The 2015-2019 Academic Years

What: The “big picture”—there is a long-standing effort to understand the mechanisms of explosive lava–water interaction on Earth and Mars. It is important to be able to distinguish those volcanic features on Mars that have formed from exclusively by “dry” volcanic...

What:  The overarching goal of this study is to improve our understanding of ice dynamics, glacial history and paleoproductivity of the Pliocene Weddell Sea using sediment cores from ODP Sites 693 and 695. Who: Suzanne O'Connell, 4 Students When: early/mid- June to...

What: This project is motivated by the objective to better predict the bioaccessibility of trace metals in the environment. Students will collect samples of iron (oxyhydr)oxide precipitates and water from an abandoned mine site, synthesize pure and trace metal...

What: The two Newberry Crater lakes are located at ~ 2 km elevation inside the Newberry Volcanic Monument area, which is located behind the Cascadian arc in the OR high desert, ~30 km south of Bend, OR. The lake waters are carbonate-rich, with neutral to slightly...

What: The 2015 southern New England Keck project will investigate Holocene and Anthropocene sediments and landforms to understand the regional history of floods, climate change and human impact.  We will focus on targeted long-timescale (Holocene) sediment archives...

Participants will investigate the behavior and morphology of basaltic lava flows from two very different but related perspectives: field observations of basaltic lava flows in Iceland and large-scale lava flow experiments conducted at Syracuse University. Experiments...

What: Arctic Alaska experienced great tectonic and climatic change during the mid to Late Cretaceous.  We will document the sedimentary, pedogenic, and biologic responses to these changes by measuring stratigraphic sections of thick marine, deltaic, and alluvial...

What: This project will document the kinematics and thermal evolution of middle and lower crustal rocks exposed during exhumation of the Ruby Mountains-East Humboldt Range metamorphic core complex (RM-EHR) in northeastern Nevada. Although the RM-EHR is widely...

Students and faculty of the Keck Colorado Project will make field measurements and collect samples to help characterize the: (1) importance of fire in the critical zone; (2) the geomorphic significance of catastrophic floods in channel and floodplain evolution; and...