Michael Hudak
Williams College, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and noble gases are usually gases at Earth's surface. They cycle between the surface and the deep Earth.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
volatiles
volatile cycling
nitrogen
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Measure nitrogen, hydrogen, and noble gas abundances in exposed lower crustal and upper mantle rocks of the Jurassic Talkeetna arc, Alaska, to estimate how much volatile material the lower arc crust stores.
- Use isotope compositions and elemental ratios in Talkeetna rocks to identify deep fluid sources and later processes that changed volatile contents in deep arc crust and the mantle below.
- Update global volatile budget models to include the lower arc crust as a volatile reservoir, using the measured Talkeetna storage capacity.
More about the research
Where one tectonic plate sinks beneath another, a process called subduction, volatiles in ocean crust and sediments are carried into the mantle. This triggers melting and fuels volcanoes, which release some of the volatiles back to the surface. This cycle helps keep Earth habitable and builds continents, but the amount of volatiles at the surface has changed over geologic time. A key unknown is how much of these volatiles gets trapped in new crust instead of returning to the surface.
Why it matters
Volatiles drive mantle melting and volcanic eruptions, and their long-term cycling shapes Earth's habitability and atmosphere. Measuring how much the lower crust traps could make global volatile budgets more accurate. This could improve understanding of how surface volatile levels changed over geologic time and help models of what drives eruptions at volcanic arcs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Maryjo Brounce
University of California-Riverside, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure Fe3+/Fe2+ and S6+/S2- ratios in Hawaiian basaltic glasses using synchrotron XANES (X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy) to determine each magma's oxidation state.
Igor Puchtel
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate the timing, volumes and proportions of continental and oceanic crust extracted in the Archean, using lead, samarium-neodymium and lutetium-hafnium isotopes in thirteen 3.6–2.7-billion-year-old komatiite-basalt systems.
Maureen Long
Yale University, CT·Earth & Environmental Science
Image the New England crust at high resolution using hundreds of nodal seismometers spaced 500 m apart, analyzing both distant earthquake waves and background seismic noise to reveal how supercontinent cycles and mountain-building shaped it.
The school
Williams College: 2 labs on PI Pages, $7M a year on research.
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