My research aims to improve the geophysical understanding of dynamic processes at Earth’s surface and in the subsurface. We combine multi-geophysics sensing including conventional seismometers, fiber-optic sensing, ground penetrating radar, wave-physics modeling, and machine learning to detect and interpret motion, deformation, fracture, and environmental change.

A growing focus of our work is the dynamics of the Arctic cryosphere, including sea-ice movement and collisions with landfast ice, ice-wedge cracking, permafrost change, and interactions among ice, ocean, atmosphere, and coastal landscapes. We also study landslides and other geohazards, hydrological and storm-driven processes, and fluid and fracture evolution in geothermal and carbon-storage systems.

By integrating continuous field observations with computational and physical models, we seek to understand how dynamic Earth systems respond to environmental forcing, how they transition toward failure, and how geophysical measurements can improve their monitoring and prediction.
 

Fossil plants tell the story of our green planet’s evolution and reveal its landscapes from deep time to present. They are also extremely sensitive indicators of past climates, plant-insect interactions, biodiversity, and the effects of significant environmental disturbances. These data provide deep-time analogs that uniquely illuminate modern ecosystems and their possible responses to anthropogenic change. My temporal focus is the latest Cretaceous through middle Eocene, ~67-45 million years ago (Ma), an interval characterized by global disturbances that are closely spaced in geologic time. These include latest Cretaceous warming and cooling (68-66 Ma), the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (66 Ma), ensuing recovery during the Paleocene (66-56 Ma), and both abrupt and long-term warming across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary (56 Ma). I enjoy collaborations with numerous colleagues worldwide and a terrific lab group, with whom I do extensive fieldwork, concentrated currently in Patagonia, Argentina, and increasingly in SE Asia. Here are highlights of two current projects, and more are listed here.

Origins of Southeast Asian Rainforests from Paleobotany and Machine Learning

This cutting-edge NSF project is underway in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Serre’s machine-learning lab at Brown, Dr. Maria Gandolfo’s paleobotany lab at Cornell, and numerous collaborators at MEF in Argentina and in several more countries including China, India, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Brunei. We aim to develop the powerful tools of machine learning to identify fossil leaves and shed a powerful new light on the evolution of SE Asia’s extremely biodiverse and threatened rainforests. We are making and using extensive fossil collections from SE Asia and diverse areas that have contributed to the flora through plate movements over geologic time.

Patagonia Paleofloras Project

The fossil record of life on land predominantly comes from the Northern Hemisphere. However, the outstandingly rich, relatively little-known fossil beds of Patagonia, southern Argentina, provide an unrivaled opportunity to learn whether life responded differently to mass extinction, plate tectonics, and past climate change on the other side of the world. This multinational NSF project intensively samples and analyzes fossil plants and animals from Patagonia through about 20 million years, from just before the end-Cretaceous dinosaur extinction (66 million years ago), through the early recovery period and the Eocene warming interval. Through groundbreaking field discoveries, comprehensive collections, and state-of-the-art lab techniques, this research is transforming understanding of the origins of the Southern Hemisphere’s floras and biomes, the role of Patagonia, and the legacy of surviving living fossils now located in vulnerable rainforest areas as far away as Southeast Asia (see above). A Google Scholar page lists our >135 publications.

I am interested in broad aspects of igneous petrology, the earliest history of our planet, ore deposit formation mechanisms, and new ways the geosciences are relevant to society. Below are examples of research directions that I am currently pursuing. 
The main thrust of my research has been, and will continue to be using petrology, isotope geochemistry, and new mass spectrometry techniques to answer fundamental questions about when and how the continental crust formed. I am also developing a research program on crustal distillation, including critical ore deposits globally. 
Ultimately, I am interested in developing projects and collaborations in the areas listed below as well as any other areas.  If you have questions, comments, or other ideas please get in touch!

Research in the Patzkowsky lab focuses on the ecological, evolutionary, and geological processes that control the diversity, distribution, and abundance of fossil taxa in time and space.  Lab members have worked in the Cambrian of Montana, the Ordovician from Pennsylvania to Nevada, the Devonian of central Pennsylvania, the Mississippian of the Illinois and Appalachian basins, the Pennsylvanian and Permian of the Midcontinent, the Paleogene of the Gulf Coast, and the Neogene of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. One of the main threads through all the field research is the collection and interpretation of fossils in a sequence stratigraphic framework emphasizing how the architecture of the stratigraphic record affects the preservation and distribution of fossils. 

