QRC members lead and participate in a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects from the study of past earth climates and glaciations to shifts in the geographic distributions and evolution of vegetation and faunal communities, to the evolution and dispersals of the genus Homo and the increasing scales of human modification of earth environments through the Holocene. QRC provides a venue for meeting and collaborating with scholars across Quaternary disciplines. We are also fortunate to be able to provide seed funding and small grants for member research projects. We are especially happy to support grad student and junior scholar research activities, much of which leads to larger, external funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation. Since the program’s launch in 2014, we have funded over 100 research projects.
Comparison of Bedrock Features at Two sites within the Seattle Fault Zone: Rockaway Beach and Blakely Rock, Bainbridge Island, Washington
Abstract: This study compares bedrock features at Rockaway Beach and Blakely Rock, two sites with the Seattle Fault Zone (SFZ). I examined depositional environment and evidence for recent uplift at both sites through field observations and mapping data. I used LiDAR data, GPS data, Pocket LiDAR, and point cloud software, to generate high-resolution DEMs at Rockaway Beach and Blakely Rock which reveal bedding and faults not observable at lower resolutions or in aerial photography. I made detailed stratigraphic descriptions of both sites, including underwater at Blakely Rock, and noted fossil evidence that provided clues to the depositional environment. I used the elevation of fossil clams at Rockaway Beach and pholad clam borings at Blakely Rock to estimate recent uplift. I document the occurrence of small faults and slip surfaces at both locations.
My findings indicate that the two locations share similar depositional environments, consistent with previous descriptions of the Blakely Harbor Formation as a subaerial, high-energy braided river system with associated floodplains. The position of fossil horse clams at Rockaway Beach and pholad borings at Blakely Rock suggest an uplift of approximately 6 meters, likely associated with the A.D. 923–924
earthquake. I suggest here that there may be a tear fault between the two sites which could explain their difference in dip directions.
Abstract: This project supports student participation in a third season of Indigenous archaeology at the Nuniaq youth culture camp for Sugpiaq* teens on Sitkalidak Island, Kodiak, Alaska in July 2025. This project represents an investment in community-based, interdisciplinary research and capacity building in Old Harbor, Alaska. The grant covers the logistic expenses for 7 undergrad and grad volunteers to participate in the 3.5-week project. It will support the career development of early career UW alumnus (Hollis Miller), a UW third-year graduate student formulating a dissertation plan around the project (Michelle Henry), an MA student and five undergrads. It will contribute additional data for adjunct QRC member Hollis Miller’s ongoing analyses of the contact era Ing’yuq site and deepen ongoing commitments of Miller and Fitzhugh in community-engaged research. The 2025 project involves traveling to the village of Old Harbor on the Kodiak Archipelago, preparing gear and setting up field camp in a remote location ten miles from the village. There the team will establish camp and re-open the excavation at the Ing’yuq Site, an ancestral village dating from the centuries just before and decades just after Russian colonization of the archipelago. Once open, the team will be instructed in the excavation and recording protocols and prepare to receive up to 10 teens from Old Harbor who will join us for 5 days discovering the archaeological history and former belongings of their ancestors. A constellation of factors conspired to limit this year’s camp to the smaller number of youth coming out to the site, so we are facilitating a two day “pre-camp” back in Old Harbor, the weekend before the field camp, for the larger group of kids (50+ in past years) to engage with elders in storytelling documentation, Suqpiaq crafting, and traditional food preparations. At the 5-day field camp, students and campers alike will be engaged in additional learning activities related to traditional Sugpiaq culture including Alutiiq Dancing, traditional plant lore, subsistence practices and storytelling. After Nuniaq campers leave the site, the university crew will spend another week wrapping up the excavation, completing documentation and refilling the excavation before decamping to Old Harbor to store our gear, present results, and depart for home in early August. As the community is planning a new location for future Nuniaq Camps, we are hoping to complete our excavations at Ing’yuq site this season to be able to publish the results and prepare to support the camp in the new location in the future. Through all this, we continue to partner with the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor, the Old Harbor Native Corporation (landowners of the site) and the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak.
