Department of Geology - USU · result in a Geology Museum within the Department. The advantages of...

In This Issue: Pages 2 - 9 Department News

Pages 10 - 16 Faculty & Staff News

Pages 17 - 24 Student News

Pages 25 - 28 Alumni News

Page 29 Donors

Pages 30-31 Pictures

The last time the Utah State Geology Department hosted the annual Rocky Mountain/Cordil-leran Conference was in 1976, so its return to Logan was much an-ticipated. The three-day conference

took place from May 18-20, 2011 in Logan at the Riverwoods Confer-ence Center with geologists from throughout the Rocky Mountain region participating in lectures and/or field trips hosted by their peers.

With such geologic diversi-ty in and around the Logan area, there was no shortage of incredible sites to see and learn more about. Most of the faculty in the USU Geology Department took part in the events during the course of the conference. Some hosted theme ses-sions while other faculty

members hosted field trips.

USU Hosts GSA Rocky Mountain/Cordilleran Conference

Susanne Janecke and Bob Oaks conducting a field trip about Lake Bonneville and Deltas of the Bear River.

Contact Information: Utah State University Department of Geology 4505 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-4505 Email: [email protected] Web: www.usu.edu/geo/

Prehistoric Aggie: USU Geologists Celebrate Namesake Trilobite

In recognition of nearly 20 years of field work in Utah’s ultra-steep Wellsville Mountains, along with exhaustive classifica-tion and sedimentation modeling of Cambrian formations, Utah State University geology professor Dave Liddell has a prehistoric namesake.

Zacanthoides liddelli is the prodigious name given to the spiky little critter. The newly identified species of trilobite is described and named by paleontologists Richard Robison of the University of Kan-sas and Loren Babcock of The

Tiny Zacanthoides liddelli, a trilobite that existed some 520 million years ago, is named for USU geologist Dave Liddell.

Continued “Namesake Trilobite” on page 7

of GeologyDepartment

Newsletter 2011-2012

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USU Department of Geology Newsletter 2011-2012

It is hard to believe that one and one-half years have elapsed since I wrote my Greetings from the Incoming Department Head message for the 2010 Geology Newsletter. During this time the Department has experienced many challenges and successes.

Even though the University has suffered four years of budget cuts, I am pleased to report that the Department of Geology is in excellent shape. This is due to the hard work of Geology Department faculty and staff and the support of many of our dedicated alumni (please refer to the article on the Ge-ology Advisory Board within). The Geology faculty have been tireless in their grantsmanship efforts - our external funding for this fiscal year is some $2.9m! Significantly, this has taken place during a time when grants are becoming more and more competitive. It is particularly noteworthy that two of our junior faculty, Tony Lowry and Tammy Rittenour, have received Na-tional Science Foundation CAREER grants, amongst the most prestigious grants that young faculty can receive! In addition, the College of Science has been very sup-portive and has shielded its departments from most of the state-mandated cuts.

Despite the challenging financial climate in the state, the Department has been able to grow through “unconventional” means. We solidified an instructor’s position with funds from the College of Science and Regional Campuses and Distance Education. Blair Larsen is excellent in this role and is responsible for the majority of our student credit hour production. We have created an instrument manager position, which is funded through our F&A (overhead) funds. Gary O’Brien has done wonders with setting up and running our increas-ingly sophisticated instrumentation, which now includes X-ray diffraction and fluorescence, ICP mass spectrom-etry and carbon stable isotopes analyses. RCDE has also funded a tenure-track geology position at the Uintah Basin Campus in Vernal. Ben Burger, our new faculty member there, is a paleontologist and stratigrapher who is broadcasting graduate courses back to the Logan campus. With the merging of USU with CEU in Price, we have been fortunate to add Michelle Fleck (geologi-cal education) and Ken Carpenter (dinosaur paleobiol-ogy) to our Department. Finally, I am very pleased to announce that the Department has been granted a new

faculty slot by the College! We are currently searching for a geochemist who we hope will be joining us in the Fall of 2012.

As the Department grows we have needed more space. We have recently received some 2,300 square feet of additional space in the Geol-ogy Building which we plan to use for student offices which will, in turn, free up labs to be used as labo-ratories. We are also in the process of moving many archived thesis and other samples to storage in the basement of the next door Animal Science Building. One new project that I am very excited about is the development of a Geology Museum

and Geoinfomatics Center within our building.Our undergraduate population now includes over

60 students. They are bright, enthusiastic and realize that they have the “coolest” major on campus. The Geology Club (see article within) has been sponsoring field trips and social activities. Five undergraduates have just received URCO (Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunities) grants and are conduct-ing research with Susanne Janecke, Joel Pederson, Tammy Rittenour and me.

Our graduate population is also at an all-time high with 30 students in residence (10 PhD and 20 MS candidates). Our first PhD students, Kelly Brad-bury and Marlon Jean, graduated this Spring. Our graduate students have made impressive showings at professional meetings such as the annual Geological Society of America and American Geophysical Union meetings, as well as others. Many have also received research funding from the Geological Society of America, American Association of Petroleum Geolo-gists, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Miner-alogists and other organizations. Our grads have also established an organization – the Logan Geological Society – which sponsors field trips and other profes-sional activities (refer to article within).

We love seeing our former students and friends. If you would like to join us on one of our field trips, such as GEO 2500 - Field Excursions (offered each semester) or GEO 6800 – Active Margins (offered in the Fall), please let us know. Also, when you are near the Logan area, please stop by to visit!

Dave Liddell

Greetings from the Department Head

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NSF CAREER awards are given to outstanding junior faculty who demonstrate their re-search has potential for impact in their fields. In particular, CAREER awards support the early career development of those who are likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.

“These CAREER awards are among some of the most prestigious awards granted by the National Science Foundation,” said Raymond T. Coward, Executive Vice President and Pro-vost of USU. Coward continues, “As a research institution, USU is known for its seasoned researchers who are some of the most well-established, internationally known experts in their fields. This group of NSF CAREER awardees will be the next generation of researchers to make groundbreaking discoveries.”

At USU, nine young faculty have received CAREER awards since 2010, the highest total number of faculty to receive this award among all of USU’s regent peer institutions, including all western land-grant universities as well as Kansas State University and Nebraska Univer-sity. The awards have added over $213 million in external funding.

Southern Utah’s landscape is dramatic and tells many stories of the past. Ar-royos, or deep flat-bottomed channels with steep walls of sediment, show an interesting slice of history that may help USU NSF CAREER funded researcher Tammy Ritten-our determine the future. Between periods of rapid incision, arroyos appear to follow prolonged aggradation or “filling” periods. The question is: What’s driving these cycles of rapid entrenchment followed by slower rates of sedimentation and infilling? Ritten-our is developing a detailed and well-dated stratigraphic record of past cut-fill cycles at six adjoining semi-arid drainages in Southern Utah using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating.

Current ef-forts to predict earthquakes are similar to what weather forecasting was like in the 19th century. Earthquakes, mountain-build-ing and other effects of continental tectonics depend on how rocks flow miles beneath our feet, but scientists don’t yet have the tools to reach into the Earth’s depths and measure proper-ties needed to understand these processes. NSF CAREER researcher Tony Lowry is developing new geophysical tools to remote-ly sense rock composition, temperature and water flux to help answer these questions. The research Lowry is pursuing could shed new light on the earthquake cycle and the evolution of stress on faults and why moun-tain chains form where they do.

Tammy Rittenour and Tony Lowry Receive NationalScience Foundation CAREER Awards

Looking at Layers of the Past toDetermine the Future

Probing the Depths

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Over the weekend of May 28-29, 2011 an individual broke into the Geology Building, damaged several display cases and stole a number of rock, fossil and mineral specimens as

well as computers and printers from the Geophysics Lab. The thefts re-ceived wide media attention, includ-ing radio and TV interviews with Dave Liddell. The Department of-fered a reward for information lead-ing to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator, and, within a week, Dave was called by the University Police and asked to join them when they conducted an early morning raid of a suspect’s apartment. All of the stolen specimens and computers

were recovered and some additional meteorite specimens that were stolen previously were also recovered. The suspect was arrested and is currently awaiting trial.

The thefts and damage to display cases precipitated the Department’s decision to remove all of the specimen displays from the hallways and house them centrally in a 1,200 square foot area adjacent to the main office on the second floor. This arrangement will ultimately result in a Geology Museum within the Department. The advantages of a museum are many. The Department’s visibility on campus and the community will be enhanced. Valuable speciments will be protected. Dozens of groups visit the Department each year to view the displays which, in the past, were scattered over three floors within the building. By housing all displays in a central location, they will proide a more coherent educational message. In addition to displays of rocks, minerals and fossils (including dinosaur mate-rial on loan from USU-Eastern’s Museum of Ancient Life), we plan to incorporate a geoinfor-matics center where visitors can access digital images of the state and geologic hazards information. Educational materials from the Utah Geological Survey will be provided.

