Short Vita

Publications

Current Students

Contact Information:

Office: 5.132
Phone: 512-471-6082

           512-471-4949
FAX: 512-471-9425
Email: kittym@mail.utexas.edu

Mailing Address:
The University of Texas at Austin,
Geol Science Dept,
1 University Station C1100,
Austin, TX 78712-0254

“Sedimentary Petrology” is a big territory. It is the field of study whereby we try to understand the processes (chemical, physical, and biological) responsible for the formation and modification of sediments and the rocks formed from sediments. In other words, sedimentary petrologists care about all the rocks formed near the surface of the Earth, and we continue to care about them until they’ve experienced temperatures of around 300 ºC, usually within a burial depth of 12 km or less (beyond which point we tend to hand them over willingly to our metamorphic colleagues). Included in this sphere of interest is a wonderfully messy variety of materials: the muck down in Waller Creek (running through the E-central part of the UT campus) or in the Mississippi River, hot and cold spring deposits (terrestrial and marine), deep-sea oozes, vein-fills precipitated from water flowing along fractures, beekite, ‘tight’ gas reservoir rocks----I hope you get the picture, basically, any rock that started out at the surface in a non-molten state and that hasn’t ‘gone metamorphic’ yet.

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"... and I argue that there is no necessary connection between the size of an object and the value of a fact, and though the objects I have described are minute, the conclusions to be derived from the facts are great."

H.C. Sorby, 1858. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, XIV

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In general, “petrology” implies that you are looking at things at a rather small scale (hand-sample scale or smaller). This is not to say that the questions involved are necessarily small-scale. Petrologists concern themselves a great deal with questions about elemental mobility and crustal element cycling that require thinking about processes far beyond the hand-sample scale. Sedimentary petrology also engages questions about porosity evolution in rocks, questions with significant practical implications (whether we’re talking, water, oil, gas, or CO₂ sequestration).

Prospective Students may want to review Current Projects.  To see the old published stuff, check out this list. Write to Kitty if you need digital reprints: kittym@mail.utexas.edu  .

Learn about how to apply to the graduate program of the Jackson School: http://www.geo.utexas.edu/grads/