Dr. Ken Adams has received a post-doctoral appointment at the Desert Research Institute to study changes in Great Basin geology and hydrology resulting from climate change and recent movements of the earth's crust in the region. He will be working in the Institute's Quaternary Sciences Center which focuses on the dramatic geologic and climatic changes that have occurred during the past two million years.
Adams, who received his doctoral degree in geology in 1997 from UNR, will examine how the paths of rivers have changed as the region's geologic strata rebounded from the immense weight of ancient Lake Lahontan after it dried up about 12,000 years ago. He will also examine more recent evidence of climate change in the Carson Sink near Fallon by documenting the rise and fall of smaller, but still relatively large lakes, and their relationship to flows in the Carson, Walker and Humboldt rivers during the past 10,000 years.