Maverick Science mag 2013-14

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Early Eocene strata in the Wind River Basin of central Wyoming show alternating ancient soil (red) and fluvial channel sandstone (grey and yellow). Photo courtesy of Majie Fan. Crunching the STRATA Sedimentary rock contains information about what the Earth was like long ago, as well as how and why it has changed. UT Arlington geologist Majie Fan and her students are studying these ancient archives to learn how mountain ranges formed, what the climate was like, and more. 20 Maverick Science 2013-14 By Greg Pe derson
Solving a childhood mystery gave Majie Fan the desire to study geology and make a career of examining sedimentary formations to unlock the clues they provide about tectonic processes and climate changes that shaped the Earth millions of years ago. Fan, a UT Arlington assistant professor of earth and environmental science, was born and raised in the Gansu Province of rural northwestern China, a region located between two famous geologic features: the Tibetan Plateau and the Chinese Loess Plateau. Loess is silty sediment, usually yellowish or brown in color, which consists of tiny mineral particles deposited by the wind. For much of her childhood, she and her family lived in cave houses, or yaodong – structures typically carved out of the side of a cliff or hill. Fan remembers her curiosity in the yellow and brown hues of the houses’ earthen walls. “When I was a kid, I always wondered about the frequent color variations from light yellow to light brown on the walls inside the houses and on any cliffs, and imagined an artist riding a helicopter and painting the cliffs,” she said. “Not until I entered college did I learn from an introductory geology class that the color variations in loess are common in the Chinese Loess Plateau, and the layers of different colors can be traced for thousands of kilometers.” Fan also learned that the color variations are caused by climate changes, with yellow layers representing periods of wind-blown dust accumulation when the area was dry, and light brown layers representing periods of soil development during relatively humid periods. Answering the questions she had as a child about the composition of the walls of the cave houses where she had lived sparked a desire to learn more about geology. That desire propelled her to a career as a geologist at UT Arlington, where she has an active research lab and enjoys helping students learn and gain experience in the fields of earth and environmental sciences. Her research focuses on sedimentary geology, basin analysis, and stable isotope geochemistry. “Sedimentary rocks archive information regarding the tectonic processes and climate changes that shaped the Earth’s surface,” she said. “My experience with yellow earth as a climate proxy and basin development in response to tectonic processes led me to the field of sedimentary geology and basin analysis. Stable isotope geochemistry is one of the common study approaches to unravel information from sedimentary rocks.” Now in her third year at UT Arlington, Fan and her students are working on a variety of projects involving the use of sedimentary records to determine what caused geologic processes to happen millions of years ago. One project focuses on reconstructing the history of surface uplift and climate change in the central Rocky Mountains during the late Cenozoic Era, roughly 70 to 45 million years ago. The project, of which Fan is co-principal investigator along with Paul Heller of the University of Wyoming, is funded by a three-year, $304,179 grant from the National Science Foundation. UT Arlington has been subcontracted $223,530 of the funds. “My students and I are working on the sedimentary record in the central Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and the nearby area in order to understand the tectonic processes shaping the regional landscape and the climate changes associated with these tectonic processes during the last 35 million years,” Fan said. The project also extends to gaining a better understanding of the stable isotope composition in modern soil and water in the central Rockies, she said. Fan says it still is not clear to what extent the present-day high regional elevation of the central Rockies was generated during the last mountain building event in western North America – called the Laramide Orogeny – versus post-orogenic surface uplift. Orogeny refers to the formation of mountain ranges by intense upward displacement of the Earth’s crust, usually associated with folding, thrust faulting, and other compressional processes. The name Laramide comes from the Laramie Mountains in eastern Wyoming. Brandon Wade Majie Fan, left, and doctoral student Min Gao, who is working with Fan on a project to study the history of surface uplift and climate change in the central Rockies of Wyoming. Contrasting data sets collected from middle and upper Cenozoic sedimentary basin fills in the region have led to different interpretations of uplift mechanism. Fan’s project aims to constrain the post-Laramide depositional history in the central Rockies coupled with paleo-elevation and paleoclimate reconstruction. Fan and her students have spent the past three summers conducting field work in the central Rockies of Wyoming with Heller and colleagues from the University of Wyoming. Fan’s UT Arlington students involved in the project over the past two years include Jillian Rowley, a former master’s student; Min Gao, a second-year doctoral student; Brian Hough, a former postdoctoral student; current master’s student Alex Mankin; and former undergraduate students Sarah Allen and Daniel Kirkwood. They have collected numerous rock samples in order to analyze the stable isotope compositions and the place of origin of the sediment. They have also collected many mod- Maverick Science 2013-14 21
Page 1 and 2: MAVERICK SCIENCE The College of Sci
Page 3 and 4: MAVERICK SCIENCE The University of
Page 5 and 6: S c i e n c e S c e n e gineers and
Page 7 and 8: Tribute w Roy S. Rubins (1935-2013)
Page 9 and 10: Watkins continued from page 7 fishi
Page 11 and 12: COLLEGE NEWS | OFFICE OF THE DEAN C
Page 13 and 14: COLLEGE NEWS | CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMI
Page 15 and 16: COLLEGE NEWS | EARTH & ENVIRONMENTA
Page 17 and 18: COLLEGE NEWS | PHYSICS | MATHEMATIC
Page 19: COLLEGE NEWS | SCIENCE EDUCATION Gr
Page 23 and 24: The Laramide Orogeny deformed the f
Page 25 and 26: Mandal, shown with members of his l
Page 27 and 28: your development, your mood, your b
Page 29 and 30: While small-scale experiments are i
Page 31 and 32: school. While preparing for admissi
Page 33 and 34: B reakthroughs in technology are ex
Page 35 and 36: sue unharmed, and it is non-toxic.
Page 37 and 38: Hollweg Roark Thompson “This is a
Page 39 and 40: Above, Stewart aboard a research ve
Page 41 and 42: TOPEX/Poseidon launched in August 1
Page 43 and 44: the hopes that such techniques migh
Page 45 and 46: S t u d e n t a n d A l u m n i N e
Page 47 and 48: CHANGE A LIFE YOUR ANNUAL GIFTS SHA

Maverick Science mag 2013-14

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?