Climate and Earth Processes

Home
News + Alumni
EAS Newsletter
EAS Newsletter Archive
Hoosier Geologic - Atmospheric Record 2017-2018
Climate and Earth Processes

Climate and Earth Processes

Monday, August 27, 2018

Map of the earth illustrating global warming temperatures

Climate and Earth processes are two of the most rapidly expanding areas in the geosciences. Research in these areas seeks to understand the character and dynamics of Earth's habitable zone, especially the com-plex interactions of its biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere coupled with human-induced perturbations of these natural systems. It embraces studies of Earth's climate and its connections operating on multiple spatial and temporal scales with the hydrologic and biogeochemical cycles that are influenced by pervasive surficial processes.

Knowledge of these systems, especially their drivers and sensitivities to change, is integral to informed use of energy, mineral, water, and land resources and the environmental consequences of human activities. These advances permit understanding of paleoclimates and ancient environments from key proxies preserved in the rock record that have been verified in the modern world. The critical zone that lies as the interface of the natu-ral and anthropogenic worlds urgently needs improved understanding. Bridges between sub-disciplines of the geosciences that focus on problems such as the role of fluids in Earth systems and controls on the movement of dissolved and suspended materials can help.

Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University possess research expertise in these important do-mains. Research that incorporates observation, analyses, experiments, and modeling has achieved critical in-sights into these geological and biogeochemical pathways, from molecular processes and chemical reactions, to local- and regional-scale water and sediment budgets, and ultimately to global dynamics of atmospheric composition and oceanic temperature.

The department is a key player in IU's Integrated Program in the Environment.

Atmospheric Sciences

Chanh Kieu, Cody Kirkpatrick, Paul Staten

Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University is a dynamic program with exciting opportunities to undertake field, satellite, or modeling research. Our faculty members actively conduct both observational and modeling studies of weather and climate processes across scales, from cold fronts and tropical cyclones, to global atmospheric cloud and circulation patterns.

The Atmospheric Sciences Group is an active participant in the interdisciplinary research of other Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty, including paleoclimate research and global climate change studies.

The Department’s diverse, close-knit group of researchers enjoys a collective expertise in atmosphere-hydrosphere-solid Earth interactions. We are among the most active users of IU’s high-performance parallel computing facilities which include the new Big Red II machine - one of the world’s 70 fastest supercomputers.

Chanh Kieu

Assistant Professor, Atmospheric Sciences

My research focuses on theoretical and numerical studies of hurricane dynamics and structure. The fundamental questions that my research group currently tackle are how far in advance can we predict hurricane intensity within a given accuracy, the abnormal structure of a hurricane’s inner core at a very high intensity limit, and potential changes in hurricane intensity and frequency in future climates.

My research employs extensive theoretical tools along with cloud-resolving model simulations on the IU exceptional high-performance computing system.

Cody Kirkpatrick

Lecturer, Atmospheric Sciences

Cody conducts research in mesoscale meteorology - the atmospheric scale that includes circulation sizes from tornadoes and individual thunderstorms up to hurricanes - and the high impact weather that these phenomena produce. His primary area of interest is improving our prediction of how thunderstorms move, and understanding why certain storms may produce hail or tornadoes while other storms nearby do not. Recently, he has also cultivated interest in the meteorology of wildfires, and how these conditions may evolve under Earth’s changing climate.

Paul Staten

Assistant Professor, Atmospheric Sciences

Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University is “green and growing,” so to speak, and the Staten Lab is no exception. Last year, Staten hosted an international working group on the “Width of the Tropics,” on campus to discuss the evidence for, and consequences of desertification and shifting wind and rain patterns.

The Staten lab is also now home to four graduate students, with research topics ranging from modeled tropical rain cycles in Earth’s geologic past to climate’s effects on midlatitude clouds as observed by satellite.

Undergraduate students

Undergraduate students also play an active role in the lab, with a Sustainability Scholar helping to run the weather research forecast model each morning. This model is being used to teach students about water use on campus, and to create high-resolution local forecasts specifically for the upper midwest.

Department, college, and campus support continue to provide favorable growing conditions for the Atmospheric Sciences program. The renaming to ”Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences” not only highlights the department’s strength in diversity, but also provides the Atmospheric Sciences program a named home. Graduate Fellowships from the college have attracted top talent to the program, and the recently announced Grand Challenge on Environmental Change has spurred the search for new faculty. The new Big Red 2+ and Carbonate supercomputers provide exciting capabilities and processing power to the active group.

Zoey Mintz reporting on the weather — Undergraduate student Zoey Mintz forecasts the weather for the coming week on Hoosier News Source.

