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Greetings from Geological Sciences!
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Greetings to all of our alumni and friends, and welcome to the 2015 Summer Newsletter of the Department of Geological Sciences! The last issue of this prestigious periodical was produced on shiny paper in September 2004, whereas this and future issues will be in all-electronic format.
Since our last newsletter, many changes have occurred here in Newark. There has been considerable turnover in the faculty (four retirements, seven new hires). The Department was renamed and moved from the College of Arts and Sciences to the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. Although Penny Hall is still home to the Department, we have expanded our facilities into the new Harker Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, with new laboratories and office space for geomicrobiology, hydrogeology, and isotope geochemistry. And Penny Hall also has undergone some renovations, including the entire first floor and the Mineralogical Museum, as well as new laboratories for remote sensing/imaging, geochemistry, and (soon) petrology.
Many of us will be at the upcoming Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland and we look forward to seeing you there! Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this newsletter, and can find the time to drop us a note for the Alumni Update page in future newsletters.
With best regards,
Neil Sturchio, Chair, Department of Geological Sciences
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Join us at an upcoming event!
October 4: UD's 39th Annual Coast Day, Lewes, DE 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Learn more >>October 8: Lecture and reception with Dr. Patrick Leahy, Executive Director of the American Geosciences Institute and former Chief Geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey University of Delaware, details forthcoming >> November 1-4: Geological Society of America meeting, Baltimore, MD Call for abstracts ends August 11. Stay tuned for information about a UD reception at GSA! Learn more >>
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Congratulations to the Class of 2015
On May 30, we celebrated the conferral of degrees for our newest graduates and therefore newest geological sciences alumni!
| Dr. Sturchio at Honors Day |
We especially congratulate the students who completed their master and doctoral programs: Trevor Lane Metz, M.S.; Daniel P. Childers, Ph.D. (Paleochannels in Lower Delaware Bay and the Delaware Inner Continental Shelf); Adam Jeffrey Pearson, Ph.D. (Determining the Impacts of Two-hundred Year Old Mill Dams on In Channel Sediment Transport and Carbon Cycling of Adjacent Floodplains in Northern Delaware); Frank Cannon Smith, Ph.D. (Search for Shock-Metamorphosed Grains in Precambrian Spherule Layers). At our annual CEOE Honors Day in May, we also recognized the following students for achievements in Geological Sciences: Daniel Hubacz, Outstanding Teaching Award in Geological Sciences; Jeremy Keeler, Jennifer Schoenstein, and Talin Tuestad, Excellence in Geosciences Award.
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| Spring break at White Rock Canyon, New Mexico
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Student Story: In the Field
Sixteen students joined Professor Sturchio on a week-long exploration of the fascinating geology of northern New Mexico and Arizona during Spring Break 2015. Highlights of their journey included a cable-tram ascent of Sandia Mountain; rhyolites and hot springs at Valles Caldera; climbing over spectacular cliffs of Mesozoic sandstone and shale; finding anticlines and synclines; going inside basaltic lava tubes at El Malpais; hiking among silicified trees in Petrified Forest; and gaping at Meteor Crater! See more photos from the spring trip, as well as newer photos from the summer 2015 field experience on the college Facebook page ( www.facebook.com/UDceoe). More details about the field experiences are noted in Dr. Michael O'Neal's faculty update below. Our student field experiences are supported in part by generous gifts from our alumni through opportunities like the "Doc" Thompson Field Experience Scholarship Fund. Thank you for making it possible for our students to have these essential geology experiences!
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Alumni Spotlight: Kathryn L. Nagy, '77
Kathryn L. Nagy (B.S. geology '77) has been named a fellow of the Geochemical Society. The honor is given to outstanding scientists who have, over some years, made significant contributions to geochemistry. She will be recognized as a Geochemical Fellow at the 2015 Goldschmidt Conference in Prague at the end of August.
