An expanding area of my research involves supervision of our Optically Stimulated Luminescence Laboratory and collaboration with faculty in the Quaternary Studies Program in determining the burial age of sand grains in a wide-range of eolian, beach, fluvial and glacio-fluvial deposits. Areas of study include France, Greenland, Alaska, and Canada, as well as the Mississippi and Colorado Rivers, Nebraska Sand Hills, Mescalero Dunes, and the Texas, Alabama and Carolina coasts.
I have an ongoing interest in the mineralogy and economic geology of stratiform sulfide deposits in the Proterozoic sedimentary rocks of the southern Canadian Rockies. This has involved field and laboratory studies of stratiform copper and lead/zinc deposits and detailed laboratory studies of copper sulfide structures.
Professor Treves and I have conducted several collaborative studies of the Proterozoic and Cretaceous igneous rocks in the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains. Professor Carlson of the Conservation and Survey Division, Professor Treves, and I are looking at the mineralogy, chemistry and petrology of the basement rocks of southeastern Nebraska, in particular the Elk Creek Carbonatite.
Selected Publications
Goble, R.J., Mason, J.A., Loope, D.B., and Swinehart, J.B., 2004,
Optical and radiocarbon ages of stacked paleosols and dune sands
in the Nebraska Sand Hills, USA, Quaternary Science Reviews.
Mason, J.A., Swinehart, J.B., Goble, R.J. and Loope, D.B., 2004, Dune
activity directly linked to hydrologic drought, Nebraska Sand Hills,
USA, The Holocene.
Mason, J.A., Jacobs, P.M., Hanson, P.R., Miao, X., and Goble, R.J., 2003,
Sources and paleoclimatic significance of Holocen Bignell Loess,
central Great Plains, USA, Quaternary Research, 60, 330-339.
Rittenour, T.M., Goble, R.J., and Blum, M.D., 2003, An optical age
chronology of late Pleistocene fluvial deposits in the northen lower
Mississippi valley, Quaternary Science Reviews, 22, 1105-1110.
Blum, M.D., Carter, A.E., Zayac, T., and Goble, R., 2002, Middle Holocene
sea-level and evolution of the Gulf of Mexico Coast (USA), Journal of
Coastal Research, SI36, 65-80.