Biogeochemistry

Simon Brassell

Professor of Geological Sciences

Simon's research activities continue to be focused on the use of the molecular and isotopic compositions of sediments to elucidate paleoclimates and paleoenvironments, and to study the fate of organic matter in the geosphere. Recent investigations by Devon Colcord as part of her M.S. and Ph.D. studies have included assessment of climate records in lake sediments from Greenland, studying cores collected by the GetGamm program led by Lisa Pratt. Two publications in Organic Geochemistry have verified that the distributions of molecules biosynthesized by bacteria known as branched GDGTs (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers) include contributions from autochthonous sources within lakes augmenting their origin from surrounding soils, and confirmed this conclusion by the first direct measurement of the carbon isotope composition of these molecules in collaboration with Professor Ann Pearson at Harvard University. Another recent publication in Organic Geochemistry reports the results from the M.S. thesis of Amishi Kumar, who elucidated the separate contributions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons originating from both natural and anthropogenic sources of both petrogenic and pyrolytic compounds within sediments from the Santa Barbara Basin, offshore California.

Over the past couple of years, investigations led by Ph.D. students Devon Colcord and Andi Shilling are elucidating changes in climate recorded by biogeochemical indices in a series of early Pleistocene lacustrine sediment cores recovered from Olduvai Gorge. This research is part of a larger collaborative project led by Jackson Njau, Nick Toth, and Kathy Schick that aims to explore environmental change during critical intervals of hominin evolution established at Olduvai. The laminated sediment sequence from ~1.8 Ma provides an extraordinary opportunity to determine short-term changes in climate that triggered responses in the lake phytoplankton and surrounding vegetation at a time of high hominin diversity.

Simon continues to work on profiling ancient climates and is a co-author of a recent paper focused on a comprehensive collation of temperature records for the Cretaceous, which has been published in Earth Science Reviews. He is also collaborating with Arndt Schimmelmann and Maria Mastalerz in analysis to better understanding the specific nature of catalytic processes transforming organic matter during diagenesis in the New Albany and other shales.

Simon teaches both a fully online introductory oceanography course that utilizes web-based resources in student exercises exploring a wide range of oceanographic phenomena and a College critical approaches class on records of global climate change.

Erika Elswick

Senior Lecturer and Director, Analytical Geochemistry Laboratory

Fall 2017 has brought a lot of additional activity to the Analytical Geochemistry Laboratory with a full class in Methods in Analytical Geochemistry (G444/G544). In the spring we acquired a new ion chromatograph for the analysis of anions in water samples. The new Thermo/Dionex instrument replaces a much older unit, and is very student friendly. We continue to analyze aqueous solutions and solids for departmental members, as well as colleagues in other departments and units across campus.

During the summer of 2017 I embarked on a new project with a colleague to begin to instrument a wetland located in the National Forest land above the IU Field Station associated with the late 19th and early 20th Century mining activities. We ultimately hope to shed some light on this dynamic setting to develop models for remediation at higher altitudes.

Arndt Schimmelmann

Senior Scientist, Organic Geochemistry and Chemical Oceanography

Arndt Schimmelmann’s international team of scientists from Vietnam, Germany, and Indiana University identified subterranean microbes in caves to voraciously consume the strong greenhouse trace gas methane from air. Cave air typically exchanges with the atmosphere on short time scales. Methane depletion in cave air on several continents indicates that the subterranean microbial sink for methane is substantial enough to warrant inclusion in global greenhouse gas modeling. In contrast, laboratory experiments at Indiana University with strong radiation from radon isotopes excluded the possibility that elevated natural radioactivity in caves can significantly contribute to oxidation of methane in air. Furthermore, Schimmelmann’s team continues to develop remediation strategies to mitigate radiation geohazards in mud-built homes in developing countries (see website: http://eosvnu.net/projects/mud-built-homes/). Outreach activities in mountain villages established personal contacts and reliable logistic support for our research.

As a third collaborative research project with Vietnam National University in Hanoi, the laminated sediment from a volcanic maar lake in central Vietnam near Pleiku is being explored as a geological archive for prehistorical monsoon strength. The record of distinct flood layers of the past can be radiocarbon-dated and may offer a reliable statistical basis to judge the effects of climate change on modern precipitation patterns in central Vietnam.

Laura Wasylenki

Associate Professor, Geological Sciences, Biogeochemistry of metals

Laura Wasylenki was on sabbatical in 2016-17, spending seven months at Stanford University and three months at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. She is investigating mineral-fluid reactions that attenuate the migration of toxic heavy metals in soils and near-surface groundwater. At the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, she shone bright beams of X-rays onto samples of iron and manganese oxyhydroxide particles that she had loaded with small amounts of tungsten, a likely carcinogen that has been widely introduced to the environment during weapons production and testing. She is studying the molecular-scale mechanisms by which adsorption to common soil particles can immobilize this toxic metal. She plans to test some of the new knowledge derived in the laboratory on a tungsten-contaminated field site in South West Indiana with new graduate student Coley Smith. In Switzerland, Wasylenki began a collaboration with an environmental microbiology group interested in molecular-scale mechanisms of uranium immobilization. While in Switzerland, she also made time to observe with great joy plenty of steeply dipping Jurassic carbonates adorned with Late Holocene glaciers and was joined on one occasion by former student Michael Haluska, M.S. ’15.