Dr. Nagy is currently the department head of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. There, she investigates geochemical and biogeochemical reactions in mineral-organic matter-water systems pertinent to Earth's surface and near-surface regions.
Upon her graduation from UD in 1977, Kathryn completed her M.S. in geological sciences at Brown in 1981 and Ph.D. at Texas A&M in 1988. She was a post-doc at Yale from 1989-1990. |
We want to hear from YOU! A new job, a promotion, a professional award, personal milestones and life events...they are all accomplishments that we would like to share. Email [email protected] and be sure to include your full name, graduation year and major. These announcements will be shared in a future newsletter and will be submitted for consideration in an upcoming issue of UD's alumni magazine, The Messenger.
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~ Geological Sciences Honor Roll ~
We gratefully acknowledge all supporters who made gifts to the Department of Geological Sciences during the last fiscal year 2014-2015. Every donor is vital to our continued collective success and each gift, large or small, makes UD a better place for our students.
David G. Angle '82
Laura Merrill Bazeley '78M
Kathleen R. Butoryak '91M and Timothy J. Schafstall '98M
ConocoPhillips
Edward S. Custer Jr. '68
Wendy Hess DeMaio '88
John R. Eastlund '72
ExxonMobile Foundation
Mark G. Gorski '78
Errin Hooten Halfen '96 '00M and Charles W. Halfen Jr. '80 '85M
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Susan D. Halsey '78PhD
Christine Bavaro Hopkins '00 and Edwin F. Hopkins '00
John C. Kraft
Paul P. Krishna Jr. '86
Gregory A. Kujala '75
David H. Lerner '86M
Amy Chasinoff Lesley '94 and Matthew P. Lesley '93 '01M
Roy W. Lunch Jr. '75
Susan McGeary and Klaus H. Theopold
Jennifer Picard McLaughlin '84 and Peter P. McLaughlin Jr. '84
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Bernard L. Oostdam '71PhD
Timothy J. Peck '86M
Karen L. Pollack '94
Lisa A. Richardson '93
Dietrich A. Schuhl '96
Neil C. Sturchio
Ellis E. Underkofler '73M
UTEC Survey Construction Services Ltd.
Christina G. von Hillebrandt-Andrade '84
Judy Yang-Logan '82M
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Faculty Updates
The section below provides information on current research and teaching efforts by current Geological Sciences faculty. You can either double click on a name in the list and jump to that section, or scroll to read all. Enjoy!
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CLARA CHAN: The Chan lab studies how tiny microbes have big effects on the geochemistry of many environments, from coastal groundwater and estuaries in Delaware, to marine hydrothermal vents across the globe. This year, we completed 3 major field campaigns. Last August (2014), we cruised the Chesapeake Bay with George Luther's group (Oceanography, School of Marine Science and Policy, CEOE) and sampled the water column during summer stratification when the bottom waters are anoxic. At the oxic/anoxic interface (about halfway down), we found Fe-oxidizing microbes (our favorite kind of microbe). We are studying the Chesapeake is an analog for stratified ancient oceans, and these modern Fe-oxidizing microbes are evidence that microbes could have played a big role in producing the extensive ancient banded iron formations (which is where we get the Fe for steel, etc.). In November/December, we went to the Marianas Arc in the western Pacific to study Fe microbial mats, performing shipboard kinetics and transcriptomics experiments to show how, and how fast microbes oxidize Fe in the warm fluids venting from the seamounts. Our work here and at the Loihi seamount (the next Hawaiian island) shows us that microbes play important roles in the Fe cycle at the bottom of the ocean, and also precipitate beautiful iron oxide mineral morphologies that we can recognize as microfossils (some have been identified as old as ~1.8 billion years). This July, we worked with Holly Michael's group to sample groundwater and sediment from a beach aquifer at Cape Henlopen in Lewes. Our ongoing work here shows that Fe- and S-cycling microbes and other organisms thrive beneath our feet at the beach, which means that they can significantly affect the metal and nutrient content of the groundwater discharging to the ocean.
