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Morgan Schaller

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Morgan F. Schaller
Born1982
Alma materRutgers University, M.Sc., & Ph.D., Binghamton University, B.S., B.A.
AwardsF.G. Houtermans Award
Scientific career
FieldsStable isotope geochemistry, Fluid inclusion geochemistry, Paleoclimatology, Geology
InstitutionsRensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Professor, 2014 - Present
ThesisLarge igneous provinces and Earth’s carbon cycle: Lessons from the late Triassic and rapidly emplaced Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (2012)
Doctoral advisorDennis V. Kent
Other academic advisorsPaul E. Olsen, James D. Wright, Ying Fan Reinfelder
Websitefaculty.rpi.edu/morgan-schaller

Morgan Schaller (born 1982) is an American geochemist and geologist specializing in stable isotope and fluid inclusion geochemistry, which he uses to reconstruct Earth's ancient atmospheric gas concentrations. He is currently the Edward P. Hamilton Associate Professor of Earth Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY. Schaller was the 2018 recipient of the F.G. Houtermans Award from the European Association of Geochemistry,[1] which recognizes the exceptional contributions to geochemistry by an early career scientist.[2]

Schaller's scholarly works have been cited over 2500 times.[3]

Education

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After receiving dual bachelor's degrees from Binghamton University in both Geology and Biology in 2005, he moved to Rutgers for an MS in hydrogeology, and a PhD in geochemistry (2012) with Dennis V. Kent. While at Rutgers, Schaller used sediments from the Newark Basin, a Triassic rift lake basin that formed as Pangea broke apart, to estimate the atmospheric CO2 concentration through the Late Triassic to earliest Jurassic.[4]

Schaller completed postdoctoral research at Yale with Mark Pagani, Brown with Jessica Whiteside, and at the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences with Yair Rosenthal and Paul Falkowski before joining the faculty at RPI. Schaller's current interests are broadly in the history of the Earth system and changes in climate over long timescales,[5][6] with a particular focus on intervals of mass extinction or other global-scale perturbations.[7]

Research

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Schaller uses light stable isotopes and fluid inclusions[8] to trace the interaction and transfer of elements through the atmosphere, biosphere, and solid earth. He is notable in geochemistry and paleoclimatology as the first to empirically demonstrate the atmospheric CO2 increase due to the eruption of a Large Igneous Province.[9] These proxy observations were made using the soil carbonate paleobarometer [10][11] on sediments in superposition with the Late Late Triassic Central Atlantic Magmatic Province lavas in the Newark Basin. Schaller showed that atmospheric CO2 concentrations doubled after each eruptive pulse of flood basalt volcanism, and subsequently decreased over the next few hundred thousand years due to weathering of the lavas themselves.[12]

Schaller is also credited with discovering impact ejecta at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary,[13] suggesting that an extraterrestrial impact played a role in the climate event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).[14] He and colleague Megan Fung were also the first to observe significant and contemporaneous accumulations of charcoal at the beginning of the PETM event from cores through the Paleocene-Eocene interval on the Atlantic Coastal Plain.[15] The charcoal data indicate widespread, intense, and likely synchronous wildfires across the mid-Atlantic region during this period of rapid and intense global warming 56 million years ago.

Awards

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References

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  1. ^ "2023 Houtermans Award: Morgan Schaller". European Association of Geochemistry. Retrieved 2024-11-08.
  2. ^ "Houtermans Award". European Association of Geochemistry. Retrieved 2024-11-08.
  3. ^ "Publications by Morgan F. Schaller". Google Scholar. Retrieved 2024-11-08.
  4. ^ Schaller, Morgan F.; Wright, James D.; Kent, Dennis V. (2015). "A 30 Myr record of Late Triassic atmospheric pCO2 variation reflects a fundamental control of the carbon cycle by changes in continental weathering". Bulletin. 127 (5–6): 661–671.
  5. ^ Knobbe, T. K.; Schaller, M. F. (2018). "A tight coupling between atmospheric pCO2 and sea-surface temperature in the Late Triassic". Geology. 46 (1): 43–46. doi:10.1130/G39626.1 (inactive 2024-11-12).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  6. ^ Cenozoic CO2 Proxy Integration Project (CenCO2PIP) Consortium (2023). "Toward a Cenozoic history of atmospheric CO2" (PDF). Science. 382 (6675): eadi5177. doi:10.1126/science.adi5177. PMID 38060645.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ Olsen, Paul; Sha, Jingeng; Fang, Yanan; Chang, Clara; Whiteside, Jessica H.; Kinney, Sean; Sues, Hans-Dieter; Kent, Dennis; Schaller, Morgan; Vajda, Vivi (2022). "Arctic ice and the ecological rise of the dinosaurs". Science Advances. 8 (26): eabo6342. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo6342. PMC 10883366. PMID 35776799.
  8. ^ Hudgins, M. N.; Knobbe, T. K.; Hubbard, J.; Steele, A.; Park, J. G.; Schaller, M. F. (2024). "In Situ Quantification of Carbonate Species Concentrations, pH, and pCO2 in Calcite Fluid Inclusions Using Confocal Raman Spectroscopy". Applied Spectroscopy. 78 (10): 1015–1027. doi:10.1177/00037028241275192. PMID 39238229.
  9. ^ Schaller, Morgan F.; Wright, James D.; Kent, Dennis V. (2011). "Atmospheric Pco2 Perturbations Associated with the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province". Science. 331 (6023): 1404–1409. doi:10.1126/science.1199011. PMID 21330490.
  10. ^ Cerling, T. E. (1992). "The use of carbon isotopes in paleosols as an indicator of the p(CO2) of the paleoatmosphere". Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 6 (3): 307–314. doi:10.1029/92GB01102.
  11. ^ Cerling, T. E.; Quade, J. (1993). "Climate Change in Continental Isotope Records". In Swart, P. K.; Lohmann, K. C.; McKenzie, J.; Savin, S. (eds.). Stable carbon isotopes in paleosol carbonates. Geophysical Monograph. Vol. 78. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.
  12. ^ Schaller, M. F.; Wright, J. D.; Kent, D. V.; Olsen, P. E. (2012). "Rapid emplacement of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province as a net sink for CO₂". Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 323: 27–39. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2011.12.013.
  13. ^ Schaller, M. F.; Fung, M. K.; Wright, J. D.; Katz, M. E.; Kent, D. V. (2016). "Impact ejecta at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary". Science. 354 (6309): 225–229. doi:10.1126/science.aaf5466. PMID 27738171.
  14. ^ Schaller, M. F.; Fung, M. K. (2018). "The extraterrestrial impact evidence at the Palaeocene–Eocene boundary and sequence of environmental change on the continental shelf". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 376 (2130). doi:10.1098/rsta.2017.0081. PMC 6127391. PMID 30177564.
  15. ^ Fung, M.; Schaller, M.; Hoff, C.; Katz, M.; Wright, J. (2019). "Widespread and intense wildfires at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary". Geochemical Perspectives Letters. 10: 1–6. doi:10.7185/geochemlet.1906.
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