Past Projects

We propose to investigate Holocene high lake stands in closed basin lakes of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. Preliminary dating of these relative high stands suggests an early to mid-Holocene age. This proxy for increased precipitation can serve as a test to hypotheses concerning the relative roles of the tropics and higher latitudes in moisture budgets across western North America and ultimately serve to predict moisture variability with a warming climate.

This study will use a multi-disciplinary approach to unravel the depositional history of the Kootznahoo Formation in Southeast Alaska with a specific focus on the exhumation history of the Coast Mountains batholith (CMB), and how high latitudes (~57°N) recorded overall global cooling from the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) through the Eocene-Oligocene transition to the present icehouse state.

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.

This project will join a large interdisciplinary study (Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory: Weathered profile development in a rocky environment and its influence on watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry—NSF 0724960) directed by Suzanne Anderson, University of Colorado and Institute for Arctic and Alpine Studies (INSTAAR). The “observatory” will consist of 3 small, instrumented sites in the Boulder Creek basin: (1) a steep alpine area in the Boulder watershed; (2) a forested, mid-elevation catchment developed in deeply weathered materials, and (3) a steep, lower-elevation basin where surficial deposits are of variable thickness.

The Deluun Range is flanked on its western side by the Tolbo Nuur Fault, which exhibits evidence for both recent right-lateral strike-slip and thrust rupture, but has never been studied beyond a reconnaissance level (Baljinnyam et al., 1993). The Mongolian Altai is the largest glaciated area in Mongolia (Lehmkuhl, 1998), and the Deluun range supports retreating glaciers that provide runoff critical to local peoples and endemic species. This project will examine the neotectonics, geomorphology, and paleoecology – climatology of this geologically fascinating area.

This project will be an integrated structural and metamorphic study that will focus on two high-grade fault zones in the Adirondack portion of the Grenville Province, with a focus on dating deformation, determining shearing conditions within the zone, and identifying discontinuities across the boundaries.

This project aims to expose students to methods of paleobiological and historical analysis on a fluvio-lacustrine early Tertiary basin in south-central Alaska. The summer program will consist entirely of fieldwork, with the expectation that some laboratory analyses will be carried out through the academic year 2008-2009.