Earth and Space Sciences
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What sets the pace of glacier change in a warming world? Examining the roles of climate, geometry, and dynamics
Glaciers are fundamentally sensitive to climate. Following a perturbation in either precipitation or temperature, their extent on the landscape must change in order to re-balance accumulation and melt. This equilibrium ... -
The Formation and Evolution of Habitable Worlds
The next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes will probe the atmospheres, and possibly the surfaces, of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone (HZ). However, observing time will be both expensive and limited ... -
A generalized interpolation material point method and anisotropic creep damage model for shallow ice shelves
Ice mass loss from Antarctica is the main source uncertainty in projections of sea level rise. In Antarctica, the rate at which grounded ice discharges into the ocean and raises sea level is largely controlled by ice ... -
Innovations in pulsed plasma thrusters to enable CubeSat science missions
CubeSats and other small satellites in the 3-25 kg range are increasingly able to conduct meaningful science through advances in technology and miniaturization. However, much of the proposed science requires satellite ... -
Climate reconstructions from ice cores: New techniques to understand the information preserved in the South Pole ice core
Polar ice cores preserve information about past changes in climate and ice dynamics. Studying changes that have occurred in the past improves understanding of Earth's climate system. Large climate changes, such as the most ... -
Implications and Limitations of Tremor as a Proxy for Slow Slip
This thesis seeks to integrate geodetic and seismic observations to explore the relationship between tremor and slow slip on subduction zones. In particular, I evaluate the one-to-one relationship of tremor and slip in ... -
Large woody debris and river morphology in scour pool formation, dam removal, and delta formation
The interactions between large woody debris, fluid flow, and sediment transport are a first-order control on river processes, affecting channel morphology at multiple scales. This thesis investigates how wood geometry and ... -
Modeling firn densification through viscosity and microstructures
Knowledge of firn densification is important for several applications, such as for ice-sheet surface elevation changes from repeat satellite altimetry methods used to estimate ice-sheet contribution to sea-level rise. ... -
Landslides in Cascadia: Using geochronometry and spatial analysis to understand the timing, triggering and spatial distribution of slope failures in the Pacific Northwest United States
Landslides kill hundreds to thousands of people every year, cause billions of dollars in infrastructure damage, and act as important drivers of landscape evolution. In the Pacific Northwest USA, landslides routinely block ... -
Landscape Response to Oblique Convergence: Insights from Numerical Modeling and from the Marlborough Fault System, New Zealand
Strike-slip and oblique faults are prominent tectonic features that can dramatically influence the landscape at all scales. In this dissertation, I explore the effects of strike-slip and oblique faults on the landscape, ... -
The history, hydraulics, and geomorphic impact of outburst floods in the eastern Himalaya
Outburst floods have shaped many landscapes on Earth and represent a significant geologic hazard, but they are relatively infrequent, and we must rely on the sedimentary record to study the most extreme events that have ... -
From Earth to exoplanets: Quantifying atmospheric biosignatures and biogeochemical controls on habitability
It will soon be possible to determine the atmospheric composition of potentially habitable planets around other stars via astronomical observations. This raises the exciting possibility of detecting life remotely from its ... -
Co-evolution of Life and Environment across Earth History: Empirical & Modeling Constraints on Nutrient Cycling, the Rise of Oxygen, and Eukaryotic Evolution
That life and its environment have co-evolved through Earth’s history, and in doing so have maintained the conditions required for planetary habitability, is one of the great discoveries in the natural sciences during 20th ... -
Terrestrial Paleoclimate of the Cenozoic: Insights from and Developments of the Soil Carbonate Clumped Isotope Thermometer
Land temperature at the surface of the Earth is a first-order parameter used to describe climate, but reliable and widespread measurements of this basic parameter through geologic time has eluded geochemists and geologists ... -
Quaternary grounding-line fluctuations in Antarctica
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be prone to rapid collapse under climates warmer than today due to a dynamic instability at the grounding line, where the ice sheet goes afloat over seawater. However, there is to-date no ... -
Geomorphic and Atmospheric Investigations on the Habitability of Past and Present Mars
While the current surface of Mars is viewed to be inhospitable to life as we know it, past Mars may have harbored habitable environments though the extent and duration of such environment is still unclear. There are several ... -
Understanding Antarctic ice-stream flow using ice-flow models and geophysical observations
Ice streams are the primary pathway by which Antarctic ice is evacuated to the ocean. Because the Antarctic ice sheets lose mass primarily through oceanic melt and calving, ice-stream dynamics exert a primary control on ... -
Magnesium isotope fractionation associated with biotic and abiotic weathering -and- Developing a scalable method for rare earth element extraction from non-traditional feedstocks using engineered Escherichia coli
This dissertation is divided into two sections, with the first discussing magnesium (Mg) isotope behavior during biotic and abiotic rock weathering, and the second describing the application of engineered microbes for the ... -
An investigation of lightning-generated whistler waves in the inner magnetosphere
In this dissertation, we use a new and unique dataset to investigate lightning-generated whistler waves in the Earth’s inner magnetosphere. Global lightning data and high-resolution waveform data in the inner magnetosphere ... -
Testing the theory of radiation belt electron loss by hiss and electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves
Hiss, chorus and electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves (EMIC wave) are three major wave modes that are widely investigated and included in the radiation belt electron models to explain electron precipitation. The quasi-linear ...
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