The department is currently seeking funding for high-quality display cases, museum lighting, computers and large, flat-screen monitors. They hope to begin initial implementation of these plans this summer - please stop by and take a look!

A broken display case after the break-in

A digital image of the proposed museum

For a view of the floorplan of the Geology Museum, go to page 8

Geology Museum the Solution Following Breakin

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No, the Rio Grande Rift—the north-trending con-tinental rift that extends from northern Mexico to Colo-rado’s central Rockies—isn’t dead, geologically speak-ing, and it’s distributed over a wider area than originally thought, say Utah State Uni-versity geophysicist Tony Lowry and colleagues.

“This certainly isn’t cause for alarm,” says Lowry, associate professor in USU’s Department of Geology, “but it means residents and government officials living along the rift corridor, including the communities of Fort Collins, Denver, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, need to be aware that they are in

earthquake country and plan construction accordingly.”

Lowry and colleagues from the Cooperative Insti-tute for Research in Environ-mental Sciences published findings from their National Science Foundation-funded research in the January 2012 issue of the journal Geology.

“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, (in this region) but we will have some earthquakes,” says Anne Sheehan, CIRES fellow, associate director of CIRES Solid Earth Sciences Division and an author on the paper.

University of Colorado Boulder researcher Henry Berglund, lead author on the paper, says recent advances

in space geodesy — use of satellite technology to mea-sure the size, shape, rotation and gravitational field of the Earth—reveal new findings. Using measurements from the NSF-funded Earthscope Plate Boundary Observa-tory array plus additional instruments, the researchers discovered strain in the Rio Grande Rift is very broadly distributed.

“We don’t know for certain how broad because none of us anticipated just how wide it would be, and we didn’t install instruments far enough east to capture the eastern boundary,” says Lowry, a 2010 NSF CA-REER grant recipient. “But it’s at least 150 miles across and probably much wider.”

In comparison, he says, in-terseismic stretching on Utah’s Wasatch Fault occurs in a nar-rowly focused zone only about 75 miles across.

“The practical impli-cation of this is the risk of earthquakes on major, previ-ously identified faults such as Colorado and New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo fault may be a bit less than expected, but the risk to major Front Range metropolitan centers such as Denver is perhaps slight-ly higher than previously thought,” Lowry says.

Deep, Wide and Alive: USU Geophysicist Explores Rio Grande Rift

The Rio Grande Rift runs north-south from Colorado's central Rockies through the center of New Mexico to northern Mexico. The diagonal line shows locations of seismic instruments used to monitor the rift. Map courtesy of New Mexico State University.

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HOTSPOT: The Snake River Scientific Drilling ProjectHotspot: The Snake River Geothermal

Drilling Project is a collaborative interna-tional research ef-fort to understand the thermal system associated with the Snake River Plain volcanic province, and its relationship to the Yellowstone hotspot. Goals are to determine the origin of the Yel-lowstone-Snake River volcanic province – does it result from a deep mantle plume? – and its effect on continental lithosphere, and to document the existence of geother-mal resources associated with this hotspot. This project combines fundamental scientific research on global scale Earth processes with applied research to enhance the discovery and development of renewable geothermal energy. Hotspot is funded by $6.4 million in grants from DOE, the International Con-tinental Drilling Program (ICDP), and the United States Air Force, plus cost share from participating universities.

The Snake River volcanic province (SRP) overlies a thermal anomaly that ex-tends deep into the mantle; it represents one of the highest heat flow provinces in North America, and an area with the highest calcu-lated geothermal gradients. This makes the SRP potentially one of the highest producing geothermal districts in the United States.

John Shervais, P.I., noted that Project Hotspot has successfully completed three deep drill holes and produced over 17,000 feet of core, including 9000 feet of basalt, 5500 feet of rhyolite, and over 2400 feet of sediments. To put this in perspective, the

Hawaii Deep Drilling Project only produced about 10,000 feet of core. Additional inves-

tigations include a complete suite of borehole geophysical measurements, mag-neto-stratigraphy, a high-resolution gravity and mag-netic survey, vertical seismic profiles, and high-resolution shal-low seismic surveys. We did not find elec-tric grade geothermal in the first two drill holes because the cold water Snake

River aquifer suppresses thermal gradients in the upper half of the drill holes, but at Mountain Home we encountered a fracture-fed artesian water system with a measured downhole temperature of 160ºC (~320ºF) – more than enough to power a binary genera-tion plant for the Air Force base.

Project participants represent a range of institutions, including Utah State University, University of Idaho, Boise State University, University of Alberta, Southern Methodist University, University of South Carolina, Brigham Young University, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Project Hotspot has sup-ported five graduate students over the last two years, as well as several undergraduates and ten recent geology bachelor’s graduates (from USU, BYU, BYU-Idaho, Univeristy of Idaho, and Idaho State) as professional staff geologists, geoscience technicians, and geoinformatics technicians. Many of the bachelor graduates have now gone on to graduate work at other universities. We are continuing to work on this project and expect to complete work sometime next year.

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Ohio State University, in a paper published in the Nov. 30, 2011, issue of the online journal Paleontological Contributions. “This trilobite was named after me in ac-knowledgment of the work my students and I have done on the local Cambrian rocks,” says Liddell, head of USU’s Department of Geology. Barely an inch long, tiny Z. liddelli lived about 520 million years ago and ex-perienced a landscape much different from today’s Utah. “During the Cambrian period, Utah was situated within five degrees of the equa-tor,” Liddell says. “The current Wellsville Mountains didn’t yet exist. Instead, this area was covered by a shallow ocean with a warm, tropical climate.” Z. liddelli was likely a sediment-proces-sor, he says, subsisting mostly on algae. The diminutive invertebrate might have been pursued by larger, carnivorous arthropods such as the shrimp-like Anomalocaris or the

bizarre, multi-tentacled Hallucigenia. “The trilobite’s spiny exterior was probably its best defense against predators,” Liddell

says. “Nobody would want to take a bite out of that.”

Z. liddelli is among a profusion of trilobites, ranging in size from about a mil-limeter to the length of a skateboard, that flourished during the Cambrian Period. The hard-shelled, segmented creatures roamed oceans of the lower Paleozoic Era for more than 270 million years.

“Fossils of between 50 to 60 trilobite species have been found in the Spence Shale of the Wellsvilles,” Liddell says.

The Wellsville Mountains offer sev-eral locations of exposed layers of Cam-brian rocks and, thus, an ideal study site for Liddell and his students.

Earth scientists studying the area now routinely refer to “Liddell Cycle 5” or “Liddell Cycle 7” in research reports.

Namesake Trilobite from Page 1

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Visiting ScholarsThe department continues to benefit from

sabbatical visitors. During 2011 and 2012, we were pleased to host Dr. Alvaar Brathan and his family from Longyearben, Svalbard, Norway. Alvaar is a professor at the University Centre, specializing in structural geology. Alvaar did field work in southeastern Utah and was a great asset to the department, helping our IBA team with regional geology and tectonics of northern Norway and the Barents Sea.

We also had Dr. Young-Seog Kim from Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea. Dr. Kim is also a structural geologist and took advantage of our location to do research on fault zones and record a number of geologic documen-taries for Korea television.

Jon Kirby, Deputy Director of the Western Australia Center for Geodesy at Curtin Univer-sity in Perth, visited the geophysics group for

a short sabbatical from October to December of 2011. While here, Jon explored shared inter-ests in lithospheric strength and rheology, and strategized about planned future collaborations regarding the direction-dependence of lithospher-ic weakness and new approaches to measuring global seafloor bathymetry.

Dr. Ashutosh Chamoli, a young scientist from the National Geophysical Research Insti-tute in Hyderabad, India, is currently visiting the department on a prestigious Indo-US Scientific and Technical Transfer Fellowship (one of only 25 awarded to Indian scientists and engineers each year). Here, he is learning new skill-sets in GPS geodesy and crustal deformation modeling, which he hopes to apply to studies of nonlinear fault frictional dynamics at the plate boundaries surrounding India upon his return in September 2012.

