Sponsored by the URI Friends of Oceanography, the event begins at 6 p.m. in the Coastal institute Auditorium at the URI Narragansett Bay campus. A reception with the speaker will follow the lecture.
Kincaid will discuss geophysical fluid dynamics — the study of why Earth’s various fluid systems circulate the way they do. He’ll share results on water circulation within Narragansett Bay and how this influences the transport of chemicals and biology, and discuss how the flow of hot material in the Earth’s mantle layer influences volcanic output in the Pacific Northwest, with a particular focus on the Yellowstone hotspot and super volcano.
Kincaid earned a bachelor’s degree in earth science from Wesleyan University and a master’s and doctorate in geophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He teaches graduate courses on marine and environmental fluid dynamics, oceanographic modeling and geodynamics, as well as an undergraduate course, The Ocean Planet, which covers topics ranging from planetary science to Earth system science.
In describing his research, Kincaid said “a goal of geological oceanography is to understand the relationship between Earth’s convecting interior and our oceans over the entire spectrum of geologic time. This feeds directly into the very pressing need for understanding where Earth’s ocean-climate system is headed, which clearly hinges on our understanding of how it has worked in past.”