Team Member Biographies
Jayne Belnap
(Biology, USGS)
Jayne Belnap has been a scientist with the Department of Interior since 1987. She received her MS (1983) from Stanford University and her PhD (1991) from Brigham Young University. She is currently a Research Ecologist and Research Station Leader in the USGS Biological Resources Discipline in Moab, UT. Jayne works around the world on issues of rangeland sustainability and climate change, with an emphasis on the relationship between geomorphology, soils, nutrient cycles, and plants. She is widely published on these topics, and is the author of a textbook on biological soil crusts. Jayne is the past chair for the Soil Ecology chapter of the Ecological Society of America, on the Governing Board of the Ecological Society of America, current President of the Soil Ecology Society, a subject editor for the journal Ecohydrology, and an associate editor of the leading ecological journal “Ecological Applications”.
Peter Haeussler
(Geology, USGS)
Peter Haeussler received a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1991 and has worked for the USGS since then. He is a research geologist with a wide range of expertise and interests in Alaskan tectonics, active tectonics, earthquake geology, structural geology, geophysics, mountain building, submarine landslides, among others. He was the lead geologist in documenting the surface rupture of the 2002 magnitude 7.9 Denali Fault earthquake. He is the face of the earthquake hazards program in Alaska, and besides making numerous public talks on earthquakes, he has made appearances on local and national television. He was a commissioner on the Anchorage Geotechnical Advisory Commission, and was recently co-convenor of the 2005 AGU Chapman conference on "Seismic potential and active tectonics of Alaska."
To see more visit: http://alaska.usgs.gov/staff/staffbio.php?employeeid=25
Steve Ingebritsen
(Water, USGS)
Steve Ingebritsen has been a member of the USGS since 1980 and received MS (1983) and Ph.D. (1986) degrees from Stanford University in hydrogeology. He currently serves as a Research Branch Chief in the USGS Water Resources Discipline. Steve is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America (GSA). He has received the John Hem Excellence in Science and Engineering Award from the National Ground Water Association (2000), served as the Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer for GSA (2001), and received the O.E. Meinzer Award from GSA (2003). He is the first author of the widely used textbook Groundwater in Geologic Processes (Cambridge University Press 1998; 2nd edition 2006) and currently serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Geofluids.
John Jones
(Geography, USGS)
Following positions in two state governments and a Canadian Geographic Information System (GIS) development firm, John joined the USGS GIS Research Laboratory in 1990. He received his MA from the University of Nebraska (1987) and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland (2002). Throughout his tenure with the USGS, John has participated in interdisciplinary Bureau and Federal research initiatives (e.g., the Office of Science and Technology Policy Integrated Monitoring Network, National Science Foundation National Center for Geographic Information Analysis, National Interagency Committee on Ecosystem Mapping, the Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, Priority Ecosystem Studies, and others). Currently, his research focuses on relationships among land cover dynamics and environmental processes with particular emphasis on accounting for vegetation processes in hydrologic modeling and on issues of scale. John was an author of the Geography Science Strategy and is currently on teams to develop the Land Remote Sensing Program Science Strategy and future Geography Discipline research directions.
Geoff Plumlee
(Geology, USGS)
Geoff Plumlee (Ph.D., Harvard University., 1989; B.S. University of New Mexico, 1980) is a research geochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) specializing in environmental and human health research. Geoff devoted much of his past professional research to understanding the environmental geology and geochemistry of mineral deposits, and use of this information to better anticipate, mitigate, and remediate environmental and health impacts of mineral resource development worldwide. Geoff served as the Team Chief Scientist of the Central Region Mineral Resources Team (1996-1999) and the Crustal Imaging and Characterization Team (1999-2001). After he rotated out of management in 2001, Geoff's research has focused on issues involving geochemistry and public health, and the roles for environmental geochemistry in disaster response and planning. Geoff's current health-related research focuses primarily on the geochemical interactions of minerals with human body fluids, and their links to toxicity. He has also helped lead interdisciplinary teams that assessed mining-related environmental and health impacts in the Philippines, characterized dusts generated by the 9/11/2001 World Trade Center collapse, and characterized flood sediments left in New Orleans by 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Geoff has presented numerous invited, keynote, and plenary lectures to earth, environmental, and health scientists, and is lead or contributing author on over 200 scientific papers and abstracts. He has served as advisor to the U.S. Navy Lung Disease Assessment Program and the U.S. Federal Interagency Working Group on Asbestos, he is an expert member of the International Volcanic Health Hazards Network, and he was a member of the 1997 USGS GD Science Strategy Team. Geoff's research has received recognition via the Society of Economic Geologists’ Lindgren Citation for his work in environmental geochemistry, the Organisation Mondiale de Mineralogie’s Prix D’Excellence Pour Les Sciences de La Terre for his work in medical geochemistry, and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Superior Service Award.