The proposed floorplan of the Geology Museum (from page 4)

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It is true that I became interested in paleontology when my mother took me to see Godzilla, King of the Monsters when I was five years old. I am not sure what it was that stirred my passion, whether it was the mon-ster’s size, ferociousness, or just the cool way it looked. Regardless, I suspect the Jurassic Park series will have the same effect, creating a new generation of paleon-tologists. Having a few lucky breaks also played a role in getting me to where I am. My first break came when I was 16 and discovered a partial ground sloth skeleton near my home in Colorado Springs. I reported the dis-covery to the Denver Museum of Natural History and helped in the excavation. That was my first field experi-ence. My second break came when, as an undergradu-ate at the University of Colorado in the 1970s, I was given some “office” space (a small desk) in the muse-um where I was taken under the wing of Drs. Robinson and VanCouvering. That gave me a foot into the door of the museum world. It was there that I also got my third big break. I was allowed to sign out a university pickup truck, was given a hundred dollars, and the free-dom to go collect whatever I wanted. Over the course of several years, I amassed thousands of specimens ranging from shrew-sized mammals to huge dinosaurs. My fourth break came when I did a one-semester ap-prenticeship at the paleontology lab at the Smithsonian Institution. I will admit, however, that I was not very good as a student in those days with the exception of vertebrate paleontology classes. In many ways, I was too focused as an undergraduate and failed to see the bigger picture of education. I do wish I had paid closer attention to physics, for example, because of my current interest in biomechanics of dinosaur forelimbs. I have to relearn force, levers, and even vectors.

After getting my BS in Geology, I went on to work in a variety of museums: Mississippi Museum of Natural History, The Philadelphia Academy of Natu-ral Sciences, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Museum of the Rockies, and eventually the Denver Museum of Natural History where I stayed for twenty

years. Stomping around the swamps and floodplains of Mississippi gave me a feeling for the coastal envi-ronments of Utah during the Late Cretaceous. It was also during this time that I undertook a taphonomic study of animal carcasses (road-kills I collected) in swamp environments. This study is an example of how I always found opportunities to do research no matter where I was. I am fortunate that I have an under-standing wife because even our vacations are research trips for me. Our recent trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium gave me the opportunity to check some points on underwater penguin flight. I had previously used such observations to formulate a hypothesis on underwater locomotion by extinct marine reptiles called plesiosaurs, which used two pairs of “wings.” That information was used in the National Geo-graphic IMAX film, Sea Monsters, to show plesiosaurs swimming. I have always wanted to duct tape two penguins together to mimic a plesiosaur but find zoo keepers less than enthusiastic about letting me (even the penguins, which have a nasty bite, are less than cooperative).

My current research is the taphonomy of the Dinosaur National Monument. You would think that one hundred years after its discovery, we would know all there is about that great bone deposit. Surpris-ingly not. The current quarry is only a third of what was originally there when the site was found in 1909, so I have relied on a lot of archival data and old photographs to fill out the story. The manuscript is currently undergoing presubmission review. I am also finishing a manuscript with colleagues in Denver about why the armored dinosaurs, or ankylosaurs, had evolved such a wide pelvis (it has to do with hindgut fermentation of low quality vegetation). Another manuscript with colleagues in Kansas has been submitted that names a new species of lower Upper Cretaceous plesiosaur. I am also juggling three books - one on dinosaurs and fossil reptiles from Mexico, one on the dinosaurs of Colorado, and one comprehensive book on everything that I know (or think I know) about ankylosaurs.

The museum celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. However, the collection space is bursting at the seams, with some specimens stacked on top of each other, and the exhibits are sorely outdated. We are in the process of redo-ing dinosaur skeletal mounts and other exhibits, and a proposed new museum will more than double the exhibit space, and archaeology and paleontology will be merged into a continuous story about the history of life in eastern

Utah. Visitors will start in the Precambrian and end in the late Prehistoric without being aware that they made a transistion from paleontol-ogy to archaeology. After all, the history of life from the Precambrian to the present is a continuum. To tell this story, we need to expand the museum’s current paleontol-ogy collections, which are composed mostly of dino-saurs from the Morrison and Cedar Mountain Formations. To do this, we have begun

targeted collecting for exhibit quality specimens in the area between the Uinta Mountains south to Mexican Hat. This pro-gram is just starting, and the details have not yet been completely worked out, but eventually, I hope there will be expanded opportunities for students. The next few years will be exciting as things continue to ramp up. New discoveries in both Utah paleontology and archae-ology will be made. Ken Carpenter

USU Prehistoric Museum, Price, UT Ken Carpenter

Ben BurgerI’m a mammalian paleontolo-

gist with an interest in discovering how mammals responded to past climate change. For the past fif-teen years, I’ve worked in the ear-ly Cenozoic basins of the Rocky Mountains, collecting fossils for a number of institutions and provid-ing a biostratigraphic framework for the Paleocene and Eocene. Pri-or to coming to Utah State Univer-sity, I worked as a paleontological consultant in the Uinta Basin. I earned my doctorate at the Univer-sity of Colorado, examining the Paleocene-Eocene boundary in the neighboring Piceance Creek Basin

in western Col-orado. I spent five years at the American Mu-seum of Natu-ral History in New York City, where I worked on cataloguing the museum’s massive collec-

tion of fossils. I earned my mas-ter’s degree in anatomy, working on the phylogeny of early ungulate mammals at Stony Brook Univer-sity in New York. I’ve done field-work in North Africa collecting Eocene mammals and have spent my summers collecting fossils in many locations across the Ameri-can West. I have two daughters, and my wife teaches as an adjunct instructor at Utah State University.

Since arriving at Utah State University’s new campus in Ver-nal, I’ve begun exploring a num-ber of paleontological research projects in the surrounding fos-sil-rich rocks. One project I’ve recently started involves the col-lection of fossil mammals from the Duchesne River Formation, west and south of town. Examina-tion of fossils from this formation could lend insight into how the

mammalian fauna responded to a recently discovered climatic shift, known as the Middle Eocene Cli-mate Optimum, 40 million years ago. I plan to employ both surface collection and screen washing for fossil teeth and bones this summer. I also plan to explore the Miocene Brown’s Park Formation in an at-tempt to expand the known fauna, which will facilitate comparison to the Miocene faunas from central and eastern Colorado. Eventually, I would like to assess the amount of faunal interchange across the Southern Rocky Mountains during this time period. Finally, I plan to spend time searching for Mesozoic mammals in a number of forma-tions exposed along the southern edge of the Uinta Mountains. Yes, there are many years of research and discovery ahead of me at Utah State University!

The geological opportuni-ties in northeastern Utah and the greater Tristate Area are endless. The Vernal Campus has expanded its science faulty, and it is excit-ing to represent the Geology De-partment on the other side of the state. I’ve partnered with the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park in downtown Vernal as they expand their facilities. I am housed in the Bingham Entre-preneurship and Energy Research Center, which also has offices for USTAR, the Energy Dynamics Laboratory and the Idaho National Laboratory. As a scientist, I’m not alone at the Vernal Campus, with local colleagues in Engineering, Chemistry, and Biology. It is very exciting to be part of Utah State University’s expansion of higher education in northeastern Utah.

Carol DehlerThis is my first contact with

you all since I became an associ-ate professor; I am so happy to be

here at USU, and I find my job and life in Cache Valley extremely re-warding.

Teaching has been an enrich-ing experience, as usual. In ad-dition to teaching Earth Through Time in 2011, I taught an in-depth Pre-c a m b r i a n Te c h n i q u e s class to my PhD students and took the GEO2500 trip to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.

My two graduate students are helping to build my research program on Neoproterozoic Earth Systems, with an emphasis on Death Valley, northern Utah, southern Idaho, and Grand Canyon strata. We have been doing a lot of micropaleontology and detrital zircon geochronology, along with chemosratigraphy and good ole’ field geology, with the ultimate goal of learning how the different Earth spheres interacted before, during, and after proposed low-latitude glaciations (or “Snowball Earth”).

Joel and I continue to enjoy the challenge of juggling aca-demia, raising our son, and car-ing for the llamas, chickens, cat, and dog. We are looking forward to the springtime field trips, and, of course, summer field camp, research, and spending time with family and friends.

Jim Evans2011 was another busy and

productive year. Our research projects are focused primarily on CO2-seal-breach analog questions with field sites in South Eastern Utah. Corey Barton defended in the summer 2011, and he worked on the San Rafael Swell and Monument Uplift areas where

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he studied the nature of deformation across reservoir-seal lithologies. Ryan Sonntag also defended and completed his work on sandstone deformation in gas-producing Mesa Verde units in the Uinta Basin. Co-rey is at Anadarko, and Ryan is at Chesapeake. Current PhD student, Elizabeth Petrie, and MS students, Leslie Clayton, Santiago Flores, and Dave Richey continue this work on SE Utah based CO2 re-lated problems. Much of this work is done in collaboration with Peter Mozley of New Mexico Tech and a group at Sandia National labs, in-cluding USU alum Jason Heath. PhD student, Mitch Prante and MS student, Rebekah Wood, keep up the long tradition of “earthquake petrology”, studying the nature of fault-related melt rocks and hydro-

thermal altera-tion associat-ed with faults. PhD student, James Kes-sler, is exam-ining brittle deformat ion in the basalts of the Project Hotspot core,

and Nathan Giles, an undergrad who will soon start grad work here, has done some great experiments on CO2-rock –water interactions, and undergrad, Brennan Young, is examining the distribution of hot springs in northern Utah and south-ern Idaho relative to active faults. And the goal is that by the time you read this, Kelly Bradbury will have defended her PhD on the San Andreas Fault work. Kelly and Marlon Jean are the first PhD students to complete in our depart-ment, and both did great work.

