G. Lang Farmer

Professor, Department of Geological Sciences
Fellow, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Ph.D., 1983, University of California, Los Angeles

Research Interests:
Application of radiogenic isotope data to igneous petrology, sedimentary provenance determinations, biogeochemistry, and tectonic evolution of the Earth's continental lithosphere

Current Projects:

1) Geochemical studies of Late Cenozoic basalts in Sierra Nevada, including this plug (left) near Loon Lake west of Lake Tahoe. The intent is to study the role of deep lithospheric removal in determining uplift history of mountain range

2) Development of epizonal silicic magma bodies in the Never Summer Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park (below) and origin of mid-Tertiary "ignimbrite flare-up" in Colorado.

neversummer.jpg (34735 bytes)

3) Evaluation of space-time-composition-volume patterns in Cenozoic magmatism in western North America. This work is being done as part of the North America Volcanic and Intrusive Igneous rock database project
(NAVDAT; http://navdat.geongrid.org/)

4) Nd, Sr and Pb studies of sources of glacially deposited marine sediments, both in the North Atlantic and in Antarctica

Recent Publications:

Farmer, G. L., Bowring, S. A., Christensen, N. I., Williams, M. L., Matzel, J. P., and L. Stevens, Contrasting lower crustal evolution across an Archean-Proterozoic suture: physical, chemical and geochronologic studies of lower crustal xenoliths in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado, in press, AGU Monograph, Rocky Mountain Continental Dynamics Project, 2005.
Jones, C. H. Farmer, G. L., and J. Unruh, Tectonics of Pliocene removal of lithosphere of the Sierra Nevada, California, Geol. Soc. Amer. Bulletin, 116, 1408-1422, 2004
Farmer, G. L., Barber, B., and J. Andrews, Provenance of Late Quaternary ice-proximal sediments in the North Atlantic: Nd, Sr and Pb isotopic evidence, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 209, 227-243, 2003.
Farmer, G. L., Continental Basaltic Rocks, in Treatise on Geochemistry-Chapter 3: The Crust, Elsevier, pg. 85-121, 2003.
Farmer, G. L., Glazner, A. F., and C. R. Manley, Did lithospheric delamination trigger late Cenozoic potassic volcanism in the southern Sierra Nevada, California?, Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull., 114, 754-768, 2002.

Email Address: farmer@colorado.edu
Phone: (303) 492-6534

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