K.D. Nelson Lecture: Dr. Valier Galy

The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences presents the K.D. Nelson Lecture Series featuring guest speaker, Dr. Valier Galy from U.C. San Diego. His talk is titled, The chilling effect of mountain growth: Cenozoic insights from the Bengal fan.

Contact Dr. Junium or earadmin@syr.edu for the Zoom link to participate.

Dr. Galy’s research focusses on multiple geochemical aspects of the global C cycle. He is particularly interested in the fluvial transfer of organic carbon from continental reservoirs to the ocean. Along with his colleagues from WHOI and the Woods Hole Research Center he is part of a wide initiative – the Global Rivers Observatory – and study a wide range of river systems including the Amazon, Congo, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Fraser, Mackenzie, Yangtze and Connecticut Rivers to name only a few. He also studies marine sedimentary records to understand past variations of the organic carbon cycle, in particular the relationships between climate change and the dynamics of organic carbon exchange. He uses a range of state of the art techniques – such as compound specific radiocarbon dating – to characterize and understand the dynamics of organic carbon exchanges during continental erosion. He uses and develops organic proxies – such as compound specific stable isotopic measurements – to study paleo-climate over timescales from centuries to millions of years. Finally, he is also interested in the relationships between erosion tectonics and climate over long timescales, in particular the relationships between Himalayan erosion and climate over the Cenozoic.

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