Current

PhD

I am currently a PhD student in Mackenzie Day's research group (GALE) at UCLA where I research geomorphology and aeolian landscape evolution on Earth and Mars. I currently am involved in three unique projects broadly focused on aeolian processes. One project focuses on when sediment is able to be transported out of a crater on Mars, the second attempts to answer how barchan shaped features are created on Earth in absence of active sediment transport, and the third focuses on how abrasion varies spatially.

Past

Masters

For my masters thesis I studied the morphology and sediment transport of two intermittent rivers along the Balcones Escarpment in Central Texas-- in order to determine what the effects of bedrock, faulting, and landscape have on each river. These rivers are located within two areas maintained by the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance. With these areas being so close together I  focused on the geology and topography of the area as the climate and land cover remain consistent. As with most intermittent rivers, the rivers in this region have been incorrectly mapped or not mapped at all. Also, monitoring the hydrologic regime of the region is virtually impossible with only one USGS stream gauge sensor within 20 km. To solve these problems, I: 1. Mapped/measured the streams morphology before and after the study, 2. deployed passive integrated transponders (PITs) within individual grains clasts to measure sediment transport, 3. Deployed stream, Temperature, Intermittency, and Conductivity sensors (STiCs) throughout the rivers to measure their temperature and intermittency. This research was conducted over the course of nine months; May 2017 - January 2018.

For any information regarding my research please send me a message here.

TalkS Given

• Planetary Science Seminar, UCLA, April 2019)

• Science on the Bayou, Lafayette, Louisiana, (May 2018)

CONFERENCE POSTERS

If you have made it this far on my website, there is a good chance you met me at conference or you scanned a QR code on one of my posters. Below you will find a list of conferences I have been to as well the posters I had at them. Feel free to download them and use them as a guide for yourself. If you have any questions about my research feel free to contact me.

AGU 2021 (New Orleans, Louisiana): "Spatial Variability of Aeolian Abrasion: Early Results from Ibex Dune Field, Death Valley National Park”

Ninth International Conference on Mars (Pasadena, California, July 2019): “Temporal wind variability and erosion of the western delta fan in Jezero crater”

Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (Woodlands, Texas, March 2019): “Temporal variations in wind patterns within Jezero crater”

AGU (New Orleans, Louisiana, December 2017): "Channel Morphology, Streamflow Patterns, and Sediment Transport of Two Intermittent Rivers along the Balcones Fault Zone in San Marcos, Texas"

Binghamton Conference (San Marcos, Texas, October 2017): "Streamflow variability of Blackburn Fork, Spring Creek, Roaring River, and Little Creek in the Eastern Highland region of Tennessee"

Publications

Day, M., & Dorn, T. (2019). Wind in Jezero crater, Mars. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 3099–3107. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082218