What's been happening?
June 2022: Joella Campbell is awarded a GSA graduate research award. Congrats Joella! Joella and I also attended GSA's 2022 Thomson Field Forum in the Sierra Nevada.
May 2022: New paper on metamorphism in the Coast Mountains batholith, British Columbia, out in the Journal of Metamorphic Geology. Read more about it here!
March 2022: New NSF Tectonics grant funded! This research will test connections between the Coast Mountains batholith and the Alberta foreland basin in Cretaceous - Paleogene time. Results will bear on the controversy around the latitudinal position of the Insular Terrane through time. Co-PIs: George Gehrels and Sarah George, University of Arizona
November 2021: New paper on magmatism in the southern Coast Mountains batholith, British Columbia, out in Geosphere. Find it here!
September 2021: New MS student Joella Campbell has joined our group. Welcome, Joella!
August 2021: Fun department field trip to the Eastern Sierra (Fall Field Frolic)!
1) deformed rocks of the Saddlebag Lake pendant, 2) the group at Panum crater, 3) Pima in June Lake
August 2021: Fieldwork in SE Alaska!
July 2021: MS student David Stone successfully defends his thesis!
January 2021: New paper on early Cordilleran arc development in Sonora, Mexico, out now. Read it here!
November 2020: Our new Thermo iCap quadrupole mass spectrometer has landed! Look for changes to our LA-ICP-MS lab coming soon!
September 2020: A new paper about metasedimentary rocks of the southern Coast Mountains batholith using U-Pb-Hf data was published in Lithosphere. Read more about it here!
June 2020: New NSF Tectonics grant awarded! This newly funded research will test the hypothesis that unique Late Cretaceous - Eocene basins in the Mojave region formed in response to the subduction and passage of a large igneous province. Read more about it here.
May 2020: MS student David Stone received a GSA graduate student research grant!
May 2020: New Department of Defense grant reported on in the CSUN paper. Check it out here! Our lab renovations have been put on hold by COVID-19, but we hope to be back up and running with a new mass spectrometer before too long!
August 2019: We hosted our 1st PLASMA summer research institute! We will run this again next summer, so stay tuned!
June 2019: We were awarded a grant from the DoD which will in part support the acquisition of a new quadrupole mass spectrometer in our lab! More to come on this once it is installed...
May 2019: Field work in and around Joshua Tree National Park!
May 2019: New results presented at GSA Cordilleran section meeting. See links below for abstracts!
Origin of zircons in metasedimentary rocks of the southern Coast Mountains batholith
January 2019: A new paper about early arc magmatism in the southwestern US Cordillera now published in GSAB. You can find it here.
November 2018: A new paper looking at along-strike variability in the Coast Mountains Batholith, British Columbia, was recently published in G-cubed!
You can find it here.
October 2017: Another great GSA meeting this Fall! See links below for some of the abstracts presented by our working groups:
- Permo-Triassic plutons and magmatic arc development following subduction initiation
- Detrital zircon analysis of Triassic backarc strata record emergence of the Permian magmatic arc
- New Al-in-hornblende crystallization pressures from the southern Coast Mountains batholith, BC
August 2017: Lots of travel and lab work over the summer, including new DZ analysis of these beautiful zircons :).
CL image by MS student Bret Sample.
April 2017: Spring field work, sedimentary rocks edition. Beautiful weekend in the southern California Mojave Desert.
February 2017: Successful recon trip to Last Chance Canyon to check out Miocene volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks of the El Paso Basin, California.
January 2017: Went with a team of undergrads to the Arizona LaserChron Center to zap a ton of zircons. We collected U-Pb ages, trace and rare earth element data, and Hf isotope data on igneous zircons from the Coast Mountains and Sierra Nevada batholiths. It was a great trip!
November 2016: New field work in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Beautiful weather, complicated rocks, and good company :).
October 2016: Fun trip to the Mojave with the Earth Materials group (seen here at the Granite Mountains preserve).
September 2016: Great GSA meeting this year! See links below for some of the abstracts presented by our working groups:
- Along-strike variation in magmatic growth of the Coast Mountains batholith
- Implications of Permian magmatism in SW Laurentian on plate reconstructions
- Stratigraphic evidence for subduction initiation: Mojave
- Stratigraphic evidence for subduction initiation: Sonora, Mexico
September 2016: Visited the Univ. of Wisconsin SIMS lab with MS student Emily Homan. Got some exciting new zircon O isotope data!
August 2016: New MS students Bret Sample and Marius Vilkas arrive CSUN!
August 2016: Co-led a fun CSUN Fall Field Frolic trip to the White - Inyo Mountains. Sitting in front of a cool pluton / wall rock contact. Also pictured: MS students Eric McDonald and Vincent Zhao :)
Photo credit: Nancy Van Wagoner
July - August 2016: Wrapped up field work in the high Coast Moutains batholith. Margi Rusmore and Glenn Woodsworth on the Franklin glacier, with Mount Waddington, the highest peak in the Coast Mountains, behind them.
April 2016: MS student Emily Homan awarded a GSA graduate student research grant!