Hi, I’m Mara—your friendly hydrothermal zealot and budding karst scientist. I earned a PhD in earth and planetary science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2025. Geysers are my primary thing. Specific interests include the triggering mechanisms for geyser reactivation and dormancy, the controls on eruption intervals, and deploying and managing the data from monitoring systems.

In June 2026, I started a postdoc at the National Cave and Karst Institute (New Mexico Tech) and am learning to apply my data wrangling skills to questions surrounding the human impact on caves. I am passionate about meaningful collaboration between communities that interact with natural resources, the scientists that study them, and the agencies that manage them.

I have been hooked on “geyser gazing” since my teens and have strong ties with Yellowstone’s geyser enthusiast community. Their collective knowledge often motivates and informs my research. One of my goals is to connect other geyser researchers to this community, so I volunteer for GeyserTimes, a crowdsourced database of geyser eruptions.

In my free time, I pursue cave photography, hike, dabble in geyser history projects, and find any excuse to eat at Taco Bell.

Contact

E-mail: reed.mara.h[at]gmail.com

Bluesky: @geyserite