This beach aquifer site is one of the two sites I use in a field- and lab-based geomicrobiology class, along with a streambank site just south of campus in the Rittenhouse Park. In class, undergrad majors and graduate students learn how to characterize the (bio)geochemistry of a field environment. Students determine how microbes are contributing to environmental chemistry, using a combination of field observations and sampling , microscopy, microbial culturing, analyses of geochemical data, and molecular biology. We are using labs and equipment in the new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building, which is home to beautiful labs and classrooms dedicated to problem-based learning. The ISE Lab is also home to one of the Chan research labs (the other one is in the Delaware Biotechnology Institute), so students also get to take advantage of research facilities. The Chan lab has also been working with local middle school students at the Serviam Academy in Wilmington, as part of a "Microbes in the Wild" mini summer camp these past two summers. Activities have included soil sampling, experiments culturing soil microbes and glowing bioluminescent microbes, and examining environmental samples and cheek swabs under the microscope. Students have commented that they have learned a lot about how microbes are not just germs, but actually do useful tasks in the environment!
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BILL GLASS (Emeritus): I have continued to do some research and publishing. In 2013, I published a book with Bruce Simonson (Oberlin College) entitled Distal Impact Ejecta Layers that was printed by Springer. My recent research has involved the study of tektites recently discovered in Belize. In the last two years, I have been coauthor of four abstracts: two Meteoritical Society abstracts dealing with the petrography and chemical composition of the Belize tektites, and two abstracts (one Meteoritical Society and one Lunar and Planetary Science conference) dealing with (U-Th)/He dating of zircons from the Chesapeake Bay impact structure and ejecta layer. Most of my time in the last few years has involved cataloging my samples, which were acquired over a period of about 50 years. When finished, they will be packed and sent to the Natural History Museum in Austria. On a sad note, Judy, my wife for 47 years, passed away on March 29th, 2015.
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JOHN MADSEN: I continue to teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department including the introductory-level general geology, and the upper-level undergraduate structural geology and plate tectonics, and senior seminar courses. Dual undergraduate and graduate courses that I have taught and/or co-taught recently include introductory geophysics, environmental and applied geology, and geological aspects of offshore wind. I'm also serving as an adviser to our earth science education majors and to several of our undergraduate geology majors.
My research lately has been focused in three main areas including high-resolution side-scan sonar imaging of Atlantic sturgeon and characterization of their preferred bottom habitat, the geological/geophysical/geotechnical aspects of offshore wind development, and geothermal energy production utilizing existing offshore oil and gas infrastructure. I'm currently advising Bart Wilson (Ph.D.) and Ali Ponte (M.S.) on their research projects and am looking forward to working with incoming graduate students Coty Cribb (M.S.) and Annie Daw (M.S.).
It was great to see some of our alumni during the 2015 departmental spring seminar series. Accompanying talks by Tracy (Connell) Hancock and Ken Lacovara, we were joined by Chris Burns, Betsy Rogers, Phil Chen, Al Fernandes, Kate Butayorek, Tim Schafstall, Danny Childers, and I apologize if I missed anyone at the Iron Hill Brewery for beverages, food, and great Penny Hall reminiscing. Please stay in touch and let us know what you are up to!
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RON MARTIN: I have been on sabbatical since last September (really since the previous June). Despite the sabbatical, there really has not been enough time to accomplish all that I had hoped for. I spent much of the summer and early fall semester working on the time series analysis of the periodic emplacement of large igneous provinces and their potential impact on nutrient (phosphorus) input to the oceans and biodiversification through the Phanerozoic. This is a followup to some previous papers on the evolution of phytoplankton stoichiometry during the Phanerozoic (if you're interested, a very general paper was recently published in Scientific American and translated into a number of languages worldwide.) The latest version of the manuscript is now in the hands of paleontology colleagues in France and Germany. I will present some preliminary results at the Baltimore GSA meeting in November.
