Students
ISU graduate and undergraduate students on a recent field trip to Canyonlands, UT.
Graduate Research
Cheyenne Bartelt
MS Geology
Anticipated Spring 2025
Cheyenne is a first-year MS student working on characterizing the detrital zircon geochemistry of major drainages in Idaho for comparison to whole rock chemistry to determine potential sources of bias in applications of detrital zircon.
Robert Manta
MS Geology
Anticipated Spring 2024
Robbie is a second-year MS student studying hypothesized Eocene wedge-top strata in southern Peru to test geodynamic drivers of retroarc foreland basin subsidence during the Cenozoic construction of the Central Andes.
Maria Reinoso
MS Geology
Anticipated Spring 2024
Maria is a second-year MS student studying the sediment routing history of the Bengal Fan. Specifically, Maria is using mixture modeling to test hypotheses involving climate and tectonics to explain observed changes in sediment provenance at the Plio-Pleistocene transition. Maria recently completed her field work sampling major tributaries to the Ganges River drainage basin in northern India.
Jon Lever
MS Geology
Summer 2023
Jon recently completed his MS focused on Mesoproterozoic strata of Leaton Gulch near Challis, ID. Jon applied detrital zircon geochronology and geochemistry to place previously unidentified strata into the context of the Belt Supergroup.
Undergraduate Research
Cassandra Kenyon
BS Geology
Spring 2023
Cassie recently completed her BS. Her project focused on the Cenozoic geology of central Peru. Cassie’s project involved quantifying stable isotopic variations of modern waters along the Central Andes of South America where she collected over 130 water samples from modern rivers and streams across and along central and southern Peru, spanning nearly 4000 meters (>13,000 feet) in elevation, with samples as high as ~4600 meters (>15,000 feet!). Cassie determined a revised empirical lapse rate for the Central Andean rain shadow, and tested her results against theoretical lapse rates to determine the timing and rate of attainment of the high plateau of the Central Andes using ancient water preserved in volcanic glass. Cassie starts her MS degree this fall at the University of Oklahoma.
Kyle Mangum
BS Geology
Spring 2023
Kyle recently completed his BS in Geology. In his undergraduate Kyle used detrital zircon to investigate hypothesized Belt Supergroup stratigraphy of the southernmost Lemhi Range near South Creek in Howe, ID. Kyle’s work characterized a previously unclassified quartzite unit that underlies the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian Wilbert Formation in an angular unconformity was investigated as a previously unidentified exposure of Belt Supergroup.
Ryan Eden
BS Geology
(University of Arizona)
Spring 2021
Ryan completed a senior thesis focused on characterizing the Lu-Hf geochemistry of volcanic rocks in southern Peru for comparison to records of surface uplift. Ryan is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.