Undergraduate and Potential Graduate Research Opportunities

To all interested undergraduate and potential graduate students:

I have recently returned from a very eventful and productive summer field season in the Gulf of Alaska and have acquired a large data set in need of analysis!  One of my major research emphases is to develop a better understanding of the degree to which continental margin sediments record the history of surface evolution. Specifically, I am trying to address the following with my research in Alaska:

• How do sediment fluxes from land to sea and within the ocean depend on hydrologic, climatic, tectonic, and lithologic boundary conditions?
• How do sediment fluxes vary across time and space scales?

For those that are interested, you can find out more about these questions and their relationship to the tectonic and climatic evolution of southern Alaska in a science plan co-edited by Dr. Sean Gulick and myself for JOI/USSSP and Continental Dynamics/NSF.

I have a number of potential undergraduate and graduate theses projects designed to study these questions.  The projects can be tailored to fit the interests and background of each student and may include:

• Computer modeling of climate-induces changes in fluvial sediment discharge and marine sediment transport and sedimentation on the Gulf of Alaska shelf (for examples of this technique, see the CSDMS: Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System webpage.
• Seismic stratigraphic and facies interpretation of continental shelf strata influenced by glacimarine sedimentation
• Geochemical, textural, and mineralogical analyses and provenance studies of glacially derived sediment
• Links between sedimentary processes and environmental magnetism in glacimarine sediments
• Holocene marine record of Bering Glacier dynamics