Earth Materials and Earth History

Dr. Peter Selkin - paselkin@uw.edu
Lab Contact and Principal Investigator
Associate Professor, Environmental Science
University of Washington Tacoma

Tiny minerals tell big stories. We use the physics and chemistry of the iron oxide minerals to reconstruct our planet’s past, from surface environments to the deep Earth.

Research - Current research projects
People - Who’s who in the lab
Publications - List of lab publications
Contact - To get involved, please contact us!

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Research

Interested in getting involved? Please let me know - see contact info below.

Details about lab equipment are posted separately. Some projects are on Github.

Natural Tracer Studies of the Puyallup Watershed: Every summer, meltwater carries a plume of suspended sediment from Mt. Rainier’s glaciers to nearby Commencement Bay. How much of the sediment from the glaciers makes it to the bay each summer? Has the flow of sediment been increasing as glacial melt has accelerated? And has the river picked up sediment from other sources along the way? Iron oxide minerals can help us to identify the sources of sediment in our local watershed, helping us to answer these questions. (Funded by NSF EAR-2409004)

STEM Transfer Partnership: Pierce College and UW Tacoma environmental science faculty co-designed an introductory environmental science course that has been taught since 2023 at Pierce College’s two campuses and piloted at UW Tacoma. The course involves students in course-based undergraduate research (CURE) projects, which have so far focused on heavy metal soil contamination in Tacoma. Soil samples collected by students in this course have had a “second life” as part of a regional map of soil magnetic properties. (Funded by Ascendium Inc. through the UW Community College Resarch Initiative)

Environmental Magnetism and Geologic History of the Bengal Fan: The erosional detritus from Earth’s tallest mountains - the Himalaya - ends up in the Bengal Fan, an submarine landscape that extends for nearly 3000 km beneath the Bay of Bengal. The Bengal Fan’s stratigraphy contains clues about the uplift and erosion of the Himalaya, but also about the river and undersea processes that carried sediment to its ultimate resting place. Iron oxide minerals that record Earth’s ancient magnetic field allow us to date some of the sediments in the Bengal Fan; those same minerals also tell us about both sediment sources and transport patterns. (International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 354)

Magnetism of Mafic and Anorthositic Intrusive Rocks: Records of Earth’s magnetic field captured by rocks are some of the only clues we have about the deep structure of our planet - in particular the behavior of its core - in deep geologic time. Among the oldest records of Earth’s magnetic field are mafic intrusions and feldspar-rich anorthositic rocks. We have been using bodies of intrusive rock formed over several billion years of Earth’s history to compare the variability in the geomagnetic field’s intensity and direction to other sources of data and to models based on the present-day field.

Magnetic Properties of the Palouse Loess and Columbia Plateau Basalts: Although most of our work on these was pre-pandemic, I am interested in picking it up again. Please let me know if you are interested in one of these topics.

People

Current Lab

Dr. Peter Selkin, Lab PI (Principal Investigator, not private eye)
Tyler Hall, Technician
Lauren Jackson, Undergraduate Researcher
James Jones, Undergraduate Researcher
Kat Lester, Undergraduate Researcher
_ Nicole Van Geel_, Undergraduate Researcher
Dennis Suprunyuk, Undergraduate Researcher

Alumni
Are you an alum? Please keep in touch! Send me an email with what’s going on in your life - see Contact below.

Tori Goodrich (Project: Modelling Sediment Transport in the Puyallup River Watershed)
Kendall Groves (Project: Investigating Magnetic Susceptibility in Soil Associations within the Puyallup Watershed)
Seth Kleckner (Internship: Boeing)
Stephanie Renteria (Project: Elemental Analysis of Suspended Sediment Transport From Glacier to Commencement Bay)
Gracelyn Snedden (Project: From Glacier to Bay: Magnetic Properties of Suspended Sediments Throughout the Puyallup Watershed)
Hailey Germeau (Now at: University of Washington Department of Earth and Space Sciences)
Kasey Sadler (Project: Magnetic Inclusions in Proterozoic Plagioclase Grains and The Connection To Geomagnetic Intensity in The Laramie Anorthosite Complex; now at: Freestone Environmental)
Lucien Vedego (Psychology major)
Lauren Doffing, Courtney Kneer, Neal Langeberg, Mara Valdez, and Tim Wahlstrom (TESC 495 Spring 2020)
Adrian Martinez (Engineering major)
Nick Marshall (Project: Use of Diffuse Reflectance to Determine Hematite to Goethite Ratio in Hemipelagic Strata of the Bengal Fan)
Kristy Ricks (Project: Magnetic Properties of Palouse Loess and Their Climate Significance)
Eric De Sart (Project: Magnetic Properties of Palouse Loess; now at: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife)
Emilia Melot (Project: Magnetic Properties of Puget Lowland Lahars)
Risa Hess (Project: Scanning Electron Analysis of Magnetic Particles from Bengal Turbidite Strata)
Michael Benjamin (Project: Physical Processes of Turbidite Deposition on the Middle Bengal Fan)
Melissa Brainard (Project: Recording Submarine Channel Migration on the Bengal Fan Through Magnetic Anisotropy)
Victor Ruiz (Project: Measuring Magnetic Anisotropy in Turbidites to Understand Sediment Sorting From Turbidity Currents)

