Research Projects

We apply a range of geochronological and thermochronological techniques to study sedimentary provenance of East and West Antarctica, the early history of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the modern patterns of ice flow and erosion, and the tectonic history of the Transantarctic Mountains.

Nineteen distinct ash layers in the Wilson Creek Formation serve as indicators of past climate from the transition for the last major interglacial until just before the start of the Holocene. We take on the challenge of dating these young ashes.

K/Ar dating and major element analyses provide insights into the origin of terrigenous sediments in the sub-tropical south atlantic ocean and the cause and path of leakage from the Agulhas Current.

K/Ar dating of clays from SAFOD (the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth) aims to address whether major earthquakes occur in - or propagate through - the central creeping section of the San Andreas Fault.

Coring through the Japan Trench, particularly through the plate boundary fault, was achieved as part of IODP Expedition 405 (2024). Fault dating will refine seismic histories along the trench and help investigate how geologic ages reset due to faulting.

Fault gouges were collected from a low angle normal fault in the Panamint Valley. Efforts are currently underway to analyze clay minerals and date them via K/Ar dating.

More information coming soon!

The uniquely broad and shallow nature of the basin around Lake Turkana leads to the exposure of both early hominid fossils and the rocks that host them. We work to improve the chronological record for the region through ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar of rift-associated basalt flows and (U-Th)/He dating and ⁴He/³He thermochronology of uplifted basement rocks.

The timing of and forces that drove extensional tectonics and collapse in the North American Cordillera remain a point of contention. These zones of rifting are associated with bands of mineralization of economically important ore along faults. We study the ages and sources of these ores in order to establish more accurate models for the drivers of rifting and collapse.

We leverage radioisotopic dating techniques to better understand the geologic forcing, hydraulic fluxes, and fluid-flow reactions in the Paradox Basin. Prior work in the region has used (U-Th)/He dating to measure cooling ages. To measure actual formation ages, we develop a custom mass spectrometer setup for measuring neon isotopes for (U-Th)/Ne dating of iron oxides.

The “Great Unconformity” represents approximately a billion years of missing geologic record, yet the timing of the erosion that formed the “Great Unconformity” remains unclear, as is the process(es) that caused it. We perform ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar and (U-Th)/Ne dating of associated Tavakaiv Sandstone injectites in order to constrain the history of erosion in the region.