from the chair - department of geoscience · geoscience department is well known within the college...

2016-17 The Outcrop 1http://geoscience.wisc.edu

Looking forward, five of our most prominent faculty

announced their plans to retire within the next three

years. We are thus on the cusp of a multiyear transition

that will require major investments in laboratory

renovations and equipment, as well as numerous other

adjustments as we hire their replacements. We are

now searching for two new geochemists, a process that

will require much time and planning this year. We are

also discussing innovations in our introductory-level

courses in order to meet a newly-announced 20%

campus-wide increase in undergraduate enrollment during

the next four years.

Our alumni continue to play a critical role in our

department’s day-to-day and long-term activities. Our Board

of Visitors actively consults with and advises the faculty and

is held in high regard by the College. Retired alumnus and

now adjunct faculty Bill Morgan teaches a department class

on carbonates and advises our student AAPG chapter. And

alumni donations profoundly impact the department. For

example, 43 of our graduate and undergraduate students

received awards at our 2017 Spring Banquet, all funded by

alumni donations. We spend ~$60,000 to fund student field

experiences every year and more than $100,000 annually for

five graduate student fellowships and assistantships, once

again all from alumni donations.

It’s a golden time to be in Weeks Hall. The department is

filled with world-class geoscientists, hard-working, talented

graduate students, and motivated undergraduates, all

tangling with important problems related to our dynamic,

fascinating, and often-hazardous planet. If you wish to

facilitate some of the research, field experiences, or other

items that elevate our department, there are abundant

opportunities to help (p. 32). We appreciate every donation

and will use it well. Enjoy this year’s Outcrop, which was

coordinated, edited, and produced by Professor John Valley

and staff member Mary Diman.

Chuck DeMets

From the ChairDear GeoBadgers,

Greetings from Weeks Hall, where we

hope that your year was filled with

challenges, adventures, and good

times with your family and friends.

Here in Bucky Land, we had a great,

collective year in the field and in

our labs and classrooms. As always,

the department was a vibrant place, with thousands of

undergraduates circulating through our classrooms and 250

faculty/scientists/post-docs, staff, and geo-students variously

engaged in our scientific and administrative enterprise. We

thank former department chair Professor Harold Tobin and

present department administrator Michelle Szabo for their

long hours and superb work in overseeing and managing

the department. Harold’s reward for his three years in “the

chair” will be a half-year research leave in New Zealand.

Michelle’s “reward” will be to help the new chair, me, guide

the department wisely and effectively.

The past year has been marked by numerous significant

events and milestones pertinent to the past, present, and

future. We honor the memories of emeritus professor Charlie

Bentley, the subject of a feature article in this Outcrop, and

long-time department accountant Judy Gosse, both of whom

died during the past year. On a happier note, 18 of our

graduate students completed their M.S. or Ph. D. degrees;

we wish them bright futures! Amongst the various awards

and honors that were conferred on our faculty during the

past year, Jean Bahr and John Valley each received multiple,

well-deserved awards for their high career achievements.

Supported by alumni donations to our Student Field

Experience Fund, Professor Brad Singer led a group of ~20

faculty, students, and alumni on an 18-day-long January field

trip to the Chilean Andes, where he spearheads a multi-

national, NSF-funded study of Earth’s most rapidly inflating

volcanic complex.

2 Department of Geoscience • University of Wisconsin-Madison

greatly. A great deal of thanks must go to Mi-chelle Szabo, the department administrator, and everyone on the staff who have worked so hard this past year to keep everything running smoothly.

We (BOV) meet with students when we visit, to give advice on careers, job searches, and graduate school admissions. Tina Niel-son, Steve Johannsen, and other alumni near Madison have met with students on mul-tiple occasions. We would like to reach more students, more often, and would welcome any interested geology alumni who would like to become involved. If you live near Madison, or are able to travel, let us or the Department know. Another way for alumni to connect with students is thru social media: Badger Bridge: https://www.uwalumni.com/services/alumni-directory/getting-started/

Last spring, we met graduate students and learned about their research in the depart-mental Research Symposium. We also heard from representatives from various student clubs: Undergraduate Geoclub, Graduate Geologic Society, AAPG Imperial Barrel, and PaleoClub. It was a pleasure to meet such enthusiastic and well-spoken students and to hear about their activities: field trips, job preparation, community outreach, and social events. My favorite social event is the ‘bad geology movie night’.

We are also very proud of the Geology Museum, with its beautiful exhibits, ongoing research programs, student fossil preparators, and community outreach. We are lucky to

The Board of VisitorsChristine Griffith, Board Chair (2016-2018)

As alumni, we are proud of our school and its reputation for research and teaching. We acknowledge the entry it has given us into our own careers and recognize the need for con-tinued support. We, on the Board of Visitors, are the voice of alumni. Our role is to provide an external perspective to the department and to reach out to other alumni, to support the department and its students. We meet in Madison in the fall and spring, to learn about what’s happening in the department and to interact with students.

We welcome the new Department Chair, Chuck DeMets, and look forward to working with him to support the department. We appreciated the opportunity to work with pre-vious department chair, Harold Tobin, and salute him for his great service as department chair and expect to continue working with him in other capacities.

Bill Morgan joined the UW faculty as adjunct professor. He had a long career as a carbonate geologist with ConocoPhillips and as a consultant, and is a past president of SEPM and a past BOV chair. Building on carbonate labs first developed by Lloyd Pray and added to by Toni Simo, he and Shanan Peters taught the first carbonate class in several years this past spring semester.

We were sad to learn about the untimely death of Judy Gosse, who handled depart-ment finances. The Department misses her

The Board of Visitors meeting in Weeks Hall, September 15, 2017: L to R, Kirt Campion, Bill Morgan, Jamie Robertson, Martin Shields, Tim Carr, Christine Griffith, Board Chair, Tina Pint, Jim Davis, Steve Johannsen, Tom Doe, Chuck DeMets, Department Chair, Photo, Mary Diman.

have them as a face of the department, dis-playing the wonders of geology to the world and budding new geologists. The enthusi-asm of everyone associated with the Geol-ogy Museum (Richard Slaughter, David Lovelace, Carrie Eaton, Brook Norsted) is contagious.

In January, Brad Singer led a successful field trip to Chile-Argentina to see volcanic rocks of the southern Andes. The trip went 18 days, with 20 students and 2 alumni. Other field trips with alumni participation are pos-sible. Anyone interested in New Zealand? This trip, scheduled for Spring 2018 is an oppor-tunity for alumni to see outstanding geology, with expert guidance, and to help defray the costs of students. Contact the Department for more information if you are interested in attending .

We want to maintain our contacts with our fellow alumni through alumni receptions at geological society meetings and through alumni events like the barbeques in Houston, hosted by Liz and Cory Clechenko. On Sept 14-15, 2017, the Geological Engineering Faculty, Staff and Students, together with the GLE Board of Visitors, held a well-attended and interesting Alumni Symposium in Madi-son. We propose to hold a similar reunion for our Geology alumni in the near future, featur-ing geologic topics of local and general inter-est, presented by departmental and alumni experts. Stay tuned for more information.

The Geoscience Department faces chal-lenges due to reduced state funding, with


freezes on tuition and staff hiring and contin-ued uncertainties about federal grants, due to recent change in the administration. The University has dealt with funding challenges by reducing faculty through attrition, but they recognize that departments need to replace faculty who retire, especially in key depart-ments, like Geoscience. Several distinguished professors in the Department are expected to retire in the next several years. It will be a tall order to fill their shoes; the Department will need to recruit new high-quality professors and fund new research, to fulfill their goal of maintaining a strong research program.

Challenges make alumni support (large and small) all the more valuable, because it allows the department freedom to tackle projects, support graduate students, and keep field camp and field trips affordable for students.

I encourage you to contribute to the Department, and to utilize your company’s matching fund, if that is an option. See the last page of the Outcrop for the various funds. The Department’s priority this year is the same as last year: the Field Camp Scholarship Fund and the Nania Fund for graduate student support. Another worth-while option is to contribute to the Geoscience General

Fund, which provides the Department the flexibility to respond to pressing needs, such as laboratory modernization. Our Develop-ment Director at the U.W. Foundation, Troy Oleck ([email protected]), is avail-able if you want to discuss donation options in more detail.

Geoscience Department is well known within the College of L&S for its very gener-ous donors. 2015-2016 was a banner year for donations as multiple donors took advantage of the Nicholas matching fund to fund gradu-ate fellowships and teaching assistantships (Geoscience made up 1/7 of the total $6MM Nicholas matches for L&S). We also had many generous gifts last year. Thank you everyone for your generosity! Large or small, your gift makes a difference.

We on the BOV represent you, so we wel-come your ideas about how we can support the Department.

GLE

Alumni, faculty, and students gathered in Madison for the Geological, Mining, and Geotechnical Engineering 2nd Technical Conference and Alumni Reunion. From left to right: Bill Likos, Jamie Robertson, Lee Petersen, Angela Pakes, Malcolm Theobald, Kevin Eisen, Chris Griffith (Chair of Geoscience Alumni Board), Hiroki Sone.

William J. Likos ([email protected])

Greetings from Geological Engineering (GLE) at UW-Madison! The big story for our program this year and the focus of this update is the Geological, Mining, and Geotechnical Engineering 2nd Technical Conference and

Geological Engineering UpdateAlumni Reunion, held in Madison from September 13-15. What a great crowd and great time! Over 100 alumni, faculty, and students attended to enjoy a stimulating program of technical

talks, learn about ongoing and planned activities in GLE, recognize our distinguished alumni and faculty, and get caught up with old friends. One highlight of the event was a banquet to honor former recipients of the College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award, including Malcolm Theobald (BS Mining, 1983), Tom Doe (PhD Mining, 1980), and Paul La Pointe (PhD Mining, 1980). Professors Herb Wang and Craig Benson were recognized for their significant contributions to the formation and growth of the GLE program. Students Morgan Sanger and Idil Akin were presented with the Bezalel Haimson Award and Norman Severson Geotechnical Engineering Award, respectively. Our program is unique and the people involved in its past and present are just outstanding. We are looking forward to our next reunion in 2022. Mark your calendars! l

The Board of VisitorsChristine Griffith,Board Chair, [email protected] Nielsen, Vice Chair, [email protected]

Board MembersTimothy Berge, [email protected] Campion, [email protected] Chan, [email protected] Clechenko, [email protected]

Tom Doe, [email protected] Franseen, [email protected] Johannsen, [email protected] Laabs, [email protected] Mahlen, [email protected] Manser, [email protected] Pietras, [email protected] Pint, [email protected] Shields, [email protected]

Senior AdvisorsCharles Andrews, [email protected] Cameron, [email protected] Carr, [email protected] Ciriacks, [email protected] Connell, [email protected] Davis, [email protected] Divine, [email protected] Driese, [email protected] Emerson, [email protected] Erwin, [email protected] Fricke, [email protected] Hoffman, [email protected] Holley, [email protected] (Fred) James, [email protected] Johnson, [email protected] MackCarol McCartney, [email protected] Mora, [email protected] Morgan, [email protected] Morrison, [email protected] Nauta, [email protected] Rinaldo-Lee, [email protected] Robertson, [email protected] Sarg, [email protected] Solien, [email protected] (Philip) Stark, [email protected] Stephenson, [email protected] Zinke, [email protected]


Gifts to the department in 2016: Thank youIngeborg F. AaltoKenneth R. AaltoCole D. AbelRichard L. AdamsPaul N. AgarwalDaniel A. AlexanianCynthia T. AlexanianAlfred James III Revocable TrustDorothy B. AndersonLance C. AndersonCharles F. AndersonRobert J. AndersonJames L. AndersonMary P. AndersonCharles B. AndrewsEric L. AserlindShashank R. AtreSeema S. AtreAurora Borealis Instruments LLCAxley Brynelson LLPDean E. AyresDiana R. AyresRobert F. BabbJack A. BabcockLaurel BabcockB. C. BallMichael F. BarberMichael A. BarclayLiz BarclayBarr Engineering CompanyCynthia W. BartonBrian L. BeardRichard L. BeauheimCatherine E. BennettHugh F. BennettTimothy B. BergeRobert O. BeringerKyra E. BerkoveEthan J. BerkoveJonathan M. BerksonJoann BerksonElizabeth BerzinEdward BerzinErick A. BestlandKarl J. BethkeBarbara J. BickfordMichael J. BittnerMarcia G. BjornerudRonald C. BlakeyDiane BlakeyRobert H. BlodgettJohn M. BlohmLaurie R. BoniukMilton BoniukMary E. BoudreauLeo E. BourcierJoanne BourgeoisDewitt F. BowmanBP FoundationLarry J. BradfishScott BrandtMichael R. BraunerDeena G. BraunsteinDella A. BrooksElwood R. BrooksHeidi W. BrownJean W. Brown-AbelWilfred B. BryanCathy BurnweitDonald E. CameronTammye R. CameronKirt M. CampionJean M. CampionMagell P. CandelariaKathy Candelaria

Canyon Springs LLCKaroun CharkoudianRonald R. CharpentierAmy I. ChengDanny K. ChengFiona ChengLauren M. ChetelChevron CorporationKenneth W. CiriacksLinda CiriacksCory C. ClechenkoElizabeth R. ClechenkoSuzanne G. CluffRobert M. CluffRebecca J. ColePatrick M. ColganDouglas E. ConnellConocoPhillipsJennie E. CookAndrew D. CosnerCheryl D. CosnerTheodore F. CotaDorothy D. CraddockGeorge A. CrawfordJames K. CrossfieldNancy L. CrossfieldJoseph T. CukjatiMatthew CushmanSamir DaliaHeeral DaliaMohammad R. DaneshvarDennis A. DarbyWilliam E. DaviesSally A. DavisJames F. DavisJames C. DawsonCaroline W. DawsonMartha Deschamps FitchenDeborah D. DottRobert H. DottEric R. DottNancy R. DottDaniel C. DouglassTerrence J. DoyleSteven G. DrieseMarylaine H. DrieseJean C. DurchEast Texas Communities FoundationNathan C. EckGene A. EdwardsGretchen EdwardsTheresa A. EinhornJanet M. ElliottRobert P. ElliottDolores G. Ellis-ReiseEnCana Cares USA FoundationJames R. EricksonExxonMobil FoundationStanley C. FagerlinKathleen M. FaragoPhil FarquharsonChristopher H. FitchenWilliam M. FitchenJohn H. FournelleAmber A. FrankEvan K. FranseenFreeport-McMoRan IncFrederick A. FreyJulie A. FreyLloyd C. FurerJoAnn R. GageHeather A. GamberJames H. GamberChristopher A. GellaschMartha L. Gerdes

Terrence M. GerlachKay A. GermiatSteven J. GermiatGregg M. GibbsRoger L. GilbertsonBarbara E. GoffmanJackson E. GoffmanErik P. GravenWalter V. GreenRichard A. GriffithChristine M. GriffithDouglas B. GrohLynn M. GrohStephen J. GuggenheimLinda GuggenheimGerald O. GundersonHalliburton Foundation IncStanley K. HamiltonBruce HandleyEd HanelThomas C. HanksJudith M. HarackiewiczThomas E. HarringtonKathleen HarringtonNancy J. HarrisMark T. HarrisDavid J. HartKristin HartLaurie E. Hartline-BabbRobert J. HartmanBarbara M. HartmanPatricia M. HartshorneThomas A. HaugePatricia A. HayesJohn B. HayesFred G. HeivilinDarrell J. HenrySamuel W. HerbstPaul E. HerrEdward L. HershbergBrian G. HessHess CorporationRobert G. HickmanElizabeth W. HickmanJohn F. HilgenbergJulie L. HillWilliam J. HinzeThomas F. HoffmanKaren J. HoffmanThomas K. HolleyNancy L. HolleyShane A. HubbardLaura E. HubbardThomas J. HudakTerrance J. HuettlRobert A. HunterSteven T. IltisIntel FoundationAlfred JamesSteve D. JohannsenMartha JohannsenWilliam J. JohnsonThomas M. JohnsonKaren JohnsonSallie B. JonesDavid G. JonesJames A. JoyMary C. KaiserCharles J. KaiserWilliam R. KaiserKirk L. KapfhammerJo L. KapfhammerJulie L. KaplanRobert F. KaufmannJerome J. KendallSally W. Kendrick

Dennis R. KerrGreg G. KimballElizabeth M. KingAndrew M. KingJoe D. KingtonKlondex Holdings IncGary A. KocurekDianna E. KocurekRobert P. KoehlerFrank D. KomatarEdith H. KonopkaJohn M. KonopkaJohn H. KopmeierJohn S. KruegerKatelyn M. KufahlRoger G. KussowBarbara KussowHilary C. LackeyJade S. LackeyMary A. LaczniakRandell J. LaczniakLaura J. LaingSally A. LanzWilliam H. LanzJohn A. LarsonThomas C. LarsonCarol M. LarsonDonna M. LarsonJohn LaudonLinda LaudonJason A. LaufenbergDavid R. LeePatrick J. LehmannDavid LeithRichard C. LenzerErilene S. LenzerSamantha E. LeoneDavid J. LesarSheryl L. LesarEric R. LevySherry S. LewallenKyle T. LewallenLance R. LindwallAniko Litasi-GerlachLloyd C. Furer Daniel LuneauEric M. LuttrellJanet N. LuttrellRobin L. LyonVirginia R. LyonHannah M. MaasRuth H. MacDonaldCarl E. MahrJudy MahrCarol MankiewiczMarathon Petroleum CorporationRandall S. MarquardBarbara E. MathieuWalter R. MayKaren M. McCurdyRoger K. McLimansMary M. McLimansLucy C. MeigsAndrew D. MeigsCarl MendelsonRichard L. MertinsMelissa J. MeyerMarjorie A. MiddletonJohn W. MiddletonLori A. MilletRobert H. MonahanPatricia D. MooreJames D. MooreClaudia I. MoraWilliam A. Morgan

