Curriculum vitae (pdf)
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Greg Balco started out as a glacial geologist and geomorphologist, but became heavily involved in developing methods for cosmogenic-nuclide geochronology. This has included compiling, refining, and online delivery of exposure dating methods (look here) as well as developing new means of dating stratified sediments using multiple cosmogenic nuclides. His main goals in doing all this are to i) better understand the long-term context of present rapid ice sheet changes in Antarctica by looking at geologic records of ice sheet change; ii) learn something about the development of the Plio-Pleistocene ice ages by providing a better chronology for the widespread and extensve, but not very well dated, early and middle Pleistocene glacial sedimentary sequences in North America, and iii) work out how changes in erosion and sediment transport rates are related to climatic and tectonic changes by using the cosmogenic-nuclide stratigraphy of sedimentary basins as a proxy for past erosion rate changes.
As a BGC postdoc, Balco's goals are to i) incorporate the cosmogenic noble gases in multiple-nuclide dating techniques, ii) work on combining cosmogenic-nuclide measurements with U-series dating methods to better extract erosion-rate records from stratified sediments, and iii) do some thinking about what can be learned by combining low-temperature thermochronometry with surface erosion rate measurements.
Balco, G., Stone, J., Lifton, N. and T. Dunai, 2007 in press. A simple, internally consistent, and easily accessible means of calculating surface exposure ages and erosion rates from Be-10 and Al-26 measurements. Quaternary Geochronology. PDF preprint
Balco, G. and J. Schaefer, 2006. Cosmogenic-nuclide and varve chronologies for the deglaciation of southern New England. Quaternary Geochronology, Vol. 1, 15-28
Balco, G., Cowdery, S., Todd, C., and J. Stone, 2006. Antarctic ice sheet reconstruction using cosmic-ray-produced nuclides. in Knight, P., ed., Glaciers and Earth's Changing Environment, pp. 221-223. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK. PDF preprint
Balco, G. and J. Stone, 2005. Measuring middle Pleistocene erosion rates with cosmic-ray-produced nuclides in buried alluvial sediment, Fisher Valley, southeastern Utah. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Vol. 30, 1051-1067.
Balco, G., Rovey, C., and J. Stone, 2003. The First Glacial Maximum in North America. Science, Vol. 307, 222.