Carol and I spent last November and December in Lille, where I had been invited as a visiting professor at the University. Carol and I lived in the old part of Lille and we both spent long days working because of the time difference between there and the U.S. I gave presentations to classes in Lille: on the impact of land plant evolution on the marine realm at the "Processes of Terrestrialization" meeting at the Universit� Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, and at the Paleontological Association meeting in Leeds (traveled through the Chunnel, which only takes about 20 minutes).
Since returning, I have sent out a proposal to several colleagues about testing the impact of hypoxia and nutrient loading on benthic stoichiometry and community structure (much like the trophic cascades that have been studied in lakes); the proposal has implications for the "Cambrian explosion" and the subsequent diversification of benthos and plankton into the Ordovician and is an outgrowth of a talk I gave at GSA in 2013. I've also co-authored several manuscripts with paleontology colleagues in France (others are in the works); submitted suggested revisions to the textbook publisher (a second edition is supposedly planned) and continued to work on another book; and am now getting anxiety attacks about fall classes. This fall, I'll be teaching GEOL 304: Sed/Strat and in the spring GEOL 110: History of the Earth, which is now required again and GEOL 307: Paleobiology.
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SUE MCGEARY: Greetings! Since I finished my term as department chair in 2012, I have become the Coordinator of the Undergraduate Program. What that means is that in addition to meeting with new majors and prospective students, I am organizing the career advisement that we give our students. So - Alums! - if you would like to come talk to our students about what it is that you actually do as a geoscientist or geoeducator or if you would be interested in having a student "shadow" you at work for a day or two, let me know. I'm also hoping to streamline the process by which students find internships with companies and agencies or arrange to work with faculty on research projects. Stay tuned!
While I was chair, I became very interested in science education and spent an amazing sabbatical with my family in Barcelona reading the research literature on how people learn. I am particularly focused on how elementary education majors learn about the Earth and am working on a proposal to NSF to develop a field-based Earth Science course (GEOL 113) based on the Next Generation Science Standards for those majors. Working with teachers seems one small way to help increase the geoscience literacy in the world.
I have also been enjoying teaching the petrology component of our course on Earth Materials with Clara Chan and Adam Wallace and working with our students in the Senior Seminar, although I miss the field trips for Petrology and Structural Geology that I got to take with some of you. My most recent graduate students include Dr. Claudia Velez Zullo, who is working for Repsol S.A. in Houston, Dr. Joseph Dunbar, who is working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, MS, and Evan Costas, who is working for CH2M Hill in Philadelphia.
For those of you who remember my son Nikolas from department picnics, he is now 6 feet tall and a sophomore (!) at Connecticut College in New London, and Karl is a junior at Newark Charter High School. I hope time hasn't passed quite so quickly for all of you. Keep in touch - cheers!
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HOLLY MICHAEL: Holly is back in Newark after a 9 month sabbatical at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. She was working with colleagues there on coastal hydrogeology - trying to understand how groundwater salinity along continental shelves responds to sea-level change over glacial cycles. Her favorite part of the trip was an excursion to the outback to see carbonate mound springs along the margin of the Great Artesian Basin! It was a great experience, but she is glad to be back, and is busy doing research this summer with her group of three postdocs, five graduate students, two undergraduates, and the lab mascot dog, Quincy. They are working along the Delaware coast as well as in South Asia and Hawaii on a range of topics such as salt marsh and beach hydrology, contaminant mobilization, geostatistical aquifer characterization, and mineral weathering.
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MICHAEL O'NEAL: The GEOL306 Field Geology course focuses on sites in the western USA. It has been offered for five consecutive years under the instruction of Dr. O'Neal, and during this time more than 50 students from Geological Sciences and allied departments have made the 6,500 mile journey across 19 states over a four-week period. It is generally considered by students to be the highlight of their UD experience! Thanks to generous support from alumni, our students are able to take this course without the great expense typical of programs offered at other universities. Continued departmental contributions and an IT Transformation Grant from the university allow this course to constantly improve in terms of infrastructure, technology, and curriculum.
