My primary research focuses on the chemistry of Earth and planetary interiors with a particular emphasis on the role of magma generation and magma and fluid - interaction on the differentiation and chemical evolution of terrestrial planets. I combine experimental techniques and thermodynamical modeling to investigate a range of various processes from magma focusing in the asthenosphere to reactive-cracking in the crust.
Prospective graduate students: I'm always interested to learn about prospective graduate students who have strong academic records, research experience and are interested in pursuing experimental petrology or geochemistry/modeling research. Please send me an email and tell me about your background and why you are interested in my group.
Fall 2025: I am happy to announce that Yuhang Ren will join the MagMaXLab next fall as a new PhD student. Yuhang Ren is in his final year of undergraduate studies at CUGB. At the U, he will use the new Neoma MC-ICP-MS to run non-traditional isotope analyses on basalts from the Basin and Range.
Aug.-Sept. 2025: Ruben Muhune, PhD candidate at VU Amsterdam with Dr. Koornneef and myself, will be on campus for two months to work with me on conducting geochemical modeling.
16-19 June 2025: I will present the work we did at CRPG last fall at the 13th International Symposium on Experimental Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry, Orleans, France
Back in August, Dr Chad Ostrander (lead PI), Dr Juan Carlos de Obeso, Dr Diego Fernandez and I (co-PIs) have been awarded an NSF MRI grant. With this award, we will a setup a new ThermoFisher Neoma MC-ICP-MS in the Geology and Geophysics Department. Delivery expected in May!!! Read more about this here.
15 May 2025: Department seminar at the University of Oslo
8 April 2025: Petroseminar seminar at the University of Lausanne.
Spring 2025: For the final part of my sabbatical, thanks to the Herbette fundation, I have been invited to UNIL to collaborate with Dr. Sebastien Pilet. Sebastien and I share many research interests on magma genesis and melt-rock reactions.
24 April 2025: New paper led by Dr. Rong Xu published in Science Advances: we present new B isotope data on intracontinental basalta and show that the heavy signature is best explain by recycled subducted carbonates.
22 April 2025: New paper led by Dr. Asmaa Boujibar published in Icarus: we present new experimental data on the partial melting of enstatite chondrite and discuss implications for for Mercury’s crust formation.
March 2025: I very excited to annouced that Dr. Elkins and I have been recommended for a NSF MG&G grant to build a parameterization for hydrous pyroxenite melting! Stay tuned for more update on this project!
29 March 2025: Congratulations Constance for being accepted as a PhD student at the University of Oxford! Well deserved! You can be proud of you!
17 March 2025: Congratulations to Will Haddick, first alumni of the MagMaXLab, for securing a graduate position for fall 2025 in the mining engineering graduate program at the University of Arizona!
13 March 2025: Congratulations to Autumn! She is the recipient of the 2025 College of Science Research Scholar Award. "This award is given to a graduating undergraduate senior for exceptional research contributions".
27 Feb 2025: Congratulations to Emily and Expedition 402 for publishing the first paper on the cruise!.
27 Feb 2025: Geochemistry seminar at V.U. Amsterdam, Netherlands.
6 Feb 2025: Solid Lunch Seminar at Cardiff University, UK.
5 Feb 2025: School seminar at University of Bristol, UK.
7 Feb 2025: Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Mendoza for starting a postdoctoral position at Sandia National Lab!
Emily and Ashley presented their research at the AGU Chapman Conference on Caldera-Forming Eruptions at Basaltic Volcanoes, in Hilo (Hawai).
Feb 13 2025: "XRF Core Scanning for Basalts: Can We Make Sample Selection Easier?" by Ashley Morris
Feb 11 2025: "BaSIC: a Markov chain Monte Carlo melting model for characterizing basalt source region mineralogy" by Emily Cunningham
Jan-Feb 2025: As another part of my sabbatical I spent some time at Cardiff University working with Dr Marc-Alban Millet to learn about a new column chemistry.
