Faculty Research

W&L Earth and Environmental Geoscience Faculty do research locally and around the world. Every summer several professors have students work on their research.

Nick Barber
My research aims to understand how and why volcanoes erupt, with the hope of mitigating their impacts on humans and the environment. I have previously led research investigating the origin of magma formation in subduction zones and the geochemistry of valuable metals in magmatic systems. I am currently studying the 2D and 3D texture and micro-scale chemistry of erupted products (glass and minerals) from several volcanoes across Southeast Asia, primarily Indonesia. The goal of my current work is to establish what processes "primed" these volcanoes for eruption and to estimate what an eruption might look like today in systems where there are sparse historical records. My work applies a wide range of field, laboratory, and computational methods.

Chris Connors
My current research interests are in structural geology, specifically forward and inverse numerical modeling of fault-related folding, seismic interpretation of complex structures, and the development of growth strata associated with fault-related folding. I am studying the tectonics of Arctic Alaska through seismic interpretation and field work with colleagues at the USGS, the University of Iowa and Dartmouth College. I am analyzing the structure of the deep water of several basins in the world using long-offset, pre-stack, depth-migrated seismic data. In addition, I have field projects underway studying the structure of the Valley and Ridge of the Appalachians and growth structures in the Catalan Coastal Ranges of Spain. My previous work in the extraction of quantitative information from remote sensing data to constrain structural interpretation and modeling has seen its most recent manifestation in the use of lidar and photogrammetry to augment traditional field mapping and field work.

Madhumita Chakraborty
My research involves studying groundwater systems and contamination dynamics in light of the safety and sustainability of the resource for human consumption. My previous research focused on a comprehensive hydrostratigraphic and hydrogeologic assessment of the transboundary aquifer system of the Ganges River delta with a special focus on groundwater arsenic contamination. Currently, I am working on multi-hazard mapping and modeling of major groundwater contaminants within the aquifers of Shenandoah Valley. My long-term research goals involve working toward developing knowledge systems that strengthen water security and promote sustainable and equitable water management under the escalating trends of groundwater stress across the globe.

Lisa Greer
Lisa Greer's current research documents the health, abundance, and history of the endangered coral Acropora cervicornis (Staghorn coral) in the Caribbean. This once dominant Caribbean reef builder is now virtually absent from the vast majority of modern reefs. Over the last several years, Lisa has analyzed the geochemistry of Modern and Holocene specimens of this coral from Barbados, Belize, St. John, Florida, and the Dominican Republic to better understand the conditions under which this species thrives. In recent years her multidisciplinary coral reef work has also included quantifying herbivore populations (urchins, parrotfish, and damselfish), creating a working carbonate budget for her study site, quantifying live coral cover at the species level from satellite imagery and photographic data, genetic characterization of acroporids and their symbiodinium symbionts, using coral branch orientation and morphology to track hydrodynamics, and aging Acropora spp. corals using a new genetic aging technique, radiocarbon data, and high resolution uranium series methods. Lisa is also working on a project to quantify the relative contribution of anthropogenic carbon (the Suess Effect) and terrestrial carbon derived from deforestation to the stable carbon isotope composition of corals from southern Belize.

David Harbor
David Harbor researches myriad topics within surficial processes including regenerative agriculture, stream erosion by plucking, and landscape evolution/tectonic geomorphology. Soil health research is yielding data on building better soils in rotationally grazed pastures of western Virginia, as well as methods for determining soil carbon content, leading to a way to pay farmer fees to sequester it. Ongoing flume study of the plucking process is characterizing and quantifying how sub-block water flow causes plucking, and instrumentation of a channel block to recover surrounding pressures and movements is into version two. I am also finishing up landscape-scale projects in Pakistan, India, and Argentina, as well as continuing my career-long study of the evolution of the Appalachian Mountain topography.

Margaret Anne Hinkle
Prof. Hinkle's interests are in aqueous environmental geochemistry, with particular emphasis on researching contaminant and micronutrient fate during iron and manganese biogeochemical cycling. She is currently studying the biomineralization of manganese oxides by fungi associated with metal polluted coal mine drainage remediation sites and the associated impact on contaminant uptake and retention by the fungal manganese oxide minerals relative to abiotic manganese oxide minerals.

Elizabeth Knapp
Hawaii: Elizabeth's current research is focusing on the Alaka'i Swamp, Kauai. Due to extreme orographic effect, this is one of the wettest places on earth. Groundwater systems that drain basaltic terranes with low relief and high rainfall have the potential to be extremely corrosive (elevated pCO2, low pH and low dissolved oxygen). Her focus is on carbon dioxide consumption by basalt weathering in this intense weathering regime.

Appalachian Critical Zone: Elizabeth is also is collaborating with Penn State as part of the Susquehanna-Shale Hills NSF Critical Zone Observatory. The goal is to develop a climosequence of Silurian Rose Hill shales (at satellite sites) and compare regolith development.

Jeff Rahl
Jeff's research interests are in tectonics, detrital geochronology, and structural geology. Much of his current work is focused on how the mineral quartz responds under pressure, so that we can use the orientation of quartz crystals in natural rocks to better understand their deformation conditions (the stress orientations, temperature of deformation, symmetry of strain, and so forth). Other projects seek to document the ages preserved in the minerals in sedimentary rocks, as a tool to reconstruct where the sediment came from and the erosional history of those source areas.