Rob Thieler
(Geology, USGS)
Rob Thieler has been a scientist with the USGS since 1997. He received his M.S. (1993; Environmental Science) and Ph.D. (1997; Geology) from Duke University. He is currently a Research Geologist at the Woods Hole Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Rob conducts research on the geologic framework and morphodynamics of the coastal zone, and leads ongoing USGS national assessments of coastal change and sea-level rise hazards. He also develops GIS software for measuring shoreline change that is used worldwide. Rob was recently named a lead author for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program report on sea-level rise. He is the author or co-author of over 100 technical publications. Rob currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Coastal Research.
Bob Thompson
(Geology, USGS)
Bob Thompson joined the USGS in 1987 and is presently a research geologist with the Earth Surface Processes Team in Denver, Colorado. He received his MS (1978) and PhD (1984) degrees in Geosciences from the University of Arizona, and subsequently held a postdoctoral position in paleoclimatology at Brown University. Bob’s research focuses on the interactions between environmental and climatic changes through time, from the Pliocene to the present day and into the future. He leads the “Climate Change, Land Use, and Environmental Sensitivity” (CLUES) Project, which investigates modern relations between plant distributions and climate, provides quantitative paleoclimatic reconstructions from paleobotanical data, and employs arrays of paleoenvironmental data to assess the ability of climate models to simulate climates different from that of today. Bob is an associate coordinator for international Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (Phase II: PMIP2) and was on the advisory board of the international journal “The Holocene”. He has served in several leadership positions within the USGS, including: Team Chief Scientist (TCS) for the Global Change and Climate History Team, TCS for the Central Region Earth Surface Process Team, acting Coordinator for the Earth Surface Dynamics program, and acting Regional Geologist in the Central Region.
Marty Goldhaber
(Geology, USGS)
Martin (Marty) Goldhaber grew up in Los Angeles California. He received his BS in Chemistry (1968) and Ph.D. in Geochemistry (1973) both from UCLA. After spending a year as a Post Doc at Yale he joined the USGS in 1975. He is currently a Senior Scientist at the USGS where he received the Department of the Interior Meritorious Service Award and recently served a rotation as the Chief Scientist for Geology. Marty has been a member of the Geochemical Society since 1972 and has been involved in the Society in a number of roles; currently as Vice President (president elect). He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the Society of Economic Geologists. Marty has served on the editorial boards of Economic Geology, American Journal of Science, and Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (two terms) and has served on advisory boards for the Geological Society of America, the Ocean Drilling Program, NASA, and NSF. His association with the Colorado School of Mines and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as adjunct professor resulted in the mentoring of thirteen masters and doctoral students. Starting in February 2006, he co-chaired the USGS Science Strategy Team. This led to the preparation of a USGS science strategy document which is now available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2007/1309/. Marty's research interests have evolved during his career. His early work was on the biogeochemistry of sulfur in modern marine sediments. After joining the USGS, he applied these perspectives on sulfur geochemistry toward understanding the origin of sediment-hosted ore deposits. This interest in ore genesis led to a focus on large scale crustal fluid flow processes that drive not only genesis of some ore types, but also impact the modern environment by enriching shallow crustal rocks with potentially toxic constituents. His research then evolved into understanding the environmental impacts of these crustal flow processes. One example of these impacts is the regional enrichment of aquifer rocks in the mid-continent of the U.S. with trace amounts of potentially toxic metals such as Pb and As which can leach into groundwater aquifers. Another example is the enrichment in coal and coal-bearing rocks of the Appalachian Basin of the eastern U.S. in As, Hg, Se, and Tl by fluids mobilized during the Alleghanian orogenic event. He has researched the mobilization of these coal-related constituents into streams by natural weathering and mining and into the atmosphere and soils by coal combustion. He is currently co-chief of a USGS project to map the inorganic and selected organic constituents in soils of the U.S., and together with the Canadian and Mexican Geological Surveys, all of North America.
