University Park, PA 16802
814-863-8055
Me with the Introductory Geology in the Field class that I taught in the Black Hills (summer 2006). I am in the bottom row on the far left. We walked down a trail off of Nemo Road following Little Elk Creek out toward the edge of the Black Hills to see Red Gate and White Gate. The Red Gate and White Gate are where the Cambrian Deadwood sandstone and Mississippian Pahasapa (or Madison) limestone are deformed into a monocline.
I'm in the final year of my Ph.D. studies at Penn State where I am part of the Biogeochemistry Research Initiative in Education (BRIE) and Center for Environmental Kinetics Analysis programs at Penn State.. I am advised by Susan Brantley and Jennifer Macalady is my second advisor for BRIE.
I am a low temperature geochemist and am interested in the connections between geochemical processes, ecological processes, and geomorphology and how those connections shape earth surface processes such as soil development, soil quality, and water quality.
My dissertation research focuses on the biogeochemistry of granite weathering and feldspar dissolution. Mineral dissolution and weathering are key processes in soil development, water quality, and the availability of nutrients for ecosystems. I am researching a couple of different aspects of granite weathering. One aspect I am studying is the connection between soil microbial communities and mineral weathering processes in a granitic soil chronosequence near Santa Cruz, CA. I am also using a reactive transport model (FLOTRAN) to better understand the orders of magnitude discrepency between mineral dissolution rates in the laboratory compared rates measured in the field.