Earth Surface Processes and Environment

Doug Edmonds, Laura Wasylenki, Brian Yanites, Chen Zhu

Doug Edmonds

Associate Professor, Geological Sciences, Malcom and Sylvia Boyce Chair in Geological Sciences

It has been an exciting year in the Sedimentary Systems research group. The heart and soul of Doug’s research group are the scientists and students. That is why Doug is so pleased with the recent success of people in his group. Notably, two post-doctoral researchers under Doug’s supervision have accepted faculty positions at other universities. Dr. Alejandra Ortiz is now an assistant professor at North Carolina State University and Dr. Jon Czuba is now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. On top of that, Dr. Rebecca Caldwell successfully defended her Ph.D. in July and will start her full-time position at Chevron in late 2017. In other news, Ph.D. student Scott David received a Dissertation Year Fellowship from Indiana University in recognition of his successes. Ph.D. student Elizabeth Olliver published her first paper in Estuarine and Coastal Shelf Science, and Ph.D. student Jeff Valenza was offered an internship at Chevron during summer 2017. M.S. student Graham Johnston accepted a full-time position with ExxonMobil starting in late 2018. M.S. student Matt Wanker just completed a month-long field season at the Judson Mead Geologic Field Station surveying gravel tracers in the Jefferson River.

In addition to all these student successes Doug and his group have initiated a new and exciting project looking at floodplains in Indiana as part of research funding by the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society and the Grand Challenges project funded by IU. This past May during flood season, Doug and his group measured water discharge and sediment transport in the floodplain channels of the East Fork of White River. The floodplain channels are interesting geomorphic features that regulate the connectivity of the river and floodplain, control sedimentation patterns, and ultimately influence the biodiversity. These data will be used to calibrate models aimed at trying to understand the function of these channels.

Doug’s research site: https://sedimentology.earth.indiana.edu

Student wading in a lake to perform research — Graham Johnston measures the water discharge through a floodplain channel using an acoustic Doppler current profiler.

Flooded field — Students pondering the nature of floodplain channels.

Man standing next to boat on riverbank — Jon Czuba surveying the water line of the East Fork of the White River.

Brian Yanites

Assistant Professor, Geological Sciences, Geomorphology

In the spring semester, Brian teamed up with 6 graduate and 3 undergraduate students in his Advance Geomorphology course to analyze river response to Typhoon Morakot in southern Taiwan using Google Earth. The typhoon caused 22,000 landslides. The students quantified how this material has impacted river systems in these landscapes. The work has implications for understanding the cascade of hazards that can exist for decades following such an event. The work is currently under review for publication.

In May, Brian and Ph.D. student Brigid Lynch traveled to southwestern Peru to measure rates of river erosion and geomorphology. The goal of the collaborative project is to tease apart tectonic and climate drivers of canyon incision along the western flank of the Andes. The IU team will combine estimates of basin-wide erosion rates from cosmogenic nuclides with river morphology metrics to calibrate a model of river incision. This model will be used to constrain the dynamics of canyon incision and ultimately help quantify when these canyons began forming. While conducting field work, the research team observed the eruption of the Sabancaya.

In July, Ph.D. student Nate Mitchell attended the Tobacco Root Mountain Geologcial Society’s annual “Field Conference”. Following the meeting, Nate conducted field work throughout central Idaho, measuring river morphology and rock strength in the Salmon and Clearwater watersheds. The goal of the project is to unravel how rock-type influences the rate of landscape transience.

Chen Zhu

Professor, Geological Sciences; Adjunct Professor, Environmental Sciences; Adjunct Professor, Environmental Health

Chen is pleased with the recent successes of his students and the publications of their papers. In June, Guanru Zhang successfully defended his dissertation on modeling the CO2 plume development at Sleipner in Norway, the world’s first industrial scale carbon storage project to abate the global warming trend. His work was published in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Technology, Energy and Fuels, and the International Journal of Energy Research.

In July, Yilun Zhang successfully passed the qualifying exam. After years of development, a new strain of research employing the use of nonconventional isotopes to study reaction kinetics has come to fruition. Chemists have known since 1884, via J.H. van’t Hoff that, at equilibrium, reactions do not stop; the rates of forward and backward reactions are equal. But how can one measure rates at equilibrium when concentrations are constant? Post-doc Zhaoyun Liu spiked a rare Si isotope into solutions at equilibrium with quartz and observed isotope changes with time. That allowed one to calculate the quartz reaction rates at equilibrium. These results, published in the new journal Geochemical Perspective Letters, have far reaching significance because it tested the range of applicability of the principle of detailed balance, something often assumed but not verified in many models for society’s mega-environmental projects. This innovative experimental method shows great promises to use a number of other isotopes of Ca, Mg, Fe in kinetics studies of carbonates, sulfides, and oxides.

Chen’s research website: https://hydrogeochem.earth.indiana.edu/