This time last summer I was about half-way through two months at sea on Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 342. A year later we are now working on the first batches of sediment samples acquired during that expedition. Undergraduate researcher, Sarah Ault, has joined the Sedimentary Systems squad and is helping me test and develop laboratory methods necessary to prepare the hundreds of samples we have. The past several weeks has been a bit two-steps-forward-one-step-back, pretty typical when starting a new project/method, but we are making progress. Sarah will be analyzing a subset of these samples to investigate the origin of distinctive 10-50 cm-thick sedimentary cycles (alternating carbonate-rich and clay-rich) from Eocene strata. More on that project in future posts. 

The rest of the research group members are quite busy as well.

Neal Auchter is working on various components of his Ph.D. research on Cretaceous outcrops in Chilean Patagonia. A long and successful field season in February-March yielded a wealth of data, photographs, and samples. This work is part of the Chile Slope Systems project, which is an industry-funded consortium focused on deep-marine stratigraphic architecture. Additionally, Neal will be heading back to South America in August, this time as a participant in the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy sponsored program Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute in Brazil. The program is a multi-national and multi-disciplinary workshop and field campaign aimed at building a more comprehensive understanding of the Amazon River sedimentary system.

Cody Mason is cranking away on samples for a project he’s working on with Virginia Tech faculty Jim Spotila examining rates of tectonic processes in mountains flanking the Coachella Valley in southern California. I’m happy to announce that I was awarded a Doctoral New Investigator grant from the American Chemical Society that will be used for a major component of Cody’s Ph.D. research. We aim to use paleo-denudation rates (from cosmogenic radionuclides) from a ~half-million year old, and now exhumed, fan-delta system in Panamint Valley, California, to investigate the relationship of sediment supply to outcropping stratigraphic patterns. Cody and I did a week of reconnaissance field work in March, and he’ll be heading out there (with Neal as field assistant) in October to collect more data and the first batch of samples.

Finally, we are all missing having Patrick Boyle around in the lab, but he’s taking a breather from his master’s research and doing an internship with ConocoPhillips in Houston this summer.