This course provides a tour of some of America's most amazing landscapes. Students are challenged daily with reading assignments, PowerPoint-based lectures, and iClicker quizzes, and field assignments at 9 different locations. The field assignments introduce some of the most well studied geological regions of the US including the Grand Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Bridger-Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Badlands. The primary goal is to give students the opportunity to apply their classroom-based knowledge in practical field exercises to helps them develop an independent and professional aptitude for interpreting the geologic history of different regions.
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JIM PIZZUTO: My research lately has been focused on quantifying transit times for suspended sediments at the watershed scale, work that has important implications for Chesapeake Bay restoration (recent articles listed below). I am serving a 2-year term as President of the AGU Earth and Planetary Surface Processes Focus Group. This summer, 2 M.S. students (Bridget O'Neill and Michael Orefice) have graduated, and Adam Pearson will complete his PhD. Mike is working at a consulting firm in Connecticut, and Adam will start a post-doc at St. Louis University in the fall.
I have been co-teaching Earth Surface Processes with Holly Michael, and several upper level courses in geomorphology. I was fortunate to spend spring term 2015 on sabbatical.
- Pizzuto, J.E., 2014, Long term storage and transport length scale of fine sediment: Analysis of a mercury release into a river. Geophysical Research Letters, 41, doi:10.1002/2014GL060722.
- Pizzuto, J.E., Schenk, E.R., Hupp. C.R., Gellis, A., Noe, G., Williamson, E., Karwan, D.L., O'Neal, M., Marquard, D., Aalto, R., D. Newbold, 2014, Characteristic Length Scales and Time-Averaged Transport Velocities of Suspended Sediment In the Mid-Atlantic Region, U.S.A. Water Resources Research. 50:1-12, doi:10.1002/2013WR014485
- Skalak, K., and Pizzuto, J., 2014, Reconstructing suspended sediment mercury contamination of a steep, gravel-bed river using reservoir theory. Environmental Geosciences, 21:17-35.
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ADAM WALLACE: Since joining the department in 2013, assistant professor Adam Wallace has established a state-of-the-art atomic force microscopy laboratory in Penny Hall. Microscopes of this type generate images by accurately monitoring the interaction force between an extremely small probe and a sample.The instrument in Penny Hall is specifically designed to observe mineral formation and growth in fluids and is currently being used to detect nanoscopic precursors during the formation of calciumcarbonate and to investigate the formation of clay mineral coatings on organic matter in marine sediments. Wallace is also a stakeholder in UD's new high performance computing facility (Farber) that is used by students to perform simulations of chemical reactions that occur at the mineral-water interface.
| Atomic Force Microscopy Laboratory in Penny Hall |
| AFM image of a clay mineral growing on a mica substrate |
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JOHN WEHMILLER (Emeritus): My official retirement began in January 2012, and since then I have been able to focus on a variety of synthesis projects, including publication of a major review paper in Quaternary Geochronology (2013) and, most recently, two on-line publications describing our on-going efforts at data and collection management. In this regard, I have been organizing our collection of samples from Quaternary coastal sites for distribution to various museums around the country so that these irreplaceable samples will be available for potential future use. The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History now has our entire collection of Pacific coast samples; the Florida Museum of Natural History now has our collection of samples from the SE US, and I travel frequently to the Paleontologic Research Institute (Ithaca) and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences to incorporate samples into the collections of these two institutions. Samples are also being distributed to the Delaware and North Carolina Geological Surveys. Thanks are due to several recent graduates (Emily Cline, Rachel Iberz, and Meghan Welker) for their help in these tasks, and to Vince Pellerito (MS, 2004) for all his help in getting our data organized!
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