Elizabeth Bell
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Geologists can date igneous rocks, which form when magma cools, and they can estimate how hot those magmas were. Working out how deep a magma formed is much harder.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
zircon
igneous rocks
trace elements
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Separate the effects of magma depth from those of fractionation, the chemical evolution of magma during crystallization, on trace element ratios in zircon, using zircons from magmas of known melting depth.
- Build quantitative depth indices for zircon by pairing trace element ratios that respond similarly or oppositely to depth and fractionation, and account for factors such as magma water content.
- Ground-truth zircon depth indices against geobarometers, pressure gauges based on mineral inclusions such as titanium in quartz and aluminum in hornblende.
- Develop potassium-calcium (40K-40Ca) dating of the salt mineral sylvite with the ion microprobe, to assess salt deposits as possible nuclear repository sites.
- Extend high-resolution uranium-lead dating to apatite and to tiny mineral inclusions using the ims1290 ion microprobe's Hyperion-II source, and further develop uranium-series dating of young volcanic rocks.
More about the research
Depth matters because it reveals how thick the crust was and what tectonic setting existed long ago. Certain trace elements in rocks record depth, but weathering at Earth's surface erases those signals in ancient rocks. This research centers on zircon, a tough, datable mineral that survives weathering and preserves chemical clues from its parent magma. It also includes running a national facility that measures tiny volumes of rock and other materials.
Why it matters
A zircon-based depth gauge could give geologists a new way to reconstruct ancient crustal thickness and tectonic settings across Earth history. The ion microprobe facility supplies precise data to hundreds of U.S. researchers. It also supports concrete applications: assessing salt deposits as possible nuclear waste repositories, analyzing asteroid Bennu samples, and tracking how drought and temperature affect endangered salmon.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Valbone Memeti
California State University-Fullerton, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine when Tuolumne magmas cooled and how long magma was present, using uranium–lead dating of zircon and titanite inclusions inside K-feldspar megacrysts from the Half Dome and Cathedral Peak units.
Igor Puchtel
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate the timing, volumes and proportions of continental and oceanic crust extracted in the Archean, using lead, samarium-neodymium and lutetium-hafnium isotopes in thirteen 3.6–2.7-billion-year-old komatiite-basalt systems.
David Moecher
University of Kentucky, KY·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine whether monazite carried by rivers from the Appalachians to the Atlantic coast comes from metamorphic rocks, granitic rocks or both, by dating detrital grains with laser-ablation split-stream mass spectrometry (LASS-ICP-MS).
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
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