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I’m a geologist working as a Postdoc at the Geological Institute within the Department Environment & Biodiversity at Salzburg University in Austria.

I am interested in understanding the dynamics of orogenic evolution and its coupling with tectonics, climate and erosion (e.g. Andes, Alps, and the Qinling Mts., China). My area of expertise is in low-T thermochronology. The applied methods allow quantifying exhumation and denudation rates, leading to a better understanding of the processes driving mountain building. I also use structural geology and high-T geochronology data in multidisciplinary studies as well as detrital thermochronology.

News

March, 14th, 2023

Elisabeth Holzner is presenting her BSc thesis. She has carried out fault-striae measurements and conducted paleostress analyses within the framework of the Ceneri project. Very little is known about the brittle evolution along the Insubric fault, as most studies focused on the ductile story. Lisa’s work not only contributes to constraining the stress field in the brittle realm but will also help to link the thermochron data with structural information.

February 2023

Second U-Pb measurement campaign at the FIERCE lab in Frankfurt in cooperation with Axel Gerdes. Slickensides are difficult, but persistent scanning samples sometimes pays!

January, 12th, 2023

Presenting new thermochron age data from the Wienerwald and the Northern Calcareous Alps in the Geoscientific Colloquium of the University of Vienna with interesting discussions on the role of the downgoing Bohemian basement spur and possibly deep lithospheric processes. This study resulted from a subproject within GeoTIEF EXPLORE and our manuscript is soon to be submitted.

September 2022

Lots of nice presentations and discussions at PANGEO 2022 in Leoben. It was particularly great to attend in-person after pandemic years (with some cabin fever …). Together with cooperation partner from Vienna, Leoben, OMV and Salzburg I presented the results from our GeoTIEF EXPLORE subproject.

September 2022

Another great field campaign within the framework of the Ceneri project. This time together with Elisabeth Holzner (collecting data for her BSc thesis), Axel Gerdes (FIERCE lab, Univ. of Frankfurt) and Meinert Rahn (ENSI and Univ. of Freiburg). We basically finished the thermochron sampling campaign, hunted for slickensides for (hopefully) dating and collected a lot of structural data. As always a rewarding week!

May 2022

Presenting my online talk at EGU – I am truly looking forward to next year and attending in person. The „too old“ zircon problem will accompany me longer, as similarly to the Eastern Alps and Southern Alps presented here, the Ceneri zircons just yielded again unexpectedly old (U-Th)/He ages. This work is based on collaboration with colleagues from Göttingen (István Dunkl, Hilmar von Eynatten and Sina Schulz), Innbruck (Hannah Pomella), Illinois (Willy Guenthner) and Salzburg (Franz Neubauer).

December 2021 – May 2022

Dr. Flora Boekhout is employed for mainly (U-Th)/He sample picking within the Ceneri project, finding the most beautiful apatites and zircons.