John E. "Jed" Damuth
Visiting Scientist
Ph.D.,M.A. Marine Geology, Columbia University (1973, 1968)
B.S. Geology, Ohio State University (1965)
Telephone: 972-623-7368
Office Number: 3.108
email: damuth@uta.edu
Jed's CV and publications
About Jed:
Jed has been working in various capacities with current UTIG scientists over the past decade, including the Gulf Intraslope Basins Project (Olson and
Ganey-Curry), ODP Leg 174A (Austin, Fulthorpe, Olson) and ODP Leg 150 (Fulthorpe).
After receiving his Ph.D. in marine geology, Jed joined the staff of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory where he conducted research on deep-water clastic systems and depositional processes, and their control by glacio-eustatic sea-level changes. He was among the first to utilize high-resolution (3.5 kHz echograms) seismic records to define sea-floor sedimentary processes and developed a 3.5 kHz echo character (seismic facies) classification that forms the basis for most classifications used today. In 1982 he led a research crusise that utilized the GLORIA long-range side-scan sonar to conduct the first survey of a large, modern deep-sea fan, the Amazon Fan. Mapping of the Amazon fans distributary channel system discovered that deep-sea fans channels can be very highly meandering. This discovery was unexpected, and has had a major impact on understanding deep-sea fan architecture and development, as well as on turbidity-current processes, for both basic research and hydrocarbon exploration. In 1983 Jed joined Mobil Oil's research laboratory in Dallas, Texas, where he conducted both research and technical service projects involving seismic-sequence and -facies analysis of deep-water depositional systems. His seismic study of the Niger Delta margin revealed tripartite structural provinces (extension, translation, and compression) caused by large-scale gravity tectonics, similar to the northern Gulf of Mexico. He also described the occurrence of large-scale deep-sea fans and channels; buried analogs of these features are now major deep-water exploration targets offshore Nigeria. Jed retired from Mobil in 1993 and has been an Adjunct Professor and a Faculty Associate-Researcher in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Texas at Arlington. He has continued to conduct research on the morphology and depositional processes of deep-sea deposits; development of submarine fans; climate control of deep-sea sediment deposition; seismic facies analysis; and geologic evolution of passive margins. Since 1993 he has participated as a sedimentologist in 6 Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) and 1 International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) research cruises. He was a proponent of ODP Leg 155, which drilled the Amazon Deep-Sea Fan; the only time a modern deep-sea fan has been systematically cored to ground truth sediment facies and processes, seismic facies, and fan growth pattern. His major research interest the past decade has been the Gulf Intraslope Basins Project (GIB), a collaborative industry-sponsored project with UTIG, which studied modern depositional processes in the intraslope basins province of the northern Gulf of Mexico to develop more reliable depositional analogues for hydrocarbon reservoirs. Both an overview of the GIB project and a large-scale (36" x 64") map of the database are available online. Related GIB Publication: Olson, Hilary C., and John E. Damuth, 2009, "Character, Distribution and Timing of Latest Quaternary Mass-Transport Deposits in Texas-Louisiana Intraslope Basins Based on High-Resolution (3.5 kHz) Seismic Facies and Piston Cores," in D. Mosher et al., eds., Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences, Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, Volume 28, Springer Science+Business Media, p. 593-603. (.pdf file)