PhD Derek Ford (Canada) |
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Contact by email
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| Address: | 187 Cedar Island Road Orillia, ON L3V 1T2, Canada |
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| Affiliation: | School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada |
| Specialization: | Geomorphology |
| Instrumentation: | My colleague, Henry Schwarcz, our graduate students and I were the effective pioneers of U series dating of speleothems, their paleomagnetism, and did most of the early stable isotope analysis. Henry still operates two mass specs for D/H, 16O:18O and trace elemental analysis but I have ceased seeking funding for such work ( having had my fair share and perhaps more than that). |
| Geoactivity: | In the past, in every continent except Africa. These days chiefly in the Canadian Rockies and the Northwest Territories, in China, and anywhere else that can offer interesting problems and help pay/contribute to my expenses. I still thoroughly enjoy travel, meeting old friends in karst and making new ones. |
| Interests: | I am interested in and experienced in most standard areas of karst and cave research, including speleogenesis, karst morphogenesis, hydrogeology, geochemistry, speleothem paleoenvironmental analysis, paleokarst phenomena, conservation, technical applied studies such as collapse hazard or leaking dams, park and show cave development, etc. During my fulltime career at McMaster University I conducted or directed karst and cave research in more than thirty nations, supervised or co-supervised more than 60 PhD and MSc students to completion and hosted ~30 post-doctoral students and visiting scientists. I also did a lot of consulting for the national parks and other government organisations in Canada, the USA and other nations. My publication list has >250 entries. I am now retired and have just finished supervising my final PhD and Post-doc students. Paul Williams and I produced the second edition of our karst textbook, entitled Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology, in April 2007. It is published by John Wiley, Chichester, UK. My interests now are primarily in consulting, conservation and park or other preserve creation. I still enjoy caving but am slow in crawls and no good now on big drops or free diving of siphons. |
Member of Speleogenesis.info since 2007-12-18