Dr Rachel Walcott
Specific responsibility: Head of Mineral, Meteorite and Rock collections with particular emphasis on developing our ore mineral and bio-mineral collections.
Research interests: Tectonic geomorphology, calcite morphology, geo-biology interactions, and tracing historical collections.
Dr Walcott started her academic career at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand where she gained a BSc(hons) and a research Masters in geology and geophysics. After working in Canada and the UK, she went on to do a PhD in structural geology at Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands. This was followed by a postdoc at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris and two Research Fellowships at the University of Edinburgh in tectonic geomorphology, the study of surface processes.
Dr Walcott’s academic research has been focussed on the role that tectonic processes have on our environment, in particular river systems. Since joining National Museums Scotland she has been leading a team to digitise the Earth System collections. In doing so she has developed expertise in the extraction and representation of geological and mineralogical metadata. Current research interests include developing a lexicon and system to retrieve lost information of historical collections.
Her professional roles include Chair of the newly formed Subcommission on Geocollections at the IUGS (International Union of Geological Sciences); Chair of the Earth Science specialist group of CETAF (the governing body for the Earth Science data portal); Treasurer of the Geological Curators Group; Ordinary member, Edinburgh Geological Society. She sits on the Editorial Board of Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is an Honorary Fellow of the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh. Memberships include Fellowship of the Geological Society of London, the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and the SMMP (Society of Mineral Museum Professionals).
Selected publications
Campbell, L.R., Lloyd, G.E., Phillips, R.J., Walcott R.C. & R.E. Holdsworth. 2020. Stress fields of ancient seismicity recorded in the dynamic geometry of pseudotachylyte in the Outer Hebrides Fault Zone, UK. Journal of the Geological Society. https://doi.org/10.1144/jgs2020-101
Campbell, L. R., Phillips, R.J., Walcott, R.C. & Lloyd, G.E. 2019. Rupture geometries in anisotropic amphibolite recorded by pseudotachylytes in the Gairloch Shear Zone, NW Scotland. Scottish Journal of Geology: https://sjg.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2019/07/12/sjg2019-003
Campbell L. S., J. Charnock, A. Dyer, S. Hillier, S. Chenery, F. Stoppa, C. M. B. Henderson, Walcott, R. & M. Rumsey. 2016. Determination of zeolite-group mineral compositions by electron probe microanalysis. Mineralogical Magazine 80 (5): 781–807. https://doi.org/10.1180/minmag.2016.080.044
Sinclair, H., Mudd, S., Dingle, E., Hobley, D., Robinson, R. & Walcott, R. 2016. Squeezing river catchments through tectonics: Shortening and erosion across the Indus Valley, NW Himalaya. Geological Society of America Bulletin 129 (1-2): 203-217. https://doi.org/10.1130/B31435.1
Upton, P. Craw D. and Walcott, R.C. 2014. Far-Field Deformation Resulting from Rheologic Differences Interacting with Tectonic Stresses: An Example from the Pacific/Australian Plate Boundary in Southern New Zealand. Geosciences 4 (3): 93-113. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences4030093
M.D. Hurst, S.M. Mudd, M. Attal, K. Yoo and R. Walcott. 2013. Influence of lithology on hillslope morphology and response to tectonic forcing in the Sierra Nevada of California. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 118: 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgrf.20049
D. Craw, P. Upton, R. Walcott, C. Burridge, and J. Waters. 2012. Tectonic controls on the evolution of the Clutha River catchment, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 55 (4): 345-359. https://doi.org/10.1080/00288306.2012.709184
Walcott R.C. and M. A. Summerfield. 2009. Universality and variability in basin outlet spacing: implications for the two-dimensional form of drainage basins. Basin Research 21 (2): 147-155. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2117.2008.00379.x
Walcott, R. and M. Summerfield. 2008. Scale dependence of hypsometric integrals: an analysis of southeast African basins. Geomorphology 96: 174-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2007.08.001
Walcott C.R. and S.H. White. 1998. Constraints on the kinematics of post-orogenic extension imposed by stretching lineations in the Aegean region. Tectonophysics 298 (1): 155-175.
For further publications see the National Museums Scotland Research Repository.