Atlanta Geological Society Newsletteratlantageologicalsociety.org/.../2015_6_AGS_newsletter.pdfODDS...
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JUNE MEETING Join us Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 760 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta GA. The meeting social starts at 6:30 pm. This month is our Annual Social, our version of dinner and a movie. The dinner will be BBQ from Shane’s Rib Shack. This will be followed by the giving away of the door prizes. The movie for the evening will be in Fernbank’s IMAX theater showing Mysteries of the Unseen World. Also, this evening is made possible by the generous support of our sponsors : HEPACO TestAmerica ProTech Analytical Environmental Services, Inc. GEOLAB ECOVAC Services, Inc. EarthSoft Piedmont Environmental Services, Inc. Please stop and seen them, thank them for their support and learn a bit about their services. This meeting is also a big push for folks to pay their 2015 dues, so fess up and help the Society continue its good work. Next meeting of the Atlanta Geological Society is June 30, 2015 Fernbank Museum of Natural History (Clifton Road) Social begins at 6:30 pm – Meeting begins at 7:00 pm June 2015 Atlanta Geological Society Newsletter ODDS AND ENDS Drumlins What do I know about drumlins? I grew up in Florida and studied geology in Florida, so the answer is not much. When I took the Georgia PG test there were a couple of questions about drumlins, eskers and such. I took a swag and hoped it didn’t count too much against me. Why do I bring this up? It is because, shortly, I’ll be on a trip to the Finger Lakes region of New York. I looking around about the geology of the area, that’s near where Herkimer diamonds come from. And all sorts of Ordovician and Devonian fossils, horn corals and brachiopods, etc. Just down the road is the town of Marcellus, the namesake for the very prolific gas producing shale. And fields and fields of drumlins. A feature that large should be hard to miss. Look for a report from the field in the coming months. Ben Bentkowski, Newsletter Editor
Transcript of Atlanta Geological Society Newsletteratlantageologicalsociety.org/.../2015_6_AGS_newsletter.pdfODDS...
JUNE MEETING
Join us Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at the
Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 760
Clifton Road NE, Atlanta GA. The meeting
social starts at 6:30 pm. This month is our
Annual Social, our version of dinner and a
movie. The dinner will be BBQ from
Shane’s Rib Shack. This will be followed
by the giving away of the door prizes. The
movie for the evening will be in
Fernbank’s IMAX theater showing
Mysteries of the Unseen World.
Also, this evening is made possible by the
generous support of our sponsors :
HEPACO
TestAmerica
ProTech
Analytical Environmental Services, Inc.
GEOLAB
ECOVAC Services, Inc.
EarthSoft
Piedmont Environmental Services, Inc.
Please stop and seen them, thank them for
their support and learn a bit about their
services.
This meeting is also a big push for folks to
pay their 2015 dues, so fess up and help
the Society continue its good work.
Next meeting of the Atlanta Geological Society is June 30, 2015
Fernbank Museum of Natural History (Clifton Road) Social begins at 6:30 pm – Meeting begins at 7:00 pm
June 2015
Atlanta Geological Society Newsletter
ODDS AND ENDS
Drumlins What do I know about drumlins? I grew up in
Florida and studied geology in Florida, so the
answer is not much. When I took the Georgia
PG test there were a couple of questions about
drumlins, eskers and such. I took a swag and
hoped it didn’t count too much against me.
Why do I bring this up? It is because, shortly,
I’ll be on a trip to the Finger Lakes region of
New York. I looking around about the geology
of the area, that’s near where Herkimer
diamonds come from. And all sorts of
Ordovician and Devonian fossils, horn corals
and brachiopods, etc. Just down the road is the
town of Marcellus, the namesake for the very
prolific gas producing shale. And fields and
fields of drumlins.
A feature that large should be hard to miss.
Look for a report from the field in the coming
months.
