Geology Department

Fall 2019 Union College

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Chair’s Note......................... 1

Faculty Updates .................. 2-6

Geo Club .............................. 7

Publications ........................ 8

2020 Seniors ...................... 10-11

Grants .................................. 12

Alumni Updates .................. 13-15

SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST

Senior Spotlight via Insta-gram

Photos from GSA Phoenix

Goodbye Deb

The Union Geology Department is a vibrant community of students and faculty, learning inside and outside the classroom and engaging in many different exciting research opportunities. The faculty continues to be very research active and productive and their accomplishments are documented throughout this newsletter. This past year saw students in Alaska, Peru, and Portugal, as well as local areas for fieldwork and sample collection. Upon return from the field, the students use our world-class instrumentation for analyses, including our isotope-ratio mass spectrom-eter (IRMS), laser ablation inductively coupled mass spectrometer (LA ICP-MS), scanning electron microscope, ion chromatographs, and Raman spectrometer. These field and analytical experiences are a pivotal part of the stu-dents’ development as scientists and key to their success in applying to graduate school and jobs after graduation.

The annual fall Geological Society of America meeting was in September this year and several of our faculty (John Garver, David Gillikin, and Jacquie Smith) and students (Alaina Chormann ’20; Steve Camarra ’20, Kaylee Ve-lasquez ’21 and Emma Puhlaski ’22) presented their work in Phoenix. In the spring, many of our senior students (Hayley Bennett ’19, Matt Cole ’19, Rebecca Lippitt ’19, Heidi O’Hora ’19, and Annika Wells ’19) and Kurt Hol-locher presented their work at the Northeastern section of the Geological Society of America meeting, held in Portland, ME. Students working in Alaska (Will Fisher ’19 and Mollie Pope ’19) presented at the Cordillera section meeting in Portland, OR. We also had a presence at the 2018 American Geophysical Union fall meeting, with presentations by Jack Wassick ’19 and his advisor Mason Stahl and the 2018 Geological Society of America fall meeting in Indianapolis, with presentations by Hayley Bennett ’19 and Heidi O’Hora ’19, and talks by Holli Frey and John Garver.

As seen in the list above, our graduating seniors were very active in research, with four students (Hayley Bennett ’19, Will Fisher ’19, Rebecca Lippitt ’19 and Heidi O’Hora ’19) earning departmental honors, based on their thesis work and a departmental presentation. The Smith Prize, awarded to the student(s) with the highest professional potential went to Will Fisher ’19 and Heidi O’Hora ’19 and the Faculty Prize for contributions to the department was awarded to Hayley Bennet ‘19 and Mollie Pope ’19. The student Geology Club continues to be active, spear-heading the senior picnic send-off, outreach events at local science festivals and schools, and the ever-popular Din-ner and Disasters movie nights once a term.

I end this note with a tremendous thank you and words of appreciation for Deb Klein, the geology Department ad-ministrative assistant for the last eleven years. Deb will be retiring in January to Florida and Europe and to spend more time with her family. In her tenure in the department, Deb has been the glue holding the place together, helping students and faculty with tasks big and small, from organizing the annual Mohawk Watershed Symposium to scanning receipts to handling petitions. There are no words to express how much we have valued Deb and how much we will miss her presence in the department.

Stay in touch with the department through our Facebook and Instagram accounts and send us your news and up-dates to include in the newsletter!

2019 Geology seniors front row: Annika Wells, Rebecca Lippitt, Hayley Bennett, Heidi O’Hora, Matt Cole. Back row: Jack Wassik, Mollie Pope, Max McGeown, John Vu, Will Fisher, Matt Cole. Missing Maddi Corcoran and Maddie Borek

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I enjoyed another busy year with teaching and research. I continue to teach courses in Sedimentology and stratigraphy, Natu-ral disasters, and Tectonics. My research is focussed on Alaskan tectonics, natural radiation in the environment, and the Mo-hawk Watershed.

My Spring term Natural Disasters course has become a favorite course of mine be-cause it allows for an interesting mix of science and policy. This course is designed for first-year students, and for many of them it is their first introduction to science and the scientific method. A new lab pro-ject that I just integrated into this course is a module on rock radioactivity and radon in the rocks in the Schenectady area. The

Schenectady area is underlain by the Utica Shale and the Schenectady Formation; both units have shale with relatively high urani-um concentrations and high fracture densi-ty. Hence there is a local radon problem, and students tackle the measurement of radioactivity and radon, but also the practi-cal implications of what this means for resi-dents in Schenectady County.

Last Spring I was appointed by Governor Cuomo to sit on the ReImagine the Canals task force to look into the future of the Erie Canal. This complicated task involves un-derstanding floods and ice jams, invasive species, irrigation, and other canal-related issues. A major goal of this effort is to look into ways that the Canal can be developed to become driving force in local economic development and to evaluate new forms of recreation and tourism on the canal (or here, the Mohawk River). One item on the agenda is Ice jam flooding on the Mohawk, which is still a major problem. The chronic and damaging flooding cause by ice jams on the Mohawk, especially in the Stockade district of Schenectady, is a concern and the focus of mitigation efforts. For more about the task force and this effort go here. https://www.ny.gov/reimagine-canals-initiative/reimagine-canal-task-force

In March 2019, we hosted the 11th annual Mohawk Watershed Symposium at Union, which was well attended by both profes-sionals and students. Union is still playing in important leadership role in the Mohawk Watershed. The Symposium has played a pivotal role in dovetailing science and poli-cy in management decisions.

My research activity in tectonics is still pri-marily focused on understanding the evolu-tion of Cretaceous and Paleocene strata in Alaska and California. This last summer we returned to the Yakutat area to work on Cretaceous-Eocene strata of the Yakutat Group. Our field work was focused on the rocks in Harlequin Lake, a 20 mile-long

John Garver

It’s hard to believe I began my twelfth year at Union this fall. I am in my fourth year as chair of the department and was promoted to full professor, so I suppose I am now officially “senior faculty”. In addition to my teaching and research, I have stepped into a new role as part of the General Education Task Force at Union, which is attempting to redesign the core curriculum to better serve our students.

I continue to teach senior seminar, volcan-ology, and petrology. Volcanology was a particularly fun class this past winter, as we discussed the 2018 eruptions at Kilauea in Hawaii. Students learned about cutting-edge volcano monitoring techniques, as well as how communities cope with an on-going eruption. The maps, datasets, and blogs published by the Hawaii Volcano Ob-servatory of the USGS were a great re-source and allowed the students to study many facets of the eight-month event.

On the research front, I wrapped up a cou-ple of projects in Dominica. We published a paper in Geology in October on the crystal-lization episodes of zircon and the implica-tion for magmatic storage conditions. The work was based on senior theses by Sarah Brehm ’15 and Rebecca Babiak ’16, who are co-authors on the paper. In March, we pub-lished a paper in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research on the chemical and isotopic compositions of hydrothermal waters in Dominica from 2013-2017. We showed that the reservoir feeding the Boil-ing Lake in the Valley of Desolation has changed from a shallow sulphate-rich source to a deeper brine-source since moni-toring began in 2000. We also explored the mysterious lake draining events that peri-odically occur at the Boling Lake and deter-mined the recent 2016 event was caused by a small landslide into the lake which blocked the conduit. Collectively, this work provides a baseline for future monitoring of volcanic unrest in the area. The work was based in part on senior theses by Tara Metzger ’15, Kathryn DeFranco ’16, and Carli Aragosa ’17 and funding from National Geographic and the Keck Geology consorti-

um. We continue to have several projects from Dominica in various stages of develop-ment. In September, I attended a VOILA workshop in Trinidad, focused on volatiles in the Lesser Antilles and got some addi-tional insights on the implications of our detrital zircon study for paleogeographic reconstructions of the Caribbean.

This year I began a new project in central Oregon, looking at some of the young (<500 ka) explosive and effusive rhyolitic deposits near Bend. Rebecca Lippitt ’19 studied the Tumalo Tuff and Bend Pumice, using trace element bulk chemistry and two-oxide ther-mometry and fugacity to elucidate magma genesis. She presented her work at NE GSA in March. Madi Corcoran ’19 focused on plagioclase textures and chemistry in 2 ka rhyolitic lavas peripheral to South Sister Volcano.

Two former petrology students, Sarah Hick-ernell ’18 and Katherine Swager ’17, began graduate programs at Stanford at University of Wisconsin, respectively, this fall.

Over the summer, Matt and I took the girls to Oregon for vacation to visit family and volcanoes and do a little sampling. Natalie and Zoe, now 8 and 6, really enjoyed Pow-ell’s book store, but were equally enamored of Mount Hood, Smith Rocks, and Crater Lake.

Holli Frey

Holli at Sky Pond in Rocky Mountain NP, CO.

Natalie, Holli, and Zoe atop Cascade Mountain, NY.

Doing fieldwork in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska.

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freshwater lake that has some of the fastest receding glaciers in Alaska. Calving ice and floating icebergs were an interesting field hazard that we dealt with daily while doing our field sampling.

Last fall, I taught Stable Isotopes and had a wonderful group of students. The class was a lot of fun and the students explored some very cool projects including water isotopes in the springs at Saratoga, water use in trees on campus, and dog diets. I also taught In-troduction to Oceanography and Earth and Life Through Time – including the weekend trip to the Catskills. This year we had beauti-ful weather and the waterfalls at Kaaterskill were amazing. In early spring I joined a joint Union/Michigan field excursion to the Peru-vian Andes. The team was Laura Piccirillo ‘20, Professor Don Rodbell, and I, along with U. Michigan professor Naiomi Levin and her two PhD students Phoebe Aron and Sarah Katz – yes the same Sarah who was our lab technician for two years! We helped the Michigan group get orientated around the lakes and then the Union team descended into two high altitude cave systems to col-lect samples. The trip was a huge success and Laura has been working hard on her samples.

I also worked with Alaina Chormann ’20 on an NSF funded cave project in Portugal. We visited the caves twice this year with our collaborator Alan Wanamaker from Iowa State University. We collected samples and downloaded data from several loggers in the caves. Alaina is sampling a stalagmite from southern Portugal at high resolution to help reconstruct paleoclimate. Two other students, Steve Camarra ’20 and Emma Pu-halski ‘22, are working on my NSF Antarcti-ca scallop project and we recently discov-ered that shell nitrogen isotopes are a good proxy of sea ice cover! Alaina, Steve, and Emma all presented at the Geological Soci-

ety of America meeting in Phoenix. At home, our son Lucas just started middle school this year – which is causing lots of adjustments for everyone. We’re all super busy, but are having fun!

David Gillikin

Dave Gillikin

Matt Manon

This year it was great to work with Matthew Cole ’19 on his senior thesis pro-ject examining the effects of ammonia gas in the reaction cell of the mass spec, and its applications to the U-Pb system for geochronology. After a summer field sea-son in the Adirondacks, Matt spent the year characterizing zircons, and then blow-ing them away, studying the effects of the ammonia on the U-Pb system with our new mass spec. Matt presented his find-ings at northeast GSA, and has moved on to a successful Minerva Fellowship in Ken-ya, so without him I will press onwards in the lab, and am now in the process of col-lecting more standards for geochronologi-cal analyses. In the next few weeks we’ll be installing a SQUID onto the ICP which, rather than shooting ink all over the place, will hopefully produce a smoothed, pre-cise ablation signal.

I am still working closely with Holli on the issue of whether subvolcanic magma chambers freeze up completely before eruptions (cold vs hot storage) and other petrogenetic processes in volcanic rocks from both Dominica and now Oregon. In collaboration with Pat Joseph at the Seis-mic Research Centre of the UWI, we con-tinue to investigate hydrothermal waters from Dominica, which appear to be chang-ing over time.

This year I again presented at the biennial North America Workshop on Laser Abla-tion in Austin Texas. The workshop is al-ways an invigorating experience, where a wide variety of laser applications mix to-

gether with users of various skill levels. There is currently much interest in the kind of work we are doing, because the triple-quad mass spectrometers are still fairly new, and there is a specific challenge to getting the gas flow within the reaction cell to play nice with the time variable ablation signal. Reaction gases work much more cleanly with the triple quads, and novel applications in geochronology and geo-chemistry are an excellent area to push further research. Union is one of a handful of labs able to do this kind of work, which is an exciting opportunity for all of us.

The new XRD is now installed in the base-ment of Olin and, following the requisite installation hiccups, is happily scanning for peaks through a wide range two-thetas. So far, we’ve observed the transition from quartz to tridymite using the high tempera-ture stage. Sadly the days of the well-loved Phillips instrument and its chart recorder may now be forever behind us.

On a personal front, we got to do some geotourism this summer with Natalie and Zoe, taking them out to see volcanic sights in Oregon, from Mt Hood all the way down to Crater Lake. There are few geologic sites in the world that can compare to staring into the deep caldera left by the explosive eruption of Mount Mazama. A truly hum-bling experience. Looking forward to a good winter ahead, with lots of time in the lab, and with the family, and then onto teaching one of my favorite classes, geophysics. Hope you are all well and always happy to hear from you about your adventures be-yond Union.

Marcy Anorthosite on Cascade Mountain in the high peaks region, Adirondacks. Geologist for scale.

Wizard Island, Crater Lake, Oregon.

David Gillikin, Alaina Chormann, and Alan Wanamaker muddy - after caving in Portugal.

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Kurt Hollocher

I taught Physical Geology as usual last year, but with three lab sections. The slight over-load was so I could go on sabbatical leave during winter and spring. During the sab-batical my plan was mostly to work on pa-pers, and learn to use the laser ablation, ICP-MS system to age date zircons from vari-ous places. In the winter, however, Mason Stahl taught a course in R programming. I wanted to learn something like that to help with data manipulation while writing pa-pers. Unfortunately, it was a tough course (for me) and took up most of my time. In the end, I couldn’t get programs for my own work to work properly, except one, which was actually a big time saver.

I finished a couple of papers in the spring, both with Union student coauthors. One,

on metamorphosed igneous rocks near the Quabbin Reservoir, central Massachu-setts, was accepted. That one involved interpretation of igneous geochemistry and a new, late Taconian tectonic model. The other paper was on Norway rocks, but sadly was rejected. For that one I’ll contin-ue work. I’ve been separating zircons for age dating to bolster some ideas for it.

Also in the fall, winter, and especially spring and summer I was heavily involved in preparation for and installation of the new $327,000 Rigaku XRD, a shared instru-ment purchased with an NSF grant. That took considerable time from other work, but it all had to be done to make sure the instrument worked and was usable by local people, including me.

During the school year I had a thesis stu-dent who worked on the Union College Water Initiative (http://minerva.union.edu/hollochk/water/index.html, contact us if you want a kit so we can analyze your water for lead, cop-per, and zinc). I also had a summer stu-dent who worked on the same general project, expanded to include New York City. Thesis student Sophia Bute ’19 pre-sented her work in a poster at the North-eastern Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America, in Portland, Maine. I also presented a poster at the same con-ference, on some of my work in Norway.

In July I also attended a 10-day field trip on the geology of Iceland, led by three geolo-gists from around the U.S. who do work there. The trip was spectacular, and I brought back samples, photos, and new understanding that will help in my Physical Geology and Petrology courses.

Iceland field trip. Waterfalls along a river carved into thick flood basalts. The basalts have large columns exposed in vertical section on the left side. In the foreground are the eroded tops of the same columns. This valley was carved large-ly by a series of large glacial outburst floods, from Vatnajökull far to the south. These glacial floods are estimated to have had flows as large as 900,000 cubic meters per second, five times the typical discharge of the Amazon River.

My field research over the past year took me to the central Peruvian Andes with col-leagues Dave Gillikin (Union College) and Naomi Levin (Michigan) and students Sarah Katz and Phoebe Aron (Michigan), and Laura Piccirillo ’20 (Union) to establish rain sampling sites to better understand the modern isotopic composition of rainfall, and thus how best to interpret the emerg-ing oxygen isotope record from a long (700 kyr) core from Lake Junin. In addition, Dave, Laura, and I started a new cave-based project to extract paleoclimate records from local caves. The latter had us deep in several caves for many hours wading through cold water with wet suits, head lamps and dry bags. In all, it was a fast-paced and very productive field season!

Much of my research time at Union was spent working with colleagues preparing manuscripts for publication on results of our years-long project on extracting and analyzing a drill core from Lake Junin Peru. As of this writing, six manuscripts are in various stages of the publication process from “in preparation” to “in review” to “in press”. The Lake Junin drilling project be-gan in earnest in 2008, so it is especially rewarding to see the results getting out. In addition, I worked closely with senior thesis student Annika Wells ‘19 and PhD student Sam Mark (University of Pittsburgh) on our ongoing research in to Cajas National Park to better understand the role of the El Nino Southern Oscillation on sedimentation in the region’s lakes.

In late August, I embarked on a 3 month-long trip that included a trip to Indonesia for a workshop on PaleoENSO records (1 week) and then on to the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) to co-direct Union’s Australia term abroad. The term has been a rewarding one for me and for our students; trips to Stradbroke and Heron Islands, and to Springbrook and Giraween National Parks have been the highlights. Brisbane is a wonderful city, and the University has been very welcoming. A side trip to Tasmania, and another to New

Don Rodbell

Dave Gillikin, Don Rodbell, and Laura Picirillo outside Huagapo Cave, Peru after a day of spe-lunking.

Iceland field trip. Kurt Hollocher standing below a lava flow that was erupted during the last interglacial period, when this part of Iceland was ice-free. These columns are quite large for the area, typically 1.5 meters across.

Iceland field trip. The pillow lava interior of a Pleistocene, sub-glacial, basalt fissure eruption. An eruption under the thick ice cap melted a lake for itself. At high pressures, deep in the lake, the eruption is relatively quiet and produc-es large piles of pillow lavas like these. As the volcanic pile thickens and the eruption vent nears the surface, it becomes more explosive, producing lava fragments instead of pillows. The fragments cascade down the flanks of the volcanic ridge, still under the lake surface, hid-ing the interior pillow lavas. Here, a gully has eroded down to expose the pillows.

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Jacquie Smith

My primary research focus is the extent of microplastic pollution in tributaries of the Mohawk River. Last year (summer 2018) we sampled 21 tributaries and the upper Mo-hawk River (in Rome) during relatively low-flow conditions; the Hans Groot Kill on the Union College campus was also sampled at high flow. Microplastics are present in all of the samples. Among the low-flow samples, the highest abundance (859 particles) and concentration (11.8 particles/m3 ) are both found in the sample from North Chuctanun-da Creek in Amsterdam, an urban stream with a history of contamination by sewage. The highest abundance and concentration overall, however, are found in the high-flow sample from the Hans Groot Kill: >7,100 particles and >144 particles/m3 – and

counting!

The Hans Groot Kill has emerged as a tiny but important contributor to contamina-tion in the Mohawk River. Our next step is to determine where the Hans Groot Kill, which is buried beneath residential neigh-borhoods in its upstream reaches, gets its water. Stormwater and sewage are among the likely sources, in addition to baseflow and runoff. Along with John Garver and research students Eva Willard-Bauer ’22 and Dan Goldman ‘20, we’ve been collecting weekly samples from the Hans Groot Kill to measure pathogen lev-els, mainly Enterococcus, a fecal indicator bacteria. All but one of 190 samples have exceeded the EPA guidelines for recrea-tional waters, typically by several orders of magnitude. Fecal bacteria levels rise during rainstorms, adding weight to the argument that stormwater and sewage make up much of the flow in the Hans Groot Kill, and not solely during high-flow events.

Microplastic particles (biggest ones) from the high-flow sample collected in the Hans Groot Kill on the Union College campus during a rainstorm in June 2018. The sample contains well over 7,000 individual microplastic particles collected in eight minutes of sampling.

Eva Willard-Bauer and Jacquie Smith sampling the Hans Groot Kill on campus in April 2019. This is one of seven sampling sites both on and off campus. Samples are analyzed for Enterococcus, a fecal indicator bacteria. All but one of 190 sam-ples has exceeded EPA guidelines for Enterococ-cus.

Anouk Verheyden

In addition to teaching, I was very lucky to work with two wonderful students this year. Liz Andonie ‘19 and Max McGeown ’19 con-tinued research on the urban stream syn-drome, research that I started about five years ago. They sampled urban and rural streams in and around Schenectady and compared element and ion concentrations, as well as indicators of nitrogen pollution using stable nitrogen isotopes of algae.

Last year I taught my usual two courses: Introduction to Environmental Science as well as Paleontology. In addition, I taught the Environmental Science, Policy and Engi-neering (ESPE) Senior Seminar and orga-nized the ESPE Winter Seminar Series, a series of talks focused on a specific topic. I chose a topic that should be the utmost

importance for everyone, but even more so for anyone working in the field of environ-mental sciences as well as earth sciences: the misinformation campaign surrounding climate change and the consequences of this. I invited three amazing speakers who have worked on this issue from different perspectives (journalism, law, and science). The continuous attacks on climate science implore us to make sure all of our students are well trained in this field.

(Continued Rodbell) Zealand to visit former student Chris Moy (Union ’98; now faculty member at the University of Otago), have been thoroughly enjoyable.

It was a year of graduations for my daugh-ters. Erika (25) completed her MS degree at Iowa State University and just began her PhD at Montana State University, and Gaby (22) graduated from St. Lawrence and started an internship in a law firm in Albany. We will all be home for Thanksgiv-ing, which will make for a nice reunion.

Chris Moy (Union ’98) and Don Rodbell in front of Lake Pukaki, New Zealand

Liz Andonie

Max McGeown during summer research work.

Finally, next to teaching and doing research with students, the isotope lab has kept me busy as ever and Madelyn Miller has her hands full keeping up with the continuous stream of samples passing through the lab. In terms of work study students, Hayley Bennett ‘19 has graduated and we will sure-ly miss her. But we are very lucky to have

I presented results of our work at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Phoenix and gave a talk at the 2018 GSA meeting in Indianapolis. Abstract found here: https:gsa.confex.com/gsa/2018AM/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/319620 I'm also teaching Environmental Geology (GEO 112) again, which is fun.

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George Shaw When George was asked to submit an up-date for the newsletter he stated “I don’t think I’ll have time to write my own update for the newsletter” So the editor of the Geo newsletter will fill you in on George’s activities.

Emeritus Professor Shaw is on campus al-most daily and he’s been very busy being a scientist. He’s currently working on submit-ting a grant with Heather Watson (Union Professor of Physics) on “Experimental De-termination of the effect of pressure on freezing point depression in salt solution”.

He was recently cited in one of his previous students’ online biographies. Here is what was said

“First Outcrop: In the spring of 1980 I took an intro. to Geology course just for fun. Early in the class our professor, a geophysi-cist named George Shaw was showing typi-cal panoramic slides of spectacular moun-tain scenery and explaining geologic fea-tures to us, when he suddenly turned into the class exclaimed with all the energy of a four year old on his birthday that the best thing about geology is that “they pay you to do this!” George still has “the energy”.

My job is to ensure the labs run smoothly, prepare samples, test them, and assist stu-dents and professors with their research and theses. In addition, I have also participated in an experiment with student Laura Picciril-lo and Prof. Anouk Verheyden-Gillikin, looking into alternative ways to preserve water samples for dissolved inorganic car-bon testing, as the current method involves a very toxic chemical, mercuric chloride. The first stage of the experiment was recently completed, however we hope to continue it further.

I graduated from SUNY New Paltz in 2018 with a BS in Environmental Geochemical Science. My senior thesis involved a ground-water study of an abandoned cement mine in Kingston, NY. My intention is to eventual-ly go to graduate school for Climatology.

Hello! I'm Maddy, the Laboratory Techni-cian for the Stable Isotope and Core Labs.

Maddie Miller

Mason Stahl Last year was exciting and rewarding from both a teaching and research perspective. I’ve continued with my research on carbon cycling in rivers and I had two thesis stu-dents (Jack Wassik ’19 and Connor Horan ’19) whose work was an important part of this research. They did great work studying carbon cycling in rivers along with the geo-logic and hydrologic factors controlling stream chemistry in Upstate NY. We pre-sented our research at AGU in Washington D.C. as well as at several regional meetings. This work has also led to a new collabora-tion with a colleague at U. Delaware and I’m excited to keep moving forward with this line of research.

My work on global groundwater arsenic is underway and I led our first working group meeting at the USGS Powell Center in Fort Collins, CO this August. The weeklong meeting was very productive and brought together collaborators from across the US (Columbia, MIT, U. Delaware, USGS, EPA) and abroad (ETH/EAWAG Zurich and Geo-logical Survey of Denmark). My research student Beck DeYoung ’21, played a key role in the success of the meeting, by pre-paring much of the data and computer code needed for this research. I am looking forward to continuing down the research plan that we laid out during our meeting. As part of this project my co-PI and I are happy to have welcomed a post-doc to our group who began working with us in September. I’m also continuing to work on additional projects focused on groundwater arsenic at

field sites in Vietnam and Bangladesh.

This year I began working on a new project to examine hydrologic processes across the United States by using groundwater isotopes. This work has been advancing in large part due to Jaclyn Gehring ’20, who spent this past summer working on this project and is now continuing with this work for her thesis. As part of this work we have also been conducting a focused study of the water supply of Schenectady using stable water isotopes of tapwater and the Mohawk River to characterize the degree of surface water groundwater in-teraction and the implications for the mu-nicipal water supply.

Last winter I developed and taught a new class Exploring Environmental Data, which I thoroughly enjoyed! The class focused on learning the fundamentals of program-ming, data analysis, and data visualization so that students are equipped to ask and answer questions with data in a rigorous, efficient, and reproducible fashion. By the end of the term, the students were able to develop their own code to analyze and interpret “big data” of all types (e.g. cli-mate, population, geochemical) and the class culminated in each student con-ducting their own independent research project. I found this class incredibly fun to teach and I really look forward to teaching and continuing to develop it in the future. My class is also part of the new Data Ana-lytics minor and I have been closely in-volved with the newly formed, interdisci-plinary Center for Data Analytics here at Union.

My family is doing great – Norah is now two and a half and she loves exploring the outdoors, in particular streams, so we may have a future hydrologist on our hands! Candice is finishing up Nurse Practitioners school and is excited to soon be an NP. I’ve enjoyed this past year and I am excit-ed for the year to come.

Taking a hiking break during our Global Arsenic Working Group meeting in Colorado

Madelyn (Maddie) in the stable isotope lab preparing water samples.

Deb Klein

It’s been a pleasure working in the Geology Department. I’ve enjoyed reaching out to alumni, meeting Geology students and as-sisting faculty.

I’ve become an experienced travel agent while working here and I plan to make use of these skills in the near future.

Thank you to all the alumni that have sent congratulations to me on my retirement. I’ll miss your emails, phone calls and visits!

Cheers!

Laura Piccirillo ‘20, Jason Higginbotham ‘21, Emma Puhalski ’22, and Rebecca Laventure ’23 who will help us run the lab this year. Their work in the lab gives them hands on experience, but also develops their problem-solving skills, patience and determination, which are all very useful skills for further achievements in life. The presence of these major scientific instruments in the Geology Department gives students a fantastic op-portunity to learn.

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Once again, the Geo Club at Union has been successful and very active. The club holds weekly meetings, run by the President Laura Piccirillo ‘20, the Vice President Dan-iel Goldman ‘20, and our Media Chair Rohit Thota ‘20. At these meetings, students and faculty in the department, as well as other students on campus interested in geology gather in the map room and discuss events we are hosting or would like to host, im-portant and interesting topics in geology, and ways to increase our outreach within the community.

This fall we held Dinner and Disasters, which we hold once a term, a graduate school information session led by Profes-sor Holli Frey, and we recently participat-ed in an outreach event at Lincoln Ele-mentary School in Schenectady. Last spring, we also participated in an out-reach event at Pinewood Elementary School in Rotterdam and held our annual spring picnic to celebrate the graduating seniors and the end to another successful school year.

GEO CLUB

At the outreach events, we have been edu-cating different grade levels about climate change and showing the students lake cores from the area. Students in the de-partment continue to volunteer at the MiS-ci museum of science as well throughout the year. The Geo Club looks forward to another great school year, participating in more outreach events in the community and increasing the knowledge about the geology department to other students on campus.

Rohit explaining to Lincoln Elementary School children what climate change is.

Dan Goldman sharing an example of a lake core, and talking about how we use these cores to determine climate in the past.

Update from Sarah Katz

My second year at Michigan is going well and I am working to understand water budgets in the modern Lake Junin Basin using a new isotope technique, triple oxy-gen isotopes. In May 2019, I traveled to Peru with a group of Union and Michigan students and faculty to collect surface wa-ter samples and construct precipitation

collection stations in the watershed. We had an awesome time and it was great to have Union colleagues (Don Rodbell, Dave Gillikin and Laura Piccirillo) join us in the field! I am hoping to return to Peru in May 2020.

I also assisted UM PhD student Phoebe Aron with her field work in southern Peru and we collected over 100 chicken egg-shells from around the region! This year, I

Sarah Katz collecting carbonate sediments at Laguna Yanacocha

Don Rodbell and Phoebe Aron constructing a precipitation station at Carhumayo school, east of Lake Junin

have an undergraduate research student working to analyze the eggshells, and we expect that the oxygen isotopes of the shells will tell us about local groundwater.

Dave Gillikin in Peru.

Rohit and Dan educating students at Lincoln Elementary School about climate change and what they can do to help prevent any further environmental harm.

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Publications

Bostick, B.C, Nghiem, A.A, Stahl, M.O., Harvey, C.F., van Geen, A. (2019) Extensive Cryptic Sulfur Cycling Affecting Arsenic Levels in Van Phuc, Vi-etnam. Goldschmidt Abstracts.

Bute, S., Hollocher, K., and Frey, H.M., 2019, An open-ended program to analyze drinking water: Public service, education, and research outreach using spare analytical instrument time. Geological Society of America, Northeastern Section Meeting, Abstracts with Programs, doi: 10.1130/abs/2019NE-328119.

Cheng, L., Normandeau, C., Bowden, R., Doucett, R., Gallagher, B., Gillikin, D.P., Kumamoto, Y., McKay, J.L., Middlestead, P., Ninnemann, U., Nothaft, D., O. Dubinina, E., Quay, P., Reverdin, G., Shirai K., Tore Mørkved, P., Theiling, B. P., van Geldern, R., Wallace, D. W. R. (2019). An international inter-comparison of stable carbon isotope composition measurements of dissolved inorganic carbon in seawater. Limnology and Oceanography: Methods 17: 200-209. doi: 10.1002/lom3.10300

Davidson, C.M., and Garver, J.I., 2019. Sediment Assimilation exerts primary control on HF isotope ratios in the Paleocene-Eocene Sanak Baranof plutonic belt, Alaska. GSA Abstracts with Program, Cordilleran Section, Portland Oregon. v. 51, n. 4.

Fisher, W.S., Pope, M.D., Malik, A.M., Garver, J.I., and Davidson, C.M., 2019. Zircon facies in the Paleocene-Eocene Orca Group GSA Society of America Abstracts with Program, Cordilleran Section, Portland Oregon. v. 51, n. 4.

Frey, H.M., Manon, M.R.F., Brehm, S., and Babiak, R.N. (2018) Episodic crystallization in young explosive eruptions in Dominica, Lesser Antilles revealed by U-Th dating of zircons: Geology, v. 46, 887-890.

Garver, J.I., and Davidson, C.M., 2019. Revisions to the stratigraphy of the flysch facies of the Chugach, Prince William, and Yakutat terranes, southern Alaska: Implications for reconstruction of Baja BC. GSA Abstracts with Program, Cordilleran Section, Portland Oregon. v. 51, n. 4.

Gillikin, D.P., A.D. Wanamaker, C.F.T. Andrus (2019). Chemical Sclerochronology. Chemical Geology doi: 10.1016/j.chemgeo.2019.06.016

Hollocher, K., Robinson, P., Lucas, B., and Mabee, S., 2019, Geochemistry of intrusive rocks on the Prescott Peninsula, central Massachusetts, USA: Implications for late detachment faulting within the Ordovician Taconian volcanic arc. American Journal of Science, v. 319, p. 658-693, doi: 10.2475/08.2019.02.

Hollocher, K., van Nostrand, M., Robinson, P., and Walsh, E.O., 2019, Igneous geochemistry of the Blåhø Nappe of the Middle Allochthon, Norwe-gian Caledonides: A deeply subducted segment of rocks geochemically similar to those exposed in the Støren Group of the Upper Allochthon. Geological Society of America, Northeastern Section Meeting, Abstracts with Programs, doi: 10.1130/abs/2019NE-328104.

Joseph, E.P., Frey, H.M., Manon, M.R.F., Onyeali, M.C., DeFranco, K., Metzger, T., and Aragosa, C. (2018) Continuation of the fluid geochemistry mon-itoring time series for geothermal systems in Dominica, Lesser Antilles island arc: 2009-2017 Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, v. 276, 86-103

Lippitt, R., Frey, H.M., and Manon, M.R.F. (2019) Crystallization conditions of the Tumalo Tuff, Bend Pumice, and Shevlin Park Tuff near South Sister, OR: Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 51, No. 1, ISSN 0016-7592.

Manon, M.R.F., Cole, M. (2019) Potential and Pitfalls of Mercury Elimination with a "Triple-Quad" ICPMS North American Workshop on Laser Abla-tion, v. 3, 82.

Nghiem, A. A., Stahl, M. O., Mailloux, B. J., Mai, T. T., Trang, P. T., Viet, P. H., et al. (2019). Quantifying Riverine Recharge Impacts on Redox Condi-tions and Arsenic Release in Groundwater Aquifers along the Red River, Vietnam. Water Resources Research, (iii), 2019WR024816. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR024816

Pope, M.D., Fisher, W.S., Malik, A.M. Garver, J.I., and Davidson, C.M., 2019. Provenance of sandstone clasts from conglomerate of the Paleocene -Eocene Orca Group in Prince William Sound, Alaska. GSA Abstracts with Program, Cordilleran Section, Portland Oregon. v. 51, n. 4.

Schartman, A., Enkelmann, E., Garver, J.I. and Davidson, C.M., 2019. Uplift and exhumation of the Russell Fiord and Boundary blocks along the north-ern Fairweather transform fault, Alaska. Lithosphere, v.11, n.2, p. 232-251

Shimkus, A., and Smith, J.A., 2019, Confirming the presence of microplastics in Capital Region fish using a novel no-kill abdomen massage, in Garver, J.I., Smith, J.A., and Rodak, C., Proceedings of the 2019 Mohawk Watershed Symposium, Union College, Schenectady, NY, March 22, 2019, v. 11, 74 p., p. 49-53.

Smith, J.A., Caruso, E., Wright, N., Willard-Bauer, E., and Garver, J. I., 2019, Elevated microplastic concentration in a small tributary stream under high-flow conditions: implications for the Mohawk River, New York: 2019 GSA Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, (22-25 September 2018), Paper 227-3, Abstracts with Program v. 51, no. 5, doi: 10.1130/abs/2019AM-333564.

Smith, J.A., Caruso, E., and Wright, N., 2019, Extreme rainfall, high water, and elevated microplastic concentration in the Hans Groot Kill: implica-tions for the Mohawk River, in Garver, J.I., Smith, J.A., and Rodak, C., Proceedings of the 2019 Mohawk Watershed Symposium, Union College, Schenectady, NY, March 22, 2019, v. 11, 74 p., p. 54-59.

Stahl, M.O., Gehring, J., Horan, C., Wassik, J., (2018) Connecting the Age and Fraction of Riverine Labile Organic Carbon to Watershed Geology and Land Use. Abstract [B51L-2114] presented at 2018 Fall Meeting, AGU, Washington, DC, 10-14 Dec 2018.

Vansteenberge, S., Verheyden, S., Genty, D., Blamart, D., Goderis, S., Van Malderen, J.M., Vanhaecke, F., Hodel, F., Gillikin, D.P., Ek, C., Quinif, Y., Cheng, C., Edwards, R.L., and Claeys, P. (2019). Characterizing the Eemian-Weichselian transition in northwestern Europe with three multiproxy speleothem archives from the Belgian Han-sur-Lesse and Remouchamps cave systems. Quaternary Science Reviews 208:21-37.

Waters, L.E. and Frey, H.M. (2018) Crystal-poor rhyolites and rhyodacites from Volcán Tepetiltic, Mexico: Evidence for melt formation, crystallization and eruption over short timescales: Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, v. 361, p. 36-50.

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Geology students present at the 2019 Geological Society of America annual meeting in

Phoenix, AZ

Alaina Chormann ‘20 presenting her poster on Portuguese stalagmites with an aim to reconstruct Iberian paleoclimate over the past 1000 years. Alaina is working with both Gillikin and Wanamaker (funded by NSF).

Kaylee Velasquez '21 presenting research she did this past summer as part of a Keck Geology Consortium project. Kaylee investigated vertebrate fossils in Cretaceous Judith River and Hell Creek formations in Montana with Dr. Raymond Rogers and Dr. Kristi Curry Rogers (Macalester College).

Stephen Camarra ’20, Professor David Gillikin, Professor Alan Wanamaker (Iowa State U.), and Emma Puhalski ’22 at their GSA poster.

Emma ‘22, Steve ‘20, and Professor Gillikin presented oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen isotope data from Antarctic Scallop shells. They are investigating if these shells can be used as a proxy of sea ice state (funded by NSF).

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Geology Seniors

Jaclyn Gehring is a top-notch student and one of the best the Geology Department has to offer. Jaclyn (JQ to friends) is from Wild Crest New Jer-sey and is also a part of the Union College Swim Team. This summer Jaclyn worked with Professor Mason Stahl implementing a data synthesis char-acterize patterns and hydrological patterns of shallow aquifers in the US. Then using special R programming language Jaclyn will be able to an-swer specific questions about tap and groundwa-ter samples collected. Keep up the wonderful water work, Jaclyn!

Follow us on Instagram!

unioncollegegeology

Steve Camarra is from Johnstown, New York and is the unofficial “funny-guy” of the Geology department. This summer Steve’s research focused on scallop shells from two locations in Anarctica to understand ice coverage during the quaternary period. Steve drilled, pol-ished and drilled hundreds of samples for analysis with the assistance of Dave Gillikin, his research advisor. Keep up the shell-shocking work, Steve!

Alaina Chormann from Concord, New Hampshire, is a bright pupil of the Geology Department studying the carbon and oxy-gen isotopes of modern stalagmites found in southern Portuguese caves used to de-termine paleoclimate conditions in south-ern Portugal. Her project is part of a larg-er research effort to evaluate the dynamic changes in the larger regional climate sys-tem through time with her thesis profes-sor Dave Gillikin. Keep up the apatite work!

Jaclyn Gehring ‘20 Alaina Chormann ‘20 Steve Camarra ‘20

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SENIOR SPOTLIGHT

Dan Goldman ‘20 Laura Piccirillo ’20

Dan Goldman is our Geology Vice President and avid Union College Mailroom employee. Dan is from Larchmont, New York and is did research this summer with Professor John Garver. Their work specifies on foreign terranes in Yakutat, Alaska and determining the age and provenance of the foreighn flysch and mélange. Keep mak-ing our earth’s quake, Dan!

Rohit Thota ‘20

Laura Piccirillo is our beloved Geology Presi-dent and motivational leader. Laura is from Rotterdam, New York and is no stranger to research as she has worked with Professor Anouk Verheyden-Gillikin. This summer Laura worked with Professor Donald Rod-bell on speleothems collected from two caves in Peru. Using isotope dating tech-niques as well as further data analysis, Laura will be able to construct the climate history of the area inspected. Keep up the gneiss work Laura!

On November 19-23, I along with Profes-sor Garver and Dan Goldman, flew to the University of Arizona where we learned and performed laser chronology on zircon crystals taken from Alaska to better understand the timing of deposi-tion and metamorphism of these ter-ranes.

All Unioncollegegeology posts are from Rohit Throta

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Grants

$1,290,000 awarded 2015-2018 - Deep Drilling of Lake Junin, Peru: Continuous Tropical Records of Glaciation, Climate Change and Magnetic Field Varia-tions Spanning the Late Quaternary. Principal Investigator: D.T. Rodbell. Organization: National Science Foundation

$149,000 awarded 2014–2018- Award Supplement: Collaborative Research: RUI: Deep Drilling of Lake Junin, Peru: Continuous Tropical Records of Glacia-tion, Climate Change and Magnetic Field Variations Spanning the Late Quaternary. Principal Investigator Donald Rodbell with co-Investigator David Gilli-kin and Senior Personnel Matthew Manon and Anouk Verheyden-Gillikin. Organization: National Science Foundation

$463,226 awarded 2017-2021- Translation and accretion of the Yakutat microplate and Prince William terrane, Alaska. Principal Investigators John Garver and Cam Davidson, Carleton College. Organization: National Science Foundation

$307,241 awarded 2017-2019 - MRI: Acquisition of an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer for Expansion of Analytical Activities and Research Training in the Earth Sciences. Principal Investigator: Holli Frey; Co-PI’s Garver, J.I., Gillikin, D.P.,Hollocher, K., and Rodbell, D.T. Organization: National Sci-ence Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Program

$15,630 awarded 2017-2019 - Investigation of Microplastic Pollution in Tributaries of the Mohawk River. Principal Investigator Jacquie Smith. Organiza-tion: NYS DEC’s Mohawk River Watershed Grants

$681,471 awarded 2018-2021 - Bridging the gap from northern Iberia to northwest Africa to reconstruct atmospheric dynamics and hydroclimate for the last 2,500 years. Principal Investigator: David P. Gillikin (Union: $64,684) Organization: US National Science Foundation, P2C2, Collaborative research

$201,695 awarded 2018-2020 - The Antarctic Scallop as Key to Paleoenvironments and Sea Ice Conditions: Understanding the Modern to Predict the Past. Principal Investigator: David P. Gillikin (Union $37,144) Organization: US National Science Foundation, Antarctic Earth Sciences, Collaborative Research

$154,000: awarded 2018-2020 – Global Variability in Groundwater Arsenic. Principal investigators: Mason Stahl, Holly Michael (U. Delaware), Clifford Voss (USGS), Benjamin Bostick (Columbia). Organization: USGS Powell Center.

$76,338.00: awarded 2019-2021 - CUE Ethics: Collaborative Research: Evaluating Frameworks for Incorporating Computing Across the Curriculum; Principal Investigator: Kristina Striegnitz; Senior Personnel: Mason Stahl (and others): National Science Foundation

$327,398.00 awarded 2018 - MRI: Acquisition of a Powder X-Ray Diffractometer (PXRD) for Interdisciplinary Research and Research Training Award Num-ber:1828144; Principal Investigator: Michael Hagerman; Co-Principal Investigator: Joanne Kehlbeck, Heather Watson, Samuel Amanuel, Ann Anderson; Senior Personnel: Kurt Hollocher; Matthew Manon; Mary Carrol; Rebecca Cortez; Organization: National Science Foundation

$35,450 awarded 2018-19 - Geology of the Chugach-Prince William terrane in northern Prince William Sound, Alaska; Principal Investigator: John Garver Organization: Keck Consortium

$996,038 awarded 2018-23—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program; Principal Investigator: Joanne Kehlbeck; Co-Principal Investigator: David A. Cotter; Senior Personnel: Holli Frey and Brad Bruno; Organization: National Science Foundation

Congratulations to Deb who will be retir-ing on January 2nd 2020!!! Deb has been working in the Geology Department since 2009. For all those years, Deb has been the smile that welcomes faculty and stu-dents every day, she has been our cup of coffee that has kept us going, our sanity during the whirlwind that is our ten-week term, the emergency operator for all last-minute tasks, the go-to person for any question and a patient ear that listened to all our daily troubles.

From all of us in Geology, students and faculty alike, we will miss you so much, Deb, but are so happy for you, as we know you will be fully enjoying your retirement!

Goodbye Deb

Last Geo Club meeting of the fall term, saying goodbye Deb. Front row: Kaylee, Izzy, Ian, Sidney, Em-

ma, Blake, Drake, Chango, Steve Back row: Chloe, Grace, Meghan, Whitney, Daniel, Laura, Deb, Lau-

ren, Grace, Rohit, Emma, Dave Third row: Jack, Alex, Dan, Casey

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Notes from Alumni Since graduation from Union 5 years ago, a lot has changed in my life, and all of it was possible because of the experiences I had in the Geology Department! After Union, I earned my M.S. in Geology at the University of Idaho. My thesis focused on the geophys-ical modeling of helium transport in mantle shear zones, and I was also fortunate enough to be invited on a research survey aboard the R/V Atlantis through WHOI. This survey was an incredible and life-changing experience, and I accomplished a lifelong goal – to travel to the bottom of the ocean! In our quest for “popping rocks” (highly vesicular rocks packed full of gas, found at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge), I was able to dive in HOV Alvin to a depth of 3000 m. This re-search opportunity opened an unexpected door for me, and after graduation, I was offered a Physical Scientist position with the Naval Oceanographic Office at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. NAVOCEANO provides navigational, bathymetric, and oceanographic support to the entire Depart-ment of Defense, especially the U.S. Navy, using a fleet of civilian ships equipped with state-of-the-art surveying instrumentation to map the ocean floor. In this position, I have been able to travel all over the world and have so far spent about 200 days at sea -- I'm actually sitting in the airport as I write this, ready to fly to my next mission. I am forever grateful to everyone in the Geology department for helping me get where I am today, and for giving me the opportunities that led to me finding a ca-reer that I'm passionate about. If anyone is ever down in the Gulf Coast area, I'd love to catch up!

Kate Kaminski ‘14

Kate Kaminski with HOV Alvin

Since graduation I have moved around quite a bit. Stops along the way include New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Philadelphia and finally back to central NY state. I have spent time in environmental consulting and environmental, health & safety (EHS) software firms including URS, ERM, Envi-ance, Locus Technologies, CH2M Hill and currently Golder Associates.

In February I was presented with an op-portunity to build a new team/service line at Golder. The past 10 months have been very busy standing up a team to deliver consulting services related to software implementation of EHS software. The work my team does is largely for mid-sized to large industrial clients helping them set up commercial software to comply with regulations and satisfy reporting require-ments. While I have been doing this sort of work for about 20 years, this was an opportunity to build a completely new service line at Golder. It is fun work and making something from nothing has been gratifying on several levels.

On a personal note, I am living on the southwest side of Syracuse, married with two kids and two retired racing grey-hounds. I swore I would never, ever move back to anywhere close to Syracuse, but fate it seems is not without a sense of humor...

Feel free to reach out to me here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrvanorder/

A short bio would report that Betty and I are in good health and enjoy traveling by land and by sea. We have traveled throughout the year. An example would be a fourteen day tour this November through Amsterdam, Brugges, Paris and Lon-don. We close out the year with a seven day Western Caribbean cruise in December.

Raleigh, North Carolina is a great place to live. Our children and their progeny agree and we have 12 grandchildren and 8 great-grand children living within an hour of us.

I continue to enjoy using the geology learned at Union. From the Outer Banks and coastal bays to the Blue Ridge Moun-tains, Carolina offers a diverse landscape for discovery.

Ron Obremski ‘59

Will Pinkston ‘12

After 3 years with an investment bank, I found my way back to geoscience chasing a MS at the University of Texas at Austin. Our work on pore pressure at the Macondo well was published in May in Scientific Re-ports. I've now been a geologist with Hess Corporation in Houston for 2 years. In Au-gust, I married fellow Dutchman Amanda Greenberg '12.

I recently graduated with my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Geological Sciences and am currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Paleoclimatology lab at UNC. My current research examines how modern and ar-chaeological limpet shells from the Canary Islands can be used to reconstruct seasonal sea surface temperature in the subtropical eastern North Atlantic Ocean during peri-ods of abrupt climate change. In other news, I married a fellow geologist in June in Cooperstown, NY!

Lauren Graniero ‘12

Lauren & Thomas Chapman

William Kirchgasser ‘61

William Kirchgasser passed away on Jan-uary 14, 2019. Wil-liam was the first student to receive the E.F.C. Smith prize in 1961. After gradu-ating from Union in 1961 William went to Cornell University to earn his Masters and Doctorate de-grees. He joined the SUNY Potsdam facul-ty in 1969 and re-tired in 2004.

William has donated to the Geology depart-ment periodically in the past and be-queathed a generous amount to the geology field fund in memory of Professors Leo Hall and Phillip Hewitt.

His obituary may be found at:

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/potsdam-ny/william-kirchgasser-8129783

William Kirchgasser Photo courtesy Garner Funeral Service

J R (William) Van Order ‘93

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Greg Brenn ‘14

Chris Kelly ‘15

I’m working as a hydrogeologist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program in Boston, MA.

This Fall marks about 2.5 years for me at Geoscience Australia as a Duty Seismolo-gist in the National Earthquake Alerts Cen-tre (The Aussie analog to the USGS NE-IC). Part shift work, monitoring local and global seismicity, and part research, cur-rently working on finite fault inversion methods, this job has it all. Send me an email (Gregory.Brenn@ga.gov.au) if you happen to be in Canberra, and I'll show you the best that the Bush Capital has to offer!

I am currently in my fifth (and hopefully final) year of my Ph.D at the University of Michigan working with Becky Lange. The past few years have involved a lot of field-work to collect basalts from various loca-tions in California and along the Yellow-stone hotspot track. More recently, I have been working on high temperature experi-ments to show how fast olivine crystals can grow in a basaltic melt. The majority of this year has been focused on writing up my first manuscript on the Big Pine volcan-ic field, which will be the first chapter of my dissertation. With my final year al-ready underway, the main objectives will be writing everything up, defending on time, and hunting for a teaching job back east. See you at AGU!

Sarah Brehm ‘15

Sarah Katz, Heidi O’Hora ’19 and Sarah Brehm ’15

at the University of Michigan.

This spring I will be participating in a the SUPERGROUP Grand Canyon Field Fo-rum this April to explore the timing, causes, and consequences of the Great Uncon-formity. I am currently running zircon-He samples from the basement units just be-low the Great Unconformity of the Grand Canyon as part of my PhD dissertation.

Olivia Thurston ‘16

A field photo from a basin development and

sedimentation field course that I took in Coun-

ty Clare, Ireland this past spring.

Emily Crampe ‘15

This past year has been an exciting one that has involved packing and unpacking quite a few times. Last summer I returned to Glaci-er National Park as an interpretive ranger. While there I talked with hundreds of peo-ple about geology and hydrology and ex-plored a lot of the lesser traveled parts of the park on my days off. (A nice respite from the over 3 million visitors who came to the park this year). After an early snow-storm came through the park in October, I welcomed the 50 degree temperatures and misty rain of Oregon, and returned to Ore-gon State University to finish up my MS degree in Water Resources Science. Things are looking good, so I should be wrapped up early spring! My research focuses on assessing long term changes in streamflow across ten watersheds at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, an LTER site in the Cascades.

Emily in Glacier National Park

Lots of updates and moves in the last cou-ples years! In the spring of 2018, I graduat-ed with my MS degree in geology from the University of Delaware, where my stud-ies were focused on fluvial geomorphology and dendrochronology. My research was recently published in Earth Surface Process-es and Landforms (Event-scale accretion revealed through tree-ring analysis of bur-ied plains cottonwoods, Powder River, MT, USA)! Promptly after I finished my MS, I moved to Washington, where I worked as a Geomorphology/Imminent Threats Geosci-entist-in-the-Park Intern at Mount Rainier National Park. This was an amazing experi-ence where I was able to spend most of my time either tromping over glaciers col-lecting water samples and assisting in mass balance surveys or hiking miles of river banks surveying and mapping glacial riv-ers. After the internship ended, I eventual-ly made my way back to the East Coast, where I am currently working for Golder Associates in NH. I mostly work for their geohazards team, mapping, surveying, and assessing landslide hazards. I love that I've been able to continue working in the natu-ral hazards sector of geology - the class that roped me in all those years ago!

Tara Metzger ‘15

Tara next to a crevasse on Emmons Glacier dur-

ing a water sampling survey at Mount Rainier.

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Katherine Swager ‘17

I have started my Master's degree at UW-Madison, and am loving it so far!

I received my Master’s degree from Central Washington University this past spring and started working as a Tsunami Geologist for the Washington Geological Survey. At The WGS, I have been working on tsunami inun-dation modeling and mapping for the outer coast of Washington state and within the Puget Sound from several earthquake sources like Cascadia, the Seattle Fault, and a maximum considered Alaska-Aleutian scenario. Working at the WGS has been an amazing learning experience so far. One of my favorite work activities is also partici-pating in a variety of outreach activities such as setting up exhibits at local commu-nity emergency preparedness expos, and giving presentations to many diverse groups and stakeholders within Washing-ton to communicate hazard science.

Alex Dolcimascolo ‘17

Alex in the Lower Johns River, WA, pointing

to a paleotsunami sand deposit preserved

in the riverbank stratigraphy from the 1700

Cascadia event.

Mollie Pope ‘19

Currently working for the Redbird Ranger District of the Daniel Boone National Forest and will be until December 27th (unless the government shuts down). I’ve submitted my travel request form for South Africa, so I’m officially leaving for Cape Town on Janu-ary 5th. I’ll be doing an igneous petrology project that would investigate the for-mation of the Saldanha Volcanic Complex with Dr. Chris Harris at the University of Cape Town. My project is titled Oxygen Isotope Variation in the Saldanha Quartz Porphyry.

Natural Arch in the Stearns District of the Daniel

Boone National Forest!

Heidi O’Hora ‘19

Heidi O'Hora is in her first year of the mas-ter's program at the University of Michi-gan, conducting research in the UM Stable and Clumped Isotopes for Paleoclimate and Paleoceanography Lab to reconstruct climate surrounding the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction using ~66 mil-lion-year-old shells from Southeast Neth-erlands. She aims to use her research as a natural CO2 emissions experiment to de-termine how the Earth responds climati-cally on a global scale to increasing atmos-pheric CO2 and to apply this information toward better understanding modern cli-mate change and predicting future long-term consequences.

I’ve been working as an education/interpretation outreach intern at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. I help with the everyday stuff around the park like talking to visitors and giving programs to ensure they understand the geological, paleontological, and anthropological sig-nificance of the park, but my main job is to run virtual field trips to the Carnegie Quar-ry through Skype in the Classroom. This program connects us with classrooms around the world and gives us the oppor-tunity to teach students about the Jurassic environment of the Morrison Formation and the dinosaurs that called it home. We climb the bone wall to ensure students get up close and personal with these ancient beasts. If you have any questions about this internship opportunity, please reach out! My email is rlip123@gmail.com

Rebecca in Echo Park at the confluence of the

Green and Yampa Rivers.

View into Whirlpool Canyon from the end of

Harper’s Corner Trail.

I'm doing well post graduation. Been work-ing a consulting job for a little over a year now in Bedford, MA, and I'm starting up the process to go to graduate school next year.

Jordy Herbert ‘18

Sarah Hickernell ‘18

I started an igneous petrology Ph.D. pro-gram at Stanford University in September. I'm starting off on a project looking into the connections between high-silica rhyolites and granite plutons. Understanding the generation of high-silica rhyolites has impli-cations for predicting and understanding future rhyolitic eruptions, which tend to be more explosive and catastrophic than their more mafic counterparts.

Alison Horst ‘17

I started working at the Washington Geo-logical Survey (with Alex Dolci) this July. My job has consisted of mostly fieldwork so far - collecting gravity and magnetic data in southwest WA and I will be working with geologists mapping in the area to look for crustal faults and analyze the seismic haz-ard. It has been an awesome place to work, and Dolci's cube is right across from me, so I see him all the time!

Andres Gallego ‘18

Currently I’m back home In Boston work-ing as a Environmental Scientist for a small Environmental Consulting firm based out-side of Boston.

Rebecca Lippitt ‘19

Union College Geology Department

807 Union St.

Schenectady, NY 12308

Phone: 518-388-6770

Fax: 518-388-6417

E-mail: geology@union.edu

Donations to the Geology Department can be made to three dedicated funds:

1.The Geology Alumni Fund is a relatively small, continuing fund that is used by the Geology Department for items not covered by the normal Departmental budget, grants, or other sources of funds. This fund is used to sponsor speakers, geologic symposiums, and Geology Club. This year, for example, it helped us sponsor 2. The Geology Field Fund is an endowed fund dedicated to supporting student field work, including field camp, long course-related trips, and summer research work. The Field Fund is funded by major gifts from John Wold ‘38, J. Clark Alberts '44, George R. MacCaulay '50 and Alumni. This year the fund helped defray costs for students traveling to Panama for the Bioge-ochemisrty field trip as well as costs associated with research in Peru and the Hans Groot. 3. The Edmund Sawtelle Fund is a continuing fund started and supported by Edmund Sawtelle’52 to assist us in Instrument Maintenance. This fund has helped us keep our ICP-MS running and support the Stable Isotope Lab as well as other major scientific equip-ment. Together, these funds help us to help our students have the opportunities they need to excel in graduate school, the geoscience industry, and in any other field to which they wish to apply themselves. We thank all those who have so generously donated to the Geology Department.

Geology Funds and Support