One of my ongoing interests is characterizing modern depositional environments on Earth to better constrain paleo-environments and climate on Earth and Mars. For example, for part of my Ph.D. I characterized sedimentary deposits and facies in perennially ice-covered lakes (PICLs) in Antarctica to develop diagnostic criteria for identifying PICL facies in the sedimentary record. Currently, modern PICLs on Earth are exclusively found in cold (below 0 °C) and arid regions near the poles and require specific environmental conditions to form. However, PICLs could have formed at lower latitudes on Earth in the past. For Mars, its still uncertain whether paleo-lakes were open or permanently ice-covered. By using this modern terrestrial analog we may be able to constrain past climate by identifying whether paleo-lake sediments were deposited in open-water or iced-covered lakes. If the lakes were permanently ice-covered, the global climate could have been much colder and dryer than if the atmosphere was in equilibrium with long-lived open-water lakes.

Recently, I have also been applying my work in Antarctica to the ancient sedimentary record of Earth, in particular for Neoproterozoic sucessions in Svalbard and Scotland.