Jean MorrisonMaureen A. MuldoonJames A. MunterElizabeth D. MunterRalph H. NafzigerWendy J. NebrijaEdgardo L. NebrijaMichael J. NetonNetwork for GoodDavid G. NicholsKaren R. NicholsMichael P. NiebauerMadeleine NiebauerTina M. NielsenWendy A. NiemAlan R. NiemNyal J. NiemuthGordon L. NordJonathan E. NyquistTeresa M. O'NeillOccidental Petroleum Charitable FoundationCasey E. OelkersEric K. OelkersAlissa A. OleckTroy C. OleckIda OrengoSilvia D. Orengo-NaniaPangean Resources LLCLynn E. PaullRachel K. PaullShanan E. PetersDebra S. PetersonDaniel T. PetersonWilliam W. PidcoeKuwanna M. PietrasJeffrey T. PietrasValerie J. PorisMichael L. PorterSarah M. PrincipatoElin QuigleyMary A. QuinnKenneth J. QuinnJames G. RanklClaudia RaoVasu RaoNick T. RashidReilly Penner and Benton LLPWilliam R. ReiseMarjory B. Rinaldo-LeeJames D. RobertsonStella M. RobertsonDennis L. RoderGary D. RosenbergMary P. RossChristine RossenRickie L. RyanPhillip L. SalstromBarbara M. SalstromAnn E. SargJ Frederick SargSarg Global Strat LLCMichael L. SargentWilliam A. SauckCarolyn P. SchoenwaldMadeline E. SchreiberFrederic L. SchwabMark A. SchwingleGerald L. ScottAlyssa A. SellwoodStephen M. SellwoodJanet E. SempereJean-Christophe SempereZufang ShnRyan F. Shedivy

Christie L. ShedivyOrville B. ShelburneRita ShelburneShell Oil Company FoundationKirk W. SherwoodElizabeth SherwoodArlyn C. ShieldsMartin L. ShieldsRichard W. SlaughterMaureen SlaughterKathleen A. SmithChristy H. SmithDonald E. SoholtMark A. SolienCarol A. SolienLynsey J. SpaethScott D. StanfordPhilip H. StarkMichael W. StephensThomas E. StephensonCarol L. StephensonRobert J. SterrettCarolyn M. StreiffAlbert Y. SunLily A. SweetMichael L. SweetCharles H. SwordSandra G. SzymanskiDaniel L. SzymanskiDavid E. TabetNora A. TankRonald W. TankBenjamin L. TankoThomas Johnson AssociatesJeffrey C. ThompsonAngela ThompsonScott E. ThorntonClifford H. ThurberArthur T. TillerSarah J. TitusLaura E. ToranScott A. TroemnerMichael A. TryggestadJennifer E. TryggestadPaul J. UmhoeferKathleen M. VerhageLois H. VitcendaPeter R. VogtWalter May & AssociatesMaurice A. WarnerNathan R. WarnkeBruce R. WeertmanJudith L. WegnerWarren W. WegnerJames L. WelshTracey WhitesellHeather M. Whitman-HerbstGary A. WhitneyDebra L. WhitneyG Richard R. WhittecarJ Michael WidmierMary M. WilcoxKeith E. WinfreeRobin WinfreeMaryjane WisemanMichael J. WoldenbergCaroline WoldenbergThomas P. WollenzienJudith E. WrayJohn L. WrayHuifang XuNancy N. YeendLois S. YoungCharles T. YoungDonald A. YurewiczPeter D. Zurn


The Mack C. Lake Distinguished Undergraduate Student Luke S. Schranz

The Laurence Dexter Environmental Scholarship Claire E. Vavrus

The Lowell R. Laudon Outstanding Junior Scholarships Samuel C. Acker, Luke E. Anderson, Danielle J. Gygi, Gregory J. Horstmeier

The Mack C. Lake Outstanding Senior Scholarships Connor J. Acker, Isabella G. West, Erin M. Zimmerman

The Paull Family Undergraduate Scholarships Gretchen A. Erdmann-Hermans, Elizabeth R. Penn

William H. & Virgie Twenhofel Student AwardLauren J. Silverstein

Awards to Graduate Students

The Stanley A. Tyler Excellence in Teaching Award Rachelle Turnier

The Thomas E. Berg Excellence in Teaching Awards Elizabeth G. Ceperley, Maureen J. Kahn, Jeremy R. Patterson

Awards to Undergraduate Students

The Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp Scholarships, Funding: Wasatch-Uinta Field CampNolan Barrette, Tristin Faust, Jon Graham, Carol Gross, Ethan Heyrman, Bryce Kies, Sam List, Daniel Losiniecki, Ben Mand, Sean Markey, Colin Pauli, Ben Polchowski, Claire Ruggles, Michael Sawall, Lauren Silverstein, Jarrett Smith, Ryan Tarpey

T.C. Chamberlin ScholarshipLauren J. Silverstein

The Outstanding SophomoreAmanda L. Feltz

The Carl and Val Dutton Scholarship Sophie L. Bernstein

Student Awards and Scholarships for 2017Presented at the Spring Banquet on April 28 at Varsity Hall, Union South

Albert and Alice Weeks Outstanding Student Research Paper AwardsM’Bark Baddouh,Tyler B. Blum, Nathaniel W. Fortney, Nicolas A. Garibaldi, Shiyun Jin, Michael R. Johnson, Seungyeol Lee, Hélène Le Mével, Benjamin J. Linzmeier, Chao Ma, Ryan J. Quinn, Elena C. Reinisch, Allen J. Schaen, Randolph T. Williams, Jody B. Wycech, YaoQuan Zhou

The James J. and Dorothy T. Hanks Awards in Geophysics Andria P. Ellis, Susanna I. Webb

The S.W. Bailey ScholarshipsTyler B. Blum, Nicholas P. Levitt

James D. and Stella M. Robertson Graduate AssistantshipSeungyeol Lee

The Mark & Carol Ann Solien Graduate Assistantship Bin Guo

The George J. Verville Award In Geology & GeophysicsBenjamin J. Linzmeier

The Jay C. Nania Graduate Student Assistantship Nicolas A. Garibaldi

Dean L. Morgridge Distinguished Graduate Fellowships Tyler B. Blum, Nicholas P. Levitt

The S.W. Bailey Distinguished Graduate StudentJody B. Wycech

Undergrad students honored with awards or scholarships at the spring banquet, L to R: Amanda Feltz, Sophie Bernstein, Lauren Silverstein, Isabella West, Connor Acker, Claire Vavrus, Gretchen Erdmann-Hermans, Elizabeth Penn, and Luke Schranz. Photo, Neal Lord.

Silvia Orengo-Nania and Nico Garibaldi at the Spring Banquet. Nico was awarded the Jay C. Nania Graduate Student Assistantship. Photo, Neal Lord.


Distinguished Alumni Awards for 2017

For his distinguished research, teaching, and service in the field of seismology and his contributions to the understanding of the earth and its ice.

RICHARD C. ASTER (M.S. Geophysics, 1986). Rick Aster obtained his bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a double major in Physics at UW-Madison in 1983. He stayed on for graduate studies at UW, working with Professor Bob Meyer for a Master’s degree in 1986, then moved to Scripps Institute of Oceanography to work with Professor Peter Shearer for his Ph.D. in 1991. Following a brief period as a post-doc at Scripps, Rick

took a faculty position at New Mexico Tech, where he worked until 2014, when he moved to Colorado State University to become Head of the Department of Geosciences. Rick’s research includes seismic imaging, volcano seismology, microseismicity, seismic noise, seismic instrumentation, crustal and mantle seismology, fluvial seismology and cryoseismology. He is well known for his re-search on earth structure, mainly in the West-ern US and Antarctica, and volcanic systems, especially Mt. Erebus in Antarctica. Although Rick never went to Antarctica while he was a grad student at UW, our department’s work in Antarctica inspired him to do research in that very challenging environment. He received the NSF Antarctic Service Medal for fieldwork in Antarctica in 1999. Aster Glacier in the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica is named after him. Rick has made many important contribu-

Richard C. Aster, DistinguisheD Alumnus

For outstanding contributions to sedimentary and petroleum geology.

tions to the broader seismological commu-nity. In 1999, he led the founding of the PASS-CAL Instrument Center at New Mexico Tech, which supports diverse seismological studies around the world under the management of the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. He served as the Principal Investigator of the facility from 1999 to 2014. Rick served as president of the Seismological Society of America from 2009 to 2010 and as an elected board member of the society from 2008 to 2014. He was one of the leaders of a major workshop on “Seismology Grand Challenges” and a key writer of a subsequent report that has been extremely influential in the field. For his distinguished research, teaching, and service in the field of seismology and his contributions to the understanding of the earth and its ice, we are pleased to honor Rick with a Distinguished Alumnus Award. —Cliff Thurber, Citationist

DON G. BEBOUT (M.S. Geology, 1954) gradu-ated from Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio in 1952. He went on to the University of Wisconsin for graduate studies and com-pleted a thesis with Dr. Marcus Thompson on the “Conemaugh Corals from Ohio”. After two years in the Army, Don continued his graduate studies and was awarded a Doctor-ate Degree in Geology from the University of Kansas in 1961 on “Desmoinesian fusulinids of Missouri.” Dr. Bebout went to work for the Esso Production Research Company (now ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company), Houston, Texas from 1960 to 1972 where he studied carbonate rocks from areas through-out the world. In 1970 Don was awarded the Medal of Merit by the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists for his contributions on

SEPM Research Conference. Subsequently, Don became president of the GCSEPM (1983-84) and was selected as an honorary member in 1987. Don returned to the BEG in 1981 as a Senior Research Scientist where he remained until his retirement in 1994. Among Don’s 150 publications include the classic AAPG Memoir 33, Carbonate Depositional Environments; Geology of Carbonate Porosity; Atlas of major central and eastern Gulf Coast gas reservoirs; and Guide to the Permian Reef Geology Trail, McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains Na-tional Park, West Texas. During his career Don impacted numerous students as an instruc-tor and advisor. He has left his mark on the geology of Texas and has a legacy of graduate students who have carried on with carbonate research. —Kirt Campion, Citationist

Don G. Bebout, DistinguisheD Alumnus

the “Classification of Anhydrite; a Practical Ap-proach.” Don moved on to become a Research Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin in 1972 where he was responsible for carbonate and evaporite studies as well as a fledgling geothermal energy project that resulted in drilling the first geopressured, geothermal test wells in Texas. His carbonate research resulted in highly re-garded papers on secondary carbonate poros-ity, linkage of porosity to depositional facies, and regional studies of the lower Cretaceous carbonates in Texas and Mexico. His academic pursuits lead Don to become an AAPG Distin-guished Lecturer (1979-80). He moved to LSU as a professor and Director of Research of the Louisiana Geological Survey in 1979. He was Vice President of the First Annual Gulf Coast


Daniel J. Fornari, DistinguisheD Alumnus

DANIEL J. FORNARI (B.S. Geology, 1972). Marine Geologist Dan Fornari has probably contributed as much as any other living scientist to the exploration and mapping of the deep ocean floor. He has over 40 years of marine research experi-ence focused on the global mid-ocean ridge system and the hydrothermal vents (a.k.a. “black smokers”) discovered there, and his leadership in both science and technol-

For his distinguished career of leadership in exploring and illuminating the depths of the mid-ocean ridges.

ogy development has advanced that field tremendously. Dan has participated in over 80 research cruises and 100 deep submergence dives in the famous submersible Alvin, and has published more than 100 papers on the geol-ogy and biology of that frontier environment. He was also chair of the NSF’s RIDGE2000 program, a decade-long large-scale interdis-ciplinary research effort into mid-ocean ridge processes. Even as an undergraduate geology major at landlocked UW-Madison, Dan got into marine research by participating in the maiden voy-age of the Scripps research ship R/V Melville. Bitten by this bug, he then went to Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory where he completed M.A. and Ph.D. work in 1978. Dan has had a long and extraordinarily productive career as a marine geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute ever since, where he now holds the

title of Senior Scientist in the Department of Geology & Geophysics. Dan was for many years the Director of the Ocean Exploration Institute at Woods Hole and also the chief scientist for Deep Submergence there. In this capacity he guided the Alvin program and the development of robotic submarines known as ROVs and AUVs, and had a particular focus on innovations in high resolution imaging of the sea bed. Throughout his career, Dan has generously and unselfishly contributed to the work of hundreds of marine scientists through his leadership and mentoring of young re-searchers. In recogntition, the American Geo-physical Union awarded Dan Fornari the 2014 Edward Flinn Award for unselfish cooperation and leadership in research. Finally, Dan is one of the authors of the stunning 2015 book Discovering the Deep: A Photographic Atlas of the Seafloor and Oceanic Crust. —Harold Tobin, Citationist

At the Spring Awards Banquet: Above, left, John Middleton and Margie Chan; right, Noriko and Barry Kita. Below, left, R to L, Kurt Fiegl, Jamie Robertson and Doug Connell; right, Harold Tobin and Shanan Peters try out the new 5-string banjo Harold had just received from Chuck DeMets and the faculty for his service as department chair.


Students in the Field

2017 Spring Break, White Lake, Field CampThe best 8-weeks in the year!Phil Brown

Spring Break this year was my 5th trip to New Mexico and the Rio Grande Rift in the last 20 years. Nineteen students and I left on Friday morning (yep, jumped the gun) and did something I have never done before—spent the night in a motel instead of driving straight through— maybe I have finally grown up? The following seven days were a mixture of young volcanic features (Valley of Fires, Kilbourne Hole, and the Valles Caldera), Economic geology (Santa Rita copper, Gonzalez fluorite) and cultural stops (Three River Petroglyphs and Bandelier National Monument). Let’s not forget White Sands National Monument and its amazing gypsum dunes.

The original plan had been to take Amtrak to Albuquerque but the logistics of rental vehi-cles, food shopping and round trip transport to Union Station in Chicago eventually convinced me to run this trip the way I had run the previ-ous 13 Spring Break trips I had organized—get in a bunch of vehicles and drive. The students were fantastic. We spent a half-day with Bill Chavez (New Mexico Tech—thanks!!) doing some mapping of an economic prospect—a first for many of the students. The weather was great (essentially no wind in New Mexico in March??) until it wasn’t (we got snowed out of our last field day; thanks, and sorry, Chloe). I believe that these smorgasbord trips provide an important enrichment opportunity for our largely Midwestern students. I hope someone steps up to share this task with Shanan in the future.

White Lake is probably my favorite week of the instructional year. World famous geology recording the most important biogeological at-mospheric event in Earth history (oxygenation of the atmosphere), coupled with mildly meta-morphosed sediments that have been gently structurally deformed. Since 1941 this area has seen more than 1100 Madison undergrads experience their first serious mapping exercise. I inherited this course from Carl Bowser who was handed it by Bob Gates who taught it starting in 1952. And since 1985 Gary and Hanny Ziegler have been our hosts at the Little White River Lodge. Gary can make beer/wine from anything (except oranges) and if he

offers you something from the Birch tree you better have no further plans for the day. Every day this course provides eight hours of pure geology followed by 1-2 hours of “community service” and the tangible and intan-gible rewards associated with keeping an open mind and being willing to do some physical labor. Recent grads of this course can translate the last sentence for you.

Field Camp 2017 was a success with no serious injuries (dilute HCl is not the eye drops you were trying for) and only two flat tires scattered across 67 students and 10 vehicles that collectively drove more than 63,000 miles. Wiscon-sin contributed 16 of the students, four of whom finished in the top nine in the class. As Director, con-tinuing to find compatible and complementary staff from the four main schools in the consortium is a challenge. This year Erik Haroldson again served as a TA for half of camp and Scott Giorgis (PhD from the Structure wing of Weeks Hall, now at SUNY Geneseo) again taught the first three weeks. Many of the camp projects are little changed from what they were 10 and 20 years ago as we have been fortunate not to have had field areas converted to condos or golf courses. This summer it was announced that a broad, concerted effort by many stakeholders (and $36 million) was going to preserve Bonanza Flats from development in the future. The 51-year old Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp can only continue to exist with Park City as its base because of the Chateau Apres and its owners the Hosenfelds, the will-ingness of ranchers to allow us access, and the support of Badger Alumni through the

White Lake: Day 1, Stop 1—a beautiful morning offsetting this confusing outcrop that, by the end of day, fits into the evolving story.

The July 4th weekend marks the half way point in camp and the students enjoy two days off in the Tetons—hiking, sitting, floating in the river. Photos, Phil Brown.

Kilbourne Hole, NM: The Kilbourne maar is famous for it’s mantle and crustal nodules. Here students examine the tuff ring around the crater.

Field Camp and Field Experiences Funds.Light duty Spring Break trips, mapping

courses like White Lake and capstone Field Camp experiences continue to provide the transforma-tive events in the development of many geoscien-tists. It has been my pleasure to have had a role in this process for the last several decades. l


Degrees Awarded—December 2016–August 2017

December 2016Davis, Andrew W. (GLE)Devitt, Caroline E,. (GLE)Felhofer, Aaron J. (GLE)Gosz, Kayla C. (GLE)Gullixson, Matthew D. (GLE)Haas, Lisa D.Howes, Beau T.Justinak, Hayley K. (GLE)Kolo, Jack T. (GLE)Nowicki, John R.Pranadjaja, Eric C. (GLE)Vnuk, Catherine T. (GLE)Watson, Adam C.May 2017Abrahams, Lauren S. (GLE)Batiza, Rodey M. (GLE)Berg, Lucas M.Bley, Erica J. (GLE)Bradshaw, Benjamin E. (GLE)Callahan, Patrick D.Champion, Raquel L.

