What do you do?
I am a carbonate petrologist/geochemist whose main interests are in defing the nature and rate of major changes in the composition of seawater and atmospheric gases over the past 550 million years of Earth's history. I am also interested in tracing ancient fluid flow events and conduits in sedimentary basins based on the mineral and geochemical record they left behind.

Why should the general public be interested in what you do?
The research carried out in my lab on defining paleoenvironmental change provides insight into the temporal scales of past global change and allows us to better understand how and at what rate the Earth can recuperate from these perturbations and return to natural baseline values. As for my research on delineating ancient fluid flow events and pathways in sedimentary basins, this has direct application to the petroleum industry. The goal of much of this research has been to define the spatial and temporal scale of these fluid flow events and how they have contributed to the evolution of porosity and permeability in the host rocks through which they flow. Many of these studies are carried out on the hydrocarbon reservoir or groundwater aquifer scale so they are applicable to the petroleum industry and the geo-technical (environmental) industry.

Why does it interest you?
I continue to find myself excited over each new discovery about how the Earth's lithosphere (soils and land), atmosphere and hydrosphere have interacted with the biosphere throughout Earth's history, and how perturbations to the processes that link these systems can contribute toward the radiation and extinction of organisms. In turn, I derive a lot of satisfaction from being able to contribute towards better understanding the record of past global change. Add to this that the work allows me to travel worldwide and to remote, beautiful places that most people never get to see, and well . . . I'm certain I can find many more years of incentive to continue such research.

What major advances/discoveries have occurred in your research field over the last 10 years?
The largest advance has probably been the rapid development and refinement of dating techniques for many different kinds of geologic materials. This has significantly expanded the range of marine and terrestrial rock records for which we can actually define a framework of numeric ages. In turn, we can use this framework to calibrate our paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental records and get a sense of the temporal scales at which global change occurred in the past and how rapidly the Earth can recover from major changes in its atmospheric and ocean composition. Another bonus, is the ability to place rates on the evolution of life on Earth.