8 Jan 2025: PhD defense of Marko Repac, doctoral student at the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment under the direction of Professor Sébastien Pilet and co-direction of Professor Yuri Podladchikov, entitled: Constraining Melt Migration in the Mantle: Implications for the Metasomatism of the lithosphere, the Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundary, and Ultrapotassic Magma Genesis.
November 2024: I am glad to annouce that I joined the AGC team as one of the handling editors. AGC is a new diamond open access journal. We are accepting submissions of paper starting January 20th, 2025
17 Nov 2024: Congratulations Ashley and Emily who have both been selected to receive a travel grant to attend and present their research at the AGU Chapman Conference on Caldera-Forming Eruptions at Basaltic Volcanoes, in Hilo (Hawai) next February!.
November 2024: Emily IODP Expedition 402 PEA proposal has been funded.
5 Nov 2024: Magma seminar at ISTO, Orleans, France.
21 Oct 2024: Internal seminar at CRPG, Nancy, France.
Fall 2024: As part of my sabbatical, I spent a few months at CRPG, Nancy (France) working with my old friend Dr Lydéric France. We conducted an experimental study on the partitioning behavior of trace elements in alkali magmas as part of the project GECO-REE.
July 2024: New publication with Dr. Lynne Elkins published in Volcanica: Uranium-series disequilibria in MORB, revisited: A systematic numerical approach to partial melting of a heterogeneous mantle.
Sept 30-Oct 6 2024: I attended the 7th Orogenic Lherzolite Meeting in NW Spain around the Cabo Ortegal high-pressure complex.
September 2024: Congratulations to Emily for her wedding to Thomas. This is a major life milestone and we all wish you a lifetime of joy and happiness together!
Sept 22-25 2024: Constance and Autumn are at GSA connects (Anaheim, California) to present their research in the session "T34: Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Petrology, and Volcanology Student Session". They have both been offered have both been offered an On to the future travel grant to attend the conference.
August 2024: Autumn and Constance both got their research internship renewed for fall semester, Autum with the Wilkes center , Constance with UROP. Cheers to a busy coming semester!
August 3rd, 2024: New publication led by Dr. Susana Henriquez: We present a compilation of geochemical data to assess how magmatism changed in time and space during the closure of the Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean: From an accretionary margin to a sediment-rich collision: Spatiotemporal evolution of the magmatism during the closure of the Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean.
August 2024: Dr Chad Ostrander (lead PI), Dr Juan Carlos de Obeso, Dr Diego Fernandez and I (co-PIs) have been awarded a NSF MRI grant to purchase a new multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer for the Department. This new instrument will be a crutial for our respective research program. I'm super excited for the MagMaX Team to use this instrument for non-traditional stable isotope geochemistry!
10-12 Jul 2024: Ana Jimenez Bustos, graduate student in Dr Elkins's group at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is visiting to work with me on converting Melt-PX in Python.
8 July 2024: Congratulations to Ashley who is one of the recipient of the 2024 AGU Lawrence A. Taylor Grant!!!
4 July 2024: New publication led by PhD Student Ashley Morris on a peculiar garnet-cordierite dacitic unit recovered in post-PETM sediments during IODP Expedition 396: Evidence for Low-pressure Crustal Anatexis During the Northeast Atlantic Break-up.
16-21 June 2024: The MagMaX group was in Akureyri, Iceland for the IODP Exp 396 Postcruise Meeting!
June 2024: GSA has been generous with the MagMaX team this year: two travel grants for Constance and Autumnn to attend GSA Connects 2024 next september, and two graduate research grants to Emily and Ashley to perform analytical work on IODP samples.
June 3rd, 2024: I am happy to announce that I have been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor, effective July 1st, and will be in sabbatical for the next fiscal year (July 2024- June 2025). Stay tuned...
26 May 2024: Congratulations to Constance who is one of the recipient of the 2024 MSA Petrology grant!!! This is a worldwide competition and there is only one undergrad student awarded per year! Constance's award will be announced in the next issue of the Elements magazine!
