Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

Tectonics, Volcanology, and Petrology

Understanding tectonic and volcanic processes and their high-temperature rock record.

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Tectonics, Volcanology, and Petrology

Understanding tectonic and volcanic processes and their high-temperature rock record.

We use geophysical and geochemical methods to investigate a wide variety of geological problems that shape Earth’s interior and surface through volcanism and tectonism. We employ observational, experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches. Active research areas include: microstructural analysis of deformed rocks and xenoliths to investigate deformation mechanisms and the rheology of the crust and mantle; the chemical and physical processes associated with magma formation, migration, and eruption; geodynamics of ice sheets and mantle rebound; the seismic structure of the lithosphere and mantle; mechanics of faulting and earthquakes.

Tectonics, Volcanology, and Petrology News

More DEEPS News
Quanta Magazine

Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface

Strong new evidence suggests that primordial material from the planet’s center is somehow making its way out. Continent-size entities anchored to the core-mantle boundary might be involved. Assistant Professor Harriet Lau commented on this exciting research, noting: if material is effusing from the core into the mantle, is the boundary between them “as distinct as we think?”
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Icarus

Lunar volcanic gas cloud chemistry: Constraints from glass bead surface sublimates

In a new study published in Icarus, a team of researchers led by DEEPS graduate student Thomas Williams and Professors Stephen Parman and Alberto Saal have used modern analysis techniques to closely examine the microscopic mineral deposits on the outside of lunar beads from the Apollo mission. The team's findings suggest a change in eruption style over the course of a pyroclastic volcanic eruption in the Taurus-Littrow Valley.
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Eos

Creeping Faults May Have Simpler Geometries

Geologists generally think that creep happens on faults that slice through particularly slippery rocks. But a recent study co-authored by Professor Victor Tsai reports that the overall structure of a fault network might also dictate why some faults creep rather than intermittently slip dramatically.
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