Another highlight this sum-mer was the presence of four under-graduates, Moises Ponce-Zepeda, Sari Rosove, Katherine Shervais, and Brennan Young, from colleg-es across the country who worked

on fault zones and hot springs in the Salton Sea and northern Utah areas. We also had sabbatical visitors, Alvaar Braathen and his family from Svalbard, Norway, and Young-Seog Kim and his family from Korea. On the home front, some of the alum will be amazed to learn that our older daughter, Erica, is a senior in high school and looking for the right college, while Karen started high school this year. Both are doing well and keep us busy.

Don FiesingerEmeritus

I’ve been asked to update my activities since July 2010 and I can sum it up as travel, travel, travel. Janet and I have made two trips back to upstate New York for visits with family and friends; numerous trips to the Portland, Oregon area for visits with our daughters and their families; summer trips to the Oregon coast for kite flying; and annual trips abroad. In the fall of

2010 we vis-ited eastern Europe with stops in the Czech Repub-lic, Slovakia, Hungary, Po-land, Croatia, and Slovenia. In the fall of 2011 we visit-

ed Spain and Morocco. This com-ing fall we are headed to Turkey and Greece. Very diverse coun-tries, cultures, and geology! I’ve been contributing information and data to the USGS people who are working on the geologic map of the Grouse Creek Quad. This mapping project will incorporate the work of a number of former graduate students (Kent Smith, Bud Voit, Matt Hare, Marc Olesen, Bruce Scarbrough, and Steve Kerr).

Michelle FleckMy name is Michelle Coo-

per Fleck, and I have been on the faculty at College of Eastern Utah in Price since 1987. I have taught a vari-ety of courses there, includ-ing Introduc-tion to Geol-ogy, Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Min-eralogy, Geology of Utah, Physical Geography, Introduction to Chem-istry, and Math 0970-0990-1010-1030-1050. I have a BS in Geol-ogy from Tennessee Tech, a MS in Geology & Geophysics from Uni-versity of Missouri-Rolla, and a PhD in Adult Learning & Technol-ogy from University of Wyoming. This fall at USU Eastern in Price, I’m teaching three sections of GEO 1010 Introduction to Geol-ogy and GEO 1110-1115 Physical Geology. Our Physical Geology class has participated in three field trips this semester: 1) Dikes in the Gordon Creek area about 7 miles west of Price, 2) Big & Little Cot-tonwood Canyons in the Wasatch Range, with a visit to the Bingham Canyon Mine, and 3) the San Ra-fael Swell. We’re looking forward to a trip to Arches National Park on November 12. We typically have about five geology majors each year, many of whom transfer to USU in Logan to complete their baccalaureate degrees. We are proud to be associated with USU Eastern’s Prehistoric Museum, which is a federal repository for hundreds of paleontological and archaeological artifacts from the Carbon-Emery County region.

Susanne JaneckeThe last academic year and

summer have been fun, exciting,

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and educational. Steve Thornock joined my research group from BYU-Idaho in the fall of 2010. Together, we are finding interesting and unexpected relationships where two active strike-slip fault zones cross one another in the Salton Trough. The smaller–displacement strands of the Extra fault zone are more evident at the earth’s surface whereas the Clark fault appears to go “underneath” into the subsurface. The bigger and older(?) Clark fault has much more slip yet it is more cryptic at the earth’s surface. I think about overpasses and underpasses on highways to visualize this process. The Clark fault localized an enormous uplift up to 70 km by 15 km centered on its traces. This uplift is so active and large that sediment cannot get across

it to fill the Salton Sea on the other side, d e p r i v i n g the delta of the large San Felipe Wash drainage basin of sediment. Next on the horizon will

be a study of the southernmost tip of the San Andreas fault.

Other exciting results have just been published from my collaboration with Bob Oaks on the outlets of Lake Bonneville. We have evidence that the Bonneville flood might be the result of a large earthquake on the Riverdale fault zone in SE Idaho. We were able to present the evidence and show some of the key relationships during field trips in northern Cache Valley. We led a trip for the combined Rocky Mountain and Cordilleran GSA meeting here in Logan (May, 2011) and contributed to a Friends of the Pleistocene field conference in late September. The paper with

many of the gory details and lots of colorful maps is published and available in Geosphere. Email me or Bob Oaks if you want a copy. [email protected]; [email protected]

In addition, I am working with the students in Field Methods (Geology 4700) and undergradu-ate researchers, A.J. Knight and Dallas Nutt, to assess a possible large earthquake on the East Cache fault around the time of the Bonn-eville flood. The evidence we have collected so far shows that liquefaction occurred near the end of the Bonneville transgression in the gravel pit in Green Canyon. Some of you may remember field trips to the gorgeous but wildly deformed outcrop there. My next project in this region may be to figure out which lava flow in Gem Valley diverted the Bear River into the Bonneville basin. I am hot on its trail.

Pete KolesarEmeritus

What I did on my summer vacation . . . I mean . . . after I re-tired:

W e ’ v e been able to do a bit of travel-ing in the time since both Mary Veronica and I retired:

I n t e r n a -tional - Italy in the fall of 2007; the Greek Islands in the fall of 2010; an upcoming trip from Prague to Paris this fall.

We’ve also managed sev-eral visits to family and friends in Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon and Florida.

I’ve also been pretty much into biking (solo) when the weath-er is warm and cross country ski-ing when there’s enough snow.

Dave talked me into teaching a carbonate class last spring and has talked me into doing an Intro to Environmental Geoscience this May. He’s a pretty darn good De-partment Head.

Tom LachmarI’m still teaching ground wa-

ter geology and physical geology every fall semester. In the winter/spring semester I alternate teach-ing the techniques of ground wa-ter investigations course with geochemistry, and I alter-nate teaching physical geol-ogy with Joel. As you may r e m e m b e r , I’m now the undergraduate advisor, so that takes up quite a bit of my time, too.

I had two new graduate stu-dents arrive last fall. Thomas Freeman came to us from the Uni-versity of Florida and is working on John’s Snake River Plain geo-thermal drilling project. Hannah McDonough is from Vermont and earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Rochester in New York. She is working on an abandoned mine contamination study near Challis, Idaho.

Former graduate students I’ve had contact with in the past year include Paul Inkenbrandt and Tom Nelson, who are still work-ing for the Utah Geological Sur-vey and Bio-West, respectively. Kevin Randall also sent me a brief e-mail message. He’s still work-ing for GeoEngineers in Spokane, Washington, and he and his wife, Camille, just had their fourth son, whom they named Liam John Ran-dall. I’ve also kept in touch with Neil Burk, in part to help me and Hannah with her research project, since Neil also worked on an aban-doned mine contamination prob-

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lem. Neil has changed jobs and is now working for Klohn Crippen Berger, Ltd. in their office in Van-couver, British Columbia. Finally, Alan V. Jones has changed jobs twice since the last newsletter. He left JM Waller and went to work for EM-Assist for ten months, both of which had him working on en-vironmental contamination at Hill Air Force Base, and then got hired by the Air Force to work in their Environmental Management group.

For those of you whom I’ve left out, please contact me and let me know how and what you’re do-ing. Also, please feel free to con-tact me if you’d like to get contact information for any of the students I’ve mentioned above.

As always, I wish each and every one of you all the best in both your professional and per-sonal lives.

Blair LarsenI teach Planet Earth, Intro-

duction to Geology, and Natural Disasters to non-majors. In 2011, I taught 11 classes (over 1000 stu-dents) over the course of the year. I also serve on the board of Science

Unwrapped - a free, month-ly presenta-tion series, open to the public, hosted by Utah State University’s College of Science.

Dave LiddellBeing Department Head

keeps me very busy – now I know why John sometimes appeared so “harried!” I still find time to teach a reduced course load – Sedimen-tation and Stratigraphy, which I love, and Quantitative Geology, which is, well, important. I have

also continued with research on the always fascinating Cambrian of the western Cordillera and the chal lenging alpine caves of the Tony Grove area. I have been assisted in the former by graduate students Eva Lyon and Ryan Jensen and undergraduate student Mi-chael Strange. Eva completed her thesis on the relationship be-tween sequence- and biostratigra-phy in the Spence Shale and grad-uated in the Fall. Ryan is working on the sequence stratigraphy of the Bloomington Formation. Michael has added to the biostratigraphy date base that Eva developed and is also studying the paleobiology of hyolithids from the Spence, using innovative Photoshop tech-niques to highlight preserved soft-tissue structures. Kirsten Bahr, who worked on cave morphology and distributions for an undergrad-uate project, is continuing to do so for her MS thesis and has added a hydrogeology aspect as well.

