I began my professional career as an earth scientist. For my master’s thesis at the University of Oregon, I worked on Isla San Esteban, a small uninhabited island in the center of the Gulf of California. I used geochemistry and geochronology to reconstruct the geologic history of the island and to fit it into the volcanic and plate tectonic history of the Gulf. As my interests in plate tectonics increased, I went on to a Ph.D. program in geological oceanography at Oregon State University. During my doctoral work and two postdoctoral positions, my research focused primarily on the geochemistry and plate tectonic history of oceanic basalts, in both hotspot and mid-ocean ridge settings. My dissertation was a study of the relationships between the chemistry (major element, trace element, and heavy isotope) and the radiometric ages of submerged volcanic rocks in the Marquesas Islands and in the Cobb-Eickelberg seamount chain. I remained at Oregon State for my first postdoctoral position; my second was at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

For my research I used, taught and sometimes developed analytical techniques for important geochemical methods in the laboratory. I also participated in ten research cruises and took one 10,000 foot deep dive in Alvin to the Siquieros Fracture Zone in the Pacific. I was part of the team that discovered the Lucky Strike hydrothermal vent site, the third hydrothermal vent site found in the Atlantic. As a scientist, I presented my scientific results in oral and poster presentations at national meetings and in professional journals and I wrote or co-wrote successful proposals to the National Science Foundation.

While I was a postdoc at Lamont, I took journalism courses at Columbia University, including Medical Research, Science, and Environment Writing in the Graduate School of Journalism with Professor Kenneth Goldstein. In the spring of 1994, I quit scientific research and began freelance science writing.

Selected Scientific Publications:

Desonie, D., R.A. Duncan, and J. Natland, 1993, Temporal and geochemical variability of volcanism at the Marquesas hotspot, Journal of Geophysical Research, 98:17,649-17,665.

Desonie, D.L., 1992, Geologic and geochemical reconnaissance of Isla San Esteban: Post-subduction orogenic volcanism in the Gulf of California, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 52:123-140.

Desonie, D.L., and R.A. Duncan, 1990, the Cobb-Eickelberg Seamount Chain: Hotspot volcanism with MORB affinity, Journal of Geophysical Research, 95:12,697-12,711.

Desonie, Dana, Geochemical Expression of Volcanism in an On-Axis and Intraplate Hotspot, Ph.D. dissertation,145 pp., College of Oceanography, Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1990

Desonie, Dana, Geology and petrology of Isla San Esteban, Gulf of California, Mexico, M.S. thesis, 78 pp., University of Oregon, Eugene, 1985.