Correlating field and laboratory rates of particle abrasion (BS-2007)

My undergraduate research looked at the interactions of grain size and distance traveled down stream.  The Rio Medio drains the western Sangre de Cristo Range in northern New Mexico.  The Ortega Formation composed mostly by the Ortega quartzite lies east of the Frijoles Fault.  As the river bisects the formation the sediment supply is dominantly quartzite, upon crossing the fault it is a coarse crystalline, highly weathered granite.  This environment allowed me to measure the median quartzite grain size at various location down stream quantify the rate of denudation.  I tumbled the quartzite clasts in a tumbling barrel and measured the tensile strength using the Brazil tensile strength splitting technique, this allowed me to correlate the field and laboratory rates of particle abrasion.

Physical modeling of ice-channel morphodynamics on Titan (MS-2009)

My current Masters research is examining the material properties of polycrystalline water ice in an effort to better understand channel formation on Titan.  Previous work suggests that despite a very different environment and materials, the rate of incision for a river of similar size on Titan is similar to Earth.  By measuring the tensile strength, modulus of elasticity and the abrasion susceptibility of polycrystalline water-ice (likely Titan bedrock) we can better understand how incision on Titan occurs.

The next step I hope to take in Titan research will be construction of an ice flume.  Within the ice flume I will run experiments to empirically relate discharge to channel width, in doing so I hope to relate precipitation–loosely correlated through discharge–to channel width and make an attempt to couple the flume results with real Titan channel widths using Cassini and Huygens imagery.