My biggest news is my mar-riage to Saundra last October – awesome lady! We have merged two households and families (we now have an aggregate of three daughters, Allison, Jessica and Katie in college – only Katie is an Aggie). Saundra understands? and is very supportive of my obses-sion with rocks, caves and desert canyons. I continue to work with Search and Rescue as an EMT, diver and vertical team member.

Jessica has paused in her global wanderings for the time be-ing and is now a graduate student at Tulane and working on dual MS degrees in Public Health and So-cial Work. Her internship and field research project deal with AIDS

research. She hopes to continue this in Africa after her graduation. Although the dual MS is tough, she still finds time to enjoy the many cultural opportunities that ‘Nawlins” has to offer.

Tony LowryHighlights for the Geophys-

ics group this past year included the additions of Seismology and Signal Analysis to the six current Geophysics course offerings, and international visitors that included Jon Kirby (on sabbatical from Curtin University in Perth) and Ashutosh Chamoli of the Nation-al Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad (here until August 2012 to collaborate on GPS geo-detic study of the Wasatch fault, with funding from a prestigious Indo-US Science and Technology Transfer Fellowship).

All three of our ongoing NSF research projects produced splashy research results this year. A five-year GPS study of motion of the Rio Grande rift showed that rift-ing there is ongoing but very slow, and surprisingly broad (more than

300 km!). An-other study of GPS in the Andaman Is-lands showed t r a n s i e n t strain excited by the 2004 great Suma-tra-Andaman e a r t h q u a k e c o n t i n u e s ,

including a surprising ~1 meter/year fault slip transient beneath the seismogenic zone, and that as much as 40% of the strain en-ergy released in the earthquake has been recovered in just six years after the event. And, in a paper in Nature we imaged bulk quartz concentration in the western US crust, finding a surprising relation-ship to the geotherm. We hypoth-

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esized this was evidence of a feed-back between quartz abundance, strain, and warming/wetting of the lithosphere. Two strong MS can-didates are finishing up their re-search projects on other topics key to lithosphere studies. Eric Beard, a returned veteran of the Iraq war, has developed a new and more accurate approach to measuring Bonneville shoreline heights from modern DEM data, and is begin-ning work on modeling the flow responsible for rebound. Lisa Seunarine has been modeling the western US’ elevation response to mass variations in the crust and lithosphere, showing that flow of the lower crust is widespread and that standard concepts of crustal isostasy oversimplify the real flow. Both are looking forward to beginning petro-industry jobs that they’ve already lined up!

Bob OaksEmeritus

I have been visiting grandchil-dren [4 boys, 0 to 8 years] in MN and TX, and enjoying field seasons at a more leisurely pace. Two pub-lications with S u s a n n e Janecke in 2011 includ-ed a major re-vision of the e n t r e n c h e d “history” of the Bonn-eville Flood and its af-termath, with outflow northward across Red Rock Pass during two Provo stillstands. Another, on the potential for aquifer storage and recovery in Cache Valley, was co-authored with former USU geol-ogy graduates Mike Lowe, Jim Goddard, and Paul Inkenbrandt [in order of graduation, not author-ship], all now with the Utah Geo-

logical Survey. I also consulted on potential sites for water wells for Mendon and Richmond, UT in 2011. In collaboration with Su-sanne and Tammy Rittenhour, I have helped establish the presence of shoreline deposits of the Cutler Dam lake cycle [~70 ka] below Bonneville and Provo deposits in the SE margin of Trenton Hill in central Cache Valley, where there is an older, yet undated older se-quence beneath, probably either the Little Valley or Pokes Point lake cycle.

Gary O’BrienHowdy, I’m Gary O’Brien. I

have been in the Dept. of Geology since 2005 as a Research Associate (Geomorphology with Pederson). My role changed to that of Instru-ment Technician last fall and I now manage our analytical facilities and the major instruments. These include the X-Ray instruments (X-Ray diffractometer and X-ray fluorescence elemental analyzer), the Malvern laser particle-size analyzer and Picarro carbon ana-lyzer, and laser ablation ICP-MS ( I n d u c t i v e l y -Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrom-eter). This di-verse resource of research tools is housed on the first floor of the Geology Build-ing.

This year we have begun to really get organized and are excit-ed to be moving in a new direction with the Geology Department In-strument Laboratory. This includes involving students in hands-on instrument-related research to a greater degree, expanding the ICP-MS lab, upgrading our field tools with new survey-grade GPS systems (real-time kinematic – RTK - Global Positioning System)

and iPads for mapping, and for the first time, implementing a new fee-based system for students, fac-ulty and on-campus and outside users. That is, we are beginning to create a financial foundation of long-term support for the instru-ments and their maintenance.

Last spring I taught Physical Geology and I taught Oceans this summer.

My family and I have lived in Cache Valley since 2005. I am married to Asst. Prof. Tammy Rit-tenour, and we have a five-year old son, Gavin. We all enjoy ski-ing, hiking, river running, biking, hanging out in our awesome little home, and of course, contemplat-ing the geology of the Great Basin and beyond.

Joel PedersonAnother academic year, an-

other set of great students gone and a new crop has sprouted. In the past couple years, Erin Tainer, Jon Harvey, and Chris Tressler have finished grad stud-ies with me. They worked on the Holocene history of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, arroyo cycles and paleofloods in southern Utah, and erosion in Grand Can-yon and across the Colorado Pla-

teau, respec-tively. Now, along with some great undergradu-ate research-ers, they have moved on to the next phases of life

as geologists. My Grand Canyon research

days are pretty much wrapped up, and I have a couple of new grad students working elsewhere in the Colorado Plateau on its landscape evolution. This includes bedrock controls on topography and study-

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ing the Colorado River’s history north of Moab, especially with re-spect to active salt tectonics. I am finishing some very fun and excit-ing work using OSL dating in new ways to figure out the mysterious age of Barrier Canyon-style rock art in southern Utah. Finally, in a new twist, a new student of mine is working on developing apps for mobile devices to teach introduc-tory geology concepts!

With the changing guard in the department, I have shifted from serving as undergraduate advi-sor to being the graduate director. For the past couple years, we have had a rapidly growing and excit-ing graduate program. The number and quality of applicants to our program has been on the rise, and we are right now graduating the first students from our PhD degree program. We have also started a plan-B MS in Applied Environ-mental Geosciences designed for those looking for a career shift, and to be taken through distance education. There is a lot going on!

Tammy RittenourThis has been a fun and excit-

ing year for me. In July I received a CAREER Award for my work on Arroyos (steep-walled entrenched semi-arid streams) in Southern Utah. The CAREER Award is the most prestigious award given by the National Science Founda-tion. This is the second CAREER awardee in the Department (Tony Lowry re-ceived a CA-REER Award in 2009) at-testing to the strengths of our small but active Geol-ogy Depart-ment.

In addition to research on arroyos in Southern Utah (MS graduate students, Will Huff and Anne Hayden), I have active re-search looking at the timing of gla-cial advances in the Southern Alps of New Zealand and the Olympic Mountains of Washington as part of an NSF-funded project inves-tigating possible correlations and climate connections between these regions during marine isotope state (MIS) 3-4 (MS graduate stu-dent, Cianna Wyshnytzky).

Current research also in-cludes using tree-rings from the Bear River Range to reconstruct past hydro-climatic variability in the region (MS graduate student, Eric Allen), fluvial response to glaciation and sea level change in Corsica, Western Mediterranean (MS graduate student, Emilee Skyles), response of alluvial fans and hillslope sediment supply to glacial-interglacial climate change in the Lost River Range, Idaho (NSF-funded project, MS student, Megan Kenworthy, Boise State University), reconstructing arid-ity from sand dune activity in the eastern Snake River Plain (BS and now MS Student, Heidi Pearce—project nearing completion), and study of the luminescence ages, thermochronology and deposi-tional environments associated with sediment intervals within the HotSpot Core from Kimama Idaho (BS student, Ben LaRiviere).

John ShervaisSince stepping down as De-

partment Head in 2010 I have been, if anything, busier than ever. I now teach both Mineralogy and Igneous/Metamorphic Petrology each year, and a range of gradu-ate courses. Our first PhD stu-dents are completing their degrees this spring. My first PhD student,

Marlon Jean, worked on both the Snake River Plain and Cali-fornia Coast Ranges. My second USU PhD student, Katie Potter, is completing her second year, and is also working on Project Hot-pot. My current Master’s student, Chris Sant, is also finishing this year and has accepted a position at BYU-Idaho.

“Project Hotspot” – funded by the US Department of Energy and the International Continental Drilling Program, with signifi-cant university contribution and additional support from the US

Air Force – has been an e n o r m o u s commitment, and I am grateful for the support and efforts of a fantas-tic DOSECC crew, Jim Evans, Tom

Lachmar, and their graduate stu-dents James Kessler and Thom-as Freeman, who have all made significant contributions to our success. For a full report on that project, see the article on Project Hotspot in this Newsletter.

