The 2015-2019 Academic Years

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

Project Director: Kirsten Nicolaysen (Whitman College) Number of students: 3 Approximate dates: July 24 to August 20th Project summaryAssessing the degree to which geological hazards in the Aleutian archipelago disrupted prehistoric human and ecological systems has...

What: We will generate continuous records of mountain glaciation in Peru that span the Holocene (~12 ka to present) through an approach that combines the acquisition and analysis of lake sediment cores with moraine dating using both lichenometry and cosmogenic...

Investigation of the sedimentary record of Antarctic climate change with a focus on Pliocene of the Weddell Sea. Today the densest ocean water, Antarctic Bottom Water, is formed in the Weddell Sea.  Yet, the sedimentary history of the Weddell Sea basin is poorly...

What: We will be working on reconstructing past environmental and geomorphic conditions in Glacier National Park through collection and analysis of lake sediment cores. There is broad interest in the future of our National Park system, particularly Glacier National...

What:  The southwest Montana project aims to characterize the protoliths, the grade and timing of metamorphism, and the intensity and nature of tectonism of metasupracrustal rocks that occur along the western flank of the Ruby Range, and to integrate these findings...

At a time of dramatic worldwide coral reef decline, much of modern coral reef science has necessarily focused on what contributes to the demise of coral reef systems. But for reef conservation and protection efforts to become significantly more effective, it is...

What: This project focuses on the tectonic evolution of the Chugach-Prince William terrane in south central Alaska, and it is a continuation of our 2011-13 Keck projects.  The Chugach-Prince William terrane is a thick accretionary complex dominated by...

The Abitibi Greenstone Belt (AGB), and specifically the Blake River Group, affords us the relatively rare opportunity to study seafloor volcanic and hydrothermal processes in an area that is both accessible and has a significant thickness of exposed extrusive pile. We plan to study mafic volcanic rocks of the AGB that were erupted as part of an ancient Archean seafloor sequence. Our proposed detailed mapping, physical properties, geochemical, and petrographic studies will contribute to the geologic understanding of seafloor volcanic and hydrothermal processes within the context of modern ocean crustal processes and provide us with a better understanding of how hydrothermal fluid flow patterns may have operated early in Earth’s history.