Potential Projects | School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University

undergraduate research Potential projects current fellows past fellows Submit Proposal		Potential Projects What follows is a list of possible projects suggested by faculty members and graduate students within the School of Earth Sciences. If you are interested in learning more or getting involved in one of these projects, you should contact the faculty member directly. This list is not comprehensive, however - many other projects are possible. Feel free to browse the list of faculty research interests and contact anyone whose research interests you. Still not sure where to start? Contact Anne Egger. Narasimha Rao Climate Change in India: Investigating Co-benefit Policies for Carbon Mitigation and Development in the Energy Sector This project involves assessing the direct and indirect impacts of energy policies on low income groups and small-scale industry in order to develop the criteria to quantify co-benefits to the economy of reducing pollution (mostly CO2). Two types of policies will be investigated: electricity pricing reform and energy-efficient technologies). This project will involve significant fieldwork and travel to India. The work includes helping me conduct qualitative surveys and interviews, and populating an economic model with data. The qualitative fieldwork involves developing a survey and sample selection, conducting interviews with households and small businesses. The model simulates rate design based on various welfare maximization criteria, and incorporates electricity supply and reliability, income levels of consumer categories and input-output analysis. The student must have some background in energy and microeconomics, an interest in economic development issues, and a willingness to travel and conduct fieldwork independently in India. A working knowledge of Hindi (or a southern state language) would be beneficial, but not necessary. Prof. Gail Mahood and Penni Borghi (BLM Archaeologist) Geoarchaeology of Surprise Valley, Modoc County, Northeastern California The student will be involved in archaeological surveys and excavation of sites related to the Gidutikadu, (a subgroup of the Northern Paiute) and their predecessors, and in establishing their geoarchaeological context with respect to resources (e.g., obsidian) and the paleoclimatology of this closed-basin lake setting in the arid Basin and Range province. The student must have interests in both geology and archaeology, having taken at least an introductory class in each. The student must have a driver's license and enjoy field studies. While the student is doing field work, s/he will be based in the charming small town of Cedarville, CA, where s/he can wash off the dust in a shower and cook meals. Prof. Gail Mahood, Anne Egger, (GES) and Prof. Emeritus George Thompson (Geophysics) Updating the model for the Lake City/Surprise Valley geothermal system Recent geological and geophysical studies of the area around Surprise Valley by groups from Stanford provide a new context for interpreting the Lake City geothermal system. This system is now the site of active exploration and drilling by ENEL (the company that operates the Lardarello geothermal field in Italy) with the goal of installing a 4 MW generator. The goal of this project is to compile available geological and geophysical information, to collect drill-hole data from county records, and, when possible, from proprietary sources, review literature produced in the 1950's and 1970's in the early geothermal exploration of the area, and to work with the advisors and others from Stanford, the USGS, and industry to produce an updated model for the geothermal system. In particular, one question to be answered is whether silicic volcanic and plutonic rocks encountered at shallow depths by drilling are intrusions, landslide blocks from the adjacent range, or parts of basement structures - with obvious consequences for the model of the geothermal system. This project requires a student who shows initiative and who would enjoy ferreting out information from a variety of sources , and compiling and synthesizing geologic, geophysical, hydrological, and geochemical data, with a goal of reinterpreting old data in light of more recent work and modern geochemical models. The student should be a junior or senior in GES, GP, or CEE, and must have a driver's license. The student would spend some of the summer based in Cedarville (near the Lake City geothermal area) and some of it in Stanford making use of library resources. Prof. Gail Mahood Miocene volcanism of northwestern Nevada Prof. Mahood and her graduate students are studying the Miocene volcanism of NW Nevada, which is thought to be related to impingement of the Yellowstone plume that gave rise to the Columbia River flood basalts. For this project, the student will be Prof. Mahood's field assistant doing geologic mapping in the Warner Range and the ranges to the east in Nevada. We will be collecting samples for 40Ar/39Ar dating and geochemical analysis, with the goal of determining the relationship of magmatism to extensional faulting in the region. During the subsequent academic year, the student will work in the School of Earth Science's noble gas laboratory, doing the argon dating. This project is best suited for a GES major, now a sophomore or junior, who would like to turn this research into a senior honor's thesis. The student must have a driver's license, and enjoy doing field work under hot, arid conditions. While doing the field work, the student will be based in Cedarville, CA, where s/he can wash off the dust in a shower and cook meals. Biondo Biondi - Geophysics Reflection seismic images and data sets and are 5-D cubes. Visualization of these cubes is essential for processing the data and analyzing the results. A growing research direction is interactive processing, where the user help guides numerically intensive algorithms. We would like a