In addition, I continue to work on ophiolites in California, and last Fall realized a life-long dream by visiting Urumqi in west-ern China for a 10 day field trip and Penrose conference on the Central Asian Orogenic Belt.

On a personal note, my daughter is completing her third year at Wesleyan University, and just received the 2012 Gutmann Field Scholarship for research in the Alps this summer. Also, my wife Marie and I will be taking our first real vacation in over 3 years this summer, and next Fall I begin my first sabbatical since 1992 (!).

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Bob Oaks

Clyde Hardy and Tom Lachmar

1980’s Department Picnic

Dave Liddell

Tom Lachmar

Jim Evans

Susanne Janecke

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A Utah State University team from the Geology Department proved their prowess in the first leg of a global competition designed to test on-the-ground knowledge and ana-lytical skills in petroleum geosciences. The Regional award added $4,000 to a student scholarship fund.

Team Store Blå (Norwegian for “Big Blue”), advised by doctoral student men-tor Elizabeth Petrie and consisting of USU graduate students Mitchell Prante (team leader), Lisa Seunarine, and Ryan Sonntag, along with undergraduates Rhead Cannon and Dave Richey, received the American Asso-ciation of Petroleum Geologists Rocky Mountain Section’s Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) March 19, 2011 in Boulder, Colorado with their presentation, “High-ly Prospective Hydro-carbon Accumulations: Southwest Barents Sea” and presented in the final competition on April 8 and 9 in Houston, Texas.

Store Blå received their assignment for the competition, which included an authen-tic geological dataset, from the competition organizers on January 22. The challenge scenario, set in Norwegian waters, inspired the team name.

According to Jim Evans, Geology professor and faculty adviser, “The AAPG organizers presented a formidable oil and ex-ploration problem for the students to solve.

The students had a limited amount of time to develop a technical assessment of their as-signed study area and prepare recommenda-tions for an industry panel of judges.”

At the final competition in Houston, the Aggies competed with five other teams from the United States as well as the winning regional teams from Africa, Asia/Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

“Competitions and project-based teach-ing efforts are an important way to prepare students for careers in the petroleum indus-

try,” Evans said. “The Imperial Barrel com-petition is designed for graduate students, but we have outstanding undergraduates on our team as well.”

Evans reported that the coordina-tor of the Rocky Mountain regional com-petition described the judges as “very impressed” with the high quality of the USU team’s presentation and their tech-nical understanding of the data. This is the first time a team from USU has en-tered the Imperial Barrel competition.

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Students Imperial Barrel Award Regional Champs, Advance to International Finals

USU Geology students after winning the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Rocky Mountain Section’s Imperial Barrel Award. From left: Dave Richey, Mitch Prante, Ryan Sonntag, Lisa Seunarine and Rhead Cannon.

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This year, the newly formed Geology Department graduate student organization – the Logan Geological Society – began meeting and taking on projects in ear-nest. The goals of the Logan Geological Society are: to foster communication between faculty and graduate students and have active representation in departmen-tal affairs, to support graduate students academically and professionally, and to promote a sense of com-munity within the Geology Department. This year, we have elected a representative to participate in faculty meetings, organized several informal “brown-bag” seminars, and provided refreshments for the weekly departmental seminar. Currently, we are hoping to raise

funds to be used for student field trips and undergradu-ate research partnerships. We are selling aluminum wa-ter bottles ($12) and bumper stickers ($2) emblazoned with our awesome logo (see website for ordering in-formation). Next year, leadership will be transitioning to Natalie Bursztyn. Dawn Hayes and Katie Potter will be our faculty meeting representatives and San-tiago Flores and Mitch Prante will organize seminar refreshments. We hope to continue fundraising and im-plementing ideas to accomplish our goals. Check out our website, and please contact us ([email protected]) with suggestions for the future, or if you’d like to make a contribution.

Logan Geological Society

This semester has been very eventful for the Geology Club here at Utah State. We voted in a new president, Lily Horne, and we are taking steps to make this club a fully functioning, fun, and successful organization. This spring, the club has had two field trips. The first trip was to Niter Ice Cave and Lava Hot Springs. Our second trip was to the Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. These trips were made possible by our

very generous alumni, who have donated their own money to support the Geology Club.

The Geology Club has been working on becoming more involved and an official club within the university. Once we accomplish this, the club will be able to apply for grants as well as be able to use University facilities.

One of Geology Club’s main goals is to become more involved in the Cache Val-ley community. To date, we have made a few contacts. We have recently been in touch with the new director of the Stokes Nature Center, which has given members of the Geology Club a grant to create a Geological Driving Tour of Logan

Canyon. With this established relationship with the Nature Center, we have been able to create a few Geology Non-Paid Internships with them. The club has also been in contact with a local elementary school and will host a 4th grade class. Our goal is to expose them to various geologic processes. We hope to stay in contact with the school and have more geology-based lessons with them in the future.

The club now has an established website. Our Vice President, Kirsten Bahr, posts all of our meeting notes, as well as various activities on the website. The club also sells T-shirts and will soon have additional Geology Club items, which you can find on the site, as well (see announcement within this newsletter). The Geo-Club website can be accessed from the Department’s web page or by typing in: http://sites.google.com/site/usugeologyclub/

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Something extraor-dinary happened to life on Earth some 740 million years ago, and USU Geologists are exploring the oldest and tiniest fossils to find out why. Deep in the fine grained mudstone of eastern Utah’s Uinta Mountains, doc-toral student Dawn Hayes and faculty mentor Carol Dehler have recovered evidence of Baylinella, a bacterium that “bloomed like crazy,” depleted an already stressed environ-ment of oxygen, crowded out more complex organisms and resulted in widespread die-off of early plant and animal life. “Similar evidence found in the rock record in other areas of the world implies some sort of global phenomenon rather than a localized event,” says Hayes,

who completed a master’s degree from USU in Spring 2010.

Did a giant meteorite strike the Earth? Did a huge volcano erupt? Or does the evidence point to a gradual change in climate?

“There’s no smoking gun,” says Dehler, Associate Professor of Sedimentology, “But increased sulfur and changes in iron compounds suggest depleted oxygen in oceans, which might have been caused by bacterial blooms, along with changes in the carbon cycle that could have been due to increased volcanic activity.”

Hayes says Baylinella is likely similar to cyanobac-teria, a modern blue-green algae that thrives in both fresh water and marine envi-

‘Really Tiny, Really Old’ Fossils

Carol Dehler, left, and Dawn Hayes are challenging long-held views of the so-called Snowball Earth Theory. The scientists pre-sented their findings at the Geological Society of America meeting October 31-November 3, 2011.

ronments.Microfossils, known as

“acritarchs,” akin to those Dehler and Hayes found in the Uintas, have been discovered in the Grand Canyon. The Precambrian specimens mirror discover-ies in Sweden, Greenland, Tasmania, and possibly, California’s Death Valley. In fact, it was microfossil changes found by Dehler and colleagues at the Grand Canyon that sparked Hayes’ and Dehler’s idea of look-ing for similar changes in rocks of the same age in the Uintas.

Hayes’ and Dehler’s findings, combined with the discoveries from the Grand Canyon, suggest that wide-spread die-offs occurred before an intense ice age purportedly spanned the globe. According to a theory known as “Snowball Earth,” glaciers encased the planet and led to the demise of early plant and animal life.

“Snowball Earth sug-gests the glaciation was the cause of die-offs,” Dehler says. “We think something much earlier led to anoxia—lack of oxygen—and caused a ripple effect, enabling bac-teria to flourish, further de-pleting the planet’s oceans of oxygen, and killing off other species.”

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The Student Showcase celebrated its 25th anniversary and was the highlight of USU’s Undergraduate Research Day. Students gave oral presentations and displayed posters through-out the day, offering audience members the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about each student’s individual re-search topic.

One of the three posters presented by the Geology de-partment was “Structural and Lithologic Influences on Karst Systems in the Tony Grove Area, Northern Utah” by Kirst-en Bahr, Nathan S. Giles, and Heather D. Smith with faculty mentor and Geology Depart-ment Head, Dave Liddell. Their research examined the caves of the Tony Grove area of the Bear River Range in Northern Utah with the goal of determining in-fluences on cave morphology.

The second geology poster presented at the Student Show-case was “The Effects of CO2 Flow Within Proposed Seques-tration Lithologies” by Nathan

Giles with faculty men-tor, Jim Ev-ans.

G i l e s ’ research was to determine minera logy and physi-cal changes within rock samples from various pro-posed CO2 s e q u e s t r a -

tion sites including samples from Svalbard, Norway and the San Rafael Swell in Utah. The San Rafael samples include the Navajo Sandstone, Entrada Sandstone, Nugget Sandstone, Mancos Shale, as well as fos-siliferous Indiana Limestone to examine the reaction within car-bonates.