15 May 2024: Our group received a NSF INTERN supplement for Ashley to do a summer internship at Veracio during which she will learn about XRF cutting-edge technologies.
10 May 2024: Congratulations to Dr Kevin Mendoza who successfully defended his PhD today!!!
April 2024: I am deeply honored to receive the 2024 Geology and Geophysics Faculty Research Award
April 2024: Congratulations to Emily who has been selected for a 2024-2025 University of Utah Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF)!!. Well done Emily!!
April 2024: Prof. Sverre Planke, co-founder of Volcanic Basin Energy Research (VBER), visited the Geology and Geophysics Department to discuss the results of Expedition 396.
April 3rd, 2024: Autumn was awarded a Wilkes Scholarship to conduct research this summer. She will expand her current research on the cause of excess magmatism during the Northeast Atlantic breakup to the potential consequences this event had on the climate.
April 1st, 2024: Autumn and I received the 2024 Undergraduate Researcher Award and the Undergraduate Research Mentor Award of the College of Mines and Earth Sciences.
March 2024: Emily, Ashley and Autumn all received a Chapman grant to attend the Science Postcruise Meeting for IODP Exp396 this June in Iceland. Constance also received a small grant to purchase supplies for her UROP project. Congratulations to all! The MagMaX team is grateful for the support of the support of the Department and the University.
11-15 Mar. 2024: Richard Gwyn, Master student in Dr Boujibar's group at Western Washington University presented the result of his Master project on the role of oxygen fugacity during Mercury’s Magmatic Evolution
27 Feb 2024: Congratulations to Dr. Asmaa Boujibar who got her NASA-RIA proposal selected for funding. The MagMaXLab will collaborate with Dr Boujibar and her team on this project to characterize Mercury’s surface using machine learning and high pressure experiments.
23 Feb 2024: The College of Science wrote a small article about my involvment as a Faculaty liaison for the ACCESS program at the University of Utah. Thanks David and Seth for the highlight!
9 Feb - 8 Apr 2024: Emily has been selected to sail as an igneous geochemist on the IODP exp#402!!! Follow the expedition on https://twitter.com/TheJR
26 January 2024: Please join me in congratulating Ashley, the recipient of the WAGS and ProQuest award for the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award in STEM. Ashley's achievements will be recognized at the 66th Annual WAGS Conference during the award ceremony.
19-21 Jan 2024: Richard Gwyn, Master student in Dr Boujibar's group at Western Washington University is visiting to use our electron microprobe to analyse experimental samples. Richard studies the effect of the sulfur on Merury's mantle mineralogical assemblage
Jan 2024: New IDOP Exp 396 publication led by Madeleine Vickers : Glendonites were found throughout the late Paleocene and early Eocene sediments from the IODP Exp. 396 cores, including those deposited during the PETM. Their presence possibly implies episodic, short-duration, and likely localized cooling in the Nordic Seas region during or shortly after the emplacement of the NAIP: Paleocene–Eocene age glendonites from the Mid-Norwegian Margin – indicators of cold snaps in the hothouse?.
11 December 2023: Emily (poster 1292) and Ashley (poster 1288) attended AGU in San Francisco and presented their work in the AGU Session OS11 focused on the IODP Exp. 396: "Volcanic Rifted Margin Formation and Environmental Consequences".
6 December 2023: Congratulations to Constance! Her UROP proposal was selected for funding. She will investigate the adiabatic decompression of a heterogeneous mantle.
Nov 2023: New paper led by Rong Xu in which we use Fe isotope to trace lithological heterogenieties in the source of intracontinental basalts: Iron isotope evidence on continental intraplate basalts for mantle lithosphere imprint on heterogenous asthenospheric melts.
October 2024: Sean Gershaneck joined our team last semester and for their senior study, they will be working on charracterizing the petrography of samples from Hawaii and Utah.