Master's Degrees–December 2016Jin, Shiyun, XU, Incommensurately Modulated Structures of Labradorite Feldspars (~An51) and Their Petrological ImplicationsMaster's Degrees–May 2017Bartram, Hanna C., GOODWIN/TO-BIN, Investigation of the tectonic history of the Rodeo Cove thrust zone: Accre-tionary pathways of Franciscan Complex rocks, Marin Headlands, CA

Martinez, Paola M., SINGER, Volcano-logic and petrologic evolution of Antuco-Sierra Velluda, Southern Andes, Chile: new insights from 40Ar/39Ar datingMaster's Degrees–August 2017Barnes, Benjamin D., PETERS, Char-acterizing Authigenic Carbonate and its Importance to the Global Carbon Cycle in the Late Devonian–Early Mississippian Bakken Formation

Cameron, Evan D., VALLEY, Genesis and alteration of inclusions in detrital Jack Hills zircons

Hammond, Alexander P., CAR-ROLL, Was Colorado Mineral Belt Volca-

Ph.D. Degrees–August 2017Andersen, Nathan L., SINGER, Per-spectives on protracted and punctuated rhyolite magma dynamics from integrated geochemistry and geochronology

Jeppson, Tamara N., TOBIN, Seis-mic velocity and elastic properties of plate boundary faults

Linzmeier, Benjamin J., PETERS, VALLEY, Cephalopod ecology inferred from high-resolution ion microprobe analyses of stable isotopes

McMullen, Sharon K., PETERS, Non-marine stratigraphic paleobiology: A multi- scale examination

Webb, Susanna I., TOBIN, Interac-tion of structure and physical properties in accretionary wedges: examples from the Cascadia and Nankai Trough subduction zones

Wycech, Jody .B., KELLY, Novel tech-niques and approaches to enhance the fi-delity of foraminiferal paleoclimate records

Undergraduate Degrees in Geoscience (GLE=double major)

Condon, Katherine J. (GLE)Conradt, Aaron A. (GLE)Cook, Liam C.Faust, Tristin L. (GLE)Frederick, Thomas P.Glanville, Sean P.Graf, Dan J. (GLE)Graham, Jonathan L. (GLE)Heikkila, Kathleen R.Heinsohn, Amanda J.Hong, Sung YoonHorstmeier, Gregory J. (GLE)Kaiser, Christopher D.Kelsey, Ian F. (GLE)Khoo, Victoria S.Neuman, Mason D.Niemisto, Erin N.O’Connell, Dustin F. (GLE)Ottmann, Eric E.Pathare, Ravindra R.Pauli, Colin D.Pelletier, Frank M. (GLE)

nism Responsible for Sodium Carbonate Evaporite Deposits in the Eocene Green River Formation?"

Heinle, Benjamin C., CARDIFF, The Im-pact of Surface Heterogeneities on Fracture Flow and Transport Processes: Visualiza-tions using a Novel Thermochromic Labora-tory Apparatus

Krause, Jacob J., CARDIFF, A tracer approach to estimate groundwater ni-trate loading from agricultural fields: Appli-cation to a shallow sand and gravel aquifer

Olson, Joshua C., BAHR, Long-term Alterations in Groundwater Chemistry In-duced by Municipal Well Pumping

Reusché, Melissa M., MARCOTT, Latest Pleistocene and Late Holocene surface ex-posure ages from two marine-terminating glaciers in northwest Greenland

Schlaudt, Elisabeth A., BAHR, Devel-oping a Groundwater Flow Model for Slough Management in Sauk County, WI

Woodard, Jacob B., ZOET, Insights into drumlin development at Múlajökull, Ice-land: a geophysical approach

Richmond, Susan M. (GLE)Roach, Colin J. (GLE)Roche, Patrick J.Rumble, Dylan J. (GLE)Sasseville, Gabrielle S.Schatz, Rowayne A. (GLE)Schmidt, James R. (GLE)Schranz, Luke J. (GLE)Schulte, Benjamin J. (GLE)Silverstein, Lauren J. Slepica, Madison K. (GLE)Stricklin, Jacob M.Suchomel, Brandon S. (GLE) Thompson, Daniel H.Tramonte, Christopher J. (GLE)Tryon-Petith, Miles W. (GLE)Walker, Alexander R. (GLE)Witman, Benjamin A.Zheng, Yihao (GLE)Zimmerman, Michael C. (GLE)August 2017Losiniecki, Daniel R.


September 2016Christina Morency, Livermore Nat'l Lab, 9-2, Wave propagation modeling in acoustic, elastic, poroelastic, and fractured porous media

Merinda Nash, Smithsonian Institute, 9-16, The unexpected role of biological dolomite in building coral reefs-an investiga-tion of chemical, bacterial and mechanical properties of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Don DePaolo, UC-Berkeley & LBL, 9-23, Understanding envi-ronmental proxies: How minerals grow and isotopes fraction-ate in aqueous media

Lauren Andrews, NASA Goddard, 9-30, Subglacial drain-age evolution beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet regulated by weakly connected regions of the bed

October 2016Jessica Creveling, Oregon State, 10-7, Sea level change through a snowball Earth deglaciation: A case study from the Noonday Formation cap dolostone, Death Valley region, California

Marjorie Chan, University of Utah, 10-14, Sedimentology Fron-tiers from Earth to Mars: Dunes, Deformation, and Diagenesis

Mike Hochella, Virginia Tech, 10-21, Nanoscience in the Earth sciences: A highly relevant science for the 21st century

Lukas Baumgartner, University of Lausanne, 10-28, A 4-D walk through the Torres del Paine Intrusion, Patagonia

November 2016Fan-Chi Lin, University of Utah, 11-4, Imaging the Yellowstone Magmatic and hydrothermal system using seismic tomography

Diana Roman, Carnegie-DTM, 11-11, Forecasting volcanic activity based on seismic quiescence

Ikuko Wada, University of Minnesota, 11-18, Fluid migration pathways in the mantle wedge of subduction zones: Effects of mineral grain size and mantle viscous resistance

December 2016Kamini Singha, Colorado School of Mines, 12-2, A tale of two porosities: Exploring why contaminant transport doesn’t always behave the way it should

January 2017Alfred Hartemink, Soil Science, UW-Madison, 1-20, The Pedon is at the Core of Digital Soil Morphometrics

Clark Johnson, UW-Madison, 1-27, New ways of looking at old rocks: Chronology of the redox evolution of the Earth in the Archean to Paleoproterozoic

February 2017Eric Steig, University of Washington, 2-3, Antarctic climate change, the last interglacial period, and sea level

Fidel Costa, NTU (Singapore), 2-10, Degas, Intrude, Mix, Erupt, Repeat (DIMER): The tempo of open vent volcanoes

Steve Shirey, Carnegie-DTM, 2-17, Superdeep diamonds: sam-pling minerals from Earth's mantle transition zone

Kate Allstadt, USGS Hazards Program, 2-24, Loud landslides and groaning glaciers: surface processes through a seismic lens

March 2017Philippe Van Capellen, University of Waterloo, 3-3, hydrobio-geochemistry

Terry Plank, Columbia LDEO, 3-10, How Hot? How Deep? Solving for the Geotherm in Melting Regions Under Conti-nents

Phoebe Cohen, Williams College, 3-31, Life in the Neoprotero-zoic: hard parts, hard dates, and hard questions

April 2017Rick Aster, Colorado State University, 4-7, Seismological Explo-ration of the Antarctic Cryosphere

Bronwen L. Konecky, UC-Boulder / Oregon State, 4-14, Fingerprinting tropical climate change during the Last Glacial Maximum

Jocelyn Sessa, American Museum of Natural History, 4-21, Using mollusks to elucidate ecologic and climatic changes in Mesozoic and Cenozoic marine environments.

Speakers DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR

Guest speaker Rick Aster, center, with Department Chair, Harold Tobin, left, and Cliff Thurber. Rick was presented with his Distinguished Alumnus Award after his April 4 talk in the Miller Lecture Hall. See page 6 for his citation. Photo: Neal Lord.


FACULTYJean Bahr received five special recognitions:

She will receive the 2017 Ambassador Award from AGU at the fall meeting in New Orleans. The Ambassador Award is given annually in recognition for “outstanding contributions to one or more of the following area(s): societal impact, service to the Earth and space community, scientific leadership, and promotion of talent/career pool.”

She is the 2017 recipient of the GSA’s Dis-tinguished Service Award. She will receive the award at the Seattle GSA meeting in October.

She was named the 2016-2017 President of the Executive Committee of the American Geosciences Institute, a network of over 50 associations representing geoscientists with a diverse array of skills and knowledge of our planet.

She was appointed in January by President Obama as Chair of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency charged with reviewing the Department of Energy’s program for manag-ing and disposing of high level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

She was named an AGU Fellow, an honor granted to only 0.1% of AGU membership.

Mike Cardiff was awarded an NSF-CAREER award for his proposed research: "Under-standing transport processes in fractured sedimentary rock through multi-frequency and multi-method investigations”. This pres-tigious award began in the summer of 2017 and will provide 5 years of funding for his research group.

Chuck DeMets received a UW WARF-named professorship in 2017, one of the highest hon-ors conferred by the university and a title that remains with him for the remainder of his UW career. Chuck's new title is “Alfred Wegener Professorship of Geophysics” in honor of the early 1900s German meteorologist who first described the hypothesis of continental drift and marshaled a variety of geological and other supporting evidence.

Steve Meyers was named Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor.

Brad Singer was selected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to be an Einstein Distin-guished Lecturer in 2016. He gave lectures on geochronology and the NSF rhyolite dynamics project at Chinese National Science Foun-dation, and Chinese Academy of Sciences Institutes in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Wuhan in August 2016.

John Valley has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow, a tradition begun in 1874, is recognition by peers for distinguished contributions to advance science or its applications. Valley was elected for contributions to geochemistry leading to a deeper understanding of the geo-logic evolution of the early Earth and also for the development of analytical methods that have opened new frontiers of research.

John was also a 2017 winner of the Hilldale Award, an honor bestowed annually to one faculty member in the Physical Sciences by the UW-Madison Secretary of the Faculty, recognizing distinguished contributions to teaching, research and service.

The new mineral valleyite (Ca4Fe

6O

13) was

named in John's honor (see p. 12).

ALUMNIRichard Alley received the 2016 Climate Communication Prize from AGU at the 2016 Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The prize honors an AGU member “for communication of climate science” and “highlights the impor-tance of promoting scientific literacy, clarity of message and efforts to foster respect and understanding of science-based values as they relate to implication of climate change”. The citation praises Richard’s excellent and engag-ing general-education books, “The Two-Mile Time Machine”, "Abrupt Climate Change", and "Earth: Operator’s Manual”, in addition to his extensive technical and other publications.

Robert (Bob) Blodgett was named interim chair of the Austin (TX) Community College Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. He also received the 2017 Teaching Excellence Award for full-time faculty at the college.

Dona Dirlam retired from her position as director of the Richard T. Liddicoat Library and Information Center of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in August. When she began her career at GIA in 1980, the collection had only 2,000 titles. During her 38 years of services, she expanded the collection to include more than 57,000 books, 700 journal titles, 198,000 digital images and 1,800 video recordings. The collection is now the largest library focused on gems and jewelry in the world.

Also noteworthy was her expansion of the library’s exceptional rare book collection. According to the GIA, this collection represents almost every major work on gems and jewelry ever written or published. In 2015, she started a project that scanned more than 300 books and made them available online. (https://www.gia.edu/library-cartier-rare-book-archives)

In 2015 she was the recipient of the prestigious Accredited Gemologist’s Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Among her other awards, Dona received the Outstanding Gemologist Award from the Association of Women Gemologists in 1989, GIA’s Staff of the Year Award in 1991, the Richard T. Liddicoat Distinguished Achievement Award in 2004 (GIA’s highest honor), and the Women’s Jewelry Association’s Award for Excellence in Special Services in 2016.

Read more about her distinguished career at: https://www.gia.edu/gia-news-research-gia-innovators-dirlam

Chris Gellasch received the Dean’s Impact Award from the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Mary-land. The Dean's Impact Award recognizes excellence in teaching. Chris is Director of the Environmental Science Graduate Program and Assistant Professor.

Vincent E. McKelvey, a noted research ge-ologist who directed the U.S. Geological Sur-vey (USGS) from 1971-77, is a National Mining Hall of Fame posthumus inductee. He and three other mining industry luminaries were honored at NMHFM’s 30th annual induction

Honors and Awards for 2016-17 to Faculty, Alumni, and Students

(Continued, next page)


banquet and ceremony in Denver on Sept. 23, 2017. McKelvey earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joined the USGS in 1941, and, over the next 46 years, helped bring global distinction to the agency.

Skylar Primm was Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Teacher Fellow, in recognition of teaching, leadership, and service. He teaches at the High Marq Environmental Charter School in Montello, which received the 2017 Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education Earthguard Award.

Cary D. Rosenberg was awarded the GSA History and Philosophy of Geology Division Gerald and Sue Friedman Award for service at GSA Denver 2016.

Karen R. Schmitt has been named Provost for the University of Wisconsin Colleges fol-lowing a nationally competitive search. She earned a BS in geology and geophysics from

University of Wisconsin‐Madison and a PhD in geological sciences from Columbia University. Schmitt was previously the Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, AK.

Board of Vistiors member Pete Stark was one of 101 geologists whose careers were selected for inclusion in a new AAPG book, “Heritage of the Petroleum Geologist”. Those selected for inclusion in the book were honored at the April 4 Division of Professional Affairs Lunch at AAPG Convention in Houston.

STUDENTSFour UW-Madison geoscience graduate stu-dents were awarded research grants by GSA in 2017: Cameron Batchelor, Soo Hyun Kim, Sarah Shields, and Andrew Walters. In addition, Walters received The Robert and Carolyn Maby Memorial Grant, American As-sociation of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the ExxonMobil/GSA Student Research Grant,

Geological Society of America (GSA).

Seungyeol Lee received the IUCr (Inter-national Union of Crystallography) Journals Poster Prize at the 67th Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association (May 2017) for his presentation of “Application of combined techniques for studying nano-minerals in geological systems.” Seungyeol also received the Student Scholar Award from the Microscopy Society of America at the an-nual meeting (Aug. 2017) for his paper “Study on nanophase minerals and their associated trace elements in freshwater ferromanganese nodules from Green Bay, Lake Michigan."

Rachelle Turnier received a travel grant to the GSA Meeting in Denver.

Claire Vavrus (Geology & GLE Major) was awarded a Hilldale Scholarship this spring and the L. Austin Weeks Undergraduate Research Grant through the AAPG Foundation. l

Huifang Xu

Magnetic minerals are important for record-ing earth’s paleo-magnetic field. Common magnetic minerals are magnetite, maghemite and pyrrhotite. Recently, our team (gradu-ate student Seungyeol Lee, Dr. Hongwu Xu of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Ryan Jacobs, Professor Dane Morgan of the UW Materials Science and Engineering Department, and myself) discovered a new magnetic mineral valleyite with stoichiom-etry of Ca

4Fe

6O

13 in basaltic glass and scoria

from the late Pleistocene Menan Volcanic Complex near Rexburg, Idaho, USA. The

new mineral occurs as euhedral crystals with sizes of several hundreds of nanometers (Fig. 1). They crystallized at high temperature in an oxidizing environment. Valleyite has the sodalite-type structure with cubic symmetry. Ferric iron and a small amount of Al are in tet-rahedral sites that form a cage-like framework (Fig. 2). Ca atoms are in the cage sites. The new mineral is named after Charles R. Van Hise Distinguished Professor John W. Valley. Professor Valley has taught at UW since 1983 and was President of the Mineralogical Society of America (2005-2006). His contributions to mineralogy, petrology

and geochemistry lead to a deeper understanding of crustal evolution from early Earth to the Anthropocene. Both the mineral species and name have been approved by Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association. Because valleyite is a new crystalline material, its

magnetic and chemical properties are being further investigated as function of tempera-ture and composition. Preliminary results from senior graduate student Seungyeol Lee show that valleyite can be synthesized through a sol-gel route. New graduate stu-dent Otto Magee will synthesize the mineral with different compositions and study their chemical and magnetic properties.

VALLEYITE: a new magnetic mineral in basaltic rocks

Figure 2. Polyhedral model of the cubic valleyite structure projected along the [111] direction. Brown tetrahedra: (Fe,Al)O4; Large green balls: Ca; Small red balls: O.

Figure 1: Left: Transmission electron microscopic image showing a valleyite crystal (V) together with basaltic glass and much smaller crystals of luogufengite (Luo, ε-Fe2O3). Right: Ideal morphology of valleyite with crystallographic forms of {100}, {111} and {111}.1


Mesozoic strata of the Neuquen forearc basin to Planchon-Peteroa, an active andesitic composite volcano straddling the Argentina-Chile border and rising to 4100 meters elevation that has been deeply dissected by Pleistocene glaciers. Then it was on to Rio Barrancas valley and a 100 km, adventure-filled trek or two through the highly folded and thrust-faulted western edge of the Neuquen Basin which is capped by the southern limits of the Laguna del Maule volcanic field. We continued south along the eastern flank of the Andes through the beautifully exposed Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments and recent volcanic flows of the Neuquen Basin and crossed back into Chile at the active Antuco-Sierra Velluda Volcanic Complex. Following a stop in Santa Cruz, Chile, in the heart of the Colchaugua Valley wine region, the last days of the trip were spent looking up close at Miocene plutons and highly deformed Mesozoic sediments in Maipo Canyon to the southeast of Santiago (Figure 5).This trip was made possible by the Student Field Experience Fund and our generous alumni. Thank you, GeoBadgers!

Professors Brad Singer and Shanan Peters led a 16 day field trip from January 2-18, 2017 to examine the deformed sedimentary basins, volcanoes, and plutons that comprise the Andes between 34o and 37o S. In addition to a fantastic

group of 16 graduate students from the geochemistry, geophysics, struc-ture, and sedimentary geology re-search groups, we were joined by dis-tinguished alums Charlie Andrews and Tom Doe, and department manager Michelle Szabo. While in Argentina, we were also joined by Dr. Paty Sruoga of the Argentine geologic survey. Paty shared with us her many years of experience mapping the geol-ogy of Mendoza Province, including the Diamante Caldera, Rio Grande Valley, and Planchon-Peteroa volcano. The route covered more than 4000 km, half on harrowing, but spectacu-lar, unpaved back-country roads in the spine of the Andes (Figure 1). We camped or stayed in cabins with spectacular views of the southern constellations each night. After our rendez-vous in Santiago, the first 4 days of the trip focused on the western flank of the Andes along the Rio Maule 250 km south of Santiago, Chile, and included stops to discuss dike intrusion within the Cretaceous Melado Pluton, the emplacement of the late Miocene Invernada Pluton (Figure 2) into Eocene arc rocks, and the restless Laguna del Maule volcanic field that has erupted enor-mous amounts of rhyolite during the past 20,000 years atop the Andean rangecrest (Figure 3). We then headed northeast 200 km to the Diamante Caldera and Maipo Volcano, ascending to 3400 meters above sea level to the floor of the 30 km diameter caldera (Figure 4). Collapse of this caldera 160,000 years ago produced the 450 km3 rhyolitic Diamante Ignimbrite on which the city of Santiago, Chile, 100 km to the northwest, is built. We then headed back south toward Laguna del Maule and northward 100 km up the Rio Grande valley through highly deformed

Chile-Argentina Andes Field Excursion

Fig. 5. At 3,000 meters on the final day of the field trip Brad gives a geologic over-view and Shanan a close up look at vertically dipping Jurassic sediments including conglomerates and sandstones at the head of Maipo Canyon, Chile.

