GFZ German research centre for geo sciences

Dr. Kimberly Huppert

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Dr. Kimberly Huppert
Building A 27, Room 101 (Büro)
Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam

Career:

2022 - present: Assistant professor of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York
2022 - present: Assistant professor, Earth & Environmental Sciences, City University of New York Graduate Center
2019 - present: Senior research scientist, GFZ
2021 - 2022: Research group leader, GFZ
2017 - 2018: Postdoctoral research scientist, GFZ
2011 - 2017: Graduate student research & teaching assistant, MIT

Education:

2017: PhD Geology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2011: BS Civil Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Projects:

Climatic controls on erosion and landscape evolution
Because anthropogenic climate change has already and will continue to raise global temperatures and alter the frequency and magnitude of storms in the coming decades, quantifying the erosional responses to permafrost and glacier melting, rainfall, and waves are urgent problems in Earth science. Despite longstanding expectations for relationships between climate and erosion rates, measuring such a signal in field data has proven surprisingly difficult – partly because many non-climatic factors (e.g. lithology, rock uplift rates) also influence erosion rates and partly because erosional processes may respond to temporally variable climatic conditions in nuanced ways. Isolating the influence of climate on erosion rates and understanding the impact of hourly to million-year scale climate variability on earth surface processes are open challenges, so basic questions about how climate change will affect Earth’s surface remain unanswered. This knowledge gap also hinders efforts to infer tectonic history from topography, interpret sedimentary records, and understand feedbacks between erosion, weathering, CO2 drawdown, and climate change over geologic timescales. Some of the clearest relationships between climate and erosion have been measured in landscapes with relatively uniform lithology and tectonic uplift rates or in landscapes where these competing factors are well characterized. My research group uses these natural laboratories to quantify the influence of climate mean and variability on fluvial and coastal erosion and to examine the consequences of melting permafrost and ice on arctic delta and alpine landscape evolution over glacial-interglacial to million-year timescales. 
 
  • Chan, N.-H., Langer, M., Juhls, B., Rettelbach, S.T., Overduin, P., Huppert, K.L., Braun, J. (In revision). Arctic delta reduced complexity model and its reproduction of key geomorphological structures. In revision at Earth Surface Dynamicsdoi:10.5194/esurf-2022-25
  • Huppert, K.L., Perron, J.T., Ashton, A.D. (2020). The influence of wave power on bedrock sea-cliff erosion in the Hawaiian Islands. Geology 48 (5), 499-503, doi:10.1130/G47113.1. [Press: MIT News]
  • Ferrier, K.L., Perron, J.T., Mukhopadhyay, S., Rosener, M., Stock, J.D., Huppert, K.L., Slosberg, M. (2013). Covariation of climate and long-term erosion rates across a steep rainfall gradient on Kaua'i. Geological Society of America Bulletin 125(7-8), 1146-1163,  doi:10.1130/B30726.1.
  • Ferrier, K.L., Huppert, K.L., Perron, J.T. (2013). Climatic control of bedrock river incision. Nature 496, 206-209, doi:10.1038/nature11982. [Press: MIT News]
Topographic constraints on lithosphere and mantle dynamics
Topography can provide important observational constraints on the rheology, thermal evolution, and dynamics of the lithosphere and mantle – all of which have implications for understanding Earth's heat budget, the styles of deformation that develop at plate boundaries, and the surface expressions of mantle convection. Tectonic and geodynamic processes drive rock uplift and alter the base level of rivers and hillslopes by changing relative sea level. They consequently exert dominant control on terrestrial and submarine geomorphology; virtually all of Earth’s steepest landscapes are found in regions of rapid rock uplift, and conductive cooling of the lithosphere is the first-order control on global seafloor depths. Topo-bathymetry, paleoshorelines, and sedimentary records can therefore provide an invaluable window to deep earth processes operating today and in the geologic past. My research group uses geomorphic observations - including the morphology of bedrock coasts, river profiles, and drainage networks - to constrain plume-plate interactions at ocean hotspots, relative sea level histories, and paleotectonics.
 
  • Malatesta, L.C., Finnegan, N.J., Huppert, K.L., Carreño, E.I. (2022). The influence of rock uplift rate on the formation and preservation of individual marine terraces during multiple sea level stands. Geology 50(1),101-105, doi: 10.1130/G49245.1
  • Yuan, X.P., Huppert, K.L., Braun, J., Shen, X.M., Liu-Zeng, J., Guerit, L., Wolf, S., Zhang, J.F., Jolivet, M. (2022). Propagating uplift controls on high-elevation, low-relief landscape formation on the Southeast Tibetan Plateau. Geology 50(1), 60-65, doi: 10.1130/G49022.1 
  • Huppert, K.L., Perron, J.T., Royden, L.H. (2020). Hotspot swells and the lifespan of volcanic ocean islands. Science Advances 6 (1), doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw6906. [Press: MIT News]
  • Huppert, K.L., Royden, L.H., Perron, J.T. (2015). Dominant influence of volcanic loading on vertical motions of the Hawaiian Islands. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 418, 149 - 171, doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2015.02.027.
Sedimentary bed forms 
Because the spacing of orbital sand ripples formed by shallow water waves scales with wave conditions and water depth, ripples preserved in sedimentary rocks can be used to infer paleoenvironmental conditions. However, modern and ancient ripple fields often contain defects - deviations from straight, evenly spaced crests - whose formation and evolution are not well understood. At MIT, I performed a series of experiments in a field-scale laboratory wave tank to characterize the response of a rippled bed to changing wave conditions.
 