28 September 2023: Ashley won one of the two WAGS & ProQuest Distinguished Master's Thesis Award (STEM Category). Ashley is now a candidate for the national WAGS/ProQuest competition as an official University of Utah nominee.
August 2023: Contance Sauvé joined our team. She's helping Ashley making starting material for high temperature experiments.
August 2023: Emily passed her qualification exam! She is officially a PhD candidate!
21 August 2023: Ancient volcanism drove ancient global warming that marked the end of the Paleocene.
August 2023: The first publication of IODP Exp396 is out!: Shallow-water hydrothermal venting linked to the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum.
2-5 August 2023: I participated in the NSF-funded Teaching Petrology Workshop at Smith College in Northampton, MA. During this workshop, we designed new assignments that I will implement in my courses this semester.
19 July: As a Schangler fellow, Emily was invited to give a talk to the U.S. Advisory Committee for Scientific Ocean Drilling (USAC) meeting in New York City.
There was also a nice article earlier this month on Emily in the last iodp newsletter.
By chronological order:
10 July: I presented in session 5f on Monday (5:30-7:30pm, poster hall) .
11-12 July: Emily and Autumn both presented their results in session 2f: Autumn presented her UROP project on the melting conditions during the continental breakup on Tuesday (5:30-7:30pm, poster hall), and Emily presented her new numerical model to predict the mineralogy of the mantle sources on Wednesday at 9:45am (room R4).
13 July:Ashley presented in session 4d on Thursday (5:30-7:30pm, poster hall) and showed that mantle-crust interaction and anatexis can play an important role in continental rifting.
It was great to see so many of our colleagues and old friends and to meet new people.
5 June 2023: MSc Defense: Congratulations to Ashley Morris who successfully defended her Master! Her dissertation focused on the origin of a garnet-cordierite dacitic flow recovered during IODP expedition 396 and the implications for crust-mantle interactions and the PETM.
April 2023: New paper led by Marthe Klöcking in GCA: Community recommendations for geochemical data, services and analytical capabilities in the 21st century.
April 2023: Ashley is on fire!!! She received the GG Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, the GG Outstanding Master Student Award AND the AWG Outstanding Graduate Student Award this year !!!!.
April 2023: Ashley and Autumn both received a 2023 AWG Student Research Scholarship to attend Goldschmidt 2023.
April 2023: The Proceedings of the IODP Volume 396 is published: Mid-Norwegian Margin Magmatism and Paleoclimate Implications.
March 2023: Congratulations to Autumn! She received both a Barb Nash fund and a diversity in geoscience travel grant from the Geochemical society to attend the Goldschmidt conference 2023 in Lyon, France.
March 2023: Congratulations to Emily! She has been selected for a Williamson fellowship for the academic year 2023-2024.
17 February 2023: Autumn is one of the GG representative at the Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research 2023. She's presenting her UROP project on the melting conditions during the Northeast continental break-up.
15 December 2022: Congratulations to Autumn! Her UROP project was renewed for an additional semester. She will continue to work with Emily on charracterizing the melting conditions during the Northeast continental breakup.
19 October 2022: Congratulations to JR who was granted $1000 from the Barbara Nash Research & Development Fund to perform microprobe analyses for his #UROP project.
September 2022: New paper published in Chemical Geology: First-row transition elements in pyroxenites and peridotites: A promising tool for constraining mantle source mineralogy. This paper is dedicated to Kurt Lawson.
August 2022: New paper led by Adrien Mourey published in EPSL: Trace elements in olivine fingerprint the source of 2018 magmas and shed light on explosive-effusive eruption cycles at Kīlauea Volcano.
Fall 2022: I teach an online and synchronous advanced petrology course for grad students at the University of Utah and at the University of Arizona. This is the second edition of this course and is meant to promote collaboration and research between the two institutions among students interested in magmatic processes.
August 2022: New paper published led by Juliette Pin in Chemical Geology: Thermodynamic modeling of melt addition to peridotite: implications for the refertilization of the non-cratonic continental mantle lithosphere.