Fig. 2. Day 3 included a visit to the late Miocene (7 Ma) Invernada Pluton. The roof of this granitic pluton is where the light colored rocks reflecting sunlight high in the opposite canyon wall are in contact with overlying darker hornfels rocks on the sky-line. The pluton has been exposed by uplift, accompanied by repeated Pleistocene glaciation. In the distance is the Loma Seca Tuff, the supervolcanic eruption product of the Calabozos Caldera that formed about 300,000 years ago.

Fig. 1. The route covered.

Fig. 3. At 2,500 meters, on top of the 19,000 year old Espejos Rhyolite flow looking north from the Laguna del Maule volca-nic field along the spine of the Andean rangecrest.

Fig. 4. Hiking across the floor of the Diamante Caldera in Argentina at 3400 meters elevation to the toe of andesitic lava flows at the base of Maipo Volcano which grew to 5264 meters elevation following caldera collapse


Sweet Spot for the Formation of Sedimentary DolomiteHuifang Xu, Eric E. Roden, and Philip E. Brown

The “dolomite problem” is a geological challenge that has endured since its first iden-tification by the French scientist Deodate Do-lomieu in 1791. Our UW team has studied the dolomite for nine years with support from the NASA Astrobiology Institute, National Sci-ence Foundation, and our university. There have been three PhD students, two Master's students, and two research scientists involved in the project. Ideal or stoichiometric dolomite mineral (CaMg[CO

3]

2) has an ordered structure with

alternating Ca2+ and Mg2+ cation layers along the c-axis. However, dolomite minerals in sedimentary rocks display a wide range of composition and Ca-Mg ordering. Natural dolomite minerals range from ~ 38 to ~ 50 mole % of MgCO

3 with a bimodal composi-

tional distribution with peaks at ~ 44 and 49 mole % of MgCO

3 respectively. Although

ordered dolomite occurs in ancient sedimen-tary rocks, weakly ordered (protodolomite) and even disordered dolomite also occurs in certain Holocene and modern carbonate de-posits. Both composition and ordering state will affect unit cell parameters of dolomite crystals (Zhang et al., 2010). A Ca-rich compo-sition in dolomite will result in formation of high-Mg calcite, ~ (Ca0

.75Mg

0.25)CO

3, and “d

dolomite” (Ca2Mg[CO

3]

3) nano-precipitates

within the host dolomite crystals during diagenesis (Shen et al., 2013, 2014a). Former graduate student Zhizhang Shen and re-search scientist Hiromi Konishi solved the crystal structure of the “d dolomite” nano-mineral using an aberration-corrected scan-ning transmission electron microscope and density functional theory calculations (Figure 1). The intermediate phase “d dolomite” can be considered a periodic stacking of dolomite and calcite layers.

Sedimentary dolomite and the “dolomite problem”

Sedimentary dolomite is generally abun-dant in the geological record yet scarce in Holocene and modern sediments. Sedimen-tary dolostones and dolomite-cemented

sandstones can be potential hydrocarbon reservoirs, and many hydrocarbon reservoirs in North America are related to sedimentary dolomite. Previous dolomitization models address the role of hydrologic circulation (or mass transfer) in supplying the necessary Mg2+. The main factor inhibiting the nucle-ation and growth of (disordered) dolomite is the strong hydration of the aqueous Mg2+ ions. Synthesis results of anhydrous Ca-Mg-carbonates in anhydrous solvent show that the distribution coefficient for Mg (D

Mg =

(Mg/Ca)solid

/ (Mg/Ca)solution

) is about an order of magnitude higher than that in aqueous solution at similar conditions (Xu et al., 2013). In order to understand the kinetics for sedimentary dolomite formation, we need catalysts that can increase Mg2+ incorpora-

tion in the crystals of disordered dolomite or partially ordered dolomite by reducing the kinetic energy barrier to dehydration of the hydrated Mg2+. The observation of dolomite occurring within some anoxic, organic-rich sediments indicates an important role for organic matter in facilitating Mg2+ incorporation. However, the precise roles and functions of these catalysts remain to be determined. Studies on Holocene peritidal deposits and modern marine shallow- and deep-sea dolomites show that methanogenesis and late-stage bacte-rial sulfate reduction can promote dolomite precipitation. Graduate student Yihang Fang demonstrated a correlation between organic matter and preferential dolomitization in some partially dolomitized carbonates from

Figure 1: Polyhedral models of dolomite (left) and “d dolomite” (center) projected along their b-axes. Blue and golden polyhedra are Ca-O and Mg-O octahedra, respectively. (C) Z-contrast image showing the interface between dolomite (upper area with Ca•Mg … or-dering sequence) and the “d dolomite” (lower area with Ca•Ca•Mg … ordering sequence) (Shen et al., 2014a). The Bright spots are Ca atoms, and the less bright spots are Mg atoms.

Figure 2: Left: Outcrop of a ribbon rock from Upper Cambrian Conococheague Formation, Central Appalachian Mountains in Maryland with a quarter coin for scale. The bands with gray and tan colors are limestone and dolomite bands, respectively. Right: Hand specimen from a mid-Ordovician carbonate displays very fine laminations and trough crossbedding.


Central Appalachians in Maryland (Figure 2). The dolomite bands show much larger thick-ness or volume reduction (i.e., biomass loss during diagenesis) than the adjacent lime-stone bands based on mud cracks penetrating both types of the bands.

Catalytic roles of polysaccha-rides and microbial EPS

The issue regarding kinetics and catalysis needs to be addressed in order to understand dolomite crystallization at low temperature. We have demonstrated that polysaccharides (PS) and microbial extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) can promote disordered dolomite formation at room temperature (Figure 3). Polysaccharides are the major components in microbial EPS. Former gradu-ate student Fangfu Zhang and research scientist Evgenya Shelobolina demon-strated that EPS from both sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) and fermentative bacteria can catalyze dolomite formation (Fig. 3). Through collaboration with Prof. Izabela Szlufarska of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, we carried out molecular dynamics (MD) modeling for the dolomite-polysaccharide interface system in aqueous solution. The results indicate that the adsorbed polysaccharides can lower the dehydration energy barrier of the surface Mg-water complex (Figure 4). Both experi-mental and MD modeling results demonstrate

catalytic roles of polysaccharides and EPS adsorbed on dolomite surfaces. Sedimentary dolomites may indicate co-deposition of microbial biomass. Other catalysts like H

2S and ethanol will

also lower the solvation or dehydration energy. Dissolved sulfide may be adsorbed on crystal faces through hydrogen bonding between the H in HS–/H

2S and the O in the

carbonate CO3

2– to weaken the rigid Mg2+ hydration shell, and enhance the growth of dolomite (Zhang et al., 2012b, 2013; Shen et al., 2014b). Such sulfide-catalyzed dolomite growth can explain microcrystalline dolomite associated with deep-sea methane seeps. SRB in the seep sites result in dolomite and protodolomite with very negative δ13C values.

The light carbon is from SRB-mediated an-aerobic oxidation of methane. Our results also show that dissolved sulfate promotes dolomite formation in the presence of the catalysts, polysaccharides or hydro-gen sulfide, at low temperature. Gypsum in dolostones indicates water with high Mg:Ca ratio and active microbial activity in presence of organic matter.

The observed catalytic roles of micro-bial EPS can help us to better understand reported variation of dolomite abundance during the Phanerozoic eon. Dolomite abundance is correlated with global high sea-level and low Mg/Ca ratio seawater (or calcite sea) time periods. It is proposed that active mid-ocean ridges resulted in high sea level, more shallow seas, and increased microbial biomass production, burial, and preservation. Calcite and Mg-calcite favors heterogeneous nucleation of dolomite, and co-deposited biomass catalyzes dolomite growth. Our new findings also explain the observed Proterozoic cap dolomites that are related to elevated concentrations of dis-solved phosphate and metal ions in estuary areas released from chemically immature gla-cier deposits. The dissolved phosphate and minerals might cause blooming of microbial biomass production and subsequent dolomi-tization of carbonate sediments. It has been controversial regarding atmospheric oxygen content after the great oxidation event (GOE,

ca 2.4 Ga). Both step-like increase of atmospheric oxygen evolution and very low atmospheric oxygen content models were proposed for the Proterozoic eon. Widespread occurrence of sedimentary dolomites during the Proterozoic eon might be related to co-deposition and preser-vation of microbial biomass due to extremely low atmospheric oxygen after the GOE.

Readers may find cited references on our astrobiology web page:

http://geoscience.wisc.edu/astrobi-ology/discoveries/

Figure 3: Left: A plot showing the composition of Ca‒Mg carbonates as a function of a dis-solved polysaccharide of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) (Zhang et al., 2012a). Right: Comparison of the MgCO3 contents of synthetic Ca-Mg carbonates precipitated in control, non-metabolizing H. saccharolyticum (fermentative bacteria) or D. retbaense (SRB) biomass-bearing solutions with different initial Mg:Ca ratios (Zhang et al., 2015).

Figure 4: A bridge shape configuration of tri-mannose lying flat on the dolomite surface (insert at low-right corner). The tri-mannose sugar can lower the energy barrier by about 1 kcal/mole (Shen et al., 2015)


Alumni News —2016-171960sElwood R. Brooks, PhD [email protected] am a Senior Fellow of the Geological Society of America. I have recently moved from Northern California to southernmost Arizona (Tucson).

Charles “Chuck” Barnes, PhD [email protected] Professor Emeritus at Northern Arizona University, Chuck sends a brief listing of his many accomplishments: directed NAU Honors Program; created and directed the Grand Canyon Semester; served as campus mediator; directed n 14 M.S. theses; served on NASA advisory committees; published two textbooks and other publications, and USGS maps. He also served as Department of Geology chair; as Associate Dean for Sciences, received the Alumni Distinguished Faculty Award and Gold Medallion from the National Collegiate Honors Council, and the Distinguished Faculty Award.

Lloyd Furer, PhD [email protected]’m retired in Ft. Atkinson, WI, with my wife and four of our 11 grandchildren.

Cary D. Rosenberg, BS [email protected] was awarded the GSA History and Philosophy of Geology Division Gerald and Sue Friedman Award for service At GSA Denver 2016. I organized a topical session with Renée Clary (Miss. State), “Museums at the Forefront of History and Philosophy of Geology” at that meeting. I am editing proceedings for GSA now.

Roger Wolff, BS [email protected] am a lighting scientist in Larkspur, CO. Our company provides ideas and energy saving earth safe lighting products for business.

1970sRobert (Bob) Blodgett, BS [email protected] After 22 years of "dodging the bullet," I agreed to become interim chair of the Austin Community College Department of Earth

and Environmental Sciences until a new chair is hired this fall. Although I have only had the position for six months, I am more than ready to pass the baton. The highlight of the past year was receiving the 2017 Teaching Excellence Award for full-time faculty at the College; the award was especially meaningful because the nomination came from both my students and colleagues. (see page 12). My husband, Jeff Hudson, and I are building a vacation home in Moretown, Vermont. As Texas has gotten hotter, the cool mixed-hardwood forest of the Green Mountains has become very appealing. Vermonters have also been very welcoming and we now have many friends in the area. Construction started in May and the house should be completed by the end of the year!

David E. Tabet, BS 1972, MS 1974I retired on April 1, 2016, after 24 years with the Utah Geological Society.

Reza Daneshvar, MS 1977, PhD [email protected] fun and busy year at BHP Billiton, exploring offshore Trinidad and poking my nose in geophysical properties of carbonate reservoirs in Brazil and exploration activities offshore Western Australia.

1980sMagell Candelaria, MS 1982First granddaughter born in July! Being a grandparent is the best!

Barb Bickford, MS 1983I’m wrapping up a 36-year career at the Wisconsin DNR and will retire in late 2017. I’ll move to Stillwater MN in 2017 and marry a geologist I met at Winona State University in 1976. We look forward to exploring the Earth together.

Spencer J. Cotkin, PhD 1987 I completed my PhD at Wisconsin 1987 and had postdoctoral positions at the Mineralogy Museum in Oslo, Caltech, and Arizona State. During the next decade

I taught and conducted research at the University of Arkansas, Virginia Tech, and the University of Illinois. I left academia in 1999 and have been working in publishing ever since. I have served as a developmental editor for more than 60 books. The topics of books have varied considerably and have included physical and organic chemistry, oceanography, anatomy & physiology and pharmacology and other health topics, various business topics, various computer topics, the trade book The Olympic Marathon, and others. For the last three years I've been freelancing. I've gotten pretty good at helping authors write books and at managing all the supplements that accompany modern textbooks. I have two adult sons: Aaron just completed his PhD at UC-San Diego in in political science and Nathaniel works in business in St. Louis. Both boys are getting married in the next few months.

2000sJade Star Lackey and Hillary Lackey, MS 1998, PhD 2005 (both)We are continuing to train the next generation of geoscientists at Mt. San Antonio College and Pomona College in the L.A. Area. Jade Star is PI on a grant to bring LA-ICP-MS and stable isotope labs to Pomona in 2017. Our children are regulars on field trips across the Golden State (especially the Sierra Nevada). They are big Badger fans!

On a trip to Greece: alums Carrie Glliam Baker (MS 1996), left, and Liz King (PhD 2001) with Liz's son Bradford.



John Fournelle

On April 28, 2017, the Weeks Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) lab was dedicated as the Ray and Mary Wilcox Scanning Electron Laboratory, during the Board of Visitors meeting. Ray E. Wilcox (1912-2012) and Mary Marks Wilcox met in the UW Geology Department and married in 1942. Ray (UW-PhB‘33, PhM’36, PhD’41) led a distinguished career as a research geologist with the USGS. Both he and Mary (BA‘42) loved optical mineralogy, and Ray developed an inexpensive and highly useful spindle stage. It is thus particularly appropriate that our SEM lab be named for them. Mary Wilcox and the Wilcox family provided the critical matching donation to upgrade the SEM lab’s Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) and Energy Dispersive Spectrometry (EDS) systems;

The Wilcox family at the SEM dedication, left to right: Todd Wilcox (grandson); Steve Wilcox (son); Sarah Wilcox (granddaughter); Lauren Livo (daughter-in-law); inset upper right: Mary Wilcox. Photo: John Fournelle.

additional funding came from friends of the Wilcox family, the Louis G. Weeks Fund of the Geoscience Department, the National Science Foundation and the UW-Madison Graduate School. This all made the critical upgrade possible.Mary Wilcox was unable to attend the dedication, but four members of the Wilcox family were present. Mary sent a short YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b81ivLpy0M&t=33s) which

SEM Lab Dedication

was played at the department spring awards banquet that evening. In it Mary shared a few anecdotes about life in the Geology Department around 1940. l

Shanan E. Peters

Geobadgers, and geologists of all stripes, tend to spend lots of time outside, either for field work or for fun. Before heading out, many of us often try to grab relevant geological maps, field guides, published papers, and other information that can be referred to while in the field. Once on the outcrop, most of us can’t resist a geology snapshot and some hand-scrawled notes.

We have developed a new App, Rockd, which attempts to help with some pre-trip organization and then equip users with the tools to preserve and share geological observations. All Rockd users (now over 4,000 globally!) have access to more than 140 geological maps, with seamless integration between scales and regions. New maps are added regularly. Minerals and their formulas, basic rock types, as well as complete lithostratigraphic lexicons for the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and other regions are all available to you in the

field. Tools include an intuitive digital Brunton compass that can record strike/dip and trend/plunge, as well as paleogeographic maps that show your present location rotated back in time. Basic note-taking capability, including location-aware picture tagging and annotation, is a focus of the App, with basic functionality working offline in remote corners of the world. All of your field checkins can be shared with permanent links (e.g., https://rockd.org/checkin/823). Rockd App development is funded primarily by a CAREER NSF award, so it is free, and we want to keep it that way! Check it out on iOS or Android, and if you like it, please consider donating to the Department of Geoscience using the Donate button! More features will be released on updates coming to the App stores soon.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1153056624

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.macrostrat.rock

Elizabeth King, PhD 2001Liz spent a week in July on a trip to Greece with son Bradford and Carrie Gilliam Baker, MS 1996. “It was an REI trip and Carrie has traveled with them before. So when asking her advice on traveling with REI I asked if she wanted join us. She did! We saw Athens, Mykonos, and Santorini. It is my first time here and what a great country. I would definitely come back and see more.” (photo)

Skylar Primm, MS [email protected] It's been an eventful year already for me. This spring, I was honored with one of 100 statewide Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Teacher Fellowships, in recognition of my teaching, leadership, and service. I just finished my sixth year at High Marq Environmental Charter School in Montello, which received the 2017 Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education Earthguard Award for our work on student environmental projects (see page 12) I love teaching, but still practice geology as a hobby, dragging my wife, Stefanie, and dog, Slate, around the country to interesting sites each summer. Thankfully, both love to hike. l

Rockd Mobile App: geological exploration tool and field notebook


By Richard Alley andSridhar Anandakrishnan

Charlie Bentley, A.P. Crary Professor of Geophysics Emeritus, who revolution-ized our understanding of the Antarctic continent and its ice, passed away peace-fully on August 19, 2017. Bentley is survived by son Alex and his spouse Emma Bentley, daughter Molly and her spouse Gordy Slack, grandson Archer Bentley and step-grandsons Jonah Taranta-Slack and Leo Taranta-Slack.

Born in 1929 in Rochester NY, Bentley was graduated in physics from Yale and then found his way into “Doc” W.M. Ewing’s program at Columbia University. After par-ticipating in ship-board seismic explorations in the Atlantic, Bentley undertook PhD research developing seismic techniques in Greenland, preparing to plumb the depths of the Antarctic ice sheet as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY).

The day after he defended his thesis, Bentley headed for Panama, where he caught the ship south, then traversed out to Byrd Station in interior West Antarctica by February, 1957. He returned over two years later, after two austral winters at Byrd and three summers exploring, to find that Columbia had not yet granted his PhD because his $50 dissertation fee had not been paid.

During those first 25 months in Antarctica, Bentley led geophysical traverses that funda-mentally changed our view of the ice sheet—far from being a thin layer draped over high mountains, the ice in places was well over two miles thick, with a surface high above sea level but a bed that plunged far below, including into the Bentley Trench, the deepest point on the Earth’s surface not presently under the ocean. Bentley reasoned that, when the ice sheet first grew, a wall of ice could not have advanced across such great depths, and instead that a bridging ice shelf must have run aground and then thickened to fill the abyss. The possibility that this sequence could run backward in a warming future, greatly and perhaps rapidly raising sea level, became the focus of much of Bentley’s research over the subsequent decades, as he and his students and collaborators repeatedly made major contributions to the knowledge needed to quantify the risk.

