My research focuses primarily on the evolution of sedimentary basins and on reconstructing the histories of orogenic (mountain) belts using sedimentary geology, structural geology, basin and provenance analysis, geochronology, thermochronology, and paleoclimate records.
See below for detailed descriptions of my current and past projects.
Paleohydrology and drainage evolution in response to laramide deformation
I am currently working on an NSF-supported project aimed at better understanding the fluvial and drainage network evolution across the western US in response to Laramide deformation. This project will use a relatively new suite of quantitative stratigraphic and sedimentologic tools to unravel how (fluvial channel) flow depth, slope, and hydrograph shape evolved in response to basin partitioning and reorganization in the Green River, Uinta, and San Juan Basins between late Cretaceous and Eocene time.
Uplift history of the mongolian Altai
This collaborative NSF-supported project focuses on determining the timing of uplift in the Mongolian Altai range in western Mongolia. Research for this project bagan in 2022 and uses sedimentary geology, basin evolution, provenance analysis, detrital and basement thermochronology, and numerical modelling to 1) determine when Altai uplift initiated, 2) constrain the rate at which the range has been uplifted since uplift initiation, and 3) investigate the connections between Mongolian Altai uplift and the collision of the Indian subcontinent with the southern margin of Eurasia approximately 60 million years ago. This project is in collaboration with Jolante van Wijk (NMT/LANL), Andrea Stevens Goddard (Indiana University), and Gantulga Bayasgalan (Mongolian University of Science and Technology).
Evolution of the Rio grande rift
Details to come.
tectonics of the ancestral rocky mountains
Beginning in 2016 during my postdoc at Northern Arizona University and continuing in my current position at NMT, I have been studying the tectonics and sediment provenance of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains through regional geology, sedimentary geology, detrital geochronology, and sediment provenance analysis.
Evolution of the Darwin and Keeler Basins, eastern California
Is there a well exposed, easily accessible outcrop analog to the subsurface Permian Basin strata?
Evolution of the India-Asia suture zone
During my Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, I studied several enigmatic sedimentary basins that formed after the onset of India-Asia collision.