student to expand the capabilities of our current multi-dimensional data viewer by enhancing our viewer's interactive capabilities. A knowledge of C or C++ is preferred, a knowledge of java acceptable. Advisors' Web sites: http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/biondo http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/bob Group Web site: http://sep.stanford.edu Jonathan Payne and Brianna Rego The Evolution and Biodiversity of Foraminifera during the end-Permian and end-Triassic Mass Extinctions As part of this project, an undergraduate student will be working closely with a graduate student in the Payne Paleobiology Group during the academic year to research the evolutionary and extinction mechanisms affecting one of the most diverse and widespread groups of organisms. Through the construction of a database of global fossil occurrences of Foraminifera (single-cell marine organisms) from the late-Permian through the mid-Jurassic (about 260 - 175 million years ago), we will focus our attention on detecting broad evolutionary and biodiversity patterns relating to the evolution of body size (Do lineages get larger through time?), extinction selectivity (are mass extinctions selective for certain traits? Are larger organisms or less-diverse organisms more likely to go extinct?), and background versus mass extinctions (are mass extinctions the same thing as background extinctions except much larger, or are they a completely different phenomenon?). This project offers an exciting opportunity to research the end-Permian and the end-Triassic extinctions (two of the most significant mass extinctions of all time) and investigate their impact on evolution and biodiversity. In addition to learning about the Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic periods -- and the history of life at those times -- a student participating in this work will be actively involved not only in data collection, but also in data analysis and interpretation, leading to a greater understanding of evolutionary history and the field of paleobiology. Chris Field Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment Several possible projects involving plant and ecosystem responses to simulated global changes. Projects available to work on soils, microorganisms, plants, insects, and environmental data. No special skills required. Field work at Jasper Ridge and laboratory work on campus. Fuel loads and fire risk at Jasper Ridge There is space on a project for a student to work on improving the algorithm for assessing fuel loads and combustibility from remote sensing data. The project will be mostly field work at Jasper Ridge, with opportunities to be involved in working with the remote sensing data in the lab. No special skills required. Kate Maher Isotopes in soils as paleoclimate indicators We are using stable and radiogenic isotopes in soils to understand soil development in response to past climate change events, and to test prevailing explanations for how soils form and develop horizons. There are many options for student involvement including measurement of stable isotopes in soils from around California, dating buried and active soils along faults, and assessing the rate of dust production and movement. Work in this area would combine field work and laboratory work. Paleoclimate records from Southern California Caves We are investigating the age distribution and paleoclimate records of caves in the Mojave Desert with an emphasis on the Holocene climate record. This project would require excellent field skills, initiative, and interest in working in the lab. Carbon vulnerability assessment This study is focused on understanding the linkages between water and nutrient residence times and carbon cycling in soils. We are working with soils of different ages across a gradient in climates extending from southern California to Alaska. Some opportunities include metadata analysis of soil chronosequence data and testing isotopic approaches for measuring the age of water in permafrost and soils. Using major and trace element chemistries of minerals to understand the evolution of a rock system The chemical compositions of minerals hold many clues about the temperature, pressure and prevailing chemical conditions that existed when they grew. In many instances, chemically-resistant minerals, such as zircon, garnet and others, can preserve much of their original chemistries even if the rocks they're in have been altered or metamorphosed. Using modern micro-analytical equipment such as the electron microprobe and the ion microprobe (SHRIMP-RG), this project seeks to unravel the chemical signatures of key minerals to answer questions about a rock's history. Many possible processes can be studied, whether it is the crystallization of an igneous rock or the chemical and mineralogical changes that accompany metamorphism or ore-forming hydrothermal activity. For students interested in sedimentary rocks and surface geology, low-temperature processes like weathering and diagenesis also can be studied. Simon Klemperer Electromagnetic monitoring of earthquake precursors scientists expect that a major earthquake is likely to strike San Francisco Bay Area between 2008 and 2032, and we want to detect signals from it, ideally before it occurs! The student will be involved in any or all phases of the project, from maintaining the field equipment around the Bay Area, through computer-based data validation and analysis, and eventual scientific publication (AGU poster). The student should know something about Fourier signal analysis, and have some familiarity with Matlab and willingness to develop further knowledge. Also will not be averse to digging holes in the ground, soldering and plumbing, to maintain and develop our field stations. Driving license desirable. Read the poster made by our previous undergrad intern, "Ultra-low Frequency Electromagnetic Monitoring of Earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area: Initial Results