Dr. Ron Counts

Dr. Counts was appointed Associate Director of the MMRI in  October of 2018. Before coming to the MMRI, he was a Research Geologist in the Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center at the USGS for 4 years, and prior to that he spent 12 years at the Kentucky Geological Survey as a field geologist and geologic mapper. Dr. Counts' research interests are broad but center on understanding the dynamics behind paleoenvironmental changes and landscape evolution due to natural geologic process, climatic fluctuations (gradual and abrupt), near-surface neotectonic deformation, and anthropogenic activities. He uses multidisciplinary research methods that include geologic and geomorphic mapping, geospatial landscape analyses, luminescence (OSL, TL) and terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) geochronology, sediment coring , detailed analyses of cores in the UM Sediment and Core Analysis Lab, and he uses a variety of geophysical methods (ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, electromagnetics, and seismic) to help construct 3D and 4D system-scale landscape models. He has performed research on the northeastern slopes of the Uinta Mountains of Wyoming, on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, in the Himalaya Mountains of northern India, on glaciofluvial landscapes in the Midwestern United States, on the Atlantic coastal plain of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, on the Appalachian Piedmont of Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, the coastal plain of the Mississippi Embayment, on the island of Hawaii, and in the New Madrid, Wabash Valley, East Tennessee, and Central Virginia intraplate seismic zones, as well as the region affected by the 1886 Charleston, South Carolina earthquake.