Occasionally Seen in the Lab

Bonnie Becker (UW Tacoma)
EC Cline (UW Tacoma)
Jim Gawel (UW Tacoma)
Julie Masura (UW Tacoma)
Bataa Jigjidsuren (Highline College/UW Tacoma)
Claire Todd (Cal State San Bernardino)
Max Handler (Pierce College Puyallup)

Recent Presentations

*Undergraduate author

Selkin, P.A., *Goodrich, V., *Groves, K., *Renteria, S., *Snedden, G., and *Suprunyuk, D., 2024, Magnetic Mineral Fingerprints of Sediment Sources in a Partially Glaciated Watershed: A Case Study of the Puyallup-White River Watershed, WA: Geological Society of America 2024 Fall Meeting, Anaheim, CA. PDF

Publications

*Undergraduate author

Reilly B.T., Bergmann F., Weber M.E., Stoner J.S., Selkin P.A., Meynadier L., Schwenk T., Spiess V., France-Lanord C. 2020. Mid to late Pleistocene evolution of the Bengal Fan: Integrating core and seismic observations for chronostratigraphic modeling of the IODP Expedition 354 8° North transect. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, Accepted for publication March 30, 2020.

Teasdale R., Selkin P., Goodell L. 2018. Evaluation of student learning, self-efficacy, and perception of the value of geologic monitoring from Living on the Edge, an InTeGrate curriculum module. Journal of Geoscience Education, 66(3), 186-204. doi:10.1080/10899995.2018.1481354.

Selkin, P.A. , J. Boyle, A. A. Carlini, K.S. Davies-Vollum, R. Dunn, M.J. Kohn, R.H. Madden, and C.A.E. Strömberg, 2015, Climate, dust, and fire across the Eocene-Oligocene transition, Patagonia, Geology, 43, 567-570.

Selkin, P.A., J.S. Gee, and W.P. Meurer. 2014. Magnetic Anisotropy as a Tracer of Crystal Accumulation and Transport, Middle Banded Series, Stillwater Complex, Montana, Tectonophysics, 629, 123-137.

Becker, B.J., and P.A. Selkin, 2009, Marine reserve design: Simulating stakeholder options, Teaching Issues in Ecology and the Environment, 6 (Experiment 3), http://tiee.esa.org/vol/v6/experiment/marine_reserve/abstract.html

Selkin, P.A., J.S. Gee, W.P. Meurer, and S.R. Hemming, 2008, Paleointensity Record from the 2.7 Ga Stillwater Complex, Montana, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 9 (Q12023), doi:10.1029/2008GC001950

Selkin, P.A., J.S. Gee, and L. Tauxe, 2007, Nonlinear thermoremanence acquisition and implications for paleointensity data, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 256, 81-89.

Gee, J.S., W.P. Meurer, P.A. Selkin and M.J. Cheadle, 2004, Quantifying three-dimensional silicate fabrics in cumulates using cumulative distribution functions, Journal of Petrology, 45, 1983-2009.

Tauxe, L., C. Luskin*, P. Selkin, P. Gans and A. Calvert. 2004. Paleomagnetic results from the Snake River Plain: Contribution to the time-averaged field global database. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 5 (Q08H13), doi:10.1029/2003GC000661.

Selkin, P.A., 2003, Archean Paleointensity from Layered Intrusions, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 323 pp.

Cronin, M.*, L. Tauxe, C. Constable, P. Selkin, and T. Pick, 2001, Noise in the Quiet Zone, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 190, 13-30.

Selkin, P.A., Gee, J.S., Tauxe, L., Meurer, W.P. and A.J. Newell, 2000, The effect of remanence anisotropy on paleointensity estimates: a case study from the Archean Stillwater Complex, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 183, 403-416.

Selkin, P.A. and L. Tauxe, 2000, Long-term trends in palaeointensity, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A., 358, 1065-1088.

Contact

Book an appointment to meet with me - this is probably the easiest way to get in touch.
Email: paselkin@uw.edu
Office: Science Building (SCI) 208
Lab: SCI 304
Mailing Address: Peter Selkin / UW Tacoma / 1900 Commerce St. Box 358436/ Tacoma, WA 98402