New Perspectives on Landscape Evolution on the Hawaiian Islands
Dr. Kelin Whipple is currently a Professor at School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.
Abstract: The Hawaiian islands are an excellent natural laboratory for studying the controls on long-term landscape evolution because (1) both landscape age and initial condition are known, (2) rock properties are generally uniform (but locally heterogeneous), (3) most of the global variation in annual rainfall is represented, and (4) there is no tectonics beyond the known subsidence history. Our work reinforces the perspective that much of landscape evolution – primarily canyon cutting – is a threshold-limited process. We show that commonly neglected thresholds largely define the relationship between climate and landscape evolution. Our work is unusual in that most studies of the role of thresholds in modulating climate control of erosion have been conducted in tectonically active settings where a balance between rock uplift and erosion rate creates opportunities researchers can exploit. Interestingly, however, it is the lack of tectonic activity in the Hawaiian islands that ultimately makes them better suited to definitively establish and quantify the role of thresholds in landscape evolution.
About: Dr. Kelin Whipple is a geomorphologist focused on active processes and landscape evolution in tectonically active mountain ranges. Kelin was born in Michigan, but grew up in the highlands of Ethiopia, where his love of the outdoors and exploring landscapes was born. Kelin received an A.B. in Geology at the University of California, and an M.S. (1989) and Ph.D. (1994) in Geological Sciences at the University of Washington. Kelin worked for one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the St. Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory of the University of Minnesota before starting his first faculty appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. In 2006, Kelin moved to Arizona State University as part of the development of the new School of Earth and Space Exploration. His research focuses on the interactions among climate, topography, and tectonics.