Keenan Lee

Emeritus Professor, Geology and Geological Engineering

Contact

klee@mines.edu
720-272-6720

Education

Ph.D., Stanford University, Geology, 1969
B.Sc., M.Sc., Louisiana State University, Geology, 1960, 1963

Employment

Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, Havana, Cuba
Union Oil Company of California, Midland, Texas
Mobil Oil Libya, Ltd., Tripoli, Libya
Mining Research and Service Organization, Taipei, Taiwan
U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Geophysics, Denver

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Lee taught geology and remote sensing at the Colorado School of Mines for 37 years before his retirement in 2006. Courses included earth and environmental systems, physical geology, historical geology, field geology, hydrogeology, photogeology, and remote sensing. Research emphasized applications of remote sensing to exploration for mineral and water resources.

Research Interests

Tunguska, the mysterious explosion that flattened millions of trees in Siberia in 1908, remains an unsolved mystery after 100 years.
The Popigai impact created one of the largest and best-preserved impact craters in the world and instantaneously transformed large amounts of graphite into diamonds.
The Missoula Flood, generally accepted as the largest flood on Earth, devastated large parts of four states on its rush to the Pacific Ocean.
The Altai Flood in Siberia presents evidence of an even larger flood and suggests that such megafloods may not have been all that rare.
Smaller outburst floods, like the Three Glaciers Flood on the Arkansas River in Colorado, were more numerous, but catastrophic nonetheless. Colorado also saw catastrophic outburst floods on four rivers in the San Juan Mountains.