The results indicated that flow of concentrated CO2 in rocks at a low temperature and pressure may significantly alter water chemistry, rock fabric, and produce neomineralization which may hinder flow in some litholo-gies.

Michae l S t r a n g e , mentored by Dave Liddell, presented his research on “Paleocology and Paleoge-ography of the Middle Cam-brian Spence

Shale Member of the Langston Formation of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho.”

The Cambrian Period was a time of great biological change. The transition from non-biomin-eralizing to biomineralizing ani-mals was the largest biotic turn-over since the first evolution of multicelluarity. One of the first of these body plan pioneers was the Hyolitha, an enigmatic sea-dwelling creature of unknown affinity. A detailed look at this understudied animal was given to some exceptionally preserved fossils from the Middle Cam-brian Spence Shale in order to clarify phylogenic relationships. This study also examined tri-lobite diversity throughout the Langston Formation with an emphasis on the Spence Shale Member due to the high number of genera and, therefore, high potential for information. This project was designed to develop a more complete picture of the ecology and paleoenvironments of the Cambrian seas of north-ern Utah and southern Idaho.

Undergraduate Research Presentations at the 2011 and 2012 Student Showcases

Nathan Giles presenting “The Effects of CO2 Flow within Proposed Sequestration Lithologies.”

Michael Strange presenting “Paleocology and Paleogeog-raphy of the Middle Cambrian Spence Shale Member of the Langston Formation of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho”

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Support the Logan Geological Society!Buy an aluminum water bottle or sticker!

The newly formed Logan Geological Society (USU Geology Graduate Student Association) would appreciate your support. We are selling aluminum water bottles and bumper stickers printed with our new logo. Money raised will go to field trips, community service projects, and scholarships for undergraduate research partnerships.

Please fill out the order form below and return it along with payment to: Robin Nagy (LGS President)

4505 Old Main HillLogan, UT 84322-4505

At this time, we can only accept cash and checks. Please make checks out to:USU Department of Geology

Aluminum water bottle ($12/each) x $12/each =

Bumper sticker ($2/each) x $2/each =Additional donation =

Shipping (no shipping if picked up in person) $3.00TOTAL

o Please ship to:

o I will pick up in person at the geology department (in Robin’s office, B01)

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

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Congratulations to Our Recent Undergraduates!

Recent Graduate Students and Their ThesesPaul Inkenbrandt: Estimates of the Hydraulic Parameters of Aquifers in Cache Valley, Utah and Idaho

Dawn Hayes: Stratigraphic, Microfossil, and Geochemical Analysis of the Neoprotero-zoic Uinta Mountain Group, Utah: Evidence for a Eutrophication Event

Meghan Zarnestske: Characterization of Fractionation of Basalt Flows Near Mountain Home, Idaho

Anne Hayden: Reconstructing the Holocene Arroyo History of the Upper Escalante River, Southern Utah, Using Optically Stimulated Liminescense (OSL) and Radiocarbon Dating

Ryan Sonntag: Sedimentologic Controls on Fracture Distribution and the Network Development Within Mesaverde Group Lithofacies, Uinta Basin, Utah

Eric Allen: USU Ecology Center Graduate Research Support Award $3,500. This award will help fund field travel and equipment as part of a long term tree-growth & climate research.

Natalie Bursztyn—Willard L. Eccles Foundation Graduate Fellowships $18,000 a year for three years. The most prestigious award available to graduate students in the College of Science. Funded annually by the Willard L. Eccles Charitable Foundation it is designed to attract and retain the finest academic minds with a creative and ambitious approach to solving research problems.

James Kessler—GSA Grant $1,990. For sample analysis on the core from the Snake River drilling project. It will be put towards the expense of making thin sections, elemental/mineralogical analysis, and/or permeability testing on core samples.

Liz Petrie—Structural Diagenesis Fellowship $8,000.

Mitch Prante—GSA Grant $2,900. “Ancient seismicity and rock products along a low-angle normal fault: Evidence from the West Salton Detachment Fault”

Cianna Wyshnytzky—The John Mason Clark 1877 Fellowship in Paleontology and Geology, $3,300 from Amherst College. A fund from the estate of Noah T. Clarke was established in memory of his father, John Ma-son Clarke 1877, to provide income for a fellowship or fellowships for the pursuit of studies in paleontology or geology.

Natalie Bursztyn—GSA Research Grant $1,500. Helped cover the costs of workshop fees, field sampling, and field & lab equipment.

Dave Richey—ExxonMobil Geoscience Recruiting Grant $5,000 and APG Duncan A McNaughton Memorial Grant $2,000

External Scholarships and Awards

Summer 2011:Brandon AlgerCody AllenKirsten BahrLarry “Will” KennickDave Richey

Fall 2011:Rhead CannonBryce CoyChristopher R. DaviesJolie Pendleton

Spring 2012:Rachel BoyackNathan GilesLayne Morris

Student

News

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Department Awards and Scholarships

Outstanding Graduate Researcher Liz Petrie Ryan Sonntag

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Dawn Hayes

Outstanding Graduating Senior Rhead Cannon

Donald W. Fiesinger Citizenship Award Sandra Harris Nathan Giles

Peter T. Kolesar Scholarship Crystal Jones

Beryl O. & Tura H. Springer Memorial Scholarship Dawn Hayes

J. Stewart Williams Graduate Fellowship Eric Allen Heidi Pearce

Graymont Geology Scholarship A.J. Knight Brennan Young

Peter R. McKillop Memorial Scholarship Hannah McDonough

Imperial Barrel Award Rhead Cannon Dave Richey Chris Sant

Outstanding PhD Researcher Katie Potter

Outstanding MS Researcher Lisa Seunarine

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Steve Thornock Dave Richey

Outstanding Graduating Senior Brennan Young

Donald W. Fiesinger Citizenship Award AJ Knight

Peter T. Kolesar Scholarship Crystal Jones Michael Strange

Thomas A. Riemondy Scholarship Lily Horne Mikayla Reid

Clyde T. Hardy Scholarship Crystal Jones AJ Knight Michael Strange

Graymont Geology Scholarship AJ Knight

Beryl O. & Tura H. Springer Memorial Scholarship Hannah McDonough

Peter R. McKillop Memorial Scholarship Andy Jochems

J. Stewart Williams Graduate Fellowship Natalie Bursztyn Will Huff Cianna Wyshnytsky

Paris Hills Agricom Mitch Prante

Robert Q. Oaks, Jr. Graduate Citizenship Award Kirsten Bahr

David Rider Memorial Scholarship Justin Oakeson

Questar Scholarship Dallas Nutt Lauren Olsen Mikayla Reid

2011 Awards:

2012 Awards:

Student

News

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2012 J. Stewart Williams Scholarship recipi-ents Will Huff, Natalie Bursztyn, and Cianna Wyshnytsky

BS graduation 2012. Left to right: Tammy Rittenour, Tom Lachmar, Dave Liddell, Chris Davies, Nate Giles, Rachel Boyack, Carol Dehler

Dave Liddell presenting Brennan Young with the 2012 Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Katie Potter, Outstanding PhD Researcher 2012, accepts award from Dave Liddell

Marlon Jean, PhD, at 2012 commencement, mentor John Shervais

Kelly Bradbury, PhD, at 2012 Commencement,mentor Jim Evans

Student

News

Alumni

News

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2012 Advisory BoardGreetings! We would like to introduce the 2012 Geology Department Advisory Board:

Mark Birch (BS 84, MS 89)Melissa Connely (MS 02)Mark Dubois (BS 87, MS 90)Jim Goddard (BS 91, MS 93)Angela Isaacs (BS 03, MS 06)Al Jones (BS 89, MS 95Dave Loope (BS 77)

Mike Lowe (MS 87)Craig Nelson (BS 82, MS 86)Stephen Personius (BS 78)Caleb Pollock (BS 96)Bob Robison (MS 87)Dan Rogers (BS 82, MS 87)Andy Taylor (MS 03) - President

The Geology Department Advisory Board consists of loyal, former students of the Geology Department drawn from the whole range of industries, government agencies, and educational groups represented by our alumni. The Board met on the campus of Utah State University in February, and board activities included a Career Advisory Panel for undergraduate and graduate students followed by pizza and beverages in town. The Board met with stu-dents, faculty and staff, College of Science Dean Jim MacMahon, and USU President Stan Albrecht to discuss the challenges and successes that the Department and University have experienced in the past year. The Board provides advice and recommendations to the Department and provides a summary of their findings to the Dean and President. We are very pleased to note that the Board found that, “Despite several challenges facing the Depart-ment, the faculty/student morale and productivity seem to be at all-time highs! It’s truly amazing how the Geology Department has overcome significant budget cuts and continued to grow academically and financially.”

