The late-stage tectonic evolution of the Yukon-Tanana upland (YTU) in interior Alaska is complex and has received limited attention, due in large part to the inaccessibility of the area. The overlap of major tectonic events in the Eocene, including the development of regional strike-slip faults (Tintina and Denali) and oroclinal bending, complicates interpretations of geological datasets from this time. For my PhD project, I am investigating the upper crustal structure of the YTU from the Cretaceous to the Eocene using low-temperature thermochronology (apatite fission track and K-feldspar Ar/Ar). With these methods, I study the low-temperature cooling history of rocks (~300 - 20° C), which allows us to answer questions about tectonics and erosion. The ultimate goal of my project is to provide constraints on latest-stage tectonic configuration of the interior with the broader interest of how this all fits into the geologic history of the rest of Alaska. 

The Hatcher Pass schist (HPs) is a regionally retrogressed chlorite-muscovite schist with plagioclase and garnet porphyroblasts located in the Willow Creek area in the southernmost Talkeetna Mountains of south-central Alaska. Most of south-central Alaska represents a subduction-accretion complex built upon the southern Wrangellia composite terrane. My MSc project was focused on constraining the origin and evolution of this schist in the context of regional southern Alaskan tectonics. We utilized geothermobarometry and forward modeling to provide constraints on the metamorphic evolution of the HPs, and conducted a detrital zircon analysis to better understand the nature of the protolith (Valdez group - turbidites).