Colleen Dalton
Brown University, RI·Earth & Environmental Science
Earth's interior is not fully rigid. Molten rock collects beneath volcanoes, and even the solid mantle, the thick rock layer beneath the crust, slowly flows when pushed.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
- Topics
seismology
volcanology
magma storage
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Map how much melt is stored beneath Yellowstone, the Cascades Arc and the Altiplano-Puna Volcanic Complex, and whether it sits in horizontal layers or vertical columns, using radial anisotropy from 25–75 s teleseismic surface waves.
- Measure Rayleigh wave amplification to estimate the VP/VS ratio, which is strongly sensitive to melt, in the lower crust and uppermost mantle beneath active volcanoes.
- Jointly invert amplification, anisotropy, and Rayleigh and Love wave speeds from ambient noise and earthquakes to build depth models of VS, VP/VS and radial anisotropy for three volcanic regions.
- Characterize frequency-dependent attenuation in the upper mantle beneath the western U.S., Alaska and Iceland using seismic and geodetic observations, to measure the mantle's response to stress across timescales.
- Test how lab-derived transient creep laws, with partner experiments and new viscoelastic models, change estimates of mantle viscosity from geodetic data and of temperature from seismic tomography.
More about the research
Measuring where melt sits and how mantle rock deforms helps explain why volcanoes erupt, how the ground rebounds when ice melts, and what seismic images of Earth's interior really mean. Two projects use seismic waves, along with other observations, to probe these hidden properties.
Why it matters
Volcanic eruptions threaten lives, infrastructure and economies. Magma in the crust is also relevant to geothermal energy, and volcanic gases can affect climate. Better maps of crustal melt could improve understanding of how magma storage affects eruptibility at Yellowstone, the Cascades and the Altiplano-Puna. Clearer laws for mantle flow could improve predictions of how land and sea level respond to melting ice sheets.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Investigating the crust and uppermost mantle beneath volcanoes with new seismic analyses
NSF · Sep 2024 – Aug 2027
Collaborative Research: Towards a new framework for interpreting mantle deformation: integrating theory, experiments, and observations spanning seismic to convective timescales
NSF · Sep 2022 – Aug 2027
Closest labs
Zachary Eilon
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test predicted signatures of dynamic upwelling beneath mid-ocean ridges using surface- and body-wave tomography from roughly 80 ocean-bottom seismometers deployed across the Pacific-Cocos and Cocos-Nazca spreading centers.
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.
Lucy Flesch
Purdue University, IN·Earth & Environmental Science
Build a regionally consistent, multi-plate velocity field for the Arctic by combining GPS measurements with mid-ocean ridge spreading rates that record motion over hundreds of thousands of years.
The school
Brown University: 23 labs on PI Pages, $375M a year on research, 251 research doctorates a year.
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