After joining the Wisconsin faculty in 1961, Bentley focused first and foremost on training generations of glaciologists and geophysicists. He did that by taking them to the most impor-tant places to learn what was there, accurately and reliably. Working with the cutting-edge technical staff at Wisconsin, and recruiting stu-dents with complementary skills, the Bentley group adapted geophysical techniques to the harsh polar environment and developed other new techniques, including pioneering work in digital data acquisition. Experiments in reflec-tion and refraction seismics, passive seismic monitoring of subglacial earthquakes, radar, gravity, magnetics, resistivity, borehole log-ging and more rolled out of Madison headed for Antarctica or Greenland, to return with the key data. Analyses were complemented by a healthy dose of modeling and remote sensing, but always tied to the ground-truth.

The list of major discoveries and contribu-tions from Bentley and his group is long, including demonstration that the fast-moving ice streams are lubricated by soft till at their bases, and that ice shelves do buttress the ice sheet but may be weakened by widespread basal crevasses. Perhaps more important is that he learned what was really there: the three-dimensional structure of the ice, its seismic and electrical character, the distribu-

tion of ice streams and crevasses and other features, the nature of the rocks beneath, and so much more. Nobody does research in Antarctica without relying on that funda-mental knowledge.

Bentley served the community, nation and world in many ways. He provided the geophysical “G” in RIGGS, the Ross Ice Shelf Geophysical and Glaciological Survey (1973-78), and was one of the founders of the subsequent Siple Coast Project, which evolved into the still-running West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) project. His service was especially directed to the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences, which he chaired, and the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, which he served as Vice-President and Convenor of their Group of Specialists on Global Change and the Antarctic, as well as serving as Vice-President of the Interna-tional Commission on Snow and Ice. His

contributions were recognized by the Selig-man Crystal of the International Glaciological Society, the Bellingshausen-Lazarev Medal from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Hilldale Award at the University of Wiscon-sin, as well as by Fellowship in the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Arctic Institute of North America.

And, when Charlie had reached the age that most people retire to well-earned rest, he stepped in to run the Ice Core Drilling Ser-vices (now Ice Drilling Design and Operations, IDDO) program at Wisconsin. This highly successful effort uses science and engineering to design, build and deploy drills to collect ice cores and basal samples or rapidly access desired depths in the ice, and has led to im-proved reconstructions of past climate, better knowledge of ice-sheet processes, and even fundamental physics observations harkening back to Bentley’s undergraduate degree. He continued to travel to Antarctica to conduct this work through 2010, and completed a total of 16 Antarctic expeditions spanning seven decades.

The reliability of Bentley’s science is legend-ary. As reported by Bentley’s long-time, dis-tinguished Antarctic colleague and three-time Wisconsin grad John Behrendt, after the first seismic profile was completed at Byrd, Charlie

Charles R. BentleyMEMORIAL TO

Photo, U.S. Navy, 1964.


Roger Gassett, M.S. 1982, Seismic refraction study at Dome C, Antarctica

Lawrence L Greischar, Ph.D. 1982, An analysis of gravity measurements on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Michael Ritzwoller, M.S. 1982, Magnetic anomalies over Antarctica and the surround-ing oceans measured by MAGSAT

Gregory Hogan, M.S. 1983, Dielectrical prop-erties of firn from Dye 3, Greenland

Craig Lingle, Ph.D. 1983, A numerical model of interactions between a polar ice stream, the ocean and the solid earth: application to ice stream E, West Antarctica

Joshua O. Adeniyi, Ph.D. 1984, Geophysical investigations of the central part of Niger State, Nigeria

Richard B. Alley, Ph.D. 1987, Transformations in polar firn

Sean T. Rooney, Ph.D. 1988, Subglacial geology of ice stream B, West Antarctica

Donald D. Blankenship, M.S. 1982 and Ph.D. 1989, Seismological investigations of a West

Antarctic ice stream

Gerilynn Moline, M.S. 1989, DC elec-trical resistivity studies: Ice Stream B, West Antarctica

Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Ph.D. 1990, Microearthquakes as indicators of ice stream basal conditions

Shashank R. Atre , M.S. 1990, Seismic studies over ice stream C, West Antarctica

Clifford Munson, M.S. 1991, The crustal structure beneath ice stream C and ridge BC, West Antarctica from seismic refraction and gravity measurements

Rory Retzlaf, M.S. 1991, Airborne radar studies: ice streams A, B, and C, West Antarctica

Chen Liu, M.S. 1994, C axes from ra-dar depolarization experiments at UPB Camp on ice stream B Antarctica

Ted S. Clarke, Ph.D. 1996, A crustal-scale seismic study of the Byrd Subglacial Basin, Antarctica

Donghui Yi, Ph.D. 1996, Satellite radar altim-etry over east Antarctica

Mark D. Stenoien, Ph.D. 1998, Interferometric SAR observations of the Pine Island Glacier catchment area

Chen Liu, Ph.D. 1999, Radar sounding on Ice Stream B, West Antarctica

Benjamin Smith, M.S. 1999, Radar studies on ice stream C, West Antarctic

Charlie Bentley’s UW-Madison graduate students

Francis S. Birch, M.S. 1964, Some heat flow measurements in the Atlantic Ocean

Edwin S. Robinson, Ph.D. 1964, Geological structure of the Trans-antarctic Mountains and adjacent ice covered areas, Antarctica

Roger Sumner, Ph.D. 1965, At-tenuation of earthquake gener-ated P waves along the western flank of the Andes

George Jiracek, M.S. 1965, Radio sounding of Antarctic ice

Hugh F. Bennet, Ph.D. 1968, An investigation into velocity anisot-ropy through measurements of ultrasonic wave velocities in snow and ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica

William V. Berge, M.S. 1968, Some magnetotel-luric modeling techniques

Forrest L. Dowling, Ph.D. 1968, A magnetotellu-ric investigation of the crust and upper mantle across Wisconsin Arch

Acharya Hemendra, Ph.D. 1969, Wave propaga-tion in inhomogeneous media with Antarctic ice cap as a model

John E. Beitzel, Ph.D. 1972, Geophysical investi-gations in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica

Karl Bethke, M.S. 1973, Moss bluff caprock thickness

John W. Clough, M.S. 1970 and Ph.D. 1974, Propagation of radio waves in the Antarctic ice sheet

1973-74 field season of the Ross Ice Shelf Geophysical and Glaciological Survey (RIGGS 1973-74). Charlie, checked shirt, was the field party leader. Next to him are John Clough and Tom Kolich, UW graduate students. In the airplane is Jan Nielsen, a Danish glaciologist from Willi Dansgaard’s group in Copenhagen. The silver box on the Nansen sled looks like one of the UW’s Lacoste & Romberg gravity meters. Photo, Jamie Robertson.

1994, Charlie, left, with Harry Hanlin, center, (Twin Otter pilot) and Barkey Kamb, Caltech, at Outstream B (OUT) remote camp Anarc-tica 1993/94 season. Photo, Neal Lord.

radioed to the IGY coordinating office that the ice was 3 km thick near there. The IGY office was unsure whether to release this startling and unprecedented result based on the word of a 20-something grad student until A.P. “Bert” Crary (deputy science lead of IGY) weighed in: “If Charlie says the ice is 3 km thick, the ice is 3 km thick." The ice was in fact 3 km thick.

Bentley’s students are spread widely across industry and academe, carrying on the work they started in Wisconsin. IDDO continues to plumb the depths of the ice sheets. Mt. Bentley still rises above the ice sheet in Antarctica. And, if society makes wise use of the knowledge that owes so much to Bentley’s leadership and efforts, the ice sheet will continue to occupy the depths of the Bentley Trench far into the future, as coastal dwellers thank him for timely warnings of possible dangers. l

James D. Robertson, M.S 1972 and Ph.D. 1975, Geophysical studies on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Larry Whiting, M.S. 1975, A gravity survey of the eastern portion of the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Edward L. Hershberg, M.S. 1976, Paleomagne-tism of the Wolf River Batholith

Joseph Koo, M.S. 1976, A gravity survey of the Flambeau Anomaly, Wisconsin

Joseph Kirchner, M.S. 1978, Seismic refraction studies on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Kenneth C. Jezek, M.S. 1977 and Ph.D. 1980, Dielectric permittivity of glacier ice measured in situ by radar wide-angle reflection


In MemoriamRobert Cluff passed away October 26, 2016, after a heroic battle with leukemia. His wife, Suzanne Gavlin Cluff, is also a Geology alum (MS 1976). Bob worked on the sedimentol-ogy of the Cretaceous Mowry Shale in the Black Hills for his MS. After receiving his MS, he took a position with the Illinois Survey, as part of the DOE Gas Shales Project. After a few years, he moved to Denver and started his own consulting business, what became The Discovery Group, Inc. Bob was a geolo-gist of wide-ranging knowledge and ability and became a highly-regarded expert in the petrophysics of tight reservoirs. His scientific publication record and his service to the pro-fession were recognized by numerous awards from professional societies, including the AAPG, SEPM, Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, and the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts. In 2006 he served as the President of the Rocky Mountain Associa-tion of Geologists. In this latter capacity he published a series of thoughtful, informal, and pathbreaking president’s columns in the RMAG Outcrop: including topics such as glob-al climate change, risk assessment in geologic practice, gender equity, professional outreach, scientific literacy, and lifelong learning. Bob was interested in everything, he loved to figure it out, and he delighted his colleagues with his witty assessments of the world.

Alfred G. “Al” Fischer (BA 1939; MA 1940), a world leader in sedimentary geology, died peacefully on July 2, 2017, in Santa Barbara, California. He was 96 years old. Al’s Wisconsin career began when he emigrated from Ger-many at age 15. He attended Northwestern College in Watertown for two years before transferring to UW to study forestry, but rapidly fell in love with geology. He studied with Norman Newell and completed a thesis entitled “Early Belemnites and Belemnite Phy-logeny.” He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1950, and held an incredible variety of positions at Virginia Tech, Stanolind Oil and Gas, the University of Rochester, the University of Kansas, International Petroleum (Peru), Princeton, and USC. He was also a leading scientist in the Deep Sea Drilling Project. Al’s work is voluminous (240+ publi-cations) and very diverse, including (but not limited to) evolution and extinction, tecton-ics and petroleum geology, and quantitative

stratigraphy. He authored or coauthored several books, including Invertebrate Fossils, which although more than 60 years old is still widely used. He is especially well known for his studies of cyclic sedimentary successions, deposited in settings ranging from the deep sea to lakes (“cyclostratigraphy”). He invented fundamental techniques that are commonly used to help interpret such strata (e.g., the “Fischer plot”), and was an enthusiastic and tireless advocate for the interpretation of externally-driven, periodic signals from repetitive sedimentary successions. He also mentored many future leaders in sedimentary geology. Al won awards too numerous to list, including the Twenhofel Medal (SEPM), the Lyell Medal (Geological Society of London), the Penrose Medal (GSA), the Paleontological Society Medal, and the Mary Clark Thompson Medal (NAS). In 1994 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he received our Distinguished Alumni Award.https://news.usc.edu/125246/in-memoriam-alfred-fischer-96-prominent-geologist/https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/2642/in-memoriam-alfred-al-fischer-96/

Judy Gosse—All of us in Weeks Hall were greatly saddened at the loss of our depart-mental financial specialist, Judy Gosse. Over the past 20 years, virtually everyone in the department got to know Judy, as she handled

all of our research accounts, purchas-ing, travel plans and much more. Her calm personal-ity and wry, slightly skeptical sense of humor made her a pleasure to work

with as she dealt effectively with the often-challenging field - and laboratory needs of our department. Even the oddest request from a faculty member—like wiring money to to buy used trucks and boats in Chile—were simply met with a raised eyebrow and a chuckle as she took care of it all. Judy passed away on March 9, 2017, at the age of 58, after a protracted battle with cancer. A native of Colby, Wiscon-sin, Judy graduated from UW-Madison in 2002. She worked in several state positions before joining the Geoscience Department. She loved traveling, the outdoors, and the Packers. Judy is survived by her partner Jim Davies, her siblings, and numerous nieces and nephews.

We really miss her.

AnnaMarie (Hazelwood) Huset (MS 1987), age 53, of Evansville, WI, passed away at home on Feb. 18, 2015, after a courageous battle with cancer. For her MS, AnnaMarie studied the transition from amphibolite to granulite facies in the Adirondack Mountains, NY with John Valley. From 2006 until 2014, she worked at the University of Wisconsin Soil and Plant Analysis Lab as a Research Specialist. She will be remembered as a caring, kind, and compas-sionate woman who inspired many. Her great web of friends and family admired her quick wit, intellect, enthusiasm for life, and zest for learning. AnnaMarie is survived by her parents, Robert and Barbara Hazelwood of George-town, TX; her husband, David of Evansville; and her son, Anthony.

Joe Kirchner died Dec. 28, 2013 in Anchor-age, Alaska. Joe received his MS in geophysics at UW, where he met his future wife, Ellen Altschuler. His graduate studies took him to the Antarctic. Joe was a petroleum geophysi-cist and his 32-year career in the oil industry took him across the globe. After retirement from BP, he was a senior consultant in the An-chorage office of the international engineering firm Golder Associates.

Thomas S. Laudon of Oshkosh, WI passed away on January 1st, 2017 at the age of 85. Tom lived a life of adventure and explora-tion that took him to every continent on Earth. He received BS, MS and PhD degrees in Geology from UW and served two years in Japan with the USAAF as well as 25 years in the ready reserves; he retired with the rank of Major. In 1956 Tom married Suzanne Hilgers of Madison. In 1963, Tom accepted a job at UW Oshkosh as the second geology profes-sor in the department. It was a job he would love until his retirement in 1999. During his tenure at UW-O, Tom established a renowned geology summer field camp. Over the course of 35 summers, he led hundreds of students through the Canadian Rockies to the Yukon Territory. He passed to his students his knowl-edge of geology, passion for the outdoors and mountaineering, and love of cheap whiskey, cigars and campfire revelry. Academic re-search played an integral component to Tom's career taking him around the world including the UK, Mexico, the South Pacific, the Hima-layas (Mt. Everest), and Australia. Beginning in graduate school, he traveled to Antarctica ten times. Fellow Antarctic explorers named Mt. Laudon in his honor. Tom was preceded



in death by his parents Lowell (UW Profes-sor 1948-1993) and Florence, and his brother Richard. He is survived by his wife Suzanne; brothers Robert and John, four children, and six grandsons.

Robert W. "Bob" Patenaude, age 86 (PhD 1967), of Sun Prairie passed away peacefully on Jan. 10, 2017, following a heart attack. His early interest in the outdoors led to his chosen profession in geology. Bob worked for the Wisconsin DOT for many years and, prior to that, Hunt Oil Co and the USGS in the Ant-arctic region. His interests included flying (he was a pilot for the Shawano civil air patrol), scuba diving, sailing, canoeing/kayaking, and biking. After retiring he obtained his motor-cycle license and liked taking his Goldwing along the country roads of Brown County. He enjoyed alpine skiing in the UP until age 85. Bob married Mary Leaper. Those who knew Bob would describe him as genuine, intel-ligent and as one not afraid to follow the beat of his own drum.

Christopher Rautman died May 12, 2017 after a long battle with prostate cancer. Chris graduated from Carelton College and then earned the MS at UW with Cam Craddock on an Alaskan project. He then received the PhD in 1975 with Bob Dott on the sedimen-tology of a Jurassic sandstone in the Black Hills region. After several years in the energy industry, Chris worked at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM focusing pri-marily on radioactive storage problems. Chris had been an ardent member of the Boy Scouts and he devoted many summer vacations developing geological hikes and interpretive

materials for Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimar-ron, NM.

Paul H. Ribbe (April 2, 1935 - June 24, 2017) was born in Bristol, Connecticut. He obtained his M.S. (1958) from UW under guidance of S.W. Bailey. Paul’s MS, “An X-ray and optical investigation of the peristerite plagioclases”, is about gemmy sodium-rich plagioclase feldspars with iridescent colors. Paul contin-ued feldspar research and was referred to as "godfather of the feldspar mafia." Paul was the first American Fulbright Scholar accepted to Cambridge University, where he completed a PhD in crystallography in 1963 under guid-ance of the legend-ary crystallographer Helen Megaw at the Cavendish Laborato-ry. Following a short post-doc at University of Chicago and an assistant professor-ship at UCLA, Paul and Elna moved to Blacksburg in 1966, where he became a professor in the De-partment of Geology at Virginia Tech.

Professor Hui-fang Xu is one of “the feldspar mafia” who benefited from Paul. In fall of 1984, Huifang was a MS student and had opportunity to listen every lecture given by Professor Ribbe at short courses (“Electron Microprobe Analysis” and “Feldspar Mineralogy”) held at Nanjing University. In early 1980’s, international

Paul Hubert Ribbe and his son David Paul Ribbe at Nanjing University in 1984. Host professors are Professor Shouyuan Ji (季寿元, left), and Professor Jiyue Xue (薛纪越, right) of the Geology Department, Nanjing University. Photo credit, Chengyi Lin.

professors and scientists were rarely seen in Chinese Universities. Professor Ribbe’s lectures impacted Huifang's life. He started to study feldspars and Huifang is still working on feldspars including complicated crystal structures and subsolidus phase relations of plagioclase (supported by NSF). He dedicated one recent feldspar paper to Professor Ribbe.

Paul received many honors and awards throughout his career. He served as presi-dent of Mineralogical Society of America (1986-1987), was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal by MSA, and received the Schlumberger Award from the Mineral-ogical Society of Great Britain. He edited an

Geoscience students on the Weeks Hall fourth floor balcony shared various methods of viewing the partial eclipse (86%) including a pinhole camera, approved glasses, and a welder's mask. Photo, Neal Lord.

100%—Basil Tikoff had just finished a workshop for structural ge-ologists in the western Idaho shear zone. His group after-ward was able to view the full solar eclipse on Snowbank Mountain. Photo, Shane Loeffler.

August 21 and the Solar Eclipse

astonishing 57 volumes of Reviews in Mineral-ogy and Geochemistry, a book series covering a multitude of topics in mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry. The pink Mg-Mn-silicate mineral, ribbeite, first discovered in Namibia, is named in his honor.


