John Shervais, Ph.D.

Field: Earth Science
Areas of Focus: Geothermal Energy, Tectonics, Volcanology

Expertise

• Geothermal energy
• Volcanology
• Mineral resources
• Global tectonics
• Scientific drilling

Bio

Dr. John Shervais is an igneous petrologist/geochemist, focusing largely on mafic-ultramafic rocks with major interests in tectonics, convergent margin systems, and mantle plumes. He completed his geology B.S. at San Jose University, and his Ph.D. in petrology and geochemistry at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Currently, he is a professor of petrology, geochemistry, and tectonics at Utah State University.

He has carried out research in the Alps, the Appalachians, the Hindu Kush/Karakoram, the Caucasus, the Pyrenees, and the western Cordillera of North America. This involved work on ophiolites, alpine peridotite massifs, subduction accretionary complexes, island arc volcanism, continental volcanics, high-pressure metamorphic rocks, and Proterozoic basement complexes, including his dissertation project in the Ivrea zone of the western Italian Alps. Shervais also worked on lunar highland crust and mare volcanics for over a decade, funded by the NASA Planetary Science program. He spent over 25 years working on continental volcanic rocks of the Snake River Plain. From 2009 to 2013, he was the principal investigator and project director for Project Hotspot, which drilled three deep (2 km) core holes in the Snake River Volcanic Province along the track of the Yellowstone hotspot mantle plume. This $7.4 million project, funded by the Department of Energy, the International Continental Drilling Program, and the US Air Force, had two goals: understanding volcanic and tectonic processes associated with mantle plumes under continental crust, and testing innovative approaches to geothermal energy exploration. This project led to his most recent effort: the Snake River Plain Geothermal Play Fairway Analysis project, funded by the Department of Energy ($3.2M). This project involves 10 PI’s from other universities, Federal Agencies, and private enterprise. Most recently, Shervais participated in two IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) expeditions to the Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc system on the drillship JOIDES Resolution. Expedition 352 (2014) looked at infant arc volcanism in the Izu-Bonin arc segment to study subduction initiation along an oceanic transform fault. Expedition 366 (2016) cored serpentine mud volcanoes in the Mariana fore-arc, which sample the underlying crust and mantle. Both expeditions involved two months at sea working as part of an international team of 30 scientists. Work on these samples is continuing, funded by NSF-OCE.