Ben Bentkowski, Newsletter Editor
Page 2 AGS JUNE 2015
HEPACO is an emergency response, industrial
services, environmental remediation, and homeland
security services company. We work with many well-
known corporations in the transportation,
communication, petroleum, energy, manufacturing,
commercial, and institutional industries. Founded in
1984, we have successfully completed more than
26,000 projects.
Atlanta Regional Office 3645 Oakcliff Road, Suites A-D, Doraville, GA 30340
Toll Free: (800) 833-8949
Phone: (770) 934-1180
Fax: (770) 621-0238
Regional Manager: Kevin Schmuggerow
E-Mail Address: [email protected]
ER Contact: Tim Hall
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 3
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http://www.envirodepot.net/ProTech/
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 5
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AGS JUNE 2015 Page 7
EcoVac Services is a remediation services firm/subcontractor formed 15 years ago
with a multidisciplinary staff and affiliated offices positioned in numerous states. We pioneer and
provide expedited and cost-effective in situ mobile remedial solutions for VOC/SVOC impacted sites.
EcoVac Services is the world leader in dual phase multi phase extraction services, having conducted
over 8,000 mobile dual phase/multi phase extraction events at over 1,500 sites throughout the United
States (40 states) and Puerto Rico. Our EFR® process (mobile dual phase multi phase extraction) alone
has been successful in removing over 1,000,000 equivalent gallons of contaminants for environmental
groundwater remediation.
The mobile dual phase multi phase extraction (EFR®) process was developed in 1988 by David
M. Goodrich, P.G., co-owner of EcoVac Services.
Nick Athens, co-owner of EcoVac Services, developed a patent relating to combining
surfactant/chemical oxidant/cosolvent injection with mobile multi phase extraction dual phase
extraction. This patent was awarded in December 2000.
EcoVac Services opened a treatability study and R&D laboratory and is advancing “treatment
train” technologies with great promise for the in-situ removal of viscous LNAPLs and DNAPLs
Our remedial solutions occupy a substantially reduced carbon footprint - >75% less than fixed
system alternatives.
Mailing Address: 105 Weatherstone Drive, Suite 610 – Woodstock, Georgia 30188
Phone: (770) 592-1001, Fax: (770) 592-1801, Toll Free: 888-4ECOVAC
http://www.ecovacservices.com/
_____________________________________________________________________________
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EQuIS Data Gathering Engine (EDGE) is the
industry’s most advanced data collection tool.
EQuIS Professional provides “Expert System”
capabilities for decision support and data
analysis. EQuIS Professional manages
Reference Values, Action Levels, Groups,
Reports, Graphs and Graphics, and a variety
of many data imports. EQuIS Enterprise web
modules provide easy to use modules with
workflow automation and dashboards. EQuIS
uses GIS tools from Esri for unparalleled GIS-
driven power, interfacing to several other
commercial softwares.
http://www.earthsoft.com/
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 9
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On April 22, 2015, the Chilean volcano Calbuco erupted, providing the most dramatic and awe-
inspiring photographs. On that day, photographer Martin Heck was right on the scene, by
happenstance taking time-lapse footage on the neighboring Osorno volcano. When Calbuco went
off, he hurriedly set up and shot video that is some of the most spectacular of any volcanic
eruption. Phil Plait, Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/06/20/calbuco_eruption_chilean_volcano_time_lapse_fo
otage_by_martin_heck.html
The 4K time-lapse video of the eruption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVcTPfBxOPU
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 11
The maps are based on data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
(GRACE) satellites, which detect small changes in the Earth's gravity field caused by the
redistribution of water on and beneath the land surface. The paired satellites travel about
137 miles (220 km) apart and record small changes in the distance separating them as they
encounter variations in the Earth's gravitational field.
To make the maps, scientists use a sophisticated computer model that combines
measurements of water storage from GRACE with a long-term meteorological dataset to
generate a continuous record of soil moisture and groundwater that stretches back to 1948.
The meteorological data includes precipitation, temperature, solar radiation and other
ground- and space-based measurements.