The spirit of the Department is lively and the creativity of students for high jinx of various sorts has been inspired. Traditionally they publicly

acknowledge, at the Spring Banquet, the faculty member who has committed the greatest blunder that year. The awardee is chosen by a democratic process of inspired nomination speeches followed by an oral vote. The "winner" is then chosen by the loudest acclamation from the crowd. The most eloquent of the nominating speeches compare to the rhetoric of Mark Twain. It is too bad that some were not preserved for our archive. For the awardee, election marked acceptance and affection by the students. For a new faculty member, it was a sign of "arrival." Historically speaking, a glance at the lists of awardees also reveals the succession of new faculty members, but also reveals the fact that some few must have been especially blunder prone.

The venerable tradition of the Crack Pot has an interesting history: The Phillip Pott Award, more familiarly known as the Crack Pot Award, was conceived by Canadian PhD candidate Richard W. Hutchinson (PhD

1954). He and some accomplices created the amusingly crude trophy, which still resides in the Cline Lounge. It was constructed like a three-tiered cake painted black and topped by an old-fashioned chamber pot cut in half with a rock saw. The trophy bears a metal plate:

PHILLIP POTT TROPHYTO

PROFESSORIAL BLUNDERS

The names of the distinguished awardees and the year of their faux pas were ‘engraved’ on small medallions attached to one of the tiers. The Crack Pot was awarded from 1951 to 1960, when the space for medallions was completely filled. Geophysicist George P. Woollard was the first recipient while I myself had the honor of being the last (photo). My award was for some alleged blunder, which I have forgotten. In fact, I am pretty sure I was framed for which there was ample precedent. Sometime in the late 1960s, the trophy disappeared to be rediscovered in the 1970s in the Clines' basement. My guess is that Lewis thought it too vulgar to be publicly displayed in the Department. It has been restored to its rightful place among some of our other treasured artifacts.

In the early 1970s a new award plaque appeared. As I recall, it was one Donald E. Owen (PhD 1964) who was the driving force in the creation of the Olympic Order of the Purple Pick Society’s Oopps Award. The first Oopps trophy was a rock hammer whose handle was broken in the middle

and painted purple. By 1980 the board holding the purple pick had been filled with 18 names of ‘winners,’ so a new panel was designed, adorned with a map of Gondwana in clay with two clay hands on a wooden panel. Each awardee’s name and year appears below in clay. In 1995 this second Oopps trophy board was filled with sixteen names and so a third board appeared. It features a very bent hand auger attached to the

Crack Pot Awardees1951 G. Woollard 1952 L. Cline1952 C. Emmons1953 S. Judson1953 E.N. Cameron1954 S. Tyler1954 S.W. Bailey1955 E.N. Cameron1955 R.M. Gates1956 L.R. Laudon1956 C. Emmons1957 R.M. Gates 1958 L. Cline 1958 S.W. Bailey and L.R. Laudon1959 R.P. Meyer1959 R.F. Black1960 R.H. Dott, Jr.

Oopps Awardees IPrinted in Purple:1962 R.P. Meyer1963 R.M. Gates1964 L.J. MaherPrinted in Black:1965 S.W. Bailey1966 L.R. Laudon1967 C.J. Bowser1968 J.R. Moore1969 R.F. Black1970 C.V. Guidotti1971 L.J. Maher1972 C.J. Bowser1973 L.C. Pray1974 C.V. Guidotti1975 R.H. Dott, Jr.1976 L.C. Pray1977 D.L. Clark1978 L.J. Maher1979 W.C. Shanks

Oopps Awardees II1980 E.N. Cameron1981 D.M. Mickelson1982 S.W. Bailey1983 C. Craddock1984 L.C. Pray1985 L.J. Maher, Jr.1986 L.C. Pray1987 L.G. Medaris1988 D.M. Mickelson1989 R.H. Dott, Jr.1990 P. Brown1991 J.A. Simo1992 L.J. Maher1993 D.M. Mickelson1994 J. Bahr1995 T. Simo

Oopps Awardees III1996 C. Craddock1997 J.W. Valley1998 P.E. Brown1999 L.J. Maher2000 P.E. Brown2001 A. Carroll2002 B. Singer2003 J.W. Valley2004 B. Singer2005 D.M. Mickelson2006 L. Goodwin2007 B. Tikoff2008 A. Carroll2009 H. Xu2010 N. Sahai2011 A. Carlson2012 J. Bahr2013 K. Feigl2014 B. Singer2015 B. Tikoff2016 S. Marcott 2017 B. Singer

The Archivist’s CornerOur Cracked and Purple FacultyR.H. Dott, Jr.

The Crack Pot Award

May, 1960: at the podium Bob Black (right) presents Bob Dott with the coveted Crack Pot Award. Seated at the front table are Maggie Hanson and Professor Carl Dutton. In the lower right corner, backs to camera, are Eleanore and Professor George Woollard.

board. Circular wooden medallions bear the name and year for each awardee. Twenty-two of these have been awarded so far. With only three blank medallions left, however, this third Oopps panel will soon need to be retired. I wonder what new trophy will appear to assure proper recognition in perpetuity of future professorial blunders. I trust that our ever-resourceful students will think of something clever.


Faculty News —2016-17Jean BahrA sabbatical semester in the spring of 2017 gave me time to devote attention to my role as President of the American Geosciences Institute and also to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, following my “promotion” to Chair of the Board in January. That meant a number of trips to DC, where both of those are headquar-tered, as well as meetings in Houston, Savannah Georgia, Nevada (for a walk through the tunnel at Yucca Mountain), and Richland Washington. I enjoyed visiting with many alumni during the Geobadger reunion during the AAPG meeting in Houston, and also enjoyed dinner with my former MS advisee Craig Arola in Richland. In addition to my AGI and NWTRB activities, the sabbatical gave me time to accept invitations to several other institutions. An undergraduate hydrogeology club at the Universidad Industrial de Santander in Bucaramanga, Colombia, hosted me as part of their first conference on hydrogeol-ogy in January. I gave a day-long short course on groundwater chemistry and was pleased that the Spanish that I had studied many years ago in high school allowed me to give most of my talks in that language. Before and after the confer-ence, I got to visit a “salt cathedral” near Bogota and one of the national parks near Bucaramanga. In March I visited Ohio State as their 2017 Shell Distinguished Woman in Science lecturer.

The late spring and summer were busy with successful defenses by three students: Elisa-beth Schlaudt (now in Panama with the Peace Corps), Josh Olson (now working for a consult-ing firm in the Twin Cities) and Madison Larkin (who is now on the job market after submitting her thesis this past week). Anna Fehling, who started her MS in Geological Engineering this past spring, is on maternity leave this fall. She will be back in classes in the spring and will be pursuing research through the WGNHS with

support from the Forest Service.The fall semester is now underway and I am

again sharing the hydrogeology class with Mike Cardiff and also co-teaching Environmental Geology with Chuck DeMets. The co-teaching allowed me to take one more trip to DC this past week to participate in the annual Geosci-ence Congressional Visits, in which geoscientists have the opportunity to discuss the importance of federal funding for geoscience research and education with congressional staff.

Phil Brown During 2016-17 I have continued to focus my energies and interest on supporting the department’s greatly expanded numbers of undergraduate majors. This fall the enrollment in both Mineralogy and Introduction to Geologic Structures has dropped below 70 for the first time in 5 years. While a majority of the students in these classes continue to be Geological Engineering majors first, essentially all of them are also Geoscience majors and the ratio has begun to become closer to 50:50. In any event these large numbers of students continue to be a challenge in the labs and especially when we go to the field.

I continue to teach the Economic Geology course in the spring every year to 10-20 students, almost all of who are undergraduates. Gary and Hanny continue to be unbelievably wonderful hosts for the White Lake mapping course that occurs the last week of April every spring. More than 1200 students have had the experience of mapping in the famous Huronian rocks since the course began in 1941. Some fortuitous scrounging by Charlie Byers when Bob Gates retired and more recent records provides us with the names of every student who has taken this course since 1952—a very distinguished group.

The past summer was my 13th year as the

Director of the Wasatch-Uinta field camp. While it is true that I have been sharing the directorship for most of these years, no previous Director served for more than 8 years. I am not sure what this says about my good sense. Total enrollment at the camp in the 51 years that the Chateau has hosted this capstone experience will pass 3000 students in 2018—one quarter of who have been Badgers. Each of the past year’s enrollment at camp have flirted with the Chateau’s capacity of~70 students, 67 completed camp in 2017. The front porch and balconies were damaged by falling ice from the roof following Park City’s mas-sive snowfall last winter but the biggest change in the Chateau was the addition of central air conditioning!

Erik Haroldson successfully defended his PhD thesis last spring but by putting off his formal graduation was able to serve as one of the TAs at Field Camp this past summer and is also one of the Mineralogy TAs this fall. Erik hopes to find a job at a college or university and is strengthening his resume by teaching 2 introduc-tory classes this semester at UW Baraboo/Sauk County. I continue to serve on several MS and PhD committees in the department but Erik will be my last student where I serve as the primary advisor. My immediate family is well – and larger. Kris and I now have 4 grandchildren. Jason and Liz have a son turning 4 this September and a daughter who will 1 the same month. Two swim-ming parents and living 4 doors away from the neighborhood pool that Jason learned to swim in has resulted in Grant being on the swim team this summer as a 3 year old! Peter and Abbey live in Cleveland and have 2 sons (ages 1 and 4). Karin and Ryan got married 2 years ago and she is the head swim coach at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia. Kris retired from her job as the librarian at Memorial High School in June 2014 af-ter her 16th year in the trenches. And speaking of retirement, I plan to retire in the next two years.

Mike CardiffThis year my group has been making headways in the area of fractured rock hydrogeology, which is becoming increasingly important for studies in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Working with student Benjamin Heinle (MS 2017), this past year saw the development of a “Visible Fracture” apparatus that will allow us to study and teach about fracture transport mechanism. This and other research became the foundation for a recently-re-ceived, 5-year NSF CAREER award, with which we will be developing a field research site for study-


Brad Singer won the Oopps Award for 2017 at the Spring Banquet thanks to these students who performed an original song about several field vehicles mired in a Chilean bog deep in mud and other offensive organic matter. Documentary photos and a narration accompanied their presentation. L to R: Charlotte Bate, Nathan Anderson, Maureen Kahn, Nick Roberts, and Nico Garaibaldi. Photo, Neal Lord.


ing fractured sedimentary rock. I look forward to seeing what new insights and collaborations this new field site brings!

alan CarrollDuring the fall semester of 2016 I was on sab-batical and focused much of my energy on a proposal for a large, multidisciplinary project that will explore the potential of the Green River Formation as an unparalleled archive of warm climate during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO). The proposal, titled “Green River Eocene Earth and Climate Observatory” (GREECO; not to be confused with with the Star Wars character Greedo!), involves 10 investiga-tors from 8 different universities, in fields ranging from geochronology to limnogeology (but no alien bounty hunters). Brad Singer and Steve Meyers are co-PIs at UW-Madison. UW gradu-ate Mike Smith, now a professor at Northern Arizona University, is also a pivotal player. We submitted the proposal last fall to the same pro-gram that has funded Brad’s Laguna del Maule project in Chile. Although not successful on the first try it did very well, and we will be resubmit-ting soon. During spring semester my wife, UW engineering professor Wendy Crone, and I took advantage of a unique opportunity to serve as Co-Leaders of the UW in Florence study abroad program. I taught Energy Resources to a group of 24 UW-Madison undergraduates, in a frescoed classroom lying on the banks of the Arno River. The idyllic setting provided an unusual opportu-nity to compare energy use patterns in the U.S. versus Italy, a country with roughly one-third our per capita energy consumption. Despite this defi-cit the standard of living in Tuscany can hardly be called inferior. The highlight of the semester was a day-trip to the Appenines, where the non-geologist students experienced first-hand the geologic evidence both for episodes of extreme carbon burial (the Bonarelli bed) and exhuma-tion (the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). Finally, my student Alex Hammond finished his M.S. thesis, which examines the innova-tive hypothesis that magmatic CO

2 from the

Colorado Mineral Belt was carried by rivers to the Bridger basin, where it enabled the accumulation of massive sodium carbonate evaporite beds. After many years of windy toil in the Wyoming sagebrush we may have finally come up with a valid reason to extend our field area to the high mountains of Colorado!

ChuCk deMetsThe past year was rewarding, fruitful, and transi-tional. Thanks to hard work by our departmental Awards Committee, I was awarded a WARF named professorship in early 2017, one of the university's highest honors. The professorship

included a self-selected title (the Alfred Wegener Professorship of Geophysics) and flexible fund-ing that will last the remainder of my UW career. My graduate students Andria Ellis and Beatriz Cosenza-Muralles continued their excellent progress in modeling the earthquake cycle and tectonics of Mexico and Central America using GPS data that they and other collaborators have gathered over the past 20 years. I continued my research in high-resolution estimates of tectonic plate motions and in 2018 plan to complete and publish uniquely detailed estimates of seafloor spreading in the southern Atlantic Ocean and Antarctic regions. Prior to assuming the duties of department chair this July, I taught a plate tectonics short course at the University of Copenhagen. It was a rewarding and enriching experience.

kurt feiglElena C. Reinisch completed her M.S. thesis, entitled, “Graph theory for analyzing pair-wise data: Application to interferometric synthetic aperture radar data”. Now she is working with Mike Cardiff and me on applying Bayesian inference to geodetic measurements of deforma-tion around the geothermal power plant at Brady Hot Springs, Nevada.

This work is a part of the PoroTomo project, including Neal Lord, Xiangfang Zeng (post-doc), Jeremy Patterson, Chelsea Lancelle (Ph.D. 2016), David Lim (M.S. 2016), Lesley Parker (M.S. 2017), Mike Cardiff, Cliff Thurber, Herb Wang and Dante Fratta (GLE) from UW-Madison. With the (awfully long) title of “Poroelastic Tomography by Adjoint Inverse Modeling of Data from Seismology, Geodesy, and Hydrology”, the PoroTomo project aims to assess an integrated technology for characterizing and monitoring changes in the mechanical properties of a geothermal reservoir in three dimensions with a spatial resolution better than 50 meters. A better understanding of the hydrologic, mechanical, thermal and chemical processes will contribute to the realizing the potential of har-nessing energy from the heat within the earth. The PoroTomo project is funded by a grant from The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Following a post-doc, Hélène Le Mével (Ph.D. 2016), accepted a position as staff scientist in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, D.C. We continue to collaborate on modeling the ongoing episode of unrest in the Laguna del Maule volcanic field on the crest of the southern Andes. As of March 2017, the rate of vertical up-lift was still faster than 200 mm/yr, as it has been since some time before 2007.

John fournelleOn August 1, Aurélien Moy joined our growing electron microscopy and microanalysis grouplet, as an NSF-funded postdoc, to continue research we started with Phil Gopon (PhD 2016) on low voltage electron probe microanalysis. The full power of the field emission electron microprobe only is manifested when the kV is dropped below 10 kV--but then some analytical complexi-ties ensue. He is working to understand the Fe L-family of X-rays and provide new analytical possibilities. Tina Hill (PhD 2013) joined us to manage the SEM lab, but after a month was grabbed by Bruker AXS (Fitchburg) to become their XRF applications scientist. Later in the fall, we hired William Schneider who had acquired an Associates Degree in Electron Microscopy at the (now shuttered) Electron Microscopy program at MATC. I was an invited lecturer Nanjing University in November for their EPMA short course, and then also at the Australian Mi-crobeam Analysis Society conference in Brisbane in February. I used the Australian opportunity to set up a visit to the "nearby" New Zealand and the famous Kakanui mineral breccia location: I have been hypothesizing that there must be a way to find/use larger crystals for mineral microprobe standards (vs the tiny grains we now have to use), particularly as the outcrop minerals are described as megacrysts. I was successful (lucky actually) and found large homogeneous hornblende crystals, which are now being evalu-ated here and at other microprobe labs. The Weeks SEM, perhaps the most heavily accessed research instrument by many different students in the Department, had been suffering with failing EBSD (electron backscatter diffraction) and EDS (energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry) systems. I was successful in raising a significant amount of money to implement a major upgrade of these two systems (as well as upgrade to SEM computer). At the same time, we named the facility The Ray and Mary Wilcox SEM lab, both because of a major donation by Mary Wilcox and family, and because of its appropriateness (see write-up page 17).

laurel goodwinEach time an alum steps into the wide world, we feel a flush of pride and sense of accomplish-ment. We look forward to hearing details of their adventures, large and small. Our alumni give us a feeling of hope; we know they will make the world a better place. Yet there is also a feeling of loss. We lose their immediate company, their energy, ideas, and humor. We lose the day-to-day interactions and the constructive synergy that results.

I’ve been thinking about this since under-(Continued, next page)


graduate Luke Schranz graduated in May. He completed a directed study in my group before moving on to a senior research project. John Valley was his lead supervisor, but Phil Brown and I got to share the fun. Luke’s extraordinary mind and endless store of energy provide the kind of spark that brings people together, as he did through his novel exploration of the fluid his-tory preserved in quartz crystals in the Baraboo breccia.

Hanna Bartram, who finished her M.S. in Spring, studied a different fluid-rock history. Harold Tobin was the lead advisor for Hanna’s study of the Rodeo Cove thrust, but I got to tag along in both the Marin Headlands and at the microscope. It was a challenging project (code for ‘wow, that fault records a complex history’), but Hanna persevered and made it through.

Randy Williams finished his Ph.D. in 2016, but I got to keep him around as a post-doc for another year. Last year’s Outcrop story on fault veins has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Over the past year, Randy completed the transition from student to collaborator, moving beyond his Ph.D. research with another paper in review and more in the works. And he too has moved on to a post-doc with Prof. Christie Rowe at McGill University.

Back in January, PhD student Jack Hoehn mapped 81 pseudotachylyte (frictional melt) fault veins, each of which records at least one earthquake, in the South Mountains of Arizona. He just submitted work dating these veins with Brad Singer and Brian Jicha, noted in last year’s Outcrop, to PNAS. This semester, he is filling a teaching gap at Central Michigan Uni-versity. New M.S. student Allison Jones arrived following a stellar performance at field camp. Her co-advisor Phil Brown and I look forward to this next research journey, as together we explore a possible rock record of slow earthquakes on small faults in Baraboo. People come and people go. The Earth remains.

