David L. Shuster

Curriculum vitae (pdf)
dshuster@bgc.org
510-644-9891

Personal Website

 

David Shuster was born in San Rafael, California in 1974. After attending public high school and subsequently receiving his A.B. in Geology from U.C. Berkeley in 1996, he carried out noble gas geochemistry research under the guidance of Dr. B. Mack Kennedy and Prof. Don DePaolo at the Berkeley Center for Isotope Geochemistry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1996 to 2000. His research was then focused on the use of naturally occurring noble gas nuclides as "tracers" in geothermal and volcanic hydrological systems. Inspired by exciting developments in the late 1990s with the (U-Th)/He system as a new thermochronometer, David began his graduate training at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2000 under the guidance of Prof. Ken Farley. At Caltech, developed a new method called 4He/3He thermochronometry, which has opened entirely new avenues of research by quantifying long-term erosion rates in mountainous terrain with unprecedented detail. In 2001, David received a three year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

After completing his Ph.D. in 2005, David joined the Berkeley Geochronology Center as a geochronologist, where he is currently pursuing research with a general focus on the interactions between past changes in global climate and the influence of climate on surface landscape evolution on Earth and Mars. David is currently pursuing three primary avenues of research:

(i) The application of spallogenic noble gases induced by energetic proton irradiation to problems in geochemistry and thermochronology,

(ii) The development and application of (U-Th)/He dating to determine precipitation ages of common minerals resulting from chemical weathering at Earth’s surface, and

(iii) The study of Martian meteorites to place long-term constraints on the surface temperatures on Mars.

More information on this reseach can be found on David's website.

In addition to geochemistry, David has strong interests in music, cooking, swimming and travel.

 

Selected Publications more ...

Heim J. A., Vasconcelos P. M., Shuster D. L., Farley K. A., and Broadbent G. (2006) Dating palaeochannel iron ore by (U-Th)/He analysis of supergene goethite, Hamersley Province, Australia. Geology 34(3), 173-176.

Shuster D. L., Ehlers T. A., Rusmore M. E., and Farley K. A. (2005) Rapid glacial erosion at 1.8 Ma revealed by 4He/3He thermochronometry. Science 310(5754), 1668-1670.

Shuster D. L. and Farley K. A. (2005) 4He/3He thermochronometry: Theory, practice and potential complications. In Low-Temperature Thermochronology: Techniques, Interpretations, and Applications, Vol. 58 (ed. P. W. Reiners and T. A. Ehlers), pp. 181-202. Mineralogical Society of America.

Shuster D. L. and Weiss B. P. (2005) Martian surface paleotemperatures from thermochronology of meterorites. Science 309(5734), 594-597.

Shuster D. L., Vasconcelos P. M., Heim J. A., and Farley K. A. (2005) Weathering geochronology by (U-Th)/He dating of goethite. Geochimica Et Cosmochimica Acta 69(3), 659-673.

Shuster D. L. and Farley K. A. (2004) 4He/3He thermochronometry. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 217(1-2), 1-17.