Department of Environmental Sciences
University of Technology, Sydney
P.O. Box 123
BROADWAY NSW 2007
Australia

Profile

Graziella Caprarelli is an igneous petrologists / geochemist and planetary scientist who works on convergent margin magmatism and tectonism. Since joining UTS in September 1996 her research has focused on the east Australian South New England Fold Belt Palaeozoic basalts and on the NW-USA Columbia River Basalt Group. She uses mineral and bulk rock compositions to determine the physical conditions of formation and evolution of basaltic magmas, and applies her methodologies also to the study of Martian basaltic magmatism. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (Richland, USA), and has been a research associate at the Johnson Space Center of NASA (Houston, USA). She held post-doctoral positions at the Geological Survey of Japan (Tsukuba, Japan), and at the Earth and Planetary Science Department of the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo, Japan). She obtained her PhD in Rome (Italy) for her geochemical work on the nature of fluid-rock interaction in the geothermal field of Campi Flegrei. She is a member of the Geological Society of Australia (GSA), and of its Special Groups (SG) in Geochemistry - Mineralogy - Petrology, Solid Earth Geophysics, and the newly constituted (and as yet informal) SG in Planetary Sciences, and of the American Geophysical Union. In 2002-2003 she served as Honorary Chair of the NSW Division of the GSA. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, and is Principal Guest Editor of a thematic issue on Mars research. She held seminars at various research institutions, including: CSIRO, NASA, the International Research School of Planetary Sciences (IRSPS). She drafted departmental and faculty policy documents and has been actively involved in their implementation by serving as a Chair and member of various committees. In 2004 she is a member of the DES Honours Management Committee and of the Faculty Library Committee.

Web Links

The NSW Division of the Geological Society of Australia

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=
synergy&synergyAction=showTOC&journalCode=ter&volume=
0&issue=0&year=0&part=null

Research Interests (broadly defined)

• Basaltic magmatism on terrestrial planets
• Magmatism and tectonism at convergent margins
• Fluid-rock interaction in volcanic areas

Five most significant recent publications

Caprarelli G, Reidel SP (2005) A clinopyroxene - basalt geothermobarometry perspective of Columbia Plateau (NW-USA) Miocene magmatism. Terra Nova, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3121.2005.00611x.

Caprarelli G, Reidel SP (2004) Physical evolution of Grande Ronde Basalt magmas, Columbia River Basalt Group, north-western USA. Mineralogy and Petrology 80, 1-25.

Caprarelli G, Leitch EC (2001) Geochemical evidence from lower Permian volcanic rocks of northeast New South Wales for asthenospheric upwelling following slab breakoff. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 48, 151-166.

Caprarelli G, Leitch EC (1998) Magmatic changes during the stabilisation of a cordilleran fold belt: the Late Carboniferous - Triassic igneous history of eastern New South Wales, Australia. Lithos 45, 413-430.

Caprarelli G, Tsutsumi M, Turi B (1997) Chemical and isotopic signatures of the basement rocks from the CampiFlegrei geothermal field (Naples, southern Italy): inferences about the origin and evolution of its hydrothermal fluids. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 76, 63-82.

Teaching Manuals

Caprarelli G (1998) Notes of Mineralogy and Petrology.

Caprarelli G (1998) Notes of Mineral Thermodynamics.

Teaching Duties

Since joining UTS Graziella Caprarelli has taught the entire range of disciplines from classical geochemistry and mineralogy to advanced petrology and planetology. In 2004 she teaches: Foundations of the Solid Earth (geochemistry / petrology sections); Surface Dynamics and People (tectonics and geodynamics sections); Comparative Planetology. She has supervised or co-supervised doctoral and Honours students.