I am a field-oriented geologist and geomorphologist interested in long-term landscape evolution and how tectonic and climatic drivers and autogenic processes are encoded in deposits and landforms. Increasingly, my students and I are also building numeric landscape evolution modeling, including base level fall histories from inversions of fluvial topography in our research approach. I have long-standing interests in the Appalachians, the Rockies, the Apennines, and central Asia, specifically Mongolia. I investigate the coupling of deep Earth and surface processes at plate boundaries, but also have a keen interest to understand the tectonic, isostatic, and dynamic processes that shape continental interiors. My core data sets are geologic maps, river terraces and related geomorphic markers, sedimentary petrography, thermochronology, paleomagnetic-based age models, and high-resolution cyclo-stratigraphic sequences that contain rock-magnetic, mineralogic, and soil-stratigraphic proxies of environmental change. I have excellent working relationships with a number of geochronology labs, and my students frequently develop projects that afford them the opportunity to integrate Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclide (TCN) and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) into their research. As a new, growing foci to my research agenda, I collaborate with other professors in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Energy Research Center on the development of low-enthalpy geothermal energy systems in Pennsylvania as well as enhanced mineral weathering for carbon capture, utilization, and storage.
Frank Pazzaglia
Professor
B.S., Geosciences, Penn State University, 1986
M.S., Geology, University of New Mexico, 1989
Ph.D., Geosciences, Penn State University, 1993
NSF Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Yale University, 1994
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Research Areas
Additional Interests
- Environmental Change
- Low-enthalpy geothermal resource exploration and development
- Enhanced mineral weathering for carbon capture, utilization, and storage
Research Statement
Biography
I am from northeastern Pennsylvania where my love of geology emerged from listening to the stories of my grandfathers who were anthracite miners, playing in old coal mines, collecting fern fossils, and feeling very lucky to be living near a smoldering volcano that glowed red at night (actually, that was a burning coal dump). It has been my great fortune to have crossed paths with many excellent teachers and mentors who exposed me to a range of geologic landscapes and processes during my education. In between my B.S. and M.S. degrees I worked for a year for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which exposed me to valuable training in applied geology and environmental science. My research has been driven in large part by many excellent students and colleagues who have opened my eyes to how a deep understanding of rivers, river processes, and the integrated record of those processes preserved in terrestrial sedimentary archives encode tectonic processes and environmental change. My professional world view has been deeply shaped by long-standing research interests in the Appalachians and the Apennines, places where I have personal roots and many wonderful colleagues. I enjoy engaging in synergistic projects with the goal of helping make Earth and Environmental Sciences accessible to the community in which I live. These projects include installation of educational panels along the Bethlehem Greenway-Saucon Rail Trail and Nockamixon State Park, frequent presentations to historical societies and related organizations, and Master Naturalist training.
Vaughan, N., Pazzaglia, F. J., Rugenstein, J., Ganbold, B. Bertoldo, R., Kodama, K. P., and Gelwick, K., 2024, Growth of Mongolian Altai encoded in sedimentologic and geomorphic markers with rates constrained by a paleomagnetic and rock-magnetic cyclostratigraphic age model: Abstract, AGU, EP23B-1321.
Pavano, F., Pazzaglia, F. J., Rittenour, T., Catalano, S., Corbett, L. B., and Bierman, P., 2024, Integrated uplift, subsidence, erosion, and deposition in a tightly coupled source to sink system, Pagliara basin, NE Sicily, Italy: Basin Research, DOI: 10.1111/bre.12845.
Kodama, K. P. and Pazzaglia, F. J., 2023, New paleomagnetic and rock magnetic cyclostratigraphy-determined age, deposition rates, and processes for a part of the Calvert Cliffs (Miocene) passive margin deposits: Earth Science Reviews 245, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104570.
Pazzaglia, F. J., 2022, Fluvial Terraces, in Shroder, J., (Editor-in-chief), Wohl, E. (Volume Editor), Treatise on Geomorphology, second edition, volume 6.2, Fluvial Geomorphology, Elsevier Academic Press, doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.12088-3.
Pazzaglia, F. J. and Fisher, J., 2022, A reconstruction of Apennine uplift history and the development of transverse drainages from longitudinal profile inversion, in Koeberl, C. Claeys, P., and Montanari, S., eds, From the Guajira desert to the Apennines, and from Mediterranean microplates to the Mexican killer asteroid: Geological Society of America Special Paper 557, doi.org/10.1130/2022.2557(09).
Fisher, J. A., Pazzaglia, F. J., Anastasio, D. J., and Gallen, S. F., 2022, Linear inversion of fluvial topography in the northern Apennines: comparison of base level fall to crustal shortening: Tectonics, 41, e2022TC007379, doi.org/10.1029/2022TC007379
Anastasio, D. J., Pazzaglia, F. J., Pares, J. M., Kodama, K. P., Berti, C., Fisher, J. A., Montanari, A., and Carnes, L. K., 2021, Applications of anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) fabrics to determine the kinematics of active tectonics: Examples from the Betic Cordillera, Spain and the northern Apennines, Italy: Solid Earth Journal, doi:10.5194/se-12-1125-2021.
Pazzaglia, F. J., Malenda, H.F., McGavick, M. L., Raup, C., Carter, M.W., Berti, C., Mahan, S., Nelson, M., Rittenour, T.M., Counts, R., Willenbring, J., Germanoski, D., Peters, S. C., and Holt, W.D., 2021, River terrace evidence of tectonic processes in the eastern North American plate interior, South Anna River, Virginia: Journal of Geology, doi:10.1086/712636.
Teaching
EES 016. The Geology of War (for non-majors)
EES 115. Surface Processes
EES 341. Lehigh Field Camp
EES 411. Physical and Chemical Processes at the Earth’s Surface (with Steve Peters)
EES 412. Advanced Tectonic and Fluvial Geomorphology