Office: 210 Halbouty Building
Phone: Office (979) 845-0637, Lab (979) 458-4486
Fax: (979) 845-6162
Email: e-grossman@tamu.edu
My current research emphasizes changes in climate, paleoceanography,
and paleochemistry in deep time (Pre-Quaternary) and
modern environments. Armed with automation for carbon
and oxygen isotopic analysis of carbonate fossils, we have
explored climate change in the Permo-Carboniferous and Tertiary,
and its relation to the carbon cycle and atmospheric CO
2 . Our oxygen and carbon isotopic
results for Permo-Carboniferous brachiopods have been
coupled with climate and icesheet modeling to constrain
Late Paleozoic glaciation and its relation to atmospheric
CO2 levels
. A new area of interest is the study
of paleocirculation in the epicontinental seas of North America
(see below). In addition to studying the icehouse-greenhouse-icehouse
transition in the late Paleozoic, we are characterizing seasonal
temperature change through the Tertiary using oxygen isotopic
and trace-metal analyses of serially-sampled mollusk shells
). 
Another effort is the development
of a database of paleochemical data. As part of the
CHRONOS project
to integrate time-related geologic
data in an interactive geochronologic-stratigraphic
system, we organized a
workshop
for the Geochemical Cycles
domain of CHRONOS in 2004 in San Antonio. A proposal
is pending to develop the HERMES database for paleochemical
data on ocean and atmospheric chemistry, paleotemperatures,
and other paleoenvironmental data. This database will be
coupled to CHRONOS' tools. A second research interest has been microbial processes in the terrestrial subsurface. We have studied the role of microorganisms in controlling groundwater chemistry and diagenetic processes, as well as the role of subsurface lithology in controlling microbial activity and ecology. Important findings include evidence for enhanced microbial populations in aquifer sands as compared with aquitard silts and mudstones (Martino et al., 1998). We also show evidence for an ecological interdependence between different microbial communities in the different lithologies (Ulrich et al., 1998; Grossman and Desrocher, 2001).
NEWLY FUNDED PROJECTS
ONGOING PROJECTS