Outreach

view from ship into oceanOur outreach includes developing new techniques and approaches for laboratory and sea-going science, data bases, and communication of the importance of Earth science for addressing societal problems.  

We developed the "rock-coring" or "wax-coring" technique in the early 1990's and were the first to use it to expedite sampling of fresh lavas along th ocean ridge system (see photo on left).  Wax coring increases sampling efficiency by a factor of three, and has been widely adopted both across the US academic fleet and internationally.  The design that we have found most succesful for wax coring can be found here.

I was the PI for the development and deployment of the PetDB database (www.petdb.org) which is used by hundreds of investigators worldwide to access the total data set that has been acquired for samples from ocean ridges.  Thanks to the on-going efforts by Kerstin Lehnert, PetDB became as a model for rock databases, and is now a principal component of EarthChem (www.earthchem.org).  I also was one of the founders of the journal G-cubed (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems) which a group of us developed independently as a new attempt to make an on-line journal for interdisciplinary Earth science.  Management of the journal was then given to the American Geophysical Union and it became their first successful on-line journal.  

THe aim of the book How to Build a Habitable Planet was to provide an integrated view of the story of the Earth from the Big Bang to humankind, which must include astronomy, planetary science, earth science, evoutionary biology, and modern societal challenges.  The book attempts to bridge what is often a divide between the general public and the needs of college education of Earth and Planetary Science. Communicating the importance of Earth science to the general public, and the implications an understanding of Earth and its history has for our current actions, is currently the major focus of my outreach work.