People

Faculty

Whitney Behr is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at JSG.  Whitney completed her Bachelor’s degree at California State University Northridge in 2006 and her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2011. She then spent 11 months at Brown University as a Postdoctoral Fellow before joining the Jackson School in August, 2012.  Whitney’s research incorporates a variety of field, analytical and experimental techniques all aimed toward understanding continental deformation in both active and ancient orogenic systems. Whitney welcomes the opportunity to develop new projects and collaborations and is always enthusiastic to talk to prospective graduate students.  Click here to view Whitney’s CV.

Students

Peter Gold‘s research interests broadly include neotectoncs and tectonic geomorphology. His masters research involved the use of terrestrial lidar and immersive virtual reality visualization and analysis methods to better understand the character of both coseismic and long term fault slip from measurements of recent earthquake ruptures along the Dixie Valley (US) and Borrego (Mexico) faults. Primary goals of these projects included the definition of field survey protocols that minimize aleatoric (measurement) uncertainties as well as the development of virtual field measurement methods that allow empirical determination of epistemic (interpretive) uncertainties associated with common field measurements.  Peter’s research with Dr. Behr at UT Austin will initially focus on combining ¹⁰Be cosmogenic nuclide and pedogenic carbonate geochronology with lidar-based surface analyses of offset alluvial fans in order to quantify fault displacement rates along a strand of the southern San Andreas fault.  Over the next 1-2 years, this research will be expanded onto San Andreas system and Gulf of California Rift Zone faults in Baja California, Mexico.

Kory Kirchner is a graduate student pursuing a Master’s degree at the Jackson School of Geosciences. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Northern Arizona University in 2012. Kory has a broad interest in structural geology and tectonics; he is currently working with Whitney on dating high pressure metamorphic rocks exposed in the Betic Cordillera of southern Spain.

Aaron Salin is an undergraduate in the Jackson School’s Honors Research Program currently working with Whitney on a senior thesis project in active tectonics.  He will be using cosmogenic  Be-10 dating to date offset Quaternary alluvial fans along the Banning strand of the San Andreas Fault just northeast of Palm Springs, CA.  Looking forward, Aaron will be applying to grad schools and making decisions on the next step of his career in the geosciences.

Colleagues and Collaborators

John Platt (University of Southern California)

Greg Hirth (Brown University)

Rick Hervig (Arizona State University)

Dylan Rood (Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre)

Warren Sharp (Berkeley Geochronology Center)