Rutgers

My lab focuses mainly on the morphology of volcanic cones in relationship to overall eruption styles, details of eruption conditions, and post-eruption influences such as erosion. I’ve extensive experience with a wide range of manual and automatic methods of measuring morphology and related characteristics of volcanic landforms. I’ve been teaching a series of undergraduate assistants to use Google Earth, GeoMapApp, QGIS and published Matlab modules to make measurements of morphology. Most morphologic work has focused on the Guatemalan-Salvadoran and San Francisco volcanic fields, but I’m looking to expand the full vent field coverage of population morphologic studies. I’ve also developed a numerical model of scoria cone growth using ballistic particle tracking and an automata model of grainflow; current work on this will focus on improving the particle tracking, connecting this local transport model to more far field tephra dispersion models, and working towards incorporating it into the VICTOR environment. I’ve also started comparing my model results with recent or well-documented historical eruptions of scoria and spatter cones. Recently, I started exploring how volcanic field and arc scale morphologic studies can be used to support understanding of longer term magma supply into volcanic arcs. So far my work has focused on the Central American and Cascades arcs, but I’m interested in looking at the South American arcs as well as any others that seem suitable. As the first person tone of this description implies, my lab is mostly me although I usually have one or more undergraduates working with me. Although I sit in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, I have connections with the Department of Geological Sciences amongst other parts of Rutgers.