UCSB Sedimentology Lab

08/18/2025

Our second Scotland paper also came out recently. This paper reports some anomalously old OSL ages from a higher than expected shoreline in NW Scotland. We hypothesize that it may represent a MIS3 shoreline. If so, it might mean Scotland was covered by an ice sheet during MIS4. Its preliminary, but an interesting hypothesize, nevertheless.

Raised shorelines provide important constraints on past sea levels, glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), and rates and directions of vertical crustal motion. Although most raised shorelines across NW ...

08/18/2025

Another exciting event this summer, was Dr. Elisa Medri successfully defending her dissertation. Congrats, Dr. Medri. She is off to be an instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

08/18/2025

Another paper that came out was Emily Huffman's first paper - also in Quaternary Science Reviews. Emily produced some of the first OSL ages on the Late-glacial shoreline across NW Scotland. It provides more evidence suggesting deglaciation may have been earlier than thought across the region.

08/18/2025

We've had a few papers come out the last couple months. First, Elisa Medri's second paper came out in Quaternary Science Reviews. She developed a new way of reconstructing sea levels using the transgressive ravinement surface. With that she is able to push back the sea-level record for California to ~16,000 years ago.

05/11/2025

We had a great field season in Scotland. With our colleagues, Louise, Tom, David, Jerry, and Anya from the UK, lab member Trap and I spent 2.5 weeks coring the bogs and marshes of NW Scotland collecting data to reconstruct past sea levels across the region. We hope the new data will shed light on the role RSL change may have played on the retreat of the Minch Ice Stream following the Last Glacial Maximum.

05/11/2025

Congrats to lab alumnus Cameron Gernant! His paper on the sea-level history of the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica came out. He uses GPR to show that the overall fall in sea levels experienced over the Holocene was likely punctuated by periods of minor sea-level rise. Are these Holocene fluctuations hiding the true size of the Antarctic Ice Sheet at the Last Glacial Maximum?

03/04/2025

For our Depositional Systems coarse we went down to Split Mountain Gorge to check out the Miocene rocks there. they record the opening of the Gulf of California.

10/13/2024

Three weeks ago we went back to Tomales Bay to collect a couple more cores for Claire’s work reconstructing past sea levels in central California. It’s always such a pretty place.

10/13/2024

Two weeks ago the whole lab went to GSA. Had a great meeting and I’m so proud of Elisa, Claire, Emily, Trap, Lauren, and Matt for presenting on their research.

08/17/2024

A couple years ago, we were involved with a project called WALIS, which sought to compile LIG indicators from across the globe. One notable omission from that work was Antarctica. Well, we finally followed up on that with this paper that we recently published summarizing what we know (not much) about the LIG around Antarctica.

08/14/2024

One of my career goals was to publish a paper with the word "Northumberland" in the title (one of my favorite places form my sabbatical at Durham University). With the aid of some colleagues at Northumbria, Durham, and York universities, it happened. Neat little project looking at Storrega tsunami deposits near Holy Island...

Microfossil and geochemical evidence for the Storegga tsunami at Budle Bay, Northumberland, UK Authors Leeza O. Pickering Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3211-0568 Grace F. Summers Department of....

07/09/2024

Just finished up teaching the first half of our summer field camp in northern New Mexico. I never tire of looking at these rocks. great group of students. A little wet this year but that meant cooler temperatures than normal. Thanks for helping Claire and Trap.