Memeti, Vali

Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences

Geological Sciences

Biography:

Vali Memeti studies the spatial and compositional evolution of magma plumbing systems and coupled regional tectonics in continental magmatic arcs through time. Specifically, she looks at the geochemistry and the structures of long-lived batholiths and plutons and their deformed host rock at mineral to magmatic arc scales. She works on determining how magma processes in the lower to upper crust are connected to processes involved in erupting volcanoes at the surface. Her research on magma plumbing systems has taken her to tilted arc sections throughout California and Western North America in general, the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, as well as to the South American Cordillera (Argentina, Peru), the European Variscides (France, Germany) and the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (inner Mongolia). Her interests are in unraveling the time and length scales of pluton construction and evolution by studying smaller domains of large magmatic bodies at different crustal depths and the magmatic processes and histories preserved with element and isotope whole rock and single mineral geochemistry. Constraints for time scales of these chemical and physical processes are determined through precise U/Pb zircon geochronology using modern chemical abrasion ID-TIMS and Laser ablation ICPMS methods. She emphasizes extensive field mapping and detailed field observations as the base of her studies. Other tools she uses for her research are igneous and metamorphic petrology; petrography; structural geology, including microstructures; as well as laser ablation ICPMS U/Pb zircon geochronology for provenance studies on large-scale tectonic problems.

Areas of Knowledge:

• Volcanoes
• Volcanic eruptions
• Magmas
• Minerals
• Rocks
• Yosemite National Park
• Joshua Tree National Park
• Plutons
• geologic maps
• tectonics
• structural geology
• geochronology

Subject(s):

• Geology

Language(s):

• French
• German

Other Languages:

Albanian

Region(s):

• Europe
• North America
• South America
• Global

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