Earth and Space Sciences
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The legacy of megafloods in the eastern Himalaya: from erosion to deposition
Glacial lake outburst megafloods are infrequent, high magnitude (discharge ≥10^6 m^3/s) events that are uniquely efficient agents of landscape change, despite being short lived. Much of our understanding of megaflood ... -
Geometry and Visualization of Folds
Reconstructing the geometry of geologic folds, and subsequently expressing this geometry visually, are necessary for understanding the kinematic and mechanical properties of folds. Novel technology for acquiring 3D geometric ... -
Biosignatures, the Origin of Life, and the Early Earth Atmosphere
The ancient Earth atmosphere is our only example for how a microbial biosphere impacts planetary atmospheres and is therefore a critical asset to the spectroscopic search for life on exoplanets. Additionally, for a subaerial ... -
Investigating the drivers of glacier retreat in West Antarctica using proxy-data assimilation and numerical modeling
Outlet glaciers in West Antarctica are rapidly retreating and contributing to sea level rise. Ice loss is primarily occurring via wind-driven incursions of warm circumpolar deep water melting the ice shelves that buttress ... -
Assimilating novel geophysical datasets into ice-sheet models: Experiments at the margins and interior of West Antarctica
This thesis uses novel remote-sensing datasets in conjunction with focused modeling efforts to contextualize present and past changes in the mechanical behavior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. In the second and third ... -
Sensing impacts to the Earth-ionosphere waveguide from terrestrial and space weather
The Earth's lower ionosphere forms the lower-altitude limit of space plasma near the Earth, coexisting with the neutral mesosphere-lower thermosphere at 60-150 km altitude. In-situ measurements of this region are made ... -
Exploring past and present ice-sheet dynamics with geophysically-derived temperature and crystal orientation fabric
The greatest physical uncertainty for projections of future sea-level rise is in ice-sheet flow dynamics and the potential realization of theorized instabilities. While knowledge on the precise fate of Earth’s ice sheets ... -
Investigating the roles of ice dynamics and climate on polar near-surface processes
Understanding processes in the snow and firn are important for studies of ice dynamics, ice-sheet mass balance, glacial hydrology, and ice-core interpretation. In this dissertation, I use a combination of modeling, geophysical ... -
Investigating the evolution of fault scarps in jointed volcanic rock through field evidence, morphometric techniques and novel methods
The morphology of fault scarps in jointed volcanic rock records information on the tectonics, volcanism and geomorphology of a region. The evolution of scarp form has been modeled to extract information varying from the ... -
Quantifying changes in climate and surface elevation of polar ice sheets during the last glacial-interglacial transition
This dissertation describes three research projects investigating changes in polar climate and the ice sheets during the last deglaciation. The first project, Chapter 2, reconstructs the past 20,000 years of Greenland ... -
The Okanogan lobe and Moses Coulee during the last glaciation
This thesis examines last-glacial chronologies of the Okanogan lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and explores whether this glacier released floods. The findings include age ranges for ice advance and retreat across the ... -
Investigations of glacier terminus changes on weekly to decadal time scales
Glacier retreat and mass loss are contributing to global sea-level rise and environmental change. One method to improve our understanding of how glaciers affect local and global environments is to measure historical and ... -
Constraining Interseismic Strain Release at the Cascadia Subduction Zone with Geodetic Data
In this dissertation, I study the style and distribution of interseismic strain release along a major convergent plate boundary to better understand how faults accommodate the relative motion between tectonic plates. ... -
A Thermodynamic Analysis of Microbial Surface Chemistry and Metabolic Strategies
A thorough understanding of microbial life on Earth and effective methods of searching for life beyond Earth require the description of possible interactions between those organisms and their geochemical environments. Such ... -
Micro-X-ray Fluorescence Mapping Data Analysis and Interpretation
The Planetary instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) is a micro-XRF instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover. XRF has long been used for analyzing geologic materials, but instrumentation is constantly evolving and ... -
Slow Earthquakes: Tremor, Low-frequency Earthquakes and Slow Slip Events
The focus of this thesis is slow earthquakes, that is earthquake-like events that release energy over a period of hours to months, rather than the seconds to minutes characteristic of a typical earthquake. Slow slip events ... -
Using local, global, and simulated earthquakes to inform earthquake resilience efforts in the Pacific Northwest
In this dissertation, we investigate how the geometry and rock composition of the Seattle and Tacoma basins influences strong ground motions during local earthquakes by surveying and interpreting strong-motion seismic ... -
Vegetation and Environmental Changes Across the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) Boundary in Northeastern Montana
The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) mass extinction was a pivotal event in Earth history; not only did this include the global extinction of non-avian dinosaurs but also the local disappearance of as much as 75% of vertebrate ... -
On the kinematic and dynamic evolution of a magma mush: from liquidus to solidus
Magmas are dynamic hydrogranular systems where the interactions between the melt and the residing crystals influences the eruptive behavior of volcanoes, the concentration of economic metals, and the stratification of the ... -
From Subduction to Collision: Sedimentary Basin Constraints on Timescales and Geodynamic Drivers
The Tethyan orogenic belt extends from the western Mediterranean to southeast Asia and the exposed rocks and landscapes present today are records of multiple orogenic events. The most recent, the Alpine-Himalayan orogeny, ...