Board members are responsible for initiating the very successful “Benchmark” fund that supports our graduate students through tuition awards. More information about the Advisory Board and various development efforts are available at: http://geology.usu.edu/htm/alumni/giving-to-usu-geology. The Benchmark fund is an annual fund to support graduate student education; stay tuned for a new effort for undergraduate students.

A report released this summer by the U.S. Department of Education indicates that the nation’s graduate students rely heavily on loans and grants to pay for their education. At the same time, universities including USU are dealing with federal and state restraints and are scrambling to offer aid to compete with peer insti-tutions and attract top candidates.

Recognizing these challenges, the USU Geology Department’s Advisory Board, a group of alumni and friends that meets annually to visit the department and offer advice and support, stepped into action. The Board established the Department’s Benchmark Society, a new group of supporters, and its accompanying Benchmark Fund, a new channel of funding to bolster recruitment and retention of hard-working scholars.

“In order to thrive in these

challenging times, it’s imperative that the Geology Department be able to continue to aggressively recruit top quality graduate students by of-fering competitive stipends, tuition waivers, and health insurance,” says Andy Taylor (MS 2003), Board chair and a manager with Anadarko Petroleum Corporation in Denver. “The Advisory Board saw these challenges as a call to action and asked fellow al-ums to join us in making an annual commitment to sup-port the Geology graduate program via the Benchmark Society.”

Beginning in 2009, the eleven-member board, con-sisting of representatives from many different indus-tries and fields, pounded the pavement to garner broader

alumni and corporate participation in the program funding. Through many forms of communication, the Society expanded to thirty mem-bers and raised more than $60,000 to establish the Benchmark Fund. This year, the fund supported seven graduate students in diverse research projects.

2011 Advisory Board

Members of Advisory Board during 2011 meeting. Left to right: Sitting: Dan Rogers, Mike Lowe, Jim Goddard, Craig Nelson. Standing: Bob Robison, Al Jones, Melissa Connely, Matt Pachell, Andy Taylor.

News from our AlumniRobert Grenda (BS 1994) Lives in Roy, Utah and now owns a geotechnical drilling company, Great Basin Drilling, Inc. He is also employed as the staff geologist/field engi-neer for GSH Geotechnical Consultants, Inc. in Salt Lake City. Robert sends his thanks to the professors of the Geology department at USU. Thanks Dave Liddell, Jim Evans, Don Fiesinger, and the many others.

Vincent Jefferies (BS 1997) It’s been a busy 11 or so years. After USU, I worked a summer at Ken-necott Exploration then went to BYU for my MS. Before graduating in the summer of 2000, I worked for a geotech company called Applied Geotechnical Engineering Consultants. Several months prior to defending my thesis (mapping the Springville Fault using gravity and magnetic methods), I took a job at Dames and Moore just prior to their merger with URS. When they ran out of work for me, I worked for three months as a helper on a Cone Tec rig until I obtained employment as a geologist again at Wasatch Environmental. I was there for 6 years, then in September of 2007 I took my current position as a coal mine geologist at Energy West's Deer Creek Mine.

It is close to a 35-40 minute drive from mine portal to the active workings. The active faces are ~12 miles back from the portal by the mine offices. It is quite an amazing mine. It was connected to the south to the old Wilberg Mine (which is sealed). The infamous Crandall Canyon mine is just north of Deer Creek. We were going to mine into it for air until they had their disaster (just prior to me being hired—I was being interviewed for my position during that time). Our lease is adjacent south of theirs. Apparently Energy West out bid them on it.

Energy West is owned by Pacificorp, and we are considered a "captive" mine as we provide all of the coal we mine to Pacificorp power plants. The Huntington Power Plant is just ~3 miles from the portal, and we have a belt that feeds it from our tipple.

Please say a warm hello to Docs Evans, Liddell, Oaks (if you ever see him around still), and all the rest. You guys are a great bunch of professors!

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Jeremiah Burton (BS 1999) Lives in Salt Lake City and is working for Hewitt Petroleum which has two areas of operations and three exploratory prospects in the Central Utah Over-thrust, in Juab and Sanpete counties. They also have a number of producing properties in Central Kansas, where new technologies are used to exploit old and abandoned fields.

Alumni

News

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If you would like to update your alumni profile, please go to

http://geology.usu.edu/ and fill out the alumni contact form.

We are also looking for photos of your fieldtrips while you attended USU

to add to our new archive link.

Bill Douglass (BS 1952) is a retired petroleum geologist. He and his wife Ana alternate between living in Logan, Utah and Ajijic, on the shore of Lake Cha-pala in Jalisco State, Mexico. His son, Eduardo, is also an Aggie, but graduated in Humanities. Bill remains active in ge-ology and has partici-pated in geophysics (GPS) investigations in Mexico conducted by the University of Wisconsin, Caltech, and UNAM.

Dave Liddell (L) and Bill Douglass (R) at 13,200’ with El Volcan Colima, Jalisco State, Mexico, in the background, March, 2011.

David Allen Williams (BS 1986) currently works as VP Amer-icas, for Exploration & Mining Services Inspectorate, America Corporation, out of Sparks, Nevada. He graduated from the Geology Department in 1986. He is the grandson of the former Dean of the USU Geology Department, J. Stewart Williams, who served as dean from 1950 to 1967.

Ken Oxburrow Cur-rently lives in Garland, Utah and is teaching Earth Systems in Bear River Valley

Alumni Updates, cont.

Alumni

News

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Utah State University Geology Club T-Shirt Order FormPlease complete form and email to Carol Dehler ([email protected]) or place in mailbox

in GEO 205 or mail to: Geology Dept. USU 4505 Old Main Hill, Logan UT, 84322. Payment due upon receipt of the T-shirt.

Styles: Sizes:Mens (M) XS-4XLLadies (L) S-3XLYouth (Y) XS (4), S (6-8), M (10-12), L (14-16), XL (18-20)Infant-Toddler (IT) 6M, 12M, 18M, 24M, 2T, 3T, 4T

Colors: Costs:White Students pay (cost): $13/adult, YNatural (M,L,Y only) $9/ITCharity pink Add $1.50 for 2XL+Yellow haze All others pay: $15/adult, YRiver blue $11/ITGreen apple Add $1.50 for 2XL+Orange (IT only) Shipping: ~$3 a shirt

Front left pocket area Back of shirt

Quantity Shirt Style Shirt Size Color Cost

Shipping:Total:

Name:_____________________________________________________________________Email address and phone:______________________________________________________Mailing address:_____________________________________________________________

Alumni

News

Donors

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Eric AllenKirsten BahrThomas FreemanWill HuffAndy Jochems

Hannah McDonoughHeidi PearceRebekah WoodMeghan Zarnetske

Current Benchmark Scholars

Robert AdamsonL.C. Allen JonesAnadarko PetroleumDon B. Bass Jr.Benjamin BelgradeStanley BeusMargaret BickmoreAndrew BrehmRuth BrockoBrowning Founda- tionRita June CritchfieldEdward J. DeputyMark DuBoisEdwin Michael Duffy

James EvansExxon MobileMardy FullerHeidi K. HadleyRobert Douglas Hilde- brandCraig S. HorneMary HubbardSusanne JaneckeTom LachmarDavid B. LoopeEugene LuziettoNewmount Mining CorporationChad M. Nichols

Matthew John NovakJill PachellLynn R. PartingtonStephen PersoniusPioneer Natural ResourcesCaleb J. PollockLarry RaymondKaren RiceTovi SantiagoJerry R. SpringerAndy Taylor Richard D. Tifft III

A Special Thanks to All ThoseWho Make Our Programs Possible

The Geology Department at USU greatly benefits from the generosity of its alumni, friends, and supporting companies. All of our programs are greatly enriched by these donations. If you would like to donate to the USU Geology Department,

please go to http://geology.usu.edu/htm/giving-to-us.

Pictures

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Fall 2011: Graduate Student field trip to Tony Groveled by Dave Liddell

2008 Graduate field trip to Southern Californialed by Susanne Janecke and Jim Evans

Spring 2007: Geo 3200 trip to Capital Reefled by Sue Morgan

Spring 2006: Geo 4500 field trip to Twin Falls with John Shervais

Spring 2005: Geo 2500 trip to Yellowstone led by Tony Lowry

Spring 2011: Geo 3200 field trip to Southern Utah

Pictures

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Spring 2012: Geology Club field trip to Natural History Museum of Utah

Joel Pederson pretending to be a dinosaur

Field trip to Notch Peak

Spring 2010 Awards Ceremony

Don Fiesinger and Pete Kolesar atthe Spring 2011 Awards Ceremony

Geology 3200 trip led by Carol Dehler

Department of Geology4505 Old Main HillLogan, UT 84322-4505

If you would prefer to receive the Geology Newsletter in digital format, please send your name and request to [email protected].

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