*Sugpiaq and Alutiiq are equivalent appellations for the Alaska Native people of Kodiak and adjacent coasts of southern Alaska. Sugpiaq is the autonym for “we people” derived from their language Sug’stun and currently advocated by cultural intellectuals. “Alutiiq” is a term more community members have come to identify with for historic reasons over the past century.
Geoarchaeological Research of sediment samples from Angkor, Cambodia
Abstract: The largest premodern government in mainland Southeast Asia, the Angkorian empire, centered mostly in Cambodia, ruled from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries AD. During this time, numerous massive temple monuments, including Angkor Wat, were constructed. Previous research has shown how the central area of Angkor Wat was inhabited by extensive low density urban settlements (Carter et al. 2018), with distinctive cycles of decline and reorganization (Carter et al. 2019). Previous work on hydroclimate reconstruction from tropical southern Vietnamese tree rings (Buckley et al. 2010) has indicated that Angkor experienced drought during the time of the transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) into the Little Ice Age (LIA). This drought appears to have led to the failure of Angkor as a viable city. However, little is known about how the remote areas of the empire were involved in these processes of expansion and decline, and how these drought events affected their involvement in the empire. We ask what impact did incorporation into the Angkor empire have on these settlements at the edge of the empire, and how did climate change affect their integration?
Examining the Chronology of the Foothills Erratics Train, Alberta, with in-situ Optical Surface Exposure Dating
Abstract: Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) depth profiles from quartz can be used to extrapolate rock surface exposure ages with an understanding of a sample’s light attenuation and OSL bleaching behaviors. However, the current measuring procedure for producing depth profiles, which involves measuring the luminescence of millimeter slices from surface core samples, offers low resolution data, limiting age and parameter extrapolative accuracy for the dating technique. Further, OSL anomalies from non-quartz mineralogical variations in the measured samples can cause depth profile data scatter in dating quartz rich rocks, further limiting age extrapolative accuracy.
Obtaining OSL depth profiles with the use of sub-millimeter OSL laser scanning measuring protocols on transverse core slices, rather than obtaining OSL from millimeter slice segments, has potential for improving the data resolution of OSL depth profiles. Further, with this spatially resolved OSL data, one can identify and eliminate OSL non-referential to light exposed quartz with the use of scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) measures. This filtering process may reduce the amount of data scatter present in depth profile datasets of heterogeneous rock mediums, which may offer improvements in parameter extrapolative accuracy for quartz OSL dating.
Thus, the QRC sponsored project aims to trial using these enhanced luminescence measuring protocols to surface date three erratics from the Foothills Erratics Train in Alberta, Canada. The erratics are believed to have been deposited along the margins of the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets during their latest glacial retreat. Ongoing controversies concerning the surface exposure dates of these erratics using cosmogenic nuclides have complicated interpretations of glacial histories and interactions between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets during the upper Pleistocene, with particular questions of when an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets opened up, which would have allowed for the migration of humans into North America. Optically stimulated luminescence is a chronometer more sensitive to millennial timescales than what cosmogenic nuclide dating can provide, and may be able to document retreat direction chronologies via surface exposure dating applications using the proposed novel OSL measuring techniques.
Using Stable Isotopes of n-Alkanes to Track the Uplift of the Cascade Mountains of Washington, USA
Abstract: The Cascade Mountains are one of the dominant geographic features of the Pacific Northwest. The Cascades produce a large rainshadow effect, which is expressed as a regional dichotomy in climate and vegetation. This dichotomy has been a major controlling factor on the natural history and biogeography of the area, which in turn has strongly influenced local cultures and economies, yet the timing of the Cascade orogeny is poorly constrained. This project endeavors to better constrain the uplift chronology of the Cascade Range of Washington State by determining the onset of its orographic rainshadow, as recorded in the d2H and d13C values of leaf wax n-alkanes in sedimentary rocks both east and west of the range’s crest. These isotopic values are controlled, ultimately, by the local climate: leaf-wax n-alkane d2H has been shown to correlate strongly with local atmospheric d2H across the Cascades (Sisley et al. 2023). These biomarkers are persistent in the rock record and can be used to elucidate past climate conditions and, by extension, the presence or absence of the Cascade rainshadow through time. Our results will provide important context for researchers studying local tectonic and evolutionary history.
