Alan Gillespie is a Quaternary geologist and directs the Remote Sensing Laboratory.  His research interests are in glacial geology, geochronology, and landscape evolution, on Earth and Mars.  His interest in remote sensing is in both its theory and application to these problems. Gillespie is currently funded by NASA and the Department of Energy.

Gillespie has been investigating asynchrony in glacier advances across Central Asia since 1991, research that led to the recognition that this area consists of three or more climatic regions.  The last maximum advances in the Kyrgyz Tien Shan and farther east in the same range differed by tens of thousands of years.  This intricate granularity is not yet explained fully.  Gillespie is also investigating the origin of the giant canyons of the Valles Marineris system on Mars, working with John Adams, Dave Montgomery and others to suggest that geothermal dewatering of hydrous salts distributed throughout the 10-km-deep regolith of the Martian highlands resulted in the removal of material through faults and aquifers on a gigantic scale.  The canyons are, essentially, collapse features in a salt karst terrain.

Gillespie is also working on hyperspectral thermal infrared remote sensing, using thermal radiation emitted from the land surface to determine mineral composition.  He has served as the Chair or Co-Chair for 16 graduate students, and served on the thesis committee for 33 others.  He has authored or co-authored 4 books and 185 articles (59 as 1^st author).  Since 2000 he has been Sr. Editor for the journal Quaternary Research.

Selected Publications:

Gillespie, A. R., and Soha, J. M., 1972.  An orthographic photomap of the south pole of Mars from Mariner 6 and 7.  Icarus 16, 522-527.

Gillespie, A. R., and Kahle, A. B., 1977.  The construction and interpretation of a digital thermal inertia image.  Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 43, 983-1000.

Gillespie, A. R., 1980.  Digital techniques of image enhancement.  In B. S. Siegal and A. R. Gillespie, eds., Remote Sensing in Geology, Wiley, NY, pp. 139-226.

Gillespie, A. R., and Criss, R. E., 1983.  Correlation of infrared reflectance ratios at 2.3 mm /1.6 mm and 1.1 mm /1.6 mm with d18O values delineating fossil hydrothermal systems in the Idaho batholith.  International Geosciences Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS '83) 1, TA-4, pp. 4.1-4.6.

Gillespie, A. R., Huneke, J. C., and Wasserburg, G. J., 1984.  Eruption age of a ~100,000-year-old basalt from ⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar analysis of partially degassed xenoliths.  J. Geophys. Res. 89, 1033-1048.

Gillespie, A. R., Kahle, A. B., and Palluconi, F. D., 1984.  Mapping alluvial fans in Death Valley, California, using multichannel thermal infrared images.  Geophysical Research Letters 11, 1153-1156.

Gillespie, A. R., Kahle, A. B., and Walker, R. E., 1986.  Color enhancement of highly correlated images, I. Decorrelation and HSI contrast stretches.  Remote Sensing of Environment 20, 209-235.

Gillespie, A. R., 1991.  Testing a New Climatic Interpretation for the Tahoe Glaciation.  White Mountain Research Station Symposium 3, 383-398.

Gillespie, A. R., 1992.  Spectral mixture analysis of multispectral thermal infrared images.  Remote Sensing of Environment 42, 137-145.

Gillespie, A. R., and Bierman, P. R., 1995.  Precision of terrestrial exposure ages and erosion rates from analysis of cosmogenic isotopes produced in situ.  J. Geophys. Res., Solid Earth and Planets 100(B12), 24,637-24,649.

Gillespie, A. R., and Molnar, P., 1995.  Asynchronism of maximum advances of mountain and continental glaciations.  Reviews of Geophysics 33, 311-364. 

Clark, D.H. and A.R. Gillespie. 1997. Timing and significance of late-glacial and Holocene cirque glaciation in the Sierra Nevada, California. Quaternary Research 19, 117-129.

Gillespie, A. R., 1997.  A precise petroglyph equinox marker in eastern California.  Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers 23, 71-85.

Gillespie, A. R., Cothern, J. S., Matsunaga, T., Rokugawa, S., and Hook, S. J., 1998.  Temperature and Emissivity Separation from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Images.  IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 36, 1113-1126.

Gillespie, A. R., Burke, R. M., and Clark, M. M., 1999.  Eliot Blackwelder and the Alpine Glaciations of the Sierra Nevada. Classic California Cordilleran Centennial Concepts, Geological Society of America Volume (C5), May 99. 

Gillespie, A. R., Porter, S. C., and Atwater, B. F. (eds.), 2004. The Quaternary Period in the United States.  Developments in Quaternary Science Vol 1, Elsevier, 584 pp.

Gillespie, A. R., and Zehfuss, P. H., 2004.  Glaciations of the Sierra Nevada, California, USA.  In Ehlers, J., and Gibbard, P. L., (eds.), Quaternary Glaciations and Chronology.  Part II: North America, Developments in Quaternary Science Vol 2b, Amsterdam, Elsevier.

Montgomery, D. R., Gillespie, A., 2005.  Formation of Martian outflow channels by catastrophic dewatering of evaporite deposits.  Geology 33, 625-628, doi: 10.1130/G21270.1.

Adams, J. B., and Gillespie, A. R., 2006.  Remote Sensing of Landscapes with Spectral Images.  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK

Mushkin, A., Gillespie, A., R., Bayasgalan, A., 2007.  Late Quaternary deformation in the Gobi-Altai Fault System.  Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Earthquake Conference Commemorating the 1957 Gobi-Altay Earthquake, July 25-27, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Kane, V. R., , Gillespie, A. R., McGaughey, R., James Lutz, J., Ceder, K., and Jerry F. Franklin, J. F., 2008.  Interpretation and topographic correction of conifer forest canopy self-shadowing using spectral mixture analysis.  Remote Sensing of Environment 112(10), 3820-3832.

Komatsu, G., Arzhannikov, S. G., Gillespie, A. R., Burke, R. M., Miyamoto, H., Baker, V. R., 2008.  Cataclysmic floods along the Yenisei River and late Quaternary paleolakes in the Sayan mountains, Siberia.  Geomorphology 104, 143-164.

Koppes, M., Gillespie, A. R., Burke, R. M., Thompson, S., and Stone, J., 2008.  Late Quaternary glaciation in the Kyrgyz Tien Shan.  Quaternary Science Reviews, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.01.009.

Montgomery, D. R., Som, S. M., Jackson, M. P. A., Schreiber, B. C., Gillespie, A. R., and Adams, J. B., 2008.  Continental-scale salt tectonics on Mars and the origin of Valles Marineris and associated outflow channels.  Geological Society of America Bulletin, DOI: 10.1130/B26307.1

• ASTER
  
• MTI
  

• A Temperature and Emissivity Separation Algorithm for Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Images
  
  
• Surface Roughness, Radar Backscatter, and Visible and Near-Infrared Reflectance in Death Valley
  
  
• Using Background Factors to Optimize Roughness Estimates from Multipolarized SAR Images
  
  
• Classification of Multispectral Images Based On Fractions of Endmembers: Application to Land-Cover Change in the Brazilian Amazon