Research Interests

Canada's Salt Giants

What's a salt giant?  Salt giants are vast areas and times in Earth history when evaporites (salts) accumulated across a scale unmatched on today's planet. These vast accumulations of salt require unique climatic, oceanographic, and hydrologic conditions. And understanding the unique conditions that have allowed for the formation of these salt giants is one of my group's primary areas of research. 

Salt giants are often hosts of potash deposits. Potash is a critical mineral in Canada, necessary to help feed the world's growing population and increase global food security in times of climate and geopolitical unrest. In this sense, unlike many other geologic resources, potash is key to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our group works to better understand the depositional systems and geohazards of potash across Canada. Our work is aimed at increasing the efficiency and safety of potash mining and better understanding the origin of this unique resource. This includes work both in the Maritimes Basin close to home and in the western Canadian potash of Saskatchewan.   

Carbonate Depositional Systems Through the Paleozoic

Whether it is Ordovician carbonate barrier islands, Devonian epicontinental basin carbonates within saline giants, or Carboniferous microbial reefs in Cape Breton, our group is investigating ancient carbonate systems and what they tell us about the evolution of climate and oceanography through geologic time.  We work equally on sedimentology, stratigraphy, and diagenesis to better understand the ancient biosphere that these deposits record and the surficial conditions they formed under.

Metalliferous Fe and Mn-bearing Sedimentary Rocks

Metaliferous sedimentary rocks, including ironstones and manganese-rich sedimentary units, are underutilized repositories of paleo-Earth system information, particularly in the Phanerozoic.  On this front, our group is interested in deciphering these unique and poorly understood sedimentary systems throughout the rock record in order to better understand the evolution of Earth's ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system through geologic time.  We focus on the Paleozoic and have recently been utilizing these records as proxies of ancient ocean oxygenation and investigating the critical mineral resources contained within them.