Colloquia

September 27, 2023 – Dr. Marisa Palucis, Dartmouth College
3:00pm in Wachenheim Room 116

“Mars on Earth: Using terrestrial landscapes to quantify the role of climate change on sediment transport rates and processes”
Many landforms found on Earth and Mars are the result of flowing surface water.  Understanding how water volumes and climatic conditions are recorded in the form (and sediments) of these features may provide key insights into habitability and climate change on Mars. However, terrestrial studies aimed at quantifying the hydrologic conditions needed to form these geomorphic features rarely assess the total amount of water that passes through a landscape, which can be problematic when inferring past climate. I will present results from several ongoing field-based analog studies. The first is at Meteor Crater (AZ, USA), where work is being conducted to understand sediment transport processes on steep slopes and the amount of water that formed the network of gullies along its inner walls. The second involves the
characterization of sediment transport processes and fluxes across periglacial alluvial fans in the Aklavik Range in the Richard-son Mountains (NWT, CA). Both sites have undergone significant climate change, providing ideal testing grounds for how sediment supply, water availability, and the frequency, duration, and magnitude of sediment transport events change under changing climate.

September 29, 2023 @ 2pm – Thesis Previews with our Class of 2024 thesis students:  Martina Berrutti Bartesaghi, Gwyn Chilcoat, Amalia Culpepper-Wehr, Annabel Flatland, Sylvain Foisy, Berenize Garcia Nueva, Kennedy Lange, Peter Miles, and Elaine Yu.
In Bronfman Auditorium

October 3, 2023 – Dr. Yolanda Lin, University of New Mexico
3:00pm in Wachenheim Room 116

“Catalyzing active hope for disaster resilience”
How can hope change the way communities approach disaster risk and resilience? In this talk, I will discuss new approaches to catalyze active hope in the field of disaster science through counterfactual thinking, co-created scenario development, and SciArt. By applying a lens of hope to traditional disaster risk assessment and reduction methods, this work can support more equitable decision making and help prepare communities for uncertain futures in the face of natural hazards and disaster risks.

November 7, 2023 – Dr. Terry Plank, Columbia University
3:00pm in Wachenheim Room 116

November 10, 2023 – Lauren Interess Adventure Fellowship Presentations with fellowship recipients Kennedy Lange ’24 and SJ Brusini ’23.
11:00am in Wachenheim Room 102

Kennedy Lange
“An Exploration of Southern Japan Volcanism and its Impact on Culture”
My interest in volcanology stemmed from my summer internship project in Oslo, Norway where I studied volcanic ash deposition in lacustrine sediment cores. This was a collaborative project that combined modeled volcanic eruption data with high-resolution sediment core samples and archaeological evidence to study volcanism-driven climate change during the Norwegian Viking Age. After months of sifting through sediments in search of cryptotephra particles, my passion for volcanism was ignited, and I sought to learn about climatic forcing from volcanic eruptions, plume heights, explosivity indexes, and about different volcano types from my collaborators.