Clay kellyWithin my research group, the 2017 academic year was marked by several significant events. First, and foremost, Jody Wycech successfully completed her Ph.D. dissertation entitled: “Novel Techniques and Approaches to Enhance the Fidelity of Foraminiferal Paleoclimate Records”. Jody had a remarkable run as a Geobadger, and much of her graduate research was done in collaboration with the WiscSIMS and Eugene N. Cameron laboratories housed here in the Department of Geoscience. Her research was primarily focused on the use of such instruments as the secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) and electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA) to

perform in-situ measurements of stable isotope and elemental ratios in micrometer-sized domains within individual microfossil (foramin-ifera) shells. She presented some of her results this past summer at the HiRes2017 conference hosted by the WiscSIMS facility. Many aspects of her research are truly groundbreaking and will prove transformative in the field of ocean-climate studies. Jody will be starting a post-doctoral posi-tion with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the Uni-versity of Colorado-Boulder later this fall (2017) semester. The 2017 academic year also witnessed the arrival of a new Ph.D. student to my research group, Brittany Hupp. Brittany will be using various analytical techniques and geochemical proxies to study geological records of past global warming events. Lauren Silverstein completed her senior thesis over the summer, which entailed stable isotope analyses of individual foraminiferal shells to distinguish reworked specimens (i.e. contaminants) from specimens still in their original stratigraphic position. In other words, her single-shell stable isotope data served as a type of “taphonomic filter” to reduce the deleterious effects of sediment mix-ing processes that can distort the stratigraphies of sedimentary records. Lauren presented the results of her research at the Climatic and Biotic Events of the Paleogene (CBEP) 2017 conference convened in Snowbird, Utah. In addition, Cailee Luther initiated her senior thesis this past summer. Cailee is using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis to delineate stratigraphic changes in the elemental composition of sediments recovered in three deep-sea cores taken in the northwest-ern Atlantic. The main objective of Cailee’s senior thesis is to use these down-core elemental data for stratigraphic correlation between the three drilling sites. Her research is being done in col-laboration with State Geologist, Jay Zambito, in the Wisconsin Geological & Natural History Survey, and Assistant Professor Shaun Marcott. Finally, another undergraduate geobadger, Ethan Heyrman, is starting his senior thesis research this fall semester. Ethan is working with Shaun Marcott and myself to study the effects of seafloor diagenesis (i.e. post-mortem chemical alteration of microfossils) on the geochemistry of fossilized planktic foraminiferal shells preserved in deep-sea sediments collected from the Carib-bean Sea region.

shaun MarCottThe past year has been a whirlwind of activi-ties and hard for me to keep track of this year. Mostly, this has to do with the group nearly doubling in size since last year, despite Melissa Reusché finishing this spring and packing up to start her position at Hess in Texas (1 week before Harvey arrived—welcome to Houston!). In Janu-

ary, I traveled for two weeks with my postdoc, Aaron Barth, to visit three other geochemical labs on the east coast to better hone our chemi-cal procedures here at Madison and begin new collaborations with other researchers. While we were away, graduate student Cameron Batch-elor took full advantage of her Weeks RA and spent six weeks in balmy Minneapolis processing her carbonate samples for U-Th dating related to her Cave of Mounds project to reconstruct past climate conditions in southern Wisconsin in col-laboration with Ian Orland, Richard Slaugh-ter, and myself. Graduate students Melissa Reusché and Elizabeth Ceperley continued their geochemical work through the spring on the samples from Greenland (see last year’s Outcrop) with assistance from undergraduates Andrew Belot and Claire Vavrus. In May, Me-lissa successfully defended her M.S. degree and submitted her paper (now in review). Also in the spring, Claire was awarded a prestigious Hilldale Undergraduate Research Fellowship to continue her work on cosmogenic dating of moraine deposits in the American West. She was also the recipient of the L. Austin Weeks Undergraduate Grant through the AAPG Foundation for the same project.

At the beginning of the summer Aaron, Eliza-beth, and I attended an international meeting on the past climate change that is held every four years. Both Aaron and Elizabeth were awarded scholarships and invited to attend and present their work at a pre-meeting for young research-ers who are up-and-coming in the ‘paleo’ field. We all presented our work at the main meeting with excellent feedback and interest in our cur-rent projects in Greenland, Ireland, and the Gulf of Mexico. Cameron made another visit to Min-nesota to continue to collect data for her Cave of the Mounds project, which she now has over 130 U/Th dates and is preparing her publica-tion. Throughout the summer, Elizabeth, Aaron, Claire, and Andrew have diligently continued to process the final data from Greenland and final measurements now await at the AMS facility in Indiana and will likely arrive any day now. This summer, nearly all of the group also spent 2-3 weeks in Montana doing fieldwork related to Claire and Aaron’s projects on alpine glaciation in the American West. Despite some car related issues, we managed to have a great field season and were able to collect enough samples to com-plete Claire’s undergraduate thesis and begin Aaron’s larger meta study in the West.

Meanwhile, throughout the year postdoc Jer-emiah Marsicek has made significant progress on his Holocene climate related project and vis-ited Northern Arizona in the spring to work with




collaborators. He also has been able to maintain his high level of production despite introducing a new daughter, Cora, into his growing family. Ad-ditionally this year, I am now co-advising Richard Becker along with Basil Tikoff and advising Harmony Liu in AOS after her advisor, and my collaborator, Zhengyu Liu accepted an outstand-ing offer from Ohio State. I have been working with both Harmony and Richard since arriving at Madison, and look forward to now advising them as they finalize their PhDs in the next year.

There are surely many other things that I’ve missed this year, but with so many people it is hard to keep track of what is all going on. However, while I’m extremely busy it has been a fantastic year and everyone seems to be thriving and doing excellent science. I look forward to all the new datasets coming out this year and working with all the students and postdocs as we finalize projects and begin new ones.

stePhen MeyersThis past year was a period of tremendous professional growth, facilitated by a sabbatical leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, grant funds provided by the National Science Foundation, and support from a range of hosts. The sabbatical travels included institutions in seven countries— spanning four continents— al-lowing me to conduct research with professional colleagues around the world, to present my research findings in a range of academic settings (seminars, conferences, workshops), and to share new approaches for doing and communicating science (e.g., the Astrochron software I develop, www.geology.wisc.edu/~smeyers/software.html).

One of the highlights of the sabbatical was the “Being Milankovitch” lecture tour, a seminar delivered at institutions in five countries outlining the theory that underlies astronomical-climate forcing (“Milankovitch forcing”), challenges to its assessment, and new solutions from our research group. Short courses on astrochronology were run at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (where I was visiting as the Columbia Climate Center Lecturer), the IsoAstro Geochronology Workshop that I co-direct (held at Boise State University), and at the Urbino Summer School in Paleoclima-tology (held at the University of Urbino, Italy), for which I recently became a co-director. In addition to delivering these seminars and short courses, many new scientific collaborations blossomed at Lamont-Doherty, GNS-Science (New Zealand), the Paris Observatory, the University of Angers, and elsewhere.

A hallmark achievement of the year was the publication of a study – with graduate student Chao Ma (now a post-doc at the University of Utah) and Brad Sageman (Northwestern University) – that confirms the chaotic behavior

of the Solar System, as previously predicted by theoretical models. This work completes one of the four main research goals of my NSF CAREER award, and traces its roots all the way back to our distinguished alumnus Alfred G. Fischer, who recognized the cyclostratigraphic potential of the Cretaceous Niobrara Formation rhythms and revived interest in G.K. Gilbert’s pioneering work from the late 1800’s. The study received a range of media attention, including a Scientific American podcast (https://www.scientificameri-can.com/podcast/episode/chaotic-orbits-could-cause-catastrophic-collision).

I returned to UW-Madison this fall with a promotion to Full Professor, and was named a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor by the Dean's office, a career-long appointment at the university level "that recognizes distin-guished scholarship as well as standout efforts in teaching and service". I am grateful for these honors, and I am excited to enter this next stage of my academic career here at UW. Looking toward the future, this fall we welcomed gradu-ate student Nicholas Sullivan into the research group, to work on new statistical approaches for the development of high-precision geologic time scales. He joins Ph.D. student Andrew Walters (co-advised with Alan Carroll), who is continuing his exploration of the paleoclimatol-ogy, cyclostratigraphy and geochronology of the Eocene Green River Formation. Keep your eyes open for some exciting science on the horizon!

shanan e. PetersAnother year has passed, and this one marks a big turnover in the Macrostrat group. Ben Linzmeier (Ph.D. ’17) successfully defended his Ph.D. in which he applied SIMS to the problem of recent and fossil cephalopod ecology. Ben is now a postdoc at Northwestern. Sharon McMullen (Ph.D. ’17) also successfully defended a Ph.D. in which she interrogated non-marine stratigraphic paleobiology at a range of scales, from a regional analysis of the Morrison Formation, to a global interrogation of modern non-marine basins. Sharon began a position at Hess this summer. Ben Barnes (M.S. ’17) also defended his M.S. thesis on carbonate in fine-grained clastic units of the Bakken Formation. Postdocs Jon Husson and Andrew Zaffos moved on to positions at University of Victoria and the Arizona Geological Survey, respectively, and intern Erika Ito (B.A. 2016) headed off to grad school. Postdoc Valerie Syverson also departed Madison for California, but the group remains strong. Scott Hartman continues to work with me and Dave Lovelace (Ph.D. ’11) and when he is not redrafting illustrations in Smithsonian displays, his is helping to supervise a group of undergrads

(including Jarret Smith, Ethan Parrish, and Eric Vanwazer). Victoria Khoo (B.A ’17) joined the group as an intern and Daniel Segessenmen started on the Ph.D. track this fall. Michael McClennen continues to maintain the Paleobiology Database and John Czaplewski remains my right hand on all things Macrostrat (https://macrostrat.org) and GeoDeepDive (https://geodeepdive.org).

eriC rodenOn behalf of the Geomicrobiology Lab I would like to dedicate this year’s Outcrop entry to my collaboration with Dr. Eric Boyd from Montana State University (MSU). Although perhaps an unconventional approach for an annual write-up, the impact that our interactions have had on my research flow and productivity have been so great they easily justify a brief call-out at this point in time. Eric is a world-class microbiolo-gist, and his additional expertise in “genomics” was crucial to our group’s foray into that mode of inquiry over the past few years. It all started with a field trip to Yellowstone National Park in August 2011 that was organized by our NASA As-trobiology Institute (NAI) program. Eric, who has worked in the park for many years and knows it like the back of his hand, served as an expert tour guide for a portion of the trip. It was our discussions on a trudge up and down from get-ting a vista on Grand Prismatic Spring that finally convinced me that I had to throw my hat into the genomics ring with all due dispatch. Additional discussions on the trip sealed the deal, and a few months after returning home Eric and I started

Microbes are expected to prefer substrates with the highest energy yield. Laboratory experiments demonstrate that a metabolically flexible archaeon exhibits preference for, and greater growth from, lower energy substrates. The image shows overlapping gradients in mineral substrates capable of supporting microbial metabolism in a hot spring outflow channel in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA. Image, Eric Roden.


work on components of a new NAI proposal. The project (which is headed up by Professor Clark Johnson in our department) was funded the following year, and thus we were off to the races. Over the past five years we have published a modest five papers together, but each of them reflects the end product of a highly vibrant intellectual exchange on the general topic of mi-crobial “chemolithotrophy”, a process whereby prokaryotic cells gain energy from the metabo-lism of both soluble and insoluble inorganic com-pounds. This work has involved the activities of a wide range of graduate students and research academic staff, including Shaomei He (current Assistant Scientist), Liz Percak-Dennet (former Ph.D. student) and Nathan Fortney (current Ph.D. student) in our department, as well as various MSU students who are involved with our NAI project and a new one (“Rock Powered Life”) that Eric is a co-PI on with people at the University of Colorado. I am pleased to say with pride that these were some pretty cool papers, two of which (April 2016 and September 2017) made the covers of the journal Geobiology, and one of which (August 2017) the cover of Nature Geoscience (photo, left). It’s worth mentioning that between the two of us we’ve been authors on three other papers that made the covers of well-recognized journals over the past few years. Just imagine how exciting it is for our young Ph.D. students (L. Percak-Dennet and N. Fortney from UW, and M. Amenabar from MSU) to see their names as first authors on research that appears on the frontispiece of major journals! Who knows if our group would have achieved anything even close to this without the dynamic interaction with “Boyd” as we affectionately call him…I don’t think so, but the one thing I can say is that without that we would have had very much less fun these past years. I imagine his response to this would be, “Damn right, Roden!”

Clifford thurBerThe 2016-2017 academic year kicked off with three new graduate students joining my research group: Reagan Cronin, Laney Hart, and DJ Miller. Assistant Scientist Ninfa Bennington recruited them to work on her NSF-funded projects at Okmok Volcano in Alaska and at Yellowstone. I had something major going on almost constantly all fall: the second success-ful "Stage Gate Review" of the Department of Energy-funded site characterization study at the Brady geothermal site in Nevada led by Kurt Feigl, the annual Southern California Earth-quake Center meeting in Palm Springs, and the Subduction Zone Observatory workshop in Boise in September; the NSF Geophysics panel meeting in October (my last); a visit to my alma mater Cornell to give two talks, a trip to Chile

for the "Cities on Volcanoes" conference and a pre-conference Laguna del Maule workshop, and setting up an NSF-funded "RAPID" seismic instru-ment deployment in New Zealand after the major Kaikoura earthquake there, all in November; and a more hectic than usual AGU meeting in De-cember. New post-doc Federica Lanza arrived in January. She started working on a tomograph-ic study of Makushin Volcano, Alaska, and has been assisting with our research at Laguna del Maule. The spring semester began much more calmly, until a series of trips started in mid-April. First, the annual SSA meeting, where I gave a talk about the Nevada geothermal project, with an add-on side trip to Southern Methodist Univer-sity to give a talk and participate on a preliminary exam committee. Next, a brief but critical trip to New Zealand to develop plans for an NSF proposal to study the Kaikoura earthquake. Then a trip to Anchorage, Alaska, for the final EarthScope National Workshop. I was appointed chair of the IRIS Transportable Array Advisory Committee in 2016, and with the Transportable Array in Alaska currently nearing completion, it was a timely opportunity to get together with IRIS staff in Anchorage. A wonderful July vacation to Madagascar and the southern Kalahari Desert came just in time to restore my energy. Shortly after returning to Madison, graduate students Crystal Wespestad and Lesley Parker success-fully defended their M.S. theses, on surface wave tomography of the Laguna del Maule volcanic field and active-source tomography of the Brady geothermal field, respectively. Over the summer, Assistant Scientist Xiangfang Zeng left for a faculty position in China, post-doc Peng Li left for a data analysis job in Florida, and visiting scholar Yan Luo left to return to her earthquake research position in China. Meanwhile, gradu-ate student Bin Guo continues to pursue his Ph.D. mainly doing seismic wave velocity and attenuation tomography studies, but with a break over the summer for a data analysis internship at Amazon. Undergraduate student Bethany Vanderhoof continues to work with me on body-wave tomography at Laguna del Maule. Looking forward, I will be taking on the position of Vice Chair of the IRIS Board of Directors in December 2017. This will be a challenging time for IRIS as it adapts to a new mode of deeper col-laboration with UNAVCO in jointly managing and operating the facilities of the National Geophysi-cal Observatory. I look forward to helping lead IRIS for the next three years.

harold toBinAh, the joy of no longer being department Chair! The customary three years went by in a flash, and I have stepped down as of summer, 2017, turning the reins over to Chuck DeMets. It’s a big year of transitions for me in many ways,

with three graduate students having completed their degrees in 2017 so far, two new students getting started this fall, and big new (and not-so-new) projects getting underway. Drs. Tamara Jeppson and Susanna Webb started graduate school here in 2011 and have been office mates for their entire time here, so it was fitting that they also defended their dissertations within a week of each other! Tamara secured an NSF GeoPRISMS postdoctoral position at Texas A&M University in the lab of Prof. Hiroko Kitajima, and Susanna is starting at ExxonMobil Upstream this fall in Houston – so they still won’t be all that far apart. Hanna Bartram defended her master’s thesis on the Rodeo Cove fault zone in the Franciscan of California in the spring. I’m proud of my recent graduates and wish them well!

It’s a time of new beginnings for projects and classes as well. This fall semester, I am in the midst of a brand new course, Natural Hazards and Disasters, to a capacity enrollment of 75 stu-dents. As the semester began, the multiple hur-ricane disasters in the Caribbean and Gulf, not to mention the wildfires in the western U.S. and earthquake in Mexico, really made the course an exercise in real time science teaching. It’s been a scramble, but a very rewarding one. In early January I plan to go to New Zealand and board the US research vessel Marcus Langseth for a 35 day 3D seismic survey of the Hikurangi Trough subduction zone, where slow-slip events (a.k.a. “silent earthquakes”) on the plate boundary fault occur closer to the surface than anywhere else on Earth (that we know of). New graduate student Stephen Ball will be joining me for that expedition.

Sarah Bremmer continues her master’s work modeling the seismic structure of the Nankai Trough region, and new graduate student Jonathan Graham will be working on fault zone petrophysics in a new location on land. Mean-while, later in 2018, the NanTroSEIZE project will finally get a shot at completing the record-setting deep drilling on the Japanese vessel Chikyu into the megathrust of the Nankai Trough. This effort has gone on for over a decade, and has recently been on a multi-year, budget related hiatus. However, we are now gearing up again for the big push to reach the plate boundary fault, and I am deepy immersed in planning for that as Chief Scientist of the project—meaning I’m taking multiple painfully short trips to meetings in To-kyo during this fall semester. I expect it all to be worth it in the end, as we have already reached 3 kilometers below the deep sea floor in 2014—by far the deepest hole in scientific ocean drilling—and we will attempt to extend that borehole to 5 km and the fault zone by March 2019. Stay tuned!


28 Department of Geoscience • University of Wisconsin-Madison(Continued, next page)

Basil tikoffIt has been a year of comings and goings in the “isolation ward” of Weeks Hall. Zach Michels finished a short post-doctoral fellowship, and moved on to the University of Minnesota. Vasili Chatzaras has returned to be with us for another 6 months as a research scientists before heading later this year to a tenure-track job at the University of Sydney, Australia. Bridget Garnier, who is still working on PhD, has moved to Costa Rica with her family: Given that her PhD is on Central American geology, it is good fit. We expect to see her frequently in the next few years. We also said good-bye to Randy Wil-liams, who was doing post-doctoral work with both Dr. Laurel Goodwin and myself. We hope he enjoys McGill University and living the good life in Montreal, Canada.