The maps are meant to depict drought associated with climatic variability, as opposed to
depletion of aquifers due to groundwater withdrawals that exceed recharge. There are
several aquifers in the U.S. that have been depleted in that way over the past century, such
as the southern half of the High Plains aquifer in the central U.S. If the groundwater
http://drought.unl.edu/MonitoringTools/NASAGRACEDataAssimilation.aspx
Page 12 AGS JUNE 2015
GRACE/NASA (cont.)
drought indicator map accounted for human-induced depletion, such regions would be red
all the time, which would not be useful for evaluating current wetness conditions relative to
previous conditions. On time scales of weeks to ten years, we expect that our maps will be
reasonably well correlated with measured water table variations over spatial scales of 25 km
(16 miles) or more. However, users should not assume a direct correspondence between
these groundwater percentiles and measured groundwater levels over multiple decades.
The color-coded maps show how much water is stored now as a probability of occurrence
in the record from 1948 to the present.
An Alternate View, not endorsed by NASA
Square and Stationary Earth" (1893) by a Professor Orlando Ferguson of Hot Springs, South
Dakota. Our friends at Atlas Obscura compiled a far out Illustrated Guide to Space
Maps. http://boingboing.net/2015/06/23/fascinating-guide-to-antique-s.html
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 13
Drumlins Are The Easy-To-Identify, Hard-To-Understand Glacial Landform
Mika McKinnon
http://space.io9.com/drumlins-are-the-easy-to-identify-mysterious-to-unders-1692890209
Drumlins are a ubiquitous landform in lands once overrun by glaciers, and yet after two
centuries of studying them, we still aren't certain how these teardrop-shaped hills form. When
glaciers creep over a landscape, they scour it clean of loose material, strip it of vegetation, polish
the very bedrock, then rebury it all in thick layers of jumbled rock and sediment. When the
glaciers retreat, they leave behind a distinctive landscape of stark erosion mixed with deposits of
dense, unsorted till. Along with snaking eskers of under-glacial rivers, piled moraines of
accumulated geological junk, and kettle lakes from melting chunks of ice are drumlins, teardrop-
shaped hills parallel to the direction of ice flow.
The drumlin field in Clew Bay, Ireland, has been drown by the ocean, transforming the hills into egg-
shaped islands. The ice flow went from left to right, with the long tail in the lee of the flow. Image
credit: BrendanConway
First named by H.M. Close in 1897, the etymology of drumlin is from the Gaelic druim, a ridge or
hill, but made more far more adorable as a diminutive droimnín, "littlest ridge." Drumlins can be
almost-round eggs to elongated tears, but all have their the rounded snout pointing up-ice (the
stress side) and the tail stretching down-ice (the lee side). Along with being the most defining
characteristic of a drumlin, this shape is one of the clues used by researchers to reconstruct the
complex movement of ancient ice flows.
The individual drumlins are usually 250 to 1,000 meters long, 120 to 300 meters wide,
averaging just 13 meters high. They're at least 100 meters long — any smaller than that, and
they're small proto-drumlin bumps lacking in the characteristic elongated shape. Part of the
mystery lays in their extreme variability in composition: drumlins can be made of carved
Page 14 AGS JUNE 2015
bedrock, the chaotic jumble of glacial till, the tidy sorted muck of glaciofluvial sediments, or
some desperately confusing mixture of all three. In his epic 1979 literature review on the state of
drumlin research, J. Menzies laments:
The internal composition of a drumlin varies from stratified sand to unstratified till to solid bedrock, with
every possible permutation between. Drumlins may have cores of rock, sand, boulders or laminated clay.
While Stokes et al. make a heroic effort to classify drumlin composition and structure, their
internal structure is just as frustratingly diverse: some have tectonic structures of interfingering,
pseudo-folds, and faults that may be produced by pressure-squeezing from overlaying ice,
while others have distinct layers and bands that may be the result of accretion over time, or
stratified bedding independent of the drumlin's shape. They can be fissured and jointed,
possibly from weathering or stress release. In 2009, Clark et al. opened their paper with:
"[Drumlins] have mystified investigators for over a hundred years. A satisfactory explanation for their
formation, and thus an appreciation of their glaciological significance, has remained elusive."
