In a collaboration with the university of New South Wales we are exploring the interactions between topography and flow in shallow coastal regions, where headlands and islands are common features that disrupt mean currents, creating wakes and eddies that may trap or disperse nutrients, sediments and biota.
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The amount and site of hydrogen in the upper mantle is important for understanding the geochemical recycling of volatiles, and the evolution of the mantle, atmosphere, and oceans. It has been proposed that the entire water budget of the upper mantle may be accommodated at defect sites in nominally anhydrous...

Paleogeographic reconstructions indicate that parts of the Australian continent have been exposed above sea level for hundreds of millions of years. Paleomagnetic dating of giant weathering profiles (up to 100 m deep) in open pit mines reveals three major periods of deep oxidation: Late Cenozoic (20 Ma to present...

Today, Earth's oceans are teaming with life, and even deep marine trenches contain enough oxygen to support complex organisms. However, oceans in Earth's distant past were fundamentally different. In the first half of Earth history, ~4.5 to 2.3 billion years (Ga) ago, the world's oceans and atmosphere were almost...

Zircon (ZrSiO4) and monazite (CePO4) are common minor minerals in granites.  Although they are not abundant they are important because they are the host of many elements that are incompatible in the rock-forming minerals.  For example, the ability of zircon to incorporate U has made it the...

Zircon and monazite are the two most important accessory minerals in metamorphic and igneous rocks that can be dated by the U-Th-Pb method. Garnet is a key-mineral to establish metamorphic or magmatic conditions encountered by rocks. These minerals all contain significant amounts of trace elements such as Y and REE...