August 2022: Welcome to Kurt and JR! Kurt is a new Master student who will work on magma transport. JR is a senior undergrad who will work on magma storage and mixing in Hawaii.
August 2022: my IODP Expedition 396 PEA proposal has been funded. It will serve in performing in situ major, trace and isotope analyses on phenocrysts from the basaltic rock collected during the expedition.
July 2022:
Co-chair of Theme #2: Deep Earth
Tuesday, 12 July at at 15:30 HST: Invited presentation with Otto Lang in session 4i
Keynote speaker and panelist for the workshop: Earth Science meets Data Science
June 2022: New paper published in Chemical Geology on the Compositional variability of San Carlos olivine.
Emily and I received the 2022 G&G Outstanding Teaching award!!!! This means a lot to us because those are nominated by students.
21-29 April 2022: The scientific party of IODP Exp396 will meet at the MARUM IODP repository (Bremen) to collect and distribute samples for future research.
March 2022: The Expedition 396 Preliminary Report is out!
Emily is the 2022 CMES Outstanding Teaching Assistant winner!!!!
March 2022: New paper published in GCA with Rong Xu on the origin of the decoupled Sr-Nd/Zn isotopic signature in continental basalts.
29 Mar 2022: Seismo seminar at UC Berkeley.
Emily's application for a Schlanger Graduate Student Fellowship has been selected for funding!! Emily will work on the samples we collected during IODP expedition 396 last summer.
10 Feb 2022: Department seminar at the University of Arizona.
January 2022: Ashley spent a week at College Station to scan the hard rock cores collected during IODP expedition #396.
October 2021: Emily and I participated to the second edition of the International School on Mantle dynamics MEREMA II. Emily received a Chapman Grant for the G&G department to participate to this school.
Aug-Oct 2021: I sailed as a Petrologist on the IODP exp#396
@THEU: U geoscientist sails on Arctic research cruise
19 July 2021: How 3-D modeling helped U geologists teach during COVID-19.
July 2021: 2nd Virtual Edition.
Co-chair of session 2e.
Presentation with Otto Lang on the behavior of FRTEs in natural mantle lithologies.
Co-author presentation with Juliette Pin, Lyderic France and Laurie Reisberg.
7-10 June 2021: Emily and I participated in the "Extensional Processes Across Tectonic Settings and Time Scales" workshop sponsored by NSF GeoPRIMS. I led the Q&A session "Rifts, Ridges, and the Mantle" on Thursday.
2 & 3 June 2021: ANU Research School of Earth Sciences school seminar.
13 May 2021: MSc Defense: Otto Lang presented his work on the behavior of First Row Transitions Elements (FRTEs) in natural mantle lithologies (peridotites & pyroxenites)
ACCESS Program: Check out Helen Lindsey's project! Helen is a freshman student and an ACCESS fellow. This spring, Helen worked on xenoliths from Cabo Verde
4 May 2021: Guest speaker for the Geologists of Jackson Hole
5 March 2021: SUNY Geneseo, NY.
December 2020: I have been awarded a teaching grant from the University of Utah to expand the online petrology resources we started to create this summer to include thin sections and microprobe analyses.
25 September 2020: University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
June 2020: New paper published in Earth Science Review with Rong Xu and Yongsheng Liu on the nature of the mantle source of the Emeishan large igneous province.
June 2020: 1st Virtual Edition
6/23 - Keynote speaker in session 3a
6/24 - Poster presentation with Sarah Hamilton
6/24 - Co-chair of session 3g
June 2020: I have been awarded a ASC PRF DNI grant to study the behavior of immiscible fluids in porous media.
March 2020: I have been awarded an NSF EAR grant to study magma migration in the mantle. More information here.
20 January 2020: Our AGU book chapter, with Ananya Mallik & Emily Chin, has been accepted for publication: a fun and productive collaboration between early-career women faculty! The preprint can be downloaded here.
