Will Ouimet

wouimet@amherst.edu

Research Statement : I am broadly interested in studying the rates and processes of erosion at the earth's surface and understanding how landforms and landscapes evolve in diverse tectonic and climatic settings. My general research areas include Earth Surface Processes, Tectonic Geomorphology, GIS and Remote Sensing, Low-Temperature Thermochronology and Cosmogenic Radio Nuclides. Research topics and projects I am either actively engaged in, or foresee myself being involved with, include the following:

Interactions among climate, tectonics and surface processes: related projects include linking surface and crustal processes in active orogenic systems such as the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau, central Andes, Western US, and Aegean Sea; quantifying topographic response to glacial erosion; characterizing lithologic and tectonic controls on landslides and mass-wasting in southern California

Models of bedrock river incision and landscape evolution: related projects include studying controls on channel width; modeling landslide processes in landscape evolution, and more specifically, transient landscape evolution; calibrating landscape relationships between erosion and hillslopes/channel morphology

Human impact on the landscape: related projects include quantifying erosional signals from 19 th century deforestation in northeast US; studying landscape response to deglaciation (i.e. rates of response to late Holocene climatic change); comparing watershed processes in urban, rural and mountain areas

Methods in Tectonic Geomorphology: related projects include developing GIS and remote sensing tools and techniques for quantifying landscape morphology; developing the tools of low-temperature thermochronology and cosmogenic radio nuclides for landscape evolution applications

Additional Directions: studying the links between ecology and earth surface processes, and river restoration

Project Details

Eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau: field mapping, digital topographic analysis, cosmogenic radio nuclide dating, (U-Th)/He thermochronology and numerical modeling, with the goal of quantifying the rates and processes of river incision and transient landscape evolution on the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Specific problems I have addressed include:

• Exploring the influence of large landslides on river incision on the eastern margin, and transient landscapes in general
• Epigenetic gorges
• Defining rates and patterns of short-term erosion on the eastern margin and using them to characterize transient morphology and address fundamental relationships between erosion and topography
• Providing new constraints on the timing of regional uplift and rates of long-term river incision to better develop geodynamical models for the crustal evolution of the eastern margin and its relationship to the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen
• Characterizing transient river response to regional uplift and the dissection of the Eastern Margin of the Tibetan Plateau.