Investigates the driving forces behind the formation, evolution, and decay of planetary surfaces across the solar system.
Research Interests
I investigate the driving forces behind the formation, evolution, and decay of planetary surfaces. Have you ever looked at a landscape and thought, “Wow, that looks cool. How did that happen?” From your backyard to faraway moons, river systems dictate how surfaces evolve over geological time. I quantify the interactions between fluvial erosion, climate, and tectonics—combining theoretical studies, field work, remote sensing, and laboratory analyses—which are recorded in landscapes over a variety of spatial and temporal scales.
Topics I investigate:
- Fluvial Systems
- Lakes & Hydrology
- Volcanic Terrains
- Glaciated Landforms
- Icy Satellites
- Uplift & Dynamic Support
- Climate-Land Links
- Landscape Evolution
- Weathering & Alteration
- Remote Sensing
- Cosmogenic Dating Tools
Biographic Sketch:
Gaia Stucky de Quay joined the EAPS faculty in 2023. After earning a master’s in Earth sciences from University College London in 2014, Stucky went on to complete her PhD studies in Earth and planetary sciences in 2019 at Imperial College London. She pursued several postdoctoral fellowship projects, including in the Department of Geological Sciences at UT Austin from 2019-2021 at in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University from 2021-2023. Stucky also held a postdoctoral fellowship in EAPS at MIT before beginning her appointment as an assistant professor in 2023.
My research into the ancient Martian climate and how climate shapes landscapes is at the nexus of Earth, planets, and climate: the central themes we study in EAPS.
Gaia Stucky de Quay
Key Awards & Honors
- 2020 • Early Career Grant, British Society for Geomorphology
- 2020 • Ralph Brown Expedition Award, Royal Geographical Soceity
Key Publications
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Gaia Stucky de QuayTimothy A. GoudgeCaleb I. Fassett; Precipitation and aridity constraints from paleolakes on early Mars. Geology (2020); 48 (12): 1189–1193. doi: 10.1130/G47886.1
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Gaia Stucky de Quay, Gareth G. Roberts, Dylan H. Rood, Victoria M. Fernandes, Holocene uplift and rapid fluvial erosion of Iceland: A record of post-glacial landscape evolution, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, (2019) Volume 505, Pages 118-130, ISSN 0012-821X, doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2018.10.026.
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Edwin S. Kite, David P. Mayer, Sharon A. Wilson, Joel M. Davis, Antoine S. Lucas, Gaia Stucky de Quay, Persistence of intense, climate-driven runoff late in Mars history. Sci. Adv., (2019) 5,eaav7710. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aav7710
