UAF awards funds for two undergrad students to help in volcano research

Research Assistant Professor Florian Hofmann at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has received university funding to mentor two undergraduate students in a project to date young volcanic rocks.

The funding comes through UAF’s Undergraduate Research & Scholarly Activity program. URSA supports creation and promotion of experiential learning activities to engage undergraduate students in UAF’s goal of becoming a leading student-focused research university.

Hofmann and the two students will try to date young volcanic rocks, those thousands of years old to tens of thousands of years old, by using argon-40/argon-39 dating.

“This will be an exploratory study since dating very young volcanics is challenging,” Hofmann said. “It can be done under certain circumstances and with the right kind of rocks, and we're planning on developing new lab methods to deal with this.”

Hofmann, who works in the Geophysical Institute’s Geochronology Lab, is working with UAF volcanologist Jessica Larsen on this project. Larsen, who is also Geophysical Institute associate director, is providing volcanic rocks on which the argon dating method can be tested.

Having a method to derive the ages of young volcanic rocks can expand the understanding of specific volcanoes.

“There are some volcanic deposits that we currently can't correlate with a certain eruption due to the lack of other evidence,” Hofmann said. “Obtaining ages for these deposits would help to assign them to a vent location or correlate them with other deposits for which we already know where they came from.”

Project funding is for the spring 2024 semester. Among the expenses it will cover is travel for the two students to California to collect a reference sample rock.

Geology student Ada Causey will fill one of the positions. The second position has not yet been filled.