Ria Fischer

My main research interests are the large scale dynamics and the geophysical and geochemical processes involved on a planetary, lithospheric and crustal scale. Numerical modelling allows me to study these processes closely by varying the involved model parameters, as well as boundary and initial conditions.

I study the 3D evolution of Precambrian, or mainly Archean, tectonics which seem to be quite different from present-day plate tectonics. A very important question in this context is the formation of continental crust and early continents. These first continents were formed from TTG rock (tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorite), which can develop by remelting of basaltic oceanic crust. Remnants of early continets still exist today in the form of cratonic shields.

Furthermore I'm interested in the development of numerical techniques like multigrid, mesh refinement and code parallelisation, as well as large data visualisation (using e.g. Paraview or VisIt).