Dr. Brian Cousens

Along with graduate and undergraduate students, my research has focused on the geochemistry and petrology of igneous rocks as probes of mantle and crustal composition. Past and present research projects include studies of mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB) and seamount lavas from the Northeast Pacific, the geochemistry of ocean island volcanic rocks from Gran Canaria (Canary Islands), Rarotonga and Tubuai (French Polynesia), and Hawaii; discerning mantle sources and the effects of crustal contamination in young continental basaltic lavas from the southern Stikine Belt, British Columbia, at Long Valley Caldera, California, in the Ancestral Cascades volcanic arc in northern California and western Nevada, and in volcanic rocks of the Great Basin, Nevada; the isotopic characteristics of back-arc basalts from the Japan Sea and the geochemistry of pelagic sediments from the northwestern Pacific Ocean; using Nd isotopes in Paleozoic volcanic rocks as probes of basement compositions in the Avalon and Meguma Terranes, Nova Scotia; the Nd and Pb isotopic composition of Archean-age mafic and felsic rocks from the Kidd Creek Cu-Zn-Ag deposit, Timmins, Ontario; Nd and Pb isotopic studies of volcanic rocks and sedimentary rocks of the Slave and Western Churchill Provinces, Northwest Territories.