9509954 Pazzaglia NSF funding will supplement matching funds from the University of New Mexico to build and implement a UNIX-based computational facility within the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Specifically, a Sun SPARCstation 20 workstation with 64 MB of memory, 10 GB of mass storage, a large-format color monitor with a graphics accelerator card, a CD-ROM and software including, Sun Solaris operating system, FORTRAN-90 and C compilers, ARC/INFO and S-PLUS will be acquired. An extant department-wide network serviced by DEC-PATHWORKS will enable all faculty, research staff, and students to access the new facility with the option to have their PC or Macintosh run X-applications through the SPARCstation 20 workstation. The facility will be designed primarily to meet the research needs of the Quaternary Studies Group in acquiring, processing, analyzing, and displaying large digital data sets, but will also have an interdisciplinary focus in enhancing UNIX-based resources and applications for the Department. Research to be performed by Quaternary Studies Group at this facility will include manipulation of high-resolution (30 and 90 m) USGS digital elevation data to perform (1) regional quantitative morphometric analysis, (2) investigate the fundamental relationship between uplift, relief, mean elevation, and erosion, (3) perform computationally-intensive Fourier analyses on topography to extract the tectonic component in landscape development, (4) provide a framework for the preparation and compilation of surficial geologic maps, and (5) use topographic data and surficial geologic data in concert with GIS-based applications in landscape evolution analyses. ***
