Nominally anhydrous minerals such as plagioclase feldspar can hold trace amounts of hydrogen within their crystal structures, providing a possible proxy to measure water concentrations in the melt. My research focuses on undertaking hydrogen plagioclase-melt partitioning and plagioclase dehydration experiments to refine hydrogen partition and diffusion coefficients. Such constraints offer alternative or complementary petrological tools to quantify magmatic water contents and decompression/ascent rates of eruptive deposits. 

Another part of my research uses plagioclase-liquid experimental data and machine learning regression to develop models that can determine multiple intensive magmatic parameters (pressure, temperature, water content, equilibrium melt/plagioclase compositions, fluid saturation), aiding reconstructions of magma storage conditions. Another area of interest is using machine learning classification to explore the factors that contribute to large-magnitude eruptions (M>7) and areas that may be prone to such eruptions in the future. 

I am supervised by Dr Mike Cassidy and Prof. Jon Blundy, and my DPhil is funded by the NERC Environmental Research Doctoral Training Programme (DTP).

Cutler, K.S., Watt, S.F.L., Cassidy, M., Madden-Nadeau, A.L., Engwell, S. L., Abdurrachman, M., Nurshal, M.E.M., Tappin, D.R., Carey, S.N., Novellino, A., Hayer, C., Hunt, J.E., Day, S.J., Grilli, S.T., Kurniawan, I.A. and Kartadinata, N. 2022. Downward-propagating eruption following vent unloading implies no direct magmatic trigger for the 2018 lateral collapse of Anak Krakatau, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 578, p. 117332. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2021.117332

 

Cutler, K.S., Filiberto, J., Treiman, A. H. and Trang, D., 2020. Experimental Investigation of Oxidation of Pyroxene and Basalt: Implications for Spectroscopic Analysis of the Surface of Venus and the Ages of Lava Flows, The Planetary Science Journal, 1(21). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ab8faf