Studies of Terrestrial Impact Craters:
El'gygytgyn, Northeastern Russia. Collaborating with members of the Northeast Interdisciplinary Research Institute in Magadan, Paul Layer, David Stone, Matt Nolan at UAF. The objective of this study is to understand the basic characteristics and morphological expression of this 3.6 million year old impact crater. Techniques employed include remote sensing, field studies, and sample analysis.
Chicxulub Crater, Yucatan Mexico. Co-Lead an international effort to explore this 200+ km crater formed during the event that initiated the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago. Techniques primarily involve analysis of geophysical data and drill core samples.
Planetary Studies:
Morphological characteristics of small craters on Mars. Here I use photoclinometry to determine the cross sectional shape of small craters on a variety of martian terrains. The objective is to determine if fresh crater shape is influenced by the physical properties of the martian surface and, if so, to use morphological variations to help identify target properties. The data set used is the high-resolution Mars Orbiter camera images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor.
Morphological studies of Venusian Impact Craters. In terms of basic planetary properties thought to affect crater morphology, Venus and Earth are very similar. Unlike the Earth, however, Venus has retained a fairly complete record of the asteroid and comet collisions occurring of the past half billion years. I use stereo radargrammetry to construct digital elevation models of venusian crater in order to determine what fresh craters on Earth would look like. This fresh shape provides an important bench mark against which the eroded landforms on Earth can be evaluated. |
