Darrel Cowan
  Professor
  Office: JHN-334
     ESS Mailing Address
  Phone: 206-543-4033
  Fax: 206-543-0489 (shared)
  Email: cowan @ ess.washington.edu
  Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/structureandtectonics/

  Research Groups: Structural Geology, Tectonics and Geodynamics

Areas of Interest:
Structural Geology, Tectonics

Current Research Interests:
In 1996, my post-doctoral associates and graduate students began a comprehensive field and theoretical study of the kinematics and mechanisms of deformation in fault rocks formed along low-angle normal faults—detachment faults—in Death Valley, California. My NSF-supported current project, with research professor Paul Bodin, is testing our hypothesis that the detachment faults are active and capable of generating microearthquakes. We have placed a temporary network of twelve short-period seismometers in Death Valley National Park and adjacent lands and are successfully recording data. From 2002-2008, I was a co-PI on a collaborative project, funded by a five-year grant from the Continental Dynamics Program at NSF, called RETREAT: an interdisciplinary study of syn-convergence extension in the northern Apennines in Italy. In earlier research projects, several graduate students and UW colleagues and I investigated how diverse rock units and terranes in the northwest Cordillera were accreted and displaced in Cretaceous to early Tertiary time. Our findings bear on the current controversy about Baja British Columbia (pdf).

Graduate Students:
Logan Chinn: Testing the hypothesis that the eastern Garlock fault terminates in a zone of late Miocene to present transpression within the Avawatz Mountains, CA

Selected Publications:

Cowan, D. S., Brandon, M.T., and Garver, J. I., 1997, Geologic tests of hypotheses for large coastwise Displacements-A critique illustrated by the Baja British Columbia controversy: American Journal of Science, v. 297, p. 117-173.

Cowan, D.S., 1999, Do faults preserve a record of seismic slip? A field geologist's opinion: Journal of Structural Geology Twentieth Anniversary Issue, v. 21, p. 995-1001.

Cowan, D.S., and Pini, G.A., 2001, Disrupted and chaotic rock units, in Vai, G.B., and Martini, I.P., eds., Anatomy of an Orogen-The Apennines and Adjacent Mediterranean Basins: Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 165-176.

Hayman, N. W., Knott, J.R., Cowan, D.S., Nemser, E., and Sarna-Wojcicki, A.M., 2003, Quaternary low-angle slip on detachment faults in death valley, California: Geology, v. 31.

Cowan, D.S., Cladouhos, T.T. and Morgan, J.K., 2003, Structural geology and kinematic history of rocks formed along low-angle normal faults, Death Valley, California: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 155, p. 1230-1248.

Cowan, D.S., 2003, Revisiting the Baranof-Leech River hypothesis for early Tertiary coastwise transport of the Chugach-Prince William terrane: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 213, p. 463-475.