School of Earth and Environmental Sciences > People > Dr Ruth Robinson

Dr Ruth Robinson

Dr Ruth Robinson

Honorary Senior Lecturer

Researcher profile

Email
rajr@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

My research was initially in the area of quantitative sedimentology, using numerical models to understand the controls on grain-size trends in gravel-bed rivers and applying the modeling results and implications to grain-size trends in ancient river systems. In 2000, I started to develop interests in landscape evolution more generally and in trying to constrain surface process rates through numerical age dating techniques, such as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and cosmogenic-ray nuclide dating. Since 2005, I have been working on quantifying the material fluxes and chemistry of the water and sediment transported by the Irrawaddy and Salween rivers of Burma. More recently, our research group has been working with Randy Parrish and Matt Horstwood at NIGL, and Dan Barford at SUERC in East Kilbride, using innovative geochronological methods on detrital minerals to identify the sediment provenance of Cenozoic deposits in central Burma and their exhumation history. This work has demonstrated that the Yarlung Tsangpo river in southern Tibet formerly connected around the eastern syntaxis and drained into the Irrawaddy river in Burma. This connection was broken around 18 Ma during exhumation of the eastern syntaxis and deformation along major shear zones around the syntaxis. 

Selected publications

 

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