Abstract: Astoria Canyon was the submarine extension of the Columbia River discharge during low-stand conditions in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. However, under current high-stand conditions, the connection between Astoria Canyon and the Columbia River is less direct, with the mouth of the Columbia separated from the canyon head by about 20 km. Although the Columbia River remains the likely source of any modern sediment-gravity flows down Astoria canyon, the processes of transport, deposition, and remobilization on the continental shelf have imparted signatures on any Columbia River sediment reaching Astoria Canyon. The goal of this work is to characterize deposits of Columbia-derived sediment along a transect between the modern river mouth and the head of Astoria Canyon. The depositional history (via 210Pb geochronology) and sediment characteristics (e.g., grain size, physical structure, porosity) of shelf sediments will be compared with active sedimentation processes in the head of Astoria. By comparing the century-scale history of deposits on the shelf with modern sedimentation in the canyon head, we will improve our understanding about the the degree of coupling between modern sediment discharge from the Columbia River and delivery to Astoria Canyon.
Sediment Supply to Astoria Canyon: Canyon Head Sedimentary Processes
Abstract: During low stands in sea level, Astoria Canyon was the submarine extension of the Columbia River dispersal system and many of the submarine deposits associated with it (e.g., Astoria Fan) are thought to have been sourced from the Columbia River. However, in modern conditions, sources of sediment to Astoria Canyon are less well understood, and could include erosion of local canyon walls, wave-supported sediment gravity flows, or bottom-boundary layer advection of sediments. Hydro- and sediment dynamics of the Astoria Canyon head will be examined using an instrumented benthic tripod as part of a USGS-funded project.
With this additional work supported by QRC we will expand the scope of that project to examine modern sedimentation within the canyon head using a combination of surface grab and box core sampling, and deployment of sediment traps in conjunction with the instrumented tripod. The proposed instrument deployment will encompass a summer field season, and thus we can evaluate dynamics and conditions by adding ship-based sampling when the tripod is deployed and retrieved (proposed for June and September of 2019, dependent on collaborative UW-USGS ship-time scheduling). The canyon head has complex morphology, and thus differing dynamics and sediment-accumulation patterns, and capturing a range of variability is essential not only for evaluating the erodibility and geotechnical strength of the sediment, but also for targeting future coring efforts. The characteristics of these modern sediments (e.g., grain size) will be compared with sediment cores collected on the shelf (see linked QRC project, PI Fricke). This will help determine whether sediment actively transported or deposited in the head of Astoria Canyon is derived from local sources, or shelf sediments, and if the latter, the degree of reworking (i.e., winnowing) of those source deposits. Dynamical measurements collected with the USGS-funded instrumented tripod will constrain the type and intensity of processes responsible for the remobilization and modification of material reaching the canyon head.
Stable Isotopes in Leaf Wax n-Alkanes as a Record of Ambient Climate Through the Transition Into Soil Organic Matter
Abstract: The ratio of stable hydrogen isotopes (δ2H) in plant n-alkanes is linked to the isotopic composition of the precipitation they receive, which is tied to local geography and climate. Plant n-alkanes are retained through the transition into leaf litter and then into soils, which represent a long-term average of climate conditions recorded by the plant community. Ultimately plant n-alkanes are preserved in sedimentary rocks, allowing for them to be used as a paleoclimate proxy, providing insight into the local atmospheric δ2H at the time of deposition.
This project examines isotopic signals in plant leaf wax n-alkanes from across Washington State as a record of ambient climate conditions and their potential as a proxy for paleoclimate. The Cascade Mountains that run north-south through the Pacific Northwest create a strong rain shadow effect as precipitation from the Pacific Ocean is carried inward. The result is a stark difference in the climatic and growing conditions on the windward and leeward sides of the mountains. Western Washington is dominated by a moist temperate rainforest biome, while Eastern Washington consists of hotter, drier scrubland. Rainwater molecules containing heavier isotopes are rained out preferentially as clouds pass over the mountains, resulting in a ratio of relatively lighter isotopes on the east side and heavier on the west. As plants use atmospheric water as their primary source of hydrogen, this climatic and topographic marker is recorded in the hydrocarbon chains (n-alkanes) that make up their leaf waxes.
