Hollister Home

Lincoln S. Hollister
Professor of Geosciences (Petrology)

Department of Geosciences
411 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

Phone: (609) 258-4106
E-Mail:

How are mountains and continental crust made?  This is the major question driving my research and teaching. I interpret the pressure-temperature-time-strain history of rocks in the context of the tectonic processes operating on the continental crust.  My contributions are based on direct observation of the products of mountain building.  I have forged collaborations with people in other disciplines, and I work over a wide range of disciplines with the objective to achieve results unattainable by focusing on only one or two disciplines.

This approach led to the article that Chris Andronicos and I wrote (Hollister & Andronicos, 2006), which brought together results from the 1993-2000 multidisciplinary project ACCRETE into a hypothesis for formation of continental crust.

My current research is on three fronts: the origin of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, the origin of the Himalayas in Bhutan, and the application of lamellar magnetism for resolving the Baja British Columbia controversy.  In addition, I play a critical role for obtaining permits for a controlled source seismic experiment.  I coordinate with the other PIs, with the granting agencies, with the ship scheduling, and with the consultants; and I help in communications with the public.

1) BATHOLITHS.  My biggest research commitment now and for the next few years (funded 2003-2008) is the multidisciplinary collaboration, called BATHOLITHS, which proposes to resolve the continental crust composition paradox: although continental crust begins as accreted island arcs, the average composition of continental crusts is more silicic than that of island arcs.  Before becoming stable continental crust, the original island arc composition is modified by processes that are not understood. This is a fundamental problem in the earth sciences, and was a topic of a special conference convened in June 2006 in Valdez, Alaska, and the subject of the article by Hollister & Andronicos (2006).

The disciplines of BATHOLITHS include active and passive source seismology, geochemistry, structural geology, and petrology.  Most of these endeavors are underway, but the active source seismology experiment has not yet been scheduled.

For information on the permitting process, see http://www.eos.ubc.ca/research/batholiths/   In addition, the Batholiths team has been involved in discussions in public forums in Canada.  An op-ed I had published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is found at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/279541_seismicrebut01.html

2) BHUTAN.  With my colleague Djordje Grujic at Dalhousie University, we have defined a process in mountain building, based on our studies in Bhutan. This process involves the rapid extrusion of a low viscosity, partially melted orogenic channel from lower crustal depths.  It was published in 2002.  Our article on pulsed channel flow in Bhutan (Hollister & Grujic, 2006) was recently published.  This article rationalizes seemingly contradictory field data to the theoretically based channel flow model of Beaumont and others. Photo by Djordje Grujic

I have helped recruit two Bhutanese students to study geology in USA. They recently received MS degrees at University of Texas, El Paso.  One of these, Tobgay Tobgay, arrived at Princeton in Sept. 2006 to begin his studies toward a Ph.D.

3) LAMELLAR MAGNETISM. Following up on our hypothesis (Hollister, et al, 2004) that reheating of ilmenohematite may explain anomalous remanent magnetization in rocks along the west coast of North America, I am collaborating on a NSF proposal funded through UC Berkeley to test the hypothesis.  The graduate student who is working on the project is one of our former undergraduate students (Sarah Brownlee).  A consequence of this study may be a solution to the Baja British Columbia controversy; the controversy is whether or not parts of western Canada traveled from latitudes corresponding to Baja California during the latest Cretaceous.