Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering Alexis Navarre-Sitchler has received an NSF Early CAREER Award for her work into understanding the geological processes which help form our landscape.
Sitchler and her team are working in the field to understand how rocks chemically react with water in natural environments, potentially unlocking clues about past climate change and land surface evolution.
“Currently, chemical reactions between rock and water measured in laboratory conditions are much faster than water-rock reactions measured in natural systems,” explained Sitchler. “This discrepancy makes it difficult to truly understand the fundamental geologic process of how these sediments break down.”
A large part of the project is researching how carbon dioxide from the air is sequestered into these geologic systems, which as Sitchler explains, is hard to emulate in a lab setting.
Sitchler’s team is measuring these reactions in the place where they actually occur—out in the natural environment. Over the course of the 5-year project, they hope to achieve a greater understanding of the way water moves through rock and how fast rock dissolves, potentially advancing the ability to predict how Earth systems will respond to future environmental influencers.
This research is made possible by NSF Award 1554502.
Contact:
Agata Bogucka, Communications Manager, College of Earth Resource Sciences & Engineering | 303-384-2657 | abogucka@mines.edu
