The following project descriptions are examples of potential MS or Ph.D. studies involving paleomagnetism. While these projects reflect the current interests and research focus of the UAF faculty, students can work with their supervisor to design other projects that incorporate the individual student's interests.
The seismic data collected in 1994 can still use much more refined processing, and more importantly, needs to be integrated with all the available gravity and magnetic information. This would then be followed by investigating the possible matches and mismatches between the subsurface information and the known surface geology.
New work on reversals indicates that a reduced intensity dipole field probably follows a given track from pole to pole, but it is not clear what happens to the other harmonics of the field. A new method of analyzing directional data from ocean cores has opened up many possibilities to investigate the behavior of low order harmonics during reversals.
It is now fairly well established that there is a good climate record in the Fairbanks loess deposits which may go back as far as 3my. Only very small sections of this record have been looked at, and a good reversal/climate record is no doubt waiting to be found.
Many animals ranging from bacteria through butterflies, geese, salmon and whales are known to have biogenic magnetite particles in their brains which it is generally assumed are used for navigation. What is not known in animals other than bacteria, is exactly where the magnetite is located, how it is connected, and what it does. We have now isolated magnetic particles in the ethmoid region in salmon smolt, but need to use a transmission electron microscope to see what and where they are. As part of the navigation studies, we are following up on the idea that perhaps animals use beacons of some sort as their primary navigational system. For salmon and other marine creatures (such as turtles and whales) they may use wave noise from specific locations. An experiment which could help test this involves using some of the U.S.Navy records of underwater sounds, and investigate for a consistent frequency distribution from selected places.
For more information on these projects, please contact Dr. David Stone
Click here for more information on Dr. David Stone and his research
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Last updated on October 19, 1998