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).
View Selected Publications
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