29-31 January: I was invited to participate to the Ph.D. Hooding Ceremony at Blaise Pascal University. I will also present my research at the Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans. After 8 years, I'm glad I finally have the opportunity to come back to the lab I did my PhD in!
9 December 2019: The MagMaX Lab gets busier! Elliot Gray has been selected as an UROP Scholar. He will join the MagMaX Lab next semester to study the origin of differentiated Hawaiian xenoliths. Sarah Hamilton also had her UROP project renewed.
November 2019: Otto has obtained both a Chapman fund award ($1200) and a GSTAA award ($500) to participate to the MEREMA II graduate school in Italy.
18 November 2019: Sarah received the Wasatch Gem Society Scholarship.
18 November 2019: Otto has been accepted to the 2020 SIMS Workshop to be held at Arizona State University on Jan 6-8.
9 December 2019: Invited talk in the session V030: “Centimeter-scale isotopic heterogeneity preserved in the lower oceanic crust”.
November 1st: University of Iowa.
September 2019: Follow us on @MineralCup and vote daily for your favorite mineral.
September 2019: Sarah has obtained two small grants for a total of $400 to purchase lab supplies. Congratulation Sarah!
18-23 July 2019:
Giulio Borghini and I co-chaired session 06a
Keynote: Andreas Stracke / Invited speakers: Lynne Elkins and Ananya Mallik.
I also presented my recent research published in Nature Geoscience, in session 02c.
18 July 2019: “a whole ocean-sized range of chemistry in samples totaling about the size of a grain of rice”. Our article is featured in EGU blog.
20 May 2019: How Earth's mantle is like a Jackson Pollock painting - UNEWS
20 May 2019: Our paper on mantle heterogeneity and melt transport was published today in Nature Geoscience. One sentence summary: highly heterogeneous melts are delivered to the oceanic crust!
I'm very glad to announce that Otto Lang, who will graduate from Fort Lewis College this summer, will join our team next fall for a Master program in the G & G department. He will work on melt circulation in the mantle and the lower crust.
I was selected for the Research Incentive Seed Grant Program by the College of Mine and Earth Sciences. This grant will provide one full year of RA-ship for a future graduate student.
Will presented his research and represented the G&G department at the UCUR 2019 at Weber State University. Well Done!
I collaborated in an invited review on the effect of pyroxenite and melt transport on the U-series disequilibrium. The article is now published in Lithos
Will got his UROP Project renewed and will present his research at both UCUR and NCUR conferences. Well done Will!
Tuesday at 2:45pm, I will reveal the true nature of the depleted mantle. Join me in session V23A - room Liberty M. - abstract.
October 16th: Utah Valley University.
October 18th: Brigham Young University
New paper accepted in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
New paper published in Energy Procedia.
William Haddick has been selected to be part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program UROP Fall 2018! Great job!
Want to know more about the U-series in basalts? Lynne Elkins will talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of using U-series disequilibria as tracers for mantle lithological heterogeneities. Friday August 17, Session 4i.
William Haddick, senior undergrad in the Geology and Geophysics department, will join me this fall for a senior thesis on magma-rock interaction and oceanic crust accretion.
22-26 July 2018: I will be attending the workshop "Early Career Geoscience Faculty: Teaching, Research, and Managing Your Career" at University of Maryland, College Park, MD
I’m thrilled to annonce that I just joined the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor in Igneous Processes.
In summer and fall 2017, I worked at V.U. Amsterdam with Janne Koornneef to perform high spatial resolution isotopic analyses on lower crust cumulate rocks.
During summer 2017, Matthew Cook performed element maps on oceanic cumulate rocks to characterise the compositional diversity of the oceanic rock for his CUROP project. He successfully presented his work last month.
Invited talk in the session 05a: "MORB Petrogenesis: From Mantle Partial Melting to Fractional Crystallization"
New paper published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
Second year of funding for my NSF project has been approved!
