alumni reception - Syracuse Universe Department of Earth Sciences ...

Evolution in Grenada, Spain and a workshop on
thermal modeling in Aussois, France. Despite that,
and the ever expanding job as Director of Graduate
Studies, we managed to publish papers on the Basin
and Range Province (Tectonics, GSA Special Paper),
the Pyrenees (Earth and Planetary Science Letters),
the Transantarctic Mountains (Tectonics) and the
Adirondacks (GSA Bulletin) with other papers
(Pyrenees, Alaska) in various stages of revision. The
summer of 2010 will end with a group of us attending
the 12 th International Thermochronology Conference
with activity, including new non-toxic, water-based
mineral separation techniques.
Perhaps the biggest news from Hoke’s corner
is that I landed my first major NSF grant from
Campsite close to the Sesitna Glacier.
in Scotland where I am one of the keynote speakers.
PhD students Josh Taylor and Stephanie Perry are
in the final stages of writing up their extensive
thermochronology-tectonic PhD’s with both accepting
positions at Exxon.
Gregory Hoke
I just finished my first full academic year at
Syracuse, complete with two graduate students to
guide though their respective M.S. projects in tectonic
geomorphology. Needless to say, it was an eventful
year. Both of my students are working at elevations
≥ 3000 m (9,900 ft) in the Andes near Mendoza,
Argentina. In order to take advantage of the warm
summer conditions at these altitudes, we all spent New
Year’s Eve in the air on our way to Argentina for 3
weeks of very productive fieldwork.
While in Argentina, I also began a pilot project
with a collaborator at the University of Washington,
instrumenting soil pits over a range of elevations and
collecting samples to measure the temperature of soil
carbonate formation, using a relatively new technique
called “clumped isotope thermometry.” Back at
Syracuse, the tectonic and geomorphology lab is busy
Advisor, field guide and cook!
the Tectonics Program. The project titled, “Basin
evolution and elevation history of the SE margin
of the Tibetan Plateau: constraints on the timing
and mechanisms of surface uplift”, is a three-year,
$365,000 (SU part) endeavor with collaborators from
the University of Rochester, University of Michigan
and the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in
China. Last fall I was invited to participate in a oneday
symposium on mountains at Cornell University,
chaired a topical session at the annual GSA meeting in
Portland Oregon, and gave an invited talk on my work
in the Altiplano at AGU. I am a co-author of a paper
in press in the journal Tectonics and am currently
contributing to several manuscripts. This fall I will
attend the IAS congress in Mendoza, Argentina where
an Argentine undergraduate I helped supervise will
present her work.
Linda Ivany
I took a semester-long sabbatical this past
spring after ten years and four consecutive semesters
teaching the Department’s largest survey course, EAR
105, Earth Science. During the sabbatical, I made
significant progress on manuscripts with students
and colleagues. A paper with former student Andrew
Haveles (M.S. 2009) is in press at Palaios. Derived
from Andrew’s thesis, the paper uses high-resolution
stable isotope analysis on fossil mollusks from the US
Gulf Coastal Plain to reveal how changes in growth
rate led to larger body sizes in a famous Eocene
unit called the Gosport Sand. A paper stemming