Ron Counts
Associate Professor of Geology and Geological Engineering and Associate Director of Mississippi Mineral Research Institute
I am the associate director of the Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute and an Associate Professor of Geology and Geological Engineering
Research Interests
- terrestrial records of Quaternary climate change
- paleoseismology of intraplate seismic zone faults
- quantifying process-rate changes with luminescence geochronology
- linking geophysical responses to sedimentary facies
- geophysical site characterizations for infrastructure integrity
Biography
Dr. Counts was appointed as an assistant research professor and Associate Director of the Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute in October of 2018, and in 2021 was also appointed as an associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering. Before coming to the MMRI, he spent 4 years as a Research Geologist in the Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center at the U.S. Geological Survey, 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.
Education
Ph.D. Geology, University of Cincinnati Main Campus (2012)