of an Earthscope PBO Project" Shear-wave splitting in crustal seismic data in order to measure geologic properties of the earth's deep crust we create sound waves with explosions, then measure the travel-times, amplitudes and wavespeeds of different seismic modes (birefringence) at different locations. We will acquire explosion-source seismic data in eastern Oregon to study magmatic growth of the continent (see e.g. this website ), in a field program between Labor Day and start of Fall Quarter, that will require about 8 Stanford undergrads for about one week. I would like to recruit one student to work during the summer to prepare for the fieldwork, including detailed experiment design and layout, and planning and preparation of logistics. Student will then participate and assist the field leader during the experiment. Student should be interested in field seismology, or the geology at the transition from the Basin-&-Range to the High Lava Plains, and should be detail-oriented. Driving license required. Jonathan Payne & Aviv Bachan-Dovrat The End Triassic mass extinction: environmental changes across the T-J boundary The goal of this research project is to understand the causes for one of the largest extinctions in the history of life- the End Triassic extinction. We have located a section that possibly documents both the events leading up to the extinction in the late Triassic, and the recovery in the early Jurassic. This section is in the Gran Sasso region in the central Apennines in Italy. The field work will include geological mapping, sampling and measuring. We are looking for a motivated field assistant who has an interest in earth history and doesn?t mind spending his/her summer scrambling up and down mountains and sleeping in a tent.Those of you that are interested should contact avivbd@stanford.edu Paleoclimate change associated with the end-Permian mass extinction and its aftermath The goal of this research project is to constrain changes in global climate during and after the largest mass extinction event in the history of animal life. There are several sources of indirect evidence suggesting extreme climatic warming during and after the extinction event: migration of tropical plants to high latitudes, the development of chemically leached soils, and the preferential extinction of marine animals most sensitive to high levels of carbon dioxide. However, there are currently very few data from oxygen isotopes to constrain paleoclimate, despite the fact that oxygen isotopes are generally the most reliable paleoclimate proxy. A student participating in this project would work in Adina Paytan?s lab at UC Santa Cruz to prepare conodonts (phosphatic microfossils) previously collected from a locality in South China for oxygen isotope analyses and work with Prof. Paytan and Prof. Payne (at Stanford) to interpret the results in terms of paleoclimate change. Why are there so many species of snails? The goal of this research is to explain why the diversity of snails has increased by as much as a factor of ten over the past 140 million years, after remaining low stable for the preceding 200 million years. We are studying the problem by comparing the distributions of sizes, shapes, and abundances of snail species in local communities before and after the diversification of snails to determine how the additional species have subdivided local resources. A student participating in this project would help to compile and analyze data from the scientific literature on the sizes, morphologies, and abundances of snail species in local marine communities from the Triassic (250 million years ago) to the present day. Kevin Arrigo Our goal is to characterize photosynthetic regulatory responses to altered environmental conditions in the laboratory, thus allowing us to improve parameterizations of photosynthesis used in ocean/ecosystem models. The proposed work will use laboratory phytoplankton systems, under precisely controlled growth conditions, to measure physiological responses to changing environmental conditions, with the goal of using this information to improve numerical models of the ocean-atmosphere system. Our study will be the first of its kind to bridge the gap between the dynamic interaction of organisms and their environment at these very different, but equally important scales. Roland Horne The Stanford Geothermal program is conducting research in the engineering of geothermal reservoirs. One of our current projects is research that we hope will lead to the development of a downhole device for the measurement of enthalpy (heat content). Presently we are investigating measurements using optical fibers, and resistivity. This is an experimental project involving work in the laboratory. Page Chamberlain The interaction between climate, tectonics, and topography of Cenozoic western US. As part of a long-term effort to understand the interaction of Cenozoic mountain ranges and climate we are conducting stable isotopic and sedimentologic studies of intermontane basins in the western US. This research is focused on two specific subtopics, which are: 1) understanding the onset of aridity of the American west from the Miocene to Recent. Here we are testing the hypothesis that there has been a steady degradation in climate with increased evaportransporation and aridity since the Miocene. We are interested in examining the links and feedbacks between the hydrologic cycle, onset of C4 plants, and development of the basin and range province. 2) understanding the growth of mountain ranges from the Eocene to Oligocene and how these affected climatic patterns. Here we are addressing the question whether topography has migrated from north to south in western US and how this migration is linked to core complex development and onset of volcanism. All of these projects involve field, laboratory and modeling components. For more information, please contact Undergraduate Education Coordinator Anne Egger, or call her at (650) 724-0984.