My research of magmatism and tectonics of the eastern Snake River Plain (ESRP) is done in collaboration with Scott S. Hughes at Idaho State University. Our studies have centered around the Department of Energy facility, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Following more than three decades of inappropriate disposal of chemical and nuclear waste, the U.S. Geological Survey was tasked with characterizing the ESRP Aquafer which had been contaminated as a result of the waste disposal practices. The subsurface stratigraphy of the ESRP at and near the INL was defined by Steve Anderson and others at the U.S.G.S. and Idaho State University as a result of the need to understand the aquafer. Scott Hughes and I have employed the subsurface basaltic architecture of the ESRP to address issues of local subsidence and spatial variations in the distribution of volcanism in the central part of the ESRP. Below are some figures from a soon-to-be-published paper on the spatial distribution of volcanism of the ESRP