  • Jin, C., Coco, G., Tinoco, R.O., Perron, T., Myrow, P.M., Huppert, K.L., Friedrich, H., Goldstein, E.B., Gong, Z. (2020). Investigating the response of wave-generated ripples to changes in wave forcing. Geomorphology, 107229, doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2020.107229
  • Perron, J.T., Myrow, P.M., Huppert, K.L., Koss, A.R., Wickert, A.D. (2018). Ancient record of changing flows from wave ripple defects. Geology 46 (10), 875-878, doi:10.1130/G45463.1. [Press: MIT NewsAtlas Obscura]
  • Perron, J.T., Myrow, P.M., Huppert, K.L., Koss, A.R., Wickert, A.D. (2016). Wave Ripple Time-Lapse Experiments. SEAD Internal Repository, doi:10.5967/M0QR4V39.

Awards:

2013 - 2016: NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship
2013: National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping Seed Project Grant
2011 - 2012: MIT Presidential Graduate Fellowship
2011: AGU Outstanding Student Paper Award, Earth & Planetary Surface Processes
2010: Chi Epsilon Civil Engineering Honor Society
 
Invited talks:
2022:     City University of New York Graduate Center, Geography, Earth Science, & Oceanography Seminar
                ETH Zürich, Earth Surface Dynamics Seminar
                AGU Earth & Planetary Surface Processes, EPSP Connects Seminar
                The City College of New York, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Colloquium
  
2021:     AGU Fall Meeting, Earth & Planetary Surface Processes Focus Group
                Ruhr University Bochum, Institute for Geology, Mineralogy, & Geophysics Colloquium
                GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Geomorphology Seminar
                University of Cambridge, Volcanology Seminar
                EGU General Assembly, Geodynamics Program
                North Carolina State University, Department of Marine, Earth, & Atmospheric Sciences Colloquium
 
2020:     University of Virginia, Department of Environmental Sciences Colloquium
                University of Wisconsin, Department of Geoscience Weeks Lecture
                Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Geoscience Research Division Colloquium
                University of Potsdam, Institute of Geosciences Colloquium                    
 
2018:    AGU Fall Meeting, Earth & Planetary Surface Processes Focus Group
               GFZ - PIK Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Workshop
               GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Earth Surface Process Modelling Seminar
               EGU General Assembly, Geomorphology Program
               University of Wyoming, Department of Geology & Geophysics Colloquium
               Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences Colloquium
 
2017:    GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Geomorphology Seminar
               UCLA Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, Tectonics & Seismology Seminar
               Sediment Experimentalists Network Workshop, Tsukuba, Japan
 
2016:    AGU Fall Meeting, Volcanology, Geochemistry, & Petrology Focus Group
 
Teaching, service, & outreach: 
City College of New York lecturer and instructor
2022: Geomorphology (for advanced undergraduate and graduate students)
  
University of Potsdam lecturer and co-instructor
2020 - 2022: Numerical Modeling of Earth Surface Processes (for Remote Sensing of the Environment MSc students)
 
MIT graduate student teaching assistant
2016: Introduction to Geology (required for Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Science undergraduate students)
2015: Geomorphology (for Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Science graduate and advanced undergraduate students)
2014: Introduction to Geophysics and Planetary Science (required for Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Science undergraduate students)
2013-2015: Incoming Freshman Field Trip to Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks
 
ReviewerGeology, The Journal of Geology,  G-cubed, ESurf, Computers and GeosciencesNature Geoscience, Geophysical Research Letters, PLOS ONE, Pacific Science, Geomorphology, Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface, NSF Geomorphology & Land-use Dynamics ProgramNational Science Centre Poland
 
Conference session co-convener
2022: EGU General Assembly, Investigating mantle dynamics through time and space using surface observations
2020 - 2022: EGU General Assembly, Advances in modelling of erosion processes, sediment dynamics, and landscape evolution 
2018 - 2021: AGU Fall Meeting, The role and relevance of thresholds and variability across landscapes 
2019: EGU General Assembly, Sediment transport and channel morphology in mountain rivers
 
Seminar organizer
2018 - 2019: GFZ Earth Surface Process Modelling Seminar
 
Outreach
2018 - present: Skype a Scientist classroom video chat guest scientist (36 kindergarten - college classrooms on 4 continents)
2018 - present: MIT Educational Council undergraduate admissions alumni interviewer
2018 - 2020: Letters to a Pre-Scientist pen-pal to a middle school prospective scientist 
 

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