Rex Flake, L.G.
M.S. 2002, Central Washington University ResearchCurrent Areas:Rex is the Project Managing Geologist responsible for permitting, constructing, and maintaining the Cascadia Tiltmeter Array. Once built, his duties encompass every aspect of research pertaining to the tiltmeters. Software development to record, archive, and analyze data, routine/emergency electrical and mechanical engineering, and fiscal management are few of his responsibilities. He also serves as tiltmeter arbitrator with general public, science peers and university personnel. To date, Rex has overseen the construction of two, and personally built one, Very Long Baseline Tiltmeter (VLBT). He has run co-located experiments with a small array of SP seismometers and measured gravity profiles with an FG-5 Absolute Gravimeter. Rex also operates an assortment of temperature thermistors and pressure transducers to aid in tilt analyses. Past:As a graduate student, Rex studied the nature of the Juan De Fuca/North America plates via waveform modeling of direct, reflected and refracted seismic compression (P) and shear (S) waves. His results support anti-correlation of the 410- and 660-km seismic discontinuities and shed light on the fine-scale variations in the Lid (seismic lithosphere). As an undergraduate, Rex studied regression of late Holocene glaciations in the upper Kittitas County. In this study, Rex completed AMS radio carbon dates on three stages of receding glaciers at ages of: 6,000, 900, and 250 B.P. The later date coinciding with the northern hemisphere's Little Ice Age that historically marked the end of the European Medieval Bread Basket and the beginning of modern science, the Renaissance. He also determined with over 60 years of aerial photographs that the response of non-moving (stagnant) glaciers in this area are effectively the result of the past three years of summer temperature and winter precipitation. In mathematics, Rex presented results of a topological study he completed at the Annual Mathematics Association of America (MAA) Regional Conference. He received his Mathematics B.S. in 2002. |