|
News
- Minority Student Recruiting
-- I continue to serve on the American Geological Institute's Minority Participation Committee.
NSF has funded a major program in our department that will allow us to interact
with minority-serving undergraduate programs in science and engineering,
providing their students with undergraduate research opportunities in the
Earth sciences. See abstract.
- Keena's Komatiites -- PhD student
Keena Kareem is nearing completion
of her study of the 3.3 Ga Weltevreden Formation komatiites, Barberton greenstone
belt, South Africa.
- Astrobiology grant funded -- The UCLA
NASA Astrobiology Team was funded for an additional five years.
This will include support for our studies of large asteroid impacts on the
early Earth. Field sites will include South Africa and western Australia.
See also the NASA Astrobiology
site.
- Ironstone pods -- Our initial paper on these unusual
rocks from South Africa has been published in Geology.
I am presenting a paper at the Fall 2003 GSA meeting.
- Gordon Conference -- I presented a talk at the GRC
"Origin of Life" conference
on the significance of large impacts on early evolution of life on Earth.
- Archean Surface Processes -- Don Lowe and I led the
first NASA Astrobiology Field Conference
on the Early Earth. The 2003 conference was held in Barberton, South
Africa, and featured 8 days of field trips and 2 days of participant talks.
Participants.
- 2003 Publications -- Two impact papers were published
this spring: the Astrobiology paper presents
a synthesis of nearly 20 years of our work, and the Geology paper new data on Cr-isotopes.
- Alumni Professorship -- I was awarded the Richard and
Betty Fenton Alumni Professorship this spring. These professorships
represent the highest professorial rank awarded on the Baton Rouge campus
and are limited to about 1% of the faculty. the Fentons. the citation.
- Science Paper -- Results of our studies of ancient large-scale
meteor impacts were recently published in Science (August 23, 2002).
Details can
be found here. Visit the AAAS-Science website for a free pdf copy
of the article (abstract
link or full
text link).
- GSA Book Published -- Geologic Evolution of the Barberton Greenstone
Belt was published by the Geological Society of America. This monograph
on some of Earth's oldest rocks includes chapters by Don Lowe and me, and
our former Stanford and LSU students, addressing issues of early crustal,
environmental, and biological evolution.
|
Keena Kareem at electron microprobe
3.470 Ga zircon from African impact layer
|
Teaching Statement
I have
taught a variety of classes at LSU in physical geology, mineralogy, petrology,
and geochemistry. My current rotation is between my spring semester
undergraduate petrography-optics class and my fall semester graduate class
in petrology or electron microscopy.
Ten years ago I developed
a summer class for incoming freshmen that was taught in National Parks of
the western US. The program began as a recruiting tool for minority
high school seniors and has evolved into broader program for recruiting freshmen
into geology. It is now taught at LSU's Colorado Geology Field Camp.
In the past five years
I have collaborated with several groups in Geology and Basic Sciences to
develop and instruct in preservice classes for education majors and summer
K-12 teacher's workshops.
With Profs Dokka and
Roche, a proposal was written to develop new classroom technology in geology.
The grant was used to place multimedia equipment, including digital cameras
and microscopes, into three undergraduate laboratories.
A common thread that
ties all of the above efforts is the recognition that learning must actively
engage the students. This is easy to do in the field, more difficult
in the classroom.
|
LSU Campus |
Research Statement
Much of my
past research focused on the magmatic and general geologic evolution of oceanic
crust, rift basins, and continental flood basalts. Fellowship supported
studies at the Smithsonian Institution and USGS included three summers of
field mapping on the Columbia River Plateau, a Naval Oceanographic Office
survey of the Reykjanes Ridge of Iceland, and a Deep Sea Drilling Project
Leg in Cretaceous crust of the western Atlantic. My early work at LSU
included studies of the Triassic rift basins of eastern North America and
the northern Gulf Coast. Analytical studies of igneous rocks from these
provinces was primarily done with the electron microprobe -- glass and mineral
chemistry. Important results of these studies include: 1) recognition
of the importance of extreme fractionation to iron-rich (and highly magnetic)
compositions in special tectonic setting where plumes interact with ocean
spreading centers (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and Journal of Geophysical
Research articles); widespread distribution of basaltic lava flows from single
eruptions on the Columbia River Plateau (Geological Society of America Bulletin);
and, 3) nature and distribution of magmatism in the Gulf of Mexico Basin
(Geological Society of America - Decade of North American Geology Series).
On-going research
is primarily directed at early Earth evolution, including magmatic, surficial,
and biological systems. This work, mostly in South Africa and Australia,
has been supported much of the time by grants from NSF and NASA. NSF
has just renewed support for my work in the Archean of South Africa.
Results include publication of a Geological Society of America Special Paper
(1999, #329, 319 pages), and four papers in Science and Nature. Some
of the most important aspects of this work include: 1) recognition
of a much more complex, stratigraphically thick, and prolonged development
of crust in the 3.6-3.2 billion-year-old Barberton greenstone belt; 2) discovery
of extreme high-pressure fractionation in mantle-derived magmas; 3) discovery
of stromatolites in volcanic interbeds; 4) recognition of unusual surficial
environments and conditions of alteration of exposed lavas; and, 5) discovery
of four major meteorite impact beds (each comparable in size to the K-T boundary
impact!). Analytical studies of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary
rocks from the early Earth include electron microprobe mineral chemistry,
ICP and ICP-MS rock chemistry, and TIMS and SHRIMP geochronology. I
have supervised the LSU Geology and Geophysics microanalytical laboratories
for the past 10 years and have been the PI on two major equipment grants
to the laboratory. I have taken three research sabbaticals while at
LSU: 1984 at University of Cape Town, 1991 at MIT, and 1999 at Stanford.
|
Goethite-todorokite, modern spring deposit
3.470 Ga Meteor Impact Spherules
|
