YACHAY TECH

Elisa Piispa, Ph.D.

OCCASIONAL PROFESSOR 3

Teléfono Ext.: 2613

Elisa Piispa is an Assistant Professor of geophysics at Yachay Tech, Ecuador. Her expertise is magnetism of Earth and its materials, which provides invaluable tools to address variable questions in Earth Sciences from global to regional scale. Her work within paleomagnetism and rock magnetism has involved topics such as: Earth’s ancient magnetic field strength (paleointensity) and variability, reversals, formation of the inner core, plate reconstructions, supercontinents, plate velocities and movements, non-heating techniques for paleointensity and detecting pyroclastic density currents. Furthermore she does research in applied geophysics (e.g. archeological, environmental, groundwater and fault detection surveying) and has constructed geophysical equipment for teaching and research purposes.
Before Yachay Tech she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. There her work focused on obtaining new palaeomagnetic and archeomagnetic data in the South-West Pacific and utilizing that information to understand how geodynamo, the source of the Earth’s magnetic field, works. Her PhD is from Michigan Technological University, USA 2015. She has published her work on high impact journals including Nature.
Selected publications:
Piispa, E.J., Smirnov, A. V., Pesonen, L. J. and Mitchell, R. H. (2018). Paleomagnetism and geochemistry of ~1144-Ma lamprophyre dikes, Northwestern Ontario: Implications for the North American polar wander and plate velocities. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 123. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JB015992
Lerner, G. A., A. V. Smirnov, L. V. Surovitckii, and E. J. Piispa (2017), Nonheating methods for absolute paleointensity determination: Comparison and calibration using synthetic and natural magnetite-bearing samples, J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 122, pp. 1-22, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JB013777
Biggin, A.J, Piispa E.J., Pesonen, L.J., Holme, R., Paterson, G.A., Veikkolainen, T. and Tauxe, L. (2015) Palaeomagnetic field strength variations suggest Mesoproterozoic inner core nucleation. Nature 526, pp. 245-248, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15523
Belica, M.E., Piispa, E.J., Meert, J.G., Pesonen, L.J., Plado, J., Pandit, M.K., Kamenov, G.D., and Celestino, M. (2014), Paleoproterozoic mafic dyke swarms from the Dharwar craton; paleomagnetic poles for India from 2.37 to 1.88 Ga and rethinking the Columbia supercontinent, Precambrian Res., 244, pp. 100-122, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precamres.2013.12.005
Baumann, S.D.J. and Piispa, E.J. (2015) Roadside Bedrock and Mining Geology of the Upper Peninsula Michigan, United States. Midwest Institute of Geosciences and Engineering, CreateSpace Publishing, 148 p. ISBN-13: 978-1516841042 https://www.amazon.com/Roadside-Bedrock-Geology-Peninsula-Michigan/dp/1516841042
Research interests:
Paleomagnetism, plate tectonics, archeomagnetism, Earth’s magnetic field strength and variability in the past, rock and environmental magnetism, applied geophysics.