Questions we ask

Simple questions can sometimes be answered and sometimes not. How much excess carbon was stored in the ocean during the last ice age? Complex questions defy simple answers. What caused reconstructed environmental change in the geologic past, or what will be the long-term consequences of ongoing human alteration of the Earth System? Our research encompasses a spectrum of computational methods: extracting environmental information from indirect geochemical measurements, developing models for the global cycling of elements with their isotopes, and combining models with observations to ask complex questions.

Tools & Skills

Abstracting from the concrete processes that we study to the global consequences in a naturally balanced Earth System requires a creative mind as well as tools and skills to convert thought into insight. As a community principle we always look to advance our mastery of digital workflows, open standards and learn new ways to communicate our thoughts into code. We work with and continue to learn Python, git, C++, make and the internet.

While each one of us pursuit different research questions and goals we realize the opportunity to learn with and from each other.

System Science

Earth is more than the sum of its parts and the Earth and environmental sciences often seek to reduce the explanation and models for observed phenomena to highlight the dominant driving forces. There are pitfalls to these reductions, especially when it comes to understand the operation of global element cycles on geologic timescales. Our research is necessarily interdisciplinary, bridging reduced views of the Earth System to yield a more complete picture.