Denny Capps

My interest in earth science undoubtedly began to develop at a young age. I spent significant time in the outdoors while growing up in rural Louisiana and the regular precipitation-induced flooding there always fascinated me. I worked a summer in Yellowstone National Park in 1994 and the geological seed was planted; I became a geology major upon return to Louisiana.

For the next three years, I pursued a degree in geology at Louisiana Tech University with an emphasis in environmental geology. During this time, I worked summers in Glacier National Park. Here is where a very strong interest in glacial environments began to take shape. I worked briefly as an environmental consultant after graduation in 1997 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. However, the love of the mountains soon drew me back west again.

I enrolled in a graduate program in Earth Sciences at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana in 2000. Here, I pursued my glacial geology interests studying past cordilleran ice sheets. Two visits to Alaska during this time directed my attention further north.

After defending my thesis in the spring of 2003, I departed for Alaska to take part in the "Geoscientist-in-the-Parks" program with the National Park Service. The seven-month assignment was to conduct a geological hazards assessment for Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska. Earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches, mass movements, and other hazards impact the area, but the focus was on glacial outburst floods.

In the fall of 2004, I began a PhD in the Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. The objective of my dissertation is to identify and characterize the glacier-dammed lakes of Glacier Bay, Denali, and Wrangell - St. Elias National Parks using ground-truthed remote sensing techniques.

Recent Publication

Capps, D.L., Rabus, B., Clague, J.J., 2007, Identification and Characterization of Dynamic Alpine Subglacial Lakes Using InSAR, Radio-Echo Sounding, and Crevasse Interpretation. Abstract with program from American Geophysical Union meeting, San Francisco, California. December 2007.

Education

M.Sc., Geology, 2004 Montana State University

B.Sc. Geology, 1997, Louisiana Tech University

For more information, please send e.mail to: dcapps@sfu.ca