email: mtwhalen(a)alaska.edu phone: (907)-474-5302
office: 332 Reichardt Bldg.
mailing address: Dept. of Geoscience, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775-5163
I am a carbonate sedimentologist and stratigrapher. I have interests in carbonate platform development and it's relationship to paleoclimate and paleoceanography. I'm also fascinated by mass extinctions and their causes, pattern, and timing. I am a professor within the Department of Geosciences and have a research appointment at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
I earned my PhD at Syracuse University and was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences before joining the faculty at UAF.
I mainly teach courses in sedimentary geology including:
I also have an interest in wine and where it's grown which I explore in GEOS 190 The Geology of Wine
Curriculum Vitae
Whalen CV for Web F19.docResearch Interests
Over the past 20 years I've engaged in several lines of research ranging from fundamental geologic description and interpretation of rock units to high-resolution stratigraphic analyses that provide insight into the pacing and timing of events in Earth history. I've explored methods of carbonate platform to basin correlation through high resolution cyclostratigraphy and time series analysis that also led to better calibration of the geologic time scale. Evaluation of geochemical variations within a high-resolution temporal framework helps to better evaluate the paleoenvironmental changes during mass extinction events like those at the Late Devonian or the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
IODP-ICDP Expedition 364 to the Chicxulub Impact Crater