The Patzkowsky lab also studies the geographic and environmental patterns of extinction and recovery across the Late Ordovician and end-Cretaceous mass extinctions.  These two mass extinctions had very different effects on the history of life and we are trying to quantify those different effects.  Recently, we have performed this work using a phylogenetic framework. This approach, called phylogenetic paleoecology, is required to understand the evolutionary underpinning of large-scale ecologic patterns of extinction and diversification.  We are also using models of speciation and extinction and models of anatomical change to better constrain the relationship between environmental change and the diversification of a major brachiopod clade during the Ordovician radiations.

My research covers five related areas involving the use of seismic data to investigate Earth structure and processes over a range of scales, from the deep mantle to the surface. Tightly integrated with my research is an education effort to improve diversity in the geosciences.

AfricaArray:  AfricaArray is a multifaceted initiative supporting science education and research in Africa and the U.S. built around interrogating the largest geophysical anomaly in Earth’s mantle to advance our understanding of its origin, structure, composition and influence on mantle dynamics and surface processes (http://africaarray.psu.edu). The AfricaArray network of 53 permanent geophysical observatories in 17 African countries provides seismic, GPS and weather data openly to the community.  Many temporary seismic networks have been deployed over the past 15 years to improve data coverage between the observatories.

Antarctica:  For almost 20 years I have been investigating the structure and origin of geologically intriguing regions of Antarctica, including the Transantarctic Mountains, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, the Marie Byrd Land Dome, and the West Antarctic Rift System, using seismic data from temporary and permanent networks.  Current efforts are part of the multi-institutional POLENET project (http://polenet.org), where seismic and GPS data from a backbone network of more than 30 stations distributed throughout West Antarctica are being used with data from temporary stations to image details of crust and mantle structure beneath large glaciers that have the potential to collapse catastrophically as the planet warms and cause several meters of sea level rise.

Appalachian Basin:  Connected to the operation of the Pennsylvania State Seismic Network (PASEIS: http://paseis.geosc.psu.edu) is a research effort to assist the mitigation of seismicity caused by hydraulic fracking and wastewater disposal. Induced seismicity in the Appalachian Basin (PA, OH, WV) is occurring in areas where the depth to crystalline basement under the sedimentary cover is fairly shallow (< ~ 4 km).  A new “basement” map is needed to improve risk assessments by regulatory agencies and the development of seismic monitoring requirements.  Seismic data from the PASEIS network, in conjunction with data from other networks, regional 2D industry seismic reflection profiles, and well logs, are being used to map the depth to basement across the Appalachian Basin.  The same data are also being used to investigate Precambrian crust and lithospheric mantle structure beneath the basin to improve our understanding of North American continental structure.

Critical Zone: The critical zone extends from the vegetation canopy downwards to unweathered bedrock, a zone of the earth “critical” for supporting life.  To understand key physical and geochemical processes at the watershed scale within the critical zone that transform bedrock into soil, 3D and 4D (i.e., time lapse) geophysical imaging of the shallow subsurface is needed.  Over the past few years, I have developed a new research thrust to obtain and interpret electrical resistivity and active and passive source seismic data to image the critical zone at Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory. 

Marone’s research group works on earthquake science, friction, fluid flow and geomechanics.  Recent work has focused on the discovery that machine learning can predict the timing and in some cases magnitude of laboratory earthquakes.  Research directions include the mechanics of laboratory earthquakes and the physics of precursory changes in rock properties prior to failure.  Marone’s group recently discovered how to reproduce in the laboratory the full spectrum of slip modes from aseismic and slow slip to elastodynamic rupture. A major research direction involves identifying the mechanisms that allow slow, quasi-dynamic rupture in the laboratory and investigations of the extent to which such mechanisms may also operate on tectonic faults. Other directions include laboratory experiments to investigate the roles of fault slip velocity and slip history on friction (so called rate and state effects) and their application to earthquake faults.  Marone’s group is studying how machine learning and other techniques can be applied to laboratory earthquake prediction to improve forecasts of the spectrum of tectonic failure modes.