MARUM Bremen, May 14th to 19th: collecting samples from the Atlantis Massif (IODP 304/305)
Bristol, April 3rd and 4th, GGRiP Meeting 2017
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA - February 23rd, 2017
CRPG, Nancy, France - February 6th, 2017
I'm excited to announce that I just started (January 2017) a new position as a COFUND fellow in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University. I will use a combination of experimental and analytical techniques to reconstruct the evolution of the oceanic crust.
My latest article featured in the Editors' Highlight of Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth. And also in the Research Spolight of EOS.
Sept. 19th, 2016: Invited research presentation at the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, University Of Nevada, Reno
I just got confirmation from NSF: My project on the effect of the melting regime for quantifying the mantle heterogeneities has been funded!
New paper accepted in Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth
Information on how to use Melt-PX can be found here
The abundance and time scales of crustal recycling are crucial aspects of the plate tectonic cycle, but difficult to constrain based solely on the petrology and geochemistry of crustal rocks. Because our access to the mantle source is limited, basalts erupted at the surface often remain our best compositional proxy to characterize its nature, ultimately providing a window onto the dynamics of our planet. However, the biggest unknown in interpreting geochemical observations is assessing the inevitable modifications the magmas suffered between their formation at depths and their emplacement at the surface. In my research group, we use cutting-edge analytical and experimental techniques to develop new approaches to help constrain the true nature of the mantle and the role of the magma transport on the geochemical and petrological properties of the system.
Among the various projects we are interested in, our team is investigating the melting behavior of pyroxenitic lithologies, by conducting high pressure- high temperature experiments, performing analytical measurements on natural basalts composition, and conducting geochemical modeling.
The mid-Norwegian Margin is the most intensively studied volcanic rifted margin in the world, yet the dynamics that produced excess magmatism in the region are not well constrained. One of the primary goals of recent IODP Expedition 396 was to test three end-member processes that could explain excess magmatism during continental breakup: presence of a mantle plume (#1), edge-driven convection (# 2), or a fertile and enriched source (#3). Additionally, the expedition aimed to better constrain the timing and process of the destruction of the continental crust. PhD Candidate Emily Cunningham is currently inverstigating the nature of the mantle source using a modified version of Melt-PX to simulate active upwelling as well as a new approach based on FRTE ratios developped by Lang and Lambart, 2022 to constrain the mineralogy of the mantle source. PhD student Ashley Morris published her Master project on a peculiar dacitic unit recovered in early Eocene sediments that prove that continental crust was still present in the NorthEast Atlantic after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum (PETM). The PETM is of particular interest for the scientific community as it represents the best analog for present global warming.
Basalt compositions are usually used as a proxy to determine the characteristics of the mantle source. However, magmas transport through the mantle will inevitably lead to melt-rock reaction and modification of the melt and host compositions. Understanding the potential modifications undergone by magmas during melt extraction and transport is crucial for correctly interpreting the geochemical and geophysical observations. At University of Utah, our group is working on a new experimental technique simulating magma flow in peridotite or pyroxenite.
We are also studying magma transport using natural samples. Using xenoliths from San Carlos, Arizona, we showed that mantle pyroxenites can either be produced by magma-rock interactions or by in-situ crystallization of percolating melts and that the olivine compositions can be used to discriminate between the two different origins. Using samples from mid-ocean ridge setting, we also demonstrated that magmatic cumulate can preserve geochemical signatures not retrieved in basalts, showing that upper crustal magma mixing must occur prior eruption. PhD student Ashley Morris is now working on better charaterizing these samples to find how to differentiate between fractionation and melt-rock reaction tracers. Finally, I am also collaborating with Dr. Janne Koornneef (V.U. Amsterdam) and PhD candidate Ruben Muhune at VU Amsterdam on aproject to compare the isotopic variability retrieved in melt inclusions from Reunion and Iceland.
Dr Sarah Lambart
Geology and Geophysics, Frederick Albert Sutton Building
115 S 1460 E, Room 409
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0102
