泰勒-佩伦 地貌学家｜

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Taylor Perron
Geomorphologist | Class of 2021
Unraveling the mechanisms that create landforms on Earth and other planets.


Portrait of Taylor Perron

Title
Geomorphologist
Affiliation
Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Age
44 at time of award
Area of Focus
Earth Sciences
Website
taylorperron.org
Social
Twitter: The Perron Group
Published September 28, 2021
ABOUT TAYLOR'S WORK
Taylor Perron is a geomorphologist unraveling the mechanisms that create landscapes on Earth and other planets. A complex interplay of tectonic shifts, climate, bedrock composition, and lifeforms uplift and erode rock and transport and deposit sediment. This interplay gives shape to landforms such as river networks, mountains, and valleys. Combining mathematical modeling of small-scale physics—such as the interactions of sediment grains with water and wind—computer simulations of the evolution of landscapes, and field studies, Perron deduces the environmental history of current landscapes and predicts how landscapes will respond to future environmental changes.

One of Earth’s fundamental topographic features is networks of river valleys that branch like the limbs of a tree. In early work, Perron developed a model that revealed how two competing processes of erosion—soil transport and the incision of river channels into elevated land—generate this branching pattern, as well as how the size of the smallest branches depends on the climate and the strength of the underlying rock. He also used natural experiments, such as islands with a wet side and a dry side, to measure how climate influences erosion. In later work, Perron and colleagues reworked existing models of river incision to account for imbalanced erosion rates across water divides, providing a way to identify sites where unequal incision (i.e., some tributaries cutting faster than others) led to rivers capturing the drainage of others. These rearrangements of river systems have consequences for landscape evolution as well as co-evolving river ecosystems. More recently, Perron has investigated the role of these river captures in the dispersal of freshwater organisms, such as fish, and the resulting effects on biodiversity. He also applies his powerful tools for inferring environmental history from landscapes on Earth to analysis of topography and imagery of Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan—the other two worlds in the solar system where rivers have flowed. His analysis of apparent river networks on Titan convincingly demonstrates that they were carved as a result of liquid methane rainfall, and it even allows an estimate of how hard it rains there. He also provided new evidence supporting the hypothesis that Mars once hosted an ocean. His analysis of river networks showed they terminated along what some scientists believe is an ancient shoreline, and he demonstrated that undulations in altitude along this shoreline—unlike the flat ocean shoreline one would expect—were created when the planet’s spin axis shifted, warping the landscape.

Currently, much of Perron’s work focuses on rivers as a record of climate history on Mars and Titan and on exploring how changing landscapes have steered the course of biological evolution and the human past. Perron is deepening our understanding of landscape evolution and creating critical tools for predicting future landscape dynamics in the face of environmental changes, both natural and anthropogenic.

BIOGRAPHY
Taylor Perron holds an AB (1999) from Harvard University and a PhD (2006) from the University of California at Berkeley. Perron conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University before joining the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009, where he currently serves as a professor of geology. Perron’s work has appeared in Nature, Science, and Geology, among other scientific journals.

IN TAYLOR'S WORDS
Middle aged white man with blonde hair and black framed glasses wearing a blue shirt with trees in background. Quote text below photo reads: We can’t take an entire planet into a lab and study it for millions of years, but nature is constantly doing experiments for us by combining climate, landforms, and life—we just need to know where to look to discover the results.


Landscapes record a planet’s past and offer clues about its future. They also raise plenty of questions. Why did Mars start off with lakes and rivers but end up a cold desert? When mountains grow or rivers change course, how does that affect biodiversity? How does a world with a methane cycle differ from one with a water cycle? We can’t take an entire planet into a lab and study it for millions of years, but nature is constantly doing experiments for us by combining climate, landforms, and life—we just need to know where to look to discover the results.



泰勒-佩伦
地貌学家｜2021级
解开在地球和其他星球上创造地貌的机制。


泰勒-佩伦的画像

标题
地貌学家
工作单位
麻省理工学院地球、大气和行星科学系
工作地点
马萨诸塞州剑桥市
年龄
获奖时44岁
重点领域
地球科学
网站
taylorperron.org
社会
推特。佩伦集团
出版日期：2021年9月28日
关于泰勒的工作
泰勒-佩伦是一位地貌学家，他正在解开在地球和其他星球上创造景观的机制。构造变动、气候、基岩成分和生命体的复杂相互作用，使岩石被抬升和侵蚀，沉积物被运输和沉积。这种相互作用形成了诸如河网、山脉和山谷等地貌。结合小规模物理学的数学模型--如沉积物颗粒与水和风的相互作用--景观演变的计算机模拟和实地研究，佩伦推断出当前景观的环境历史，并预测景观将如何应对未来的环境变化。

地球的基本地形特征之一是河谷网络，它们像树的肢体一样分支。在早期的工作中，佩伦开发了一个模型，揭示了两种相互竞争的侵蚀过程--土壤迁移和河道切入高地--如何产生这种分支模式，以及最小的分支的大小如何取决于气候和地下岩石的强度。他还使用了自然实验，如有湿边和干边的岛屿，来测量气候如何影响侵蚀。在后来的工作中，Perron和他的同事重新修改了现有的河流切割模型，以考虑跨水系分界线的不平衡侵蚀率，提供了一种方法来识别不平等切割（即一些支流比其他支流切割得更快）导致河流捕获其他河流的排水。河流系统的这些重新排列对景观演化以及共同演化的河流生态系统有影响。最近，Perron研究了这些河流捕获在淡水生物（如鱼类）散布中的作用，以及由此对生物多样性的影响。他还将他从地球景观中推断环境历史的强大工具用于分析火星和土星的卫星泰坦的地形和图像--太阳系中另外两个有河流流动的世界。他对土卫六上明显的河流网络的分析令人信服地表明，它们是由于液态甲烷降雨而形成的，它甚至可以估计那里的降雨有多大。他还提供了支持火星曾经拥有海洋的假设的新证据。他对河流网络的分析表明，它们是沿着一些科学家认为的古代海岸线终止的，而且他证明了沿着这条海岸线的高度起伏--与人们期望的平坦的海洋海岸线不同--是在行星的自旋轴发生变化、扭曲地貌时产生的。

目前，佩伦的大部分工作集中在作为火星和土卫六气候历史记录的河流上，以及探索不断变化的地貌如何引导生物进化和人类历史的进程。佩伦正在加深我们对景观演变的理解，并创造关键的工具来预测面对自然和人为的环境变化时的未来景观动态。

个人简历
泰勒-佩伦拥有哈佛大学的学士学位（1999年）和加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的博士学位（2006年）。在2009年加入麻省理工学院地球、大气和行星科学系之前，佩伦在哈佛大学进行了博士后研究，目前担任地质学教授。佩伦的作品发表在《自然》、《科学》和《地质学》等科学杂志上。

泰勒的话
中年白人男子，金发，戴着黑框眼镜，穿着蓝色衬衫，背景是树木。照片下面的引用文字是："。我们无法将整个星球带入实验室并对其进行数百万年的研究，但大自然通过将气候、地貌和生命结合起来，不断为我们做实验--我们只需要知道到哪里去发现结果。


地貌记录了一个星球的过去，并提供了关于其未来的线索。它们也提出了很多问题。为什么火星一开始有湖泊和河流，最后却变成了寒冷的沙漠？当山脉生长或河流改变路线时，这对生物多样性有什么影响？一个有甲烷循环的世界与一个有水循环的世界有什么不同？我们无法将整个星球带入实验室并研究它几百万年，但自然界不断地通过结合气候、地貌和生命为我们做实验--我们只需要知道到哪里去发现结果。