Brandon Shuck
Louisiana State University, LA·Earth & Environmental Science
Ocean basins are born when continents split apart and new seafloor begins to form between them. The central Atlantic Ocean began opening about 190 million years ago, when the supercontinent Pangaea broke up.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
seafloor spreading
mantle dynamics
asthenosphere
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Oct 2027
What they work on
- Measure how the thickness, composition and basement roughness of oceanic crust changed over the first ~50 million years of Atlantic seafloor spreading, using multichannel seismic and ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) profiles.
- Infer the direction and strength of anisotropy in the asthenosphere (the soft mantle layer beneath the plates) from 3D active-source mantle refractions and ambient-noise surface waves recorded by OBS instruments.
- Combine seismic observations with petrological models of mantle melting and crust crystallization to estimate how the mantle's composition and temperature evolved during early spreading.
- Link existing seismic datasets from the rifted Eastern North American Margin and mature Atlantic seafloor with a new four-profile survey.
More about the research
Geologic records from that time point to unusual conditions as seafloor spreading began, but the reasons are poorly understood. The mantle beneath the young ocean was probably different in composition, temperature and flow from the mantle beneath mature spreading ridges. It is not known how long it took for the mantle to cool and become chemically depleted (lose easily melted material), or for normal seafloor production to take hold.
Why it matters
This is basic Earth science. The work will add to the understanding of how ocean basins form, a central part of plate tectonics, by showing how mantle temperature, composition and flow changed as the Atlantic first opened. The results could inform models of how continents break apart and how normal seafloor spreading becomes established.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Syracuse University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify and screen candidate sites for the Cosmic Explorer gravitational-wave observatory using Geographic Information Systems (mapping software) and public data, then partner with Indigenous and local communities before assessing the sites.
Zachary Eilon
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test predicted signatures of dynamic upwelling beneath mid-ocean ridges using surface- and body-wave tomography from roughly 80 ocean-bottom seismometers deployed across the Pacific-Cocos and Cocos-Nazca spreading centers.
Maureen Long
Yale University, CT·Earth & Environmental Science
Image the New England crust at high resolution using hundreds of nodal seismometers spaced 500 m apart, analyzing both distant earthquake waves and background seismic noise to reveal how supercontinent cycles and mountain-building shaped it.
The school
Louisiana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $431M a year on research, 323 research doctorates a year.
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