All that changed when researchers in Iceland accidentally spotted the world's only active
drumlin field while out on an entirely unrelated glaciological field expedition. When the
Múlajökull glacier retreated, it left a fan of 110 drumlins behind. One of the drumlins was cut
through by a meltwater stream, giving the researchers access to its interior. From looking at the
sedimentological structure, they confirmed this was a modern, recently-created drumlin from
between when the glacier surged forward in 1992 and when it retreated in 2009. The drumlins
closest to the glacier were narrower and taller, while the drumlins farthest from the glacier were
wider, shorter, and lower relief.
Idealized sketch illustrating the potentially
diverse internal structure of a drumlin, and
the deceptive impression formed by limited
natural exposures (1,2,3). Image
credit: Stokes et al.
The location of currently-
exposed drumlins (black
outlines) line up with long
crevasses where the glacier
previously covered the area in
this 1995 air photo. Image
credit: Johnson et al.
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 15
DRUMLINS (cont.) From their field observations, the researchers suggest that the Múlajökull drumlin field formed
mostly by bed deformation, lodgement, and subglacial erosion, not meltwater outwash. In their
hypothesis, the fan-shaped glacier developed radiating cracks as it surged forward. The
crevasses resulted in stress differences, with slightly more erosion between the cracks and
slightly more till deposition directly under them at the future drumlin-locations. Once the slight
hills formed, they in turn created stress in the ice sheet every time it flowed over that location,
generating cracks in a positive feedback loop, increasing the size of the drumlins during each
surge. In a later study, they suggested that the drumlins closest to the glacier have probably
been worked over by more glacial surges, while those farthest away are least developed.
Yet, this is just one case study, and not enough to crown any formation theory as the triumphant
winner of drumlin genesis. Between 1997 and 2004 geophysical surveys, a like a mound 10
meters high and 100 meters wide grew under the ice West Antarctica. In one of those tiny silver
linings on the edge of catastrophe, sheet might soon expose another active drumlin field, giving
us a second case study of recently-formed drumlins to investigate.
A better understanding of how drumlins form could lead to better reconstructions of the
glaciological history of the region. If drumlin formation is related to rapid surges forward by
glaciers, they could also give us greater insight into the speed of ice flow along with the existing
hints of directionality. This isn't just an academic exercise: understanding how a glacier surged
and flowed would help us understand the formation and origin of glacial deposits, which gets
downright interesting when we find a bit of gold and want to track down the main deposit.
You may have just
quadrupled your
knowledge about
drumlins. Perhaps it will
help out those going to
take the PG test soon.
Ed.
Page 16 AGS JUNE 2015
On view June 6 - August 23, 2015
“An interactive sensory feast that both surprises and stimulates” – Live Science
Discover the workings of the most complex and fascinating biological structure: the
human brain. Explore how the brain controls our senses and emotions, powers our
thinking, how the organ ages, and how technological advances may change our brains in
the future.
Highlights of the exhibition include interactive stations such as brain-teaser games, an
engaging neuron gesture table that shows how brain cells connect and communicate
with each other, and a glowing 8-foot tall model of the subcortical brain that illustrates
how we process language and decision-making.
Filled with hands-on activities, Brain: The Inside Story is a high-energy exploration of
topics diverse as the neurochemistry of love, how memory is formed, neuroplasticity and
the health of the brain, and the intriguing soon-to-be-reality of the futuristic brain.
Immersive, dynamic, and fun, you’re sure to leave this exhibition seeing and thinking of
yourself in a whole new light.
Admission to Brain: The Inside Story is included with Museum admission and is FREE
for members.
Brain: The Inside Story is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New
York, in collaboration with Codice. Idee per la cultura, Torino, Italy in association with
Comune di Milano – Assessorato Cultura, Italy; Guandong Science Center, Guangzhou,
China; and Parque de las Ciencias, Granada, Spain.
