Current and past research
ORCid: orcid.org/0000-0002-8702-2581
Lake Paleoseismology (current)
My current research seeks to determine if sustained, not necessarily strong, ground motions from a Cascadia earthquake leave a unique imprint on lake sediment at locations as far inland as Portland and Seattle where most people live. My data suggest that inland lakes can be sensitive recorders of Cascadia earthquakes, and that the resulting disturbances are different from those from other types of extreme events such as floods and smaller local earthquakes.
Marine Turbidite Paleoseismology
I collaborated with Dr. Chris Goldfinger (Oregon State University) on three major marine turbidite paleosesimology projects:
1) Paleoseismicity of the San Andreas fault (and stress linkages with Cascadia),
2) Paleoseismicity of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and
3) Paleoseismicity of the Sumatra-Andaman subduction zone (dissertation research by Dr. Jason R. Patton, Oregon State University).
Constraining reservoir age variability through time
The goal of this project was to quantify reservoir age variability through time (and space) by comparing radiocarbon age data from coeval marine and coastal earthquake-triggered event deposits. The resulting variability in reservoir age was used to correct event ages included in the Cascadia earthquake chronology published in Goldfinger et al., 2012 (see Publications).
Paleoceanography and Marine Micropaleontology
My research used multivariate statistics to identify and apply the relationship between modern planktonic foraminiferal assemblages and sea-surface variables (such as temperature and salinity) to infer past ocean conditions from fossil assemblages. Specialized statistical training for this work resulted from a visit to the Geobotanical Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland. I applied these statistical methods, originally developed to reconstruct lake conditions from diatom assemblages, to infer past ocean conditions from foraminiferal assemblages preserved in marine sediments.