 David A. Clague |
2015 Distinguished Geologic Career Award (MGPV Division)
Presented to David A. Clague
Citation by Wendy Bohrson and Jackie Dixon
We are pleased to honor Dr. David A. Clague of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute as the 6th recipient of the MGPV Distinguished Geologic Career Award. Dave’s career has been extraordinary, marked by hundreds of high-quality, data-intensive publications that combine field and analytical constraints to address questions in such wide ranging disciplines as petrology, geochemistry, volcanology, geochronology, geomorphology and climate.
Dave’s multi-disciplinary approach has led to a series of fundamental contributions. Among the most important of these are his discoveries on the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain, including the time-transgressive nature of eruption along the chain, the evolution of Hawaiian volcanoes from the pre-alkalic to rejuvenated stages, and the existence of giant landslides on the seafloor. Dave also has a distinguished history of research on mid-ocean ridges, including his work on strombolian eruptions that challenged accepted dogma that MOR eruptions were limited to effusive discharge of pillow lavas and sheet flows.
Dave sees scientific opportunity in the most unlikely of places. For example, while focused on collecting basalt over his ~40-year career, he also saved the coral “by-catch”, and is now using these samples to investigate climate, sea level, and glacial cycles. This encapsulates Dave’s creative and remarkable scientific career...trained as a basalt petrologist and now engaging in climate studies using coral.
Dave remains one of the most enthusiastic people we know. His personal and intellectual generosity has resulted in a long list of collaborators, including co-nominators Fred Frey, Jim Moore and Mike Perfit, and also his daughter Gillian. Both of us had the good fortune to work with Dave early in our careers. He treated us as colleagues from our first meeting and was unwavering in his support for us as scientists. We benefited from the high standards he placed on us to be tough, thorough field geologists at a time (years ago!) when women were not as commonly seen in field geology positions.
We are honored to have Dave as a colleague. We are also very pleased that he was surprised when Diane Smith, Chair of MGPV called him to tell him he was the 2015 recipient. As he admitted, he was speechless—this is also a remarkable feat!
2015 Distinguished Geologic Career Award (MGPV Division) — Response by David A. Clague
I want to thank my co-nominators Wendy Bohrson and Jackie Dixon for their kind and supportive words. I have been a most fortunate scientist throughout my career. That good fortune begins with my wife of nearly 45 years Andrea and our daughter Gillian, who have listened to (and seen) much more geology than they like to think about, but still stuck by me and supported me, moved from California to Vermont and to Hawaii, and have tolerated my fascination with roadside outcrops.
My enthusiasm for science blossomed while an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Barbara where a remarkable faculty taught me the wonders of geology. Bob Webb in his role as department undergraduate advisor induced me to switch from studying physics to geology. At Scripps Institution of Oceanography, faculty, postdocs, and fellow graduate students were exploring and defining the basics of sea-floor spreading and how plate tectonics worked. Every cruise brought back new insight into the processes that shaped the Earth. The environment of discovery was electrifying and launched my research career. Advisors Jerry Winterer and Jim Hawkins provided many opportunities for a young scientist to spread his wings. My enthusiasm for research has never faded and has been shared with, or inflicted on, colleagues, employees, postdocs, and graduate students I have worked with since.
Each of my employers offered me opportunities to pursue what I thought were important scientific questions. A postdoc at the U.S. Geological Survey with Dale Jackson and Brent Dalrymple was followed by four years teaching undergraduates at Middlebury College where Brewster Baldwin taught me about teaching and research, especially to speak to and write to as broad an audience as possible. Following a Deep Sea Drilling leg to the Emperor Seamounts, I returned to the USGS as a research geologist in Pacific Marine Geology. There I explored mid-ocean ridges and seamounts to compare to submerged Hawaiian volcanoes.
The Volcano Hazards Program supported me as I learned to reconstruct the history of on-land volcanoes, which provided a much-needed perspective to understanding submerged Hawaiian volcanoes. Wendy and I were in Hawaii doing fieldwork in 1984 when Mauna Loa erupted. My interest in the Hawaii-Emperor volcanic chain was renewed by seafloor sonar mapping of the seafloor around Hawaii. Pete Lipman offered me the position of Scientist-in-Charge of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. It was here that I realized that volcanic hazards and processes could only be understood in the context of the long-term evolution of volcanoes.
I joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in 1996 with the goal of unraveling the history of submarine volcanoes to understand how or if they differed from subaerial ones. I have been there ever since. The Institute was growing rapidly, their mission to merge technology and science, and their focus on developing remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) as research tools were irresistible. Dave Caress has taught me about seafloor mapping and I have merged the high-resolution mapping done using autonomous vehicles with targeted sampling from ROVs to study explosive submarine eruptions, and the geologic history of submarine volcanoes.
Colleagues Brent Dalrymple, Fred Frey, Jim Moore, and Brian Cousens have been long-term collaborators on numerous studies. I have enjoyed these long-term relationships and learned from them all. I have been fortunate in having postdocs Doug Wilson, Jennifer Reynolds, Jody Webster, Brian Dreyer, and Ryan Portner to teach me new ways to look at the world. My good fortune extended to people I supervised, including both Wendy and Jackie, but especially Alice Davis and Jennifer Paduan, who each worked with me for more than 15 years and became partners in my research. These and many other colleagues and graduate students from the US and abroad have taught me new things and kept me young and my spirits high.