Principal Investor: The Marcus Foundation, Inc. Additional funding provided by
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and the General Motors Foundation in support of STEM
learning.
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 17
Now Showing in the Fernbank IMAX movie theater:
Mysteries of the Unseen World Go to places on the planet you've never been before and see things that are beyond your normal
vision yet are literally right in front of your eyes. Mysteries of the Unseen World reveals phenomena
that can’t be seen with the naked eye, taking audiences into earthly worlds secreted away in different
dimensions of time and scale.
Now showing through July 16, 2015* Run time: 40 min Learn more
Jean-Michel Cousteau's Secret Ocean See the hidden beauty of our oceans blossom before your eyes as thousands of colorful fish ripple
over vibrant corals and stunning, 400-pound giant clams. Observe the genius of a camouflaged
octopus hunting along a reef. Hover next to a basket star as it unfurls its tangled tendrils at nightfall.
Take a closer look at our oceans and you’ll find that the smallest living things can be a powerful
inspiration for protecting the blue planet.
Learn more Now showing through September 24, 2015
Coming Soon Robots Opens July 17, 2015
Today’s robots are nothing short of astonishing. Those coming in the not-too-distant future are simply revolutionary. ROBOTS is a sneak peek into the future at what
might be possible as scientists use innovative engineering and design to make cyber characters less “humanoid” and more just plain human.
Fernbank Museum of Natural History
(All programs require reservations, including free programs)
Page 18 AGS JUNE 2015
AGS Committees
AGS Publications: Open
Career Networking/Advertising: Todd Roach
Phone (770) 242-9040, Fax (770) 242-8388
Continuing Education: Open
Fernbank Liaison: Kaden Borseth
Phone (404) 929-6342
Field Trips: Open
Georgia PG Registration: Ken Simonton
Phone: 404-825-3439
John Salvino, P.G.
Ginny Mauldin-Kenney,
ginny.mauldin@gmailcom
Teacher Grants: Bill Waggener
Phone (404)354-8752
Hospitality: Currently open
And in need of a volunteer or two.
Membership Burton Dixon
Social Media Coordinator: Carina O’Bara
Newsletter Editor
Ben Bentkowski
Phone (404) 562-8507, (770) 296-2529
Web Master: Kathaleen Bentkowski
www.atlantageologicalsociety.org
AGS 2015 Meeting Dates
Listed below are the planned meeting dates for
2015. Please mark your calendar and make
plans to attend.
JUNE
PG Study Group June 27, 2015
Lecturer: Dr. Jim Meyer, Ph. D.
AGS meeting June 30, 2015
AGS Annual Social; Dinner and a Movie
No meeting in July
AUGUST
PG Study Group August 29
AGS meeting August 25
SEPTEMBER
PG Study Group September 26
AGS Meeting September 29
AGS Officers
President: Nils Thompson
Phone (770) 910-5645
Vice-President: Shannon George
Phone (717)-343-4452
Secretary: Rob White
Phone (770) 891-0519
Treasurer: Lucy Mejia
AGS JUNE 2015 Page 19
ATLANTA GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
www.atlantageologicalsociety.org
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP FORM Please print the required details and check the appropriate membership box.
DATE:
NAME:___________________ _
ORGANIZATION:____________________________________________________________
TELEPHONE (1): TELEPHONE (2): EMAIL (1): EMAIL (2):
STUDENT $10 PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP $25 CORPORATE MEMBERSHIP $100 (Includes 4 professional members, please list names and emails below)
NAME: EMAIL: NAME: EMAIL: NAME: EMAIL: NAME: EMAIL:
For further details, contact the AGS Treasurer: Lucy Mejia: telephone: 404-438-9584;
Please make checks payable to the “Atlanta Geological Society” and remit with the completed form to: Atlanta Geological Society, Attn: Lucy Mejia
2143 Melante Drive, Atlanta, GA 30324
CASH
CHECK (CHECK NUMBER: .)