My goal is to assess the local trend of δ2H depletion across the Cascade Mountains’ orogenic gradient and to examine the pathway of this isotopic signature from plant tissue into soils. Duff plays an important role as the intermediate between plants and soil, but this pathway is largely understudied. This research serve to broaden our insight into the pattern of isotopic signals preserved from live plants into the soil and sedimentary rock record as well as into the climate of Washington State and its changes over time. With our results, we hope to refine isotopic methods of assessing paleoclimate through better understanding of modern biota and natural processes, including the poorly-studied pathway from live plant tissue to dead plant detritus to soil organic matter. Quantifying the isotopic fractionation that occurs in the transitional steps from precipitation to the rock record is crucial to expanding the potential of this method as a paleoclimate indicator.
Abstract: This study compares bedrock features at Rockaway Beach and Blakely Rock, two sites with the Seattle Fault Zone (SFZ). I examined depositional environment and evidence for recent uplift at both sites through field observations and mapping data. I used LiDAR data, GPS data, Pocket LiDAR, and point cloud software, to generate high-resolution DEMs at Rockaway Beach and Blakely Rock which reveal bedding and faults not observable at lower resolutions or in aerial photography. I made detailed stratigraphic descriptions of both sites, including underwater at Blakely Rock, and noted fossil evidence that provided clues to the depositional environment. I used the elevation of fossil clams at Rockaway Beach and pholad clam borings at Blakely Rock to estimate recent uplift. I document the occurrence of small faults and slip surfaces at both locations. 
Abstract: This project supports student participation in a third season of Indigenous archaeology at the Nuniaq youth culture camp for Sugpiaq* teens on Sitkalidak Island, Kodiak, Alaska in July 2025. This project represents an investment in community-based, interdisciplinary research and capacity building in Old Harbor, Alaska. The grant covers the logistic expenses for 7 undergrad and grad volunteers to participate in the 3.5-week project. It will support the career development of early career UW alumnus (Hollis Miller), a UW third-year graduate student formulating a dissertation plan around the project (Michelle Henry), an MA student and five undergrads. It will contribute additional data for adjunct QRC member Hollis Miller’s ongoing analyses of the contact era Ing’yuq site and deepen ongoing commitments of Miller and Fitzhugh in community-engaged research. The 2025 project involves traveling to the village of Old Harbor on the Kodiak Archipelago, preparing gear and setting up field camp in a remote location ten miles from the village. There the team will establish camp and re-open the excavation at the Ing’yuq Site, an ancestral village dating from the centuries just before and decades just after Russian colonization of the archipelago. Once open, the team will be instructed in the excavation and recording protocols and prepare to receive up to 10 teens from Old Harbor who will join us for 5 days discovering the archaeological history and former belongings of their ancestors. A constellation of factors conspired to limit this year’s camp to the smaller number of youth coming out to the site, so we are facilitating a two day “pre-camp” back in Old Harbor, the weekend before the field camp, for the larger group of kids (50+ in past years) to engage with elders in storytelling documentation, Suqpiaq crafting, and traditional food preparations. At the 5-day field camp, students and campers alike will be engaged in additional learning activities related to traditional Sugpiaq culture including Alutiiq Dancing, traditional plant lore, subsistence practices and storytelling. After Nuniaq campers leave the site, the university crew will spend another week wrapping up the excavation, completing documentation and refilling the excavation before decamping to Old Harbor to store our gear, present results, and depart for home in early August. As the community is planning a new location for future Nuniaq Camps, we are hoping to complete our excavations at Ing’yuq site this season to be able to publish the results and prepare to support the camp in the new location in the future. Through all this, we continue to partner with the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor, the Old Harbor Native Corporation (landowners of the site) and the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak.