the boulder rundown - depauw.edu · project supervised by dr. fred soster. photo: fred soster the...

T H E B O U L D E R R U N D O W N

1 DePauw University Department of Geosciences Newsletter

The

Boulder RUNdownSpring 2019 Newsletter

Department of Geosciences

Cover Photo: Students collecting water samples as part of the Big Walnut Creek Watershed, IN research project supervised by Dr. Fred Soster. Photo: Fred Soster

The Year in Review Fred Soster, Chair

Welcome to the 2019 Boulder RUNdown, the 22nd annual edition of the Department of Geosciences newsletter. Thanks to Scott Wilkerson who continues to serve as the editor. Co-curricular activities continued to be a key feature of the geosciences program in 2018. The year began with another epic adventure for Jim Mills, this time to the Galapagos Islands for Winter Term 2018 (last year it was New Zealand). Jim was a faculty participant on the trip that was led by Professor Kevin Kinney (Biology). During Spring Term 2018, Jim took the petrology class to the St. Francois Mountains for a weekend field trip to look at the igneous rocks in that region. Scott Wilkerson took the introductory class to Shades State Park. If you are reading this newsletter, you probably remember going on this same trip when you were in your first geology class at DePauw!

In April, we awarded almost $13,000 in merit-based department scholarships to 14 of our majors at the annual Awards Convocation (you can find the names of the award recipients elsewhere in this newsletter). These merit scholarships are made possible by the Department’s endowed scholarship funds: the Bieber Scholarship Fund, the Gault Memorial Fund, the “Rock” Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund, and the Wylie-Condit Science Scholarship Fund. Thanks to all of you who continue to support our geoscience students through your contributions to these endowed funds. We graduated thirteen students in May: five geology m a j o r s a n d e i g h t e n v i ro n m e n t a l geoscience majors. D u r i n g s u m m e r 2 0 1 8 , s e v e n geoscience students stayed on campus to conduct research with department faculty members. Ben Magnin ’20 worked with Scott Wilkerson on the Hudson Valley fold-thrust belt, NY, and six students – Bryce Brown ’20, Nathan Carey ’20, Vy Le ’19, Shelby Lutz ’20, Xiaoli Magary ’20, and Mary Stute ’20 – worked with Fred Soster on sediment transport in the Big Walnut Creek Watershed, IN. Support for all of this work came from several sources including: the Science Research Fellows



Thanks DePauw alumni for all of y o u r s u p p o r t ! Photo: Fred Soster

Program, the James A. Madison Fund for Research, the DePauw Faculty Development Fund, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, and a John Clark Ridpath Faculty Fellowship. J im Mi l l s cont inued h is work on deconstructing the campus farmhouse, and Tim Cope continued to work on his sedimentology book. Details about all of these projects can be found in the individual faculty columns below. In August, 24 geoscience majors returned to campus for Fall Term classes, and 6 more students declared majors in the department bringing our total number of majors to 30 students. Scott Wilkerson led his annual 3-day field trip to Baraboo, WI for his structural geology class, and Jim ran his semiannual field trip out to the Black Hills in South Dakota over fall break. This continues to be a very popular trip, and this year 19 students participated. The F. Michael and Dorothy W. Wahl Endowed Fund for Geosciences Field Trips paid for all the costs of transportation and lodging for all trip participants. All department faculty attended the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Indianapolis in November. Ben Magnin ’20 and Scott Wilkerson did a poster presentation of their summer research results titled “2D and 3D Structural Analysis of a Mesoscopic Fault-Related Fold: Implications for Using Cross-Section Balancing to Understand Lateral Variations in Fold Geometry.” The GeoClub remained active in 2018 thanks to a core group of enthusiastic junior and senior geoscience majors. They participated in “Space Day” and co-hosted a guest speaker with the Physics club. They also attended two rock and mineral shows, and went canoeing on Sugar Creek. Jim is the faculty advisor and provides more details in his column.

The Department of Geosciences continues to offer a strong curriculum that is greatly enhanced by the many co-curricular activities that are available to our students. All of this activity costs money, and the Department of Geosciences is fortunate to have several endowed funds for research (Madison Fund), for field trips (Wahl Fund), and for scholarships (Bieber, “Rock” Smith, Gault, and Wylie-Condit Funds) that we can draw upon to support our students. Many thanks to all of you who continue to support our programs and our students. In closing, I extend my usual invitation to consider visiting campus if your travel plans bring you to the Midwest. Our students would enjoy hearing your DePauw story. Take care.

Ken Brown

! Ken is the newest addition to the Department of Geosciences (he will be starting Fall 2019). He was recently hired as a 2-year Teaching Post-Doc in Mineralogy & Petrology. Ken is returning back to his roots as he is a Brown County, IN native. He earned his B.A. in Geology from IUPUI in 2005, his M.S. in Geology from IUPUI in 2008, and his Ph.D. in Geology from Miami University in 2015. Ken has considerable experience teaching a n d c o n d u c t i n g r e s e a r c h w i t h undergraduates (most recently at West Virginia University). Welcome, Ken!


DePauw University Department of Geosciences Newsletter 3

Tim Cope

Hi everyone — it’s been a good year. My sabbatical during AY2017-2018 ended this past fall, and although I was sad to see it end, I was delighted to return back to teaching. Interacting with students in the classroom, and especially in the field, is my favorite thing to do—and after a year away, I was finally able to meet and work with some of the excellent new majors that populated the department during my absence. The main project I was working on during my sabbatical year is a new Sedimentology and Stratigraphy textbook (contracted for Waveland Publishing), which is now about half complete. The book, titled Sedimentary Geology from Source to Sink is a modern perspective of sedimentology that explicitly links the topic to broader Earth Systems (tectonics, climate, and biogeochemcial cycles). A textbook is a difficult thing to write—the pressure is on to make sure that everything is up-to-date, clear, and absolutely error-f ree—but i t has been a va luab le experience for me because the process has forced me to research aspects of sedimentology that are beyond my usual realm of specialization. My knowledge base has grown, and this will certainly make me a better teacher (although now I have so much more to teach!). I am currently using this new book (the half that is complete, anyway) to teach Sed/Strat. I hope the students like it, and I certainly

hope they will give me honest feedback on it at semester’s end. My foray into the publishing business has not ended with this book. Last semester I contracted with W. W. Norton to revise some of the ancillary materials—specifically, the online reading quizzes—for Marshak’s Essentials of Geology. Last semester I integrated a service project for the City of Greencastle into my GIS course. The project involved mapping the city’s stormwater system; specifically, researching new ways to make that endeavor easier to accomplish and to organize data collection in a manner that is useful and easier to update. The class conceptualized and created a data form that can be loaded into a smartphone and includes information on the type, condition, elevation, and depth of storm drains (including photos). They then used ArcGIS Collector on their phones to map the storm drains surrounding campus. The result was a map that nicely showed the location of storm drains in south-central Greencastle and the elevations to which they drain—a first step towards identifying the pathways that stormwater takes once it enters the system, and finding out where water flowing into each drain eventually ends up. I hope to extend this map—ideally with subsur face in format ion about the stormwater system and more accurate elevation measures—when I teach the class again next year. Please drop us a line if you’re ever in the neighborhood—we would love to hear from you! - Tim

Visit our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/DePauw-University-Geosciences/

118662514879623

Visit our website: http://www.depauw.edu/academics/departments-programs/

geosciences/



http://www.facebook.com/pages/DePauw-University-Geosciences/118662514879623




http://www.depauw.edu/academics/departments-programs/geosciences/




Jim Mills

Greetings once again from another chilly, polar-vortex-ridden winter in Indiana! Lot’s to cover this year, so let’s get started. First, to the Senior Class of 2018, I cannot thank you all enough for the incredible honor of your efforts in leading the charge for the DePauw Senior Class to nominate me as the 2018 Senior Class Luncheon Speaker and the Faculty Speaker for the Matriculation Ceremony for the Class of 2022 (which, of course, I accepted). I am truly humbled by your efforts and support. Again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much! 2018 started with a marvelous opportunity to travel to Ecuador and the Galapagos with Kevin Kinney (Biology Department), Nathan Carey ’20 (Geology), and 13 other students for an Extended Studies trip. We spent the first three days touring the region around Quito to explore the rainforest, standing on the equator, visiting local markets, and, of course, visiting some spectacular stratovolcanoes! If you have never climbed to 14,000 feet as we did, you are missing quite an experience… We spent the rest of the trip exploring the Galapagos with Kevin and Washington Paredes, our magnificent local guide (who is also the Assemblyman for the Galapagos). What a magnificent place to view evolution at its best (iguanas of every color, finches, and lots and lots of tortoises of different shapes and sizes).

Also, the region is an incredible place to explore some of the world’s most beautiful shield volcanos, cinder and tuff cones, and basaltic lavas. To make the visit even better, Sierra Negra on the island of Isabel, was becoming active the day we hiked to the top! No eruption, but some low magnitude seismic activity signaling the beginning of an eruptive episode a couple of months later. The snorkeling wasn’t too bad either! And, to be on a ship...at sunset...on the equator (literally, at 0° 0’ 0” N) with 15 other awestruck people – simply no way to describe that!

You are here: 0° 0’ 0” N. Photo: Jim Mills In the spring, I worked with Nick Meszaros ’18 on his senior thesis on the effects of assimilation on the Town Mountain Granite in the Llano Uplift of Texas. Nick did a magnificent job on this study and is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas, Austin. For Petrology, we did another excellent trip to the St. Francois Mountains of southeastern Missouri to study the igneous suite of rock exposed there (Nick – we still need to collect those last two granites!). Nine geoscience majors participated on this trip: Bryce Brown ’20, Nathan Carey ’20, Samantha Carlin ’18, Shelby Lutz ’20, Ben Magnin ’20, Nick Meszaros ’18, C a t a l i n a S a l d a n a ’ 2 0 , S p e n c e r Schillerstrom ’18, and Mary Stute ’20.



Fall Break last year saw another epic trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Nineteen students (twelve majors and seven non-majors, including three international students) and Rachel Curtis (our Department Administrative Assistant) participated on the trip. Rachel was instrumental as a co-leader on this trip as she volunteered to be one of the drivers. We a r r i v e d i n S o u t h D a k o t a t o temperatures in the low 20’s, high winds, and snow. So, our first day, needless to say, was just a wee bit chilly… However, temperatures bounced right back up into the 50’s and 60’s for the rest of trip. And believe it or not, the ONLY issue we had was a loose oil pan drain plug…the curse may be broken!

Alex Ruger ’17 at the Black Hills Institute of Geologic Research. Photo: Jim Mills We visited Dinosaur Park and the Black Hills Institute of Geologic Research. Everyone got to meet Peter Larson, who is always so gracious in hosting our visits (plus he hired Alex Ruger ’17 as an intern last year). Alex gave us a wonderful ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the museum and facilities. Thank you so much, Peter and Alex!! We also saw the Great Unconformity, Devil’s Tower, Wind Cave, Mt. Rushmore, and collected minerals and

rocks across the region. We did our usual hike to the top of Black Elk Peak (aka Harney Peak) and ran into two of Tim’s friends from Stanford! And Ben Gibson, another dinner feast at the Firehouse… where were you? Because of the bitterly cold conditions on our way out, we stopped at the Badlands on the way back and spent a wonderful morning there (no rattlesnakes this year). The GeoClub has been very active again this year with Ben Magnin ’20 serving as president, and Shelby Lutz ’20, Xiaoli Magary ’20, Vy Le ’19, Mary Stute ’20, Bryce Brown ’20, and Nathan Carey ’20 all serving as officers over the last two semesters. The club has gone to the GeoFest Mineral and Fossil Show at the Indiana State Museum (where we met Dave Nance ‘79 and Vanessa Gonzalez ’17), and the gem and mineral show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds (where we met Vanessa Gonza lez ’17 and Ty le r Donaldson ’16). Hi David, Vanessa, and Tyler! (and Tyler, I’m following your footsteps – I’m doing archaeology in Italy this summer with Rebecca Schindler and Pedar Foss!). The GeoClub also ran a well-attended canoe trip on Sugar Creek at Turkey Run State Park last fall. The GeoClub already has a list of activities for the 2019 newsletter! The old Campus Farm House is now g o n e . . . w e l l , a t l e a s t a l l o f t h e superstructure...only the foundation and basemen t rema in . Jen Eve re t t (Environmental Fellows Program co-Director and Dept. of Philosophy), a whole bunch of students, and I have been working diligently to get this project wrapped up (at least the physical deconstruction). Jen and I presented a poster at AASHE in Pittsburgh this fall on



the project, which was very well received by all who stopped by. We are now in the midst of getting the lumber dated through the use of tree rings. Jen contacted Darrin Rubino of Hanover College’s Biology Department (who is a dendrochronologist), and he has been dating the wood for us. We now have three key dates – 1846, 1851, and 1878, which all seem to match the construction history of the house based on other lines of evidence. We’ll be presenting a talk on these data this spring at the Indiana Academy of Sciences. And the oldest germination date Darrin has found from the lumber? 1588 CE. Even I’m not that old… Lastly, to the thirty alumni that I have been in contact with and/or have seen over the last year – a big hello!! You all are doing such wonderful things, and we are so excited to hear about all of your life stories, accomplishments, and careers. And to those of you that have/are helping our current students find internships and or jobs – THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! You know this means so much to these students, and to us. To all of our alumni, we wish you the very best and keep in touch!!

- Jim

Rocks-R-Us!...Geoscience students rocking it in the field. Photo: Jim Mills

Fred Soster

I am on sabbatical leave during Spring Term 2019, working on a research project that is examining sediment sources and transport distances in the Big Walnut Creek Watershed, IN. It’s really nice to have my laboratory sitting in the middle of my field area! I am using fallout radionuclides as tracers of fine sediment particles to identify their source areas and to track their movement through the watershed.

Research students gathering tilled agricultural soil samples. Photo: Fred Soster During Summer 2018, 6 students worked with me on the project. We concentrated on establishing sampling sites and collecting data to develop discharge rating curves for each site. We also collected soil cores from source area soils to determine the radionuclide activities. This summer, I plan to sample a storm runoff hydrograph to look at the radionuclide activities on suspended



sediments undergoing transport. A comparison of the radionuclide activities on the suspended sediments with the radionuclide activities on the source area soils will hopefully shed light on the sources of the particles and how far they move during storm runoff.

Research students measuring stream discharge for the watershed study. Photo: Fred Soster

I was awarded a Faculty Fellowship last year to do this work, so some of my teaching load was reassigned to the research project. Consequently, I only taught three courses last year. I taught Introduction to Environmental Science in both Spring Term 2018 and Fall Term 2018, and I taught Energy and the Environment in Spring Term 2018. I decided to completely reorganize the course, so this kept me busy throughout the semester. It has become a pretty popular course despite the heavy focus on problem solving and the fact that it was offered at 8:00 a.m. The Soster family continues to do well. Our son Fred is in his second year of graduate school working on a master’s degree in meteorology at Florida State University. Our daughter, Erica, continues her work as a genetic counselor for Sequenom, where she works as a Clinical

Liaison. Jennifer is the Music Operations Manager for DePauw’s School of Music and continues to enjoy her work. Last year she became a certified personal trainer, and formed her own LLC. She plans to begin accepting clients later this spring or summer. Because of my summer research with students, we did not take our normally long summer vacation, but we did manage to spend a week in Wrightsville Beach, NC in early August. We also spent some time hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains over fall break. I continue to enjoy corresponding with many of you via email. Please drop me a line and let me know how you are doing. Best wishes for the coming year! - Fred

Department Scholarship Awards

Ernest R. ”Rock” Smith Memorial ScholarshipNelson Blake ’19, Blake Edwards ’19,

Vy Le ’19, Rafael Robert ’19, & Danielle Smith ’19

Charles L. Bieber Memorial FundNathan Carey ’20, Kate Flynn ’20, Xiaoli Magary ’20, Ben Magnin ’20,

Rachel Moore ’20, & Bronson Rago ’20

Charles M. & Frances Wylie-Condit Science Scholarship

Shelby Lutz ’20 & Joevita Weah ’20

H. Richard Gault Memorial ScholarshipBryce Brown ’20

Income from the James A. Madison Fund for Research and the

F. Michael and Dorothy W. Wahl Endowed Fund for Geosciences Field Trips helps subsidize Department of Geosciences faculty-student research activities

and student field trip costs, respectively.



ScottWilkerson

Greetings from Greencastle...I hope this newsletter finds you and yours happy and healthy! Spring is ramping up here, so our thoughts are now turning towards satiating our desire for a “lithic” fix...the rocks are eroding, after all! On the teaching front, the year flew by with me teaching Earth & the Environment, Map Interpretation, Structural Geology & Tectonics, and Senior Seminar. Map Interpretation was great fun as we tried several new activities, including using Sketchfab to generate 3-D digital elevation models (some of which we printed with a 3-D printer) and using ESRI storymaps to create an interactive report/portfolio describing specific landforms and their topographic characteristics (see https://w w w . d e p a u w . e d u / a c a d e m i c s /departments-programs/geosciences/cool-geoscience-resources/). We continued to use Google Earth as a means of visualizing topographic maps draped over 3-D landforms...something the students find very effective. I also taught Senior Seminar this past fall for the first time since the format had changed to better prepare students for life after DePauw. I really enjoyed working with students on their cv’s/resumes, their letters of application, a n d s e e i n g t h e i r o r a l t e c h n i c a l presentations improve over the semester! On the research front, I continue to work with Steve Marshak on a manuscript explaining how the enigmatic down-dip-

verging, second-generation foliations and folds developed during the formation of the regional Baraboo Syncline. I look forward to submitting the manuscript for review.

Interpretation of serial slices through a mesoscopic fault-related fold as part of Summer 2019 student-faculty research project by Ben Magnin ’20 & Scott Wilkerson. Photo: Scott Wilkerson

In addition to this research, I also worked with Ben Magnin ’20 over the summer on fault-related fold research. Ben became quite adept at balancing cross sections using the LithoTect software package as he divided his time between analysis of a mesoscopic fault-related fold from China and restoring some seismic reflection profiles from New York State. The former was especially challenging given the amount of dissolution along multiple surfaces relative to the scale of the



https://www.depauw.edu/academics/departments-programs/geosciences/cool-geoscience-resources/








sample. In fact, we had to slice the specimen into multiple serial sections in order to better characterize the detailed 3-D geometry of the structure (see photo). Ben presented this work at the 2018 GSA annual meeting with a poster entitled 2D and 3D structural analysis of a mesoscopic fault-related fold: Implications for using cross-section balancing to understand lateral var iat ions in fold geometry.

Wilkerson family whitewater rafting on the Ocoee River in TN. Photo: Scott Wilkerson

On the home front, things remain busy. Ben (17) is juggling 5 AP classes, 3 academic bowl teams, band performances/competitions, and various organizations. Zach (21) is a junior at DePauw. This past January he did a WT trip to Australia to follow in the steps of Charles Darwin. A week after his return, he had the “unfortunate” task of traveling back across part of the Pacific to present last summer’s research on artificial intelligence at a computer science conference in Hawaii (he didn’t get much sympathy from us!). Beth continues her GIS work for various folks at DePauw (including a project creating a pre-79 AD eruption DEM for Vesuvius). She continues to expand her repertoire of visualization skills by working on

photogrammetry (and now drone and 360° panoramas). I hope the rest of 2019 goes well for you and yours...please stop by if you are in town! - Scott

Alumni News

Thanks to everyone who has sent us information about job openings and internship opportunities...you are incredible resources for our current students and alumni looking for positions! Please keep us informed about your activities as well.

Ben Olszewski ‘00 is now Di rector o f Environmental, Health and Safety for SemGroup in Tulsa, OK. He writes “I am responsible for setting the direction for all of SemGroup’s environmental, health, safety, and compliance programs and policies to ensure our compliance with applicable local, state, and federal regulations. We provide oil and natural gas midstream services that include storage, transportation, and processing with operations in the US gulf coast, US midcontinent, and Canada.”. Ben is an excellent resource for students interested in the environmental business and said that he’d be more than happy to talk with students about work in the environmental arena He and wife Amanda ’99 (who took a geo-class from Scott way back when) have three daughters, Helen (11), Caroline (10), and Mary Mills (6).

Bill Alward ’08, his wife Rebecca, and son Ansel recently welcomed brother Quincy Joseph into the world on Dec 27. All are doing well and plan to stop by Greencastle on their next visit to IN.

Nick Vetz ’08 moved to Salt Lake City, UT and is now a geologist with Rio Tinto at the Bingham Canyon copper mine. Nick and his wife also are the proud parents of a daughter (who is now nearly one year old).

Proud papa holding...a future geo-major at DePauw? Photo: Nick Vetz



Reilly Taylor ’13 recently left his position of four years at a small environmental engineering and consulting business in Bloomington, IN. He writes “My Geo education at DPU was pivotal to my success these past four years.” Reilly now works in Corvallis, OR for a GIS LiDAR company called Quantum Spatial.

Mackenzie Cremeans ‘14 is now using her hydrogeology and environmental expertise as a senior staff geologist for Geosyntec Consultants in Boca Raton, FL. She “...managed to successfully defend the DePauw education to the Florida Board of Professional Geologists...” in July--- as if there was ever any doubt! Congratulations, Mackenzie!

Ian Munn ‘15 gave us a heads-up regarding a summer internship with his organization, The Solar Foundation. Ian is lead on a Puerto Rico solarization project that donates solar modules to medical clinics on the island.

Nick Williams ‘15 continues working for Nexen Petroleum in Houston, TX and writes “...you can inform your structure class that I used three-point problems in the real world”. Nick also just had a paper about salt welds in Australia published in Marine & Petroleum Geology.

Thomas “Kojo” Addaquay ‘16 dropped by the department last summer and had lunch with Fred and his research students. Kojo is presently attending the University of Toronto’s graduate program in Environmental Science.

Kelsey Furman ‘16 writes that she is now enrolled in law school at Lewis & Clark in Portland, OR. She writes “I’m really looking forward to becoming a student again and hope I get lucky enough to have another round of professors as great as you!” Thanks and good luck, Kelsey!

Lauren Van Fleet ‘16 recently moved to the Knoxville, TN area where she is currently a teaching assistant at a local area high school. If you know of any environmental/geoscience positions in the Knoxville area, please let us know and we’ll pass the information along to Lauren!

Gabby Jensen ’17 is currently living in Sankt Paul, Kärnten, Austria. She has been looking at some geology jobs in the area, including a Lithium mining

project and a company doing data processing and technology assistance for oil and gas drilling.

Elise Johns ’18 is now working as an Orr Fellow with KAR Auction Services. She was back at DePauw last fall recruiting students for the Orr Fellowship.

Mackenzie Jones ’18 recently accepted a position with the Maine Conservation Corps as a field team member.

Logan LaCross ’18 recently became a staff scientist for Wood (formerly Amec Foster Wheeler) at their offices in Traverse City, MI.

GeoClub members enjoying a snack on the Sugar Creek/Turkey Run State Park canoe trip.

Photo: Jim Mills

Mark your calendars: Thursday, October 10, 2019 @ 7:00pm

in Kresge Auditorium

Speaker: Dr. M. JacksonGeographer, Glaciologist,

National Geographic Explorer, & TED Fellow

https://www.drmjackson.com/





Students chillin’ at Badlands NP on the South Dakota field trip led by Jim Mills (yes, that is snow on the ground!). Photo: Jim Mills

3-D photogrammetry model of Van Hise Rock near Baraboo, WI. Model created from a 360° array of overlapping photos. Photo: Beth Wilkerson



Department of Geosciences

602 South College Avenue, Greencastle, IN 46135

Non-Profit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit No. 17

Greencastle, Indiana

the boulder rundown - depauw.edu · project supervised by dr. fred soster. photo: fred soster the...

Documents