We are launching a new application for geological field mapping, called StraboSpot, at the upcoming 2017 national Geological Society of America meeting in Seattle. This application was funded by the National Science Founda-tion, as part of creating a Structural Geology and Tectonics database (check it out at: https://www.strabospot.org). Drs. Doug Walker (Uni-versity of Kansas), Julie Newman (Texas A&M) University, and I are the lead instigators. There has been a lot of work in the last year to make this application happen and I wanted to thank all the UW-Madison post-doctoral fellows and graduate students who were involved: Randy Williams, Vasili Chatzaras, Zach Michels, Maureen Kahn, and Nick Roberts. As part of making sure that the application work, we ran a workshop in the western Idaho shear zone for structural geologists. That activity allowed us to afterward catch the full solar eclipse in western Idaho (on Snowbank Mountain), with superb views in all directions (see photo, p. 21). The to-tal solar eclipse was —in the words of my 9-year old son—awesome. I can hardly wait for the next total solar eclipse in the United States in 2024.

A dedicated volume of Lithosphere for the EarthScope IDOR (Idaho-Oregon) project was finally published in early 2017. Finishing that volume was a herculean task (that I never want to do again). It involved research by current student Maureen Kahn (who was an enormous help) and many past students (Nicole Braudy, Ad Byerly, Scott Giorgis, Zach Michels, Tor Stetson-Lee). It is nice to see all that data finally see the light of day!

The only other noteworthy achievement is that a caffeine shrine has been built in Room 174, to facilitate our scholarly activities. Please stop by if you are ever around Weeks Hall.

John Valley This was another good year for students, teach-ing and research. Luke Schranz presented his undergraduate research, “Stable oxygen isotopes, fluid inclusions, and microstructures in quartz ce-ments and veins in the Baraboo Quartzite Brec-cia”, at the Institute on Lake Superior Geology in May and graduated with a BS. Evan Cameron and Rachelle Turnier defended their MS theses on Hadean zircons from the Jack Hills, Australia, and metamorphic corundum/sapphire deposits from Naxos, Greece, respectively. They will both continue for PhDs. Rachelle was selected for a student internship at the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, CA for the fall and will ap-ply advanced spectroscopic techniques to basalt-sourced sapphires. Ben Linzmeier and Jody Wycech finished their PhDs this summer, apply-ing SIMS microanalysis of stable isotope ratios to nautiloids and foraminifera, respectively. Jody has started a post-doc at CU-Boulder and Ben is starting one at Northwestern. Aki Ishida com-pleted his post-doc in Astrobiology, analyzing C and N isotope ratios in kerogen of Proterozoic microfossils, and is now an Assistant Professor at Tohoku University in Japan. After 11 years at UW, Jim Kern, who provided gracious technical as-sistance to over 300 researchers at WiscSIMS, has moved to Oregon Physics in Portland.

Last June, I hosted the third biennial HiRes 2017 Conference in Weeks Hall with Ian Or-land, Noriko Kita, Kouki Kitajima and others in the WiscSIMS group. Talks and posters fo-cused on high resolution proxies of paleoclimate. Abstracts are available at: http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~wiscsims/Hires2017/.

I was pleased to receive an “Honored Instruc-tor” Award from residents of university housing for teaching in Geoscience 100. I don’t have an exact count, but the number of students I have taught at UW, mostly in this course, is close to 10,000. I am also honored that Huifang Xu has named a new highly magnetic mineral valleyite (see p. 12). I played no role in this discovery. Huifang and his students are conducting fun-damental research into the carriers of rock magnetism, important for paleomagnetism, and the new atomic structures they have found may inspire the design of useful engineered materials.

I travelled to Asia twice last winter for gemol-ogy, once to sapphire mines in the Khmer Rouge part of Cambodia, and the other time to Board Rooms and inner offices of high-end jewel mer-chants in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Even for someone who owns no jewelry, it’s a thrill to hold a beautiful natural crystal that is worth more than Weeks Hall!

herB wang I returned to Madison in June after two years as a program director in the Instrumentation & Facili-ties program of the Earth Sciences Division at NSF. I saw firsthand how we need to invest more in science and science infrastructure. The people at NSF are a great group and I enjoyed being a part of it. Rotation opportunities come up regu-larly and I encourage you to consider it. At the end of June, I presented a paper at the American Rock Mechanics Association meeting on stress measurements from last August at the 4850-foot depth level in the former Homestake Mine, now the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, S.D. Bezalel Haimson of GLE was involved. Two of his former Ph.D. students, Moo Lee and Tom Doe, and Neal Lord, who was the go-to person for the data acquisition, and GLE grad student, Peter Vigilante, were the people actually underground for the testing. Pe-ter completed his M.S. thesis on laboratory core measurements from the project under the guid-ance of GLE professor Hiroki Sone. The project was run by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as part of a DOE initiative to learn how to manipulate fracture permeability through fluid injection. Our group of faculty and alumni are involved now in a new project at SURF with many of the same goals but specifi-cally targeted at Enhanced Geothermal Systems. I also continue research in Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) with analysis of ground motion recorded by an earthquake during Kurt Feigl’s PoroTomo project at Brady Hot Springs, NV. GLE professor Dante Fratta, Neal Lord, assistant scientist Xiangfang Zeng, and Thomas Coleman of the fiber-optics company, Silixa, conducted a DAS experiment recording weight drops and mine blasts at the Lafarge-Conco mine in N. Aurora IL. The experiment was part of a project using fiber optics for mine safety that was headed by Professor Mary MacLaughlin at Montana Tech. Neal and I had witnessed a similar experiment at their student mine in November 2016. I missed the actual testing at the end of July because I was at a review of a Bureau of Reclamation project to develop a second deep injection well in Paradox Valley, CO. I will participate in a couple more program reviews in the fall and then retire at the

end of the year.

huifang Xu Graduate student Franklin Hobbs has finished his master thesis on kinetics of Ca-Mg ordering in dolomite, and continues on magnesite formation at low-temperature. Graduate student Shiyun Jin has investigated subsolidus phase relations in Na-rich plagioclase feldspars. He discovered a phase boundary between the modulated struc-tures based careful structural studies of plagio-


clase feldspars from different geological environ-ments. His results will help us better understand thermal histories of the feldspars and their host rocks. Graduate Seungyeol Lee studied nano-minerals and their evolutions in Mn-crusts from seamounts. He also studied correlation between microstructures and magnetic property of lode-stones (natural magnets) in order to understand mechanism for causing large magnetic coercivity of lodestone. Lodestones are partially oxidized magnetite. Seungyeol discovered that the abun-dance of interface domains (2-D nanocrystals with luogufengite structure) between hematite lamellae and magnetite is related to the magnetic coercivity. New graduate students Yihang Fang, Yizhou Lu, and Otto Magee joined my research group. Yihang comes back after a year in Hawaii, and he will work on the dolomitization process at low temperature. Yizhou plans to work on structures of nano-minerals using X-ray total scattering and TEM imaging methods. Otto will investigate magnetic and chemical properties of a newly discovered magnetic mineral of valleyite in basalt glass and groundmass. In the past year, I worked on solving structures of nano-minerals and intermediate plagioclase feldspars. Our na-no-mineral studies resulted in discovery of a new mineral, valleyite (see page 12 for details).

luke Zoet Over the past year, I received two research grants from NSF to study glacial processes and a grant from the Sea Grant Institute to study bluff stability. The last year has been busy as my group continues to gather momentum. Jacob Woodard completed his Master’s degree focused on understanding the internal stratig-raphy of drumlins in an active drumlin field at Mulajokull, Iceland. Jacob will be continuing on for a PhD at UW-Madison where his project will focus on better characterizing the morphology of glacial forefields using terrestrial LiDAR scanning and structure from motion. This work is part of a project aimed at better constraining sliding laws for glaciers, and includes scanning two glacier forefields in Canada during this first field season and seven more forefields in the Swiss Alps next summer. Jacob has also begun analyzing a pas-sive seismic dataset collected on Saskatchewan glacier in Banff National Park. Ian McBrearty is defending his master’s thesis on glacial seismicity from the North-East Greenland Ice Stream this Fall. Shortly after his defense, he’ll be off to start a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s seismic group. Dougal Hansen is a new student who joined the group this fall from Portland State University and will be working on glacier sliding experiments using the new ring shear and direct shear devices in the cold room. Dougal has also been working with Kurt Feigl and myself on us-ing InSAR to estimate the mass change of various glaciers.

In addition to the international projects, the group has been working hard to study aspects of Wisconsin. Undergraduate Nolan Barrette has been analyzing the spacing of drumlins in Wisconsin and investigating the subglacial origin of the tunnel channels found on the west side of the Green Bay Lobe using an active seismic survey. In addition, we’ve begun investigating the mechanisms that cause bluffs to fail along the southwestern coast of Lake Michigan through the deployment of newly developed in-situ monitoring devices. There are lots interesting projects underway and we’re looking forward to

next year. On a personal note, my wife Lana

and I were happy to welcome our first child, Jack Howard Zoet, on July 22. He’s learning and growing at an incredible rate and is a happy baby. I’m on a teaching release for the 2017-18 academic year and plan to spend the time further developing the laboratory, writing, and hanging out with Jack.

EMERITIMary andersonIn April, I went to Shenzhen, China, to chair the second meeting of the advisory board for the new School of Environmental Science and Engineering at SUSTech (Southern University of Science and Technology). The other four board members and I were guests of Dean Chunmiao Zheng, one of our own hydrobadgers, who is charged with establishing a powerhouse for education and research in environmental science and engineering at SUSTech. I also presented a lecture at a conference held at SUSTech and had an opportunity to meet faculty, students, and leaders of government and industry in China. After the meeting, Chunmiao took hydrobadger Charlie Andrews (who also attended the con-ference) and me on a 3 day trip to the beautiful city of Lijiang in Yunnan Province where we enjoyed the local geology (mountains, glaciers, and lakes), the historic old city and the wonder-ful local cuisine. It was a trip of a lifetime!

I also attended the National Academy of Engineering meeting in October in Washington, D.C. and the AGU meeting in San Francisco in December, where I saw Chris Lowry and Chris Gellasch. (Congratulations to Chris Lowry on getting tenure at the University of Buffalo and to Chris Gellasch on his new job in academia.)

Charles and I are still trying to travel as much as we can, often working in some opera (includ-ing in New York City and San Francisco) and theater (the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, and the Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans). We also continue to enjoy local music and theater and our vacation house in Door County.

Carl BowserJudy and I continue to enjoy the Tucson area and its natural landscape. Geologic field trips last year included debris flow deposits in the mountains just behind our house (led by the Arizona Geological Society) and the contact zone of lower crustal rocks and upper crustal


Saskatchewan Glacier in Alberta Canada.

Jacob Woodard and Luke Zoet on Saskatch-ewan glacier. We’re picking up a geophone. Photos, Luke Zoet.


sediments of the famous detachment fault of the Catalina Mountains (let by George Davis at the University of Arizona). Regular weekly talks at the UA Geosciences and monthly talks at the Arizona Geological Society keep my earth sciences ap-petite whetted. I’m finishing up my third year as counselor to the Arizona Geological Society. This year I was appointed to the research committee at the Western National Parks Association and look forward to seeing proposals in the natural sciences, including geology. I continue to help out at the Mineralogical Society of America booth at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show. Finally, for the past 2-3 years I have been working with the huge mineral/ore specimen collection of Waldemar T Lindgren (MIT) in an effort to bring it into the public realm. Talks with Mindat and the Flandreau Museum on campus (Bob Downs) are leading to an on-line documentation of this important collection and a possible home in the new Flandreau mineral museum being built in the downtown area.

In our "spare time" I’ve been elected to a second three-year term as secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Last Fall Judy and I co-spondored a “Parties of Note” with UA Mars specialist, Peter Smith, and his wife, Dana. The TSO gathering featured a piano recital and Tucson premiere of a Peter Smith commissioned piece celebrating the first landing of humans on Mars. Through help of meteorite specialist, Geoff Notkin, President of Aerolite Meteorites, I was able to obtain a speci-men of a Martian meteorite to show the attend-ees. It was done as a pretext to the performance of Holst’s “Planets” featuring projected images of Mars provided by the UA-NASA “Phoenix Mars Mission” during the performance.

We travelled recently to Nebraska to witness the solar eclipse. Clouds overhead spoiled the view of the Sun, but the other effects on the landscape were spectacular. We can generally be found at home. Reading, enjoying Tucson’s fabulous food scene, photography, and peering through my 11" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope occupy my waking hours.

daVid l. ClarkWhile I am still concerned with a few unresolved problems of Utah geology, my only serious geologic work this year was related to crawling under barb-wire fences with Scott Ritter and looking for specific Cambrian outcrops (which we didn’t find). Other less serious geologic involvement occurred during a June cruise which sailed completely around the Italian Peninsula. Among other things we viewed Vesuvius as well as explored one of its 79 A.D. victims, Pompeii. Vesuvius didn’t provide any fireworks (it last erupted in 1944), however, current volcanic

activity was observed by a couple of our party, BYU’s Bart Kowallis and Eric Christiansen, who stayed awake after midnight to see multiple erup-tions of Stromboli as we approached the straits of Messina. I missed this viewing because after reviewing the Miocene Mediterranean Messinian Salinity Crises with our party, I had gone to bed, something that a paleontologist might be ex-pected to do! However, Stromboli was about the only thing I missed, and exploring many of Italy’s cultural centers made it a great cruise. Later, our group walked the Las Ramblas in Barcelona only a few weeks prior to the heinous August mas-sacre which occurred there.

roBert h. dott, Jr. The one geological highlight for me during the past year was the publication of “Darwin the geologist in southern South America” coauthored with Ian Dalziel of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (Earth Sciences History, 2016, v. 35 p. 303-345). This represents almost 50 years of research by the two of us following upon the heels of Darwin’s pioneering geological investigations during the Voyage of HMS Beagle during the 1830s.

Otherwise, 2017 has been mostly a year of health issues for both Nancy and me. Nancy had a stroke-related seizure in June, which set her back significantly, although she has recovered somewhat since. As for myself, the lymphoma that had been well controlled for eleven years, suddenly transformed into a more virulent form. This new form is much more difficult to fight. Six months of chemo treatments bought me only two months of remission. Radiation and a new (to me) drug promise some temporary relief, but nothing long term apparently. It is too soon to see results from these.

I have been receiving many nice messages of appreciation and wishes of luck, which are fine rewards for years of joyful associations with colleagues and former students. These make one feel their efforts have made a difference in many lives. What better tribute could an educator receive?

gordon MedarisLife continues to be enjoyable in retirement. My colleagues still humor this old codger along, kindly including me as a co-author on three papers in 2016:

• “An Orphaned Baltic Terrane in the Green-land Caledonides” in the Journal of Geology with lead author Hannes Brueckner and seven others,

• “Axial-type Olivine Crystallographic Pre-ferred Orientations” in the Journal of Geo-physical Research: Solid Earth with lead author Vasileios Chatzaras and four others, and

• “Origin of Moldanubian Garnet and Spinel Pyroxenites” in the Journal of Petrology with my long-time Czech comrades, Martin Svojtka, Lukáš Ackerman, and Emil Jelínek, and four others, including John Valley.

At the other end of the geological spectrum, I’m continuing research on paleosols, including a re-visit of the Baraboo paleosol (in press with Precambrian Research) and an investigation of a sub-Cambrian paleosol in Trempealeau County, which is particularly interesting due to the pres-ence of pedogenic quartz (in review with the Journal of Geology). Due to my ageing body, I can no longer run or ski, so Nancy and I traveled to Florida again for the Winter to avoid Cabin Fever – first to Everglades City, where we enjoy paddling in the (where else?) Everglades, and then to DeLand, which is within striking distance of several paved, dedicated bike trails and some gorgeous spring-fed rivers, such as Juniper Springs.

In the spring, we travelled to the Caribbean for a week of snorkeling, this time to Little Cayman. The summer was filled with gardening, biking, and paddling on our favorite rivers in the region, including our annual, week-long sojourn on the Root River (with dedicated bike trail) in SE Minnesota.

daVe MiCkelsonI continue to enjoy the new energy and excite-ment about things Quaternary generated by our relatively new faculty, Luke Zoet and Shaun Marcott, and their students! Helping Professor Chin Wu (CEE) to advise Nick Jordan for his MS Thesis on the effects of shoreline structures on Lake Michigan bluff erosion was a rewarding experience. My limited research and consulting in that area continues, and I will present those results at GSA. The Geology of the Ice Age Trail continues to be featured in talks around the state, most of which are arranged through the UW Speakers Bureau. The engaged audiences often keep me answering questions for up to an hour after my presentation! Vin and I enjoy these short get-aways and we often stay for a couple of days to explore various parts of the state. I did manage a trip to New England to enjoy (and work!) at our cottage. We still spend quite a bit of time in Dodgeville, and I am very pleased to have gotten a brand new table saw! Our garden is getting smaller and we are concentrating now on improving our little prairie. John Attig and I con-tinue to make slow progress on our next book. Likely it will be called something like “Explaining Wisconsin’s Landscape”, but no final decision on title yet. I didn’t make it to GSA in Denver in 2016, but hope I will see many of you at GSA in Seattle! l


Getting Lost in Lodi This fall the Geology Museum teamed up with Treinen Farm Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch in Lodi, Wiscon-sin to create a 15-acre trilobite corn maze with a cabinet of curiosities theme. During weekends in October, we debuted a trilobite mascot named “Marvel“ after former museum curator Marvel Ings and showcased a replica of the largest known trilobite, the 28” long Isotelus rex. Additionally, folks tossed bean bags into trilobite-shaped targets to win temporary trilobite tattoos. This effort is the inaugural use of our new museum endowment, the Sherry Lesar Fund for Geological Wonder. The trilobite corn maze was featured in Sci-ence Magazine: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/giant-trilobite-crash-es-wisconsin-corn-field

Harnessing the Power of the Sun(flowers) Deep time is no-toriously hard to grasp, especially for non-geoscience folks. Our latest effort at making millions and billions more accessible took us to Sunflower Days at Pope Farm Park and Conservancy, an event that welcomes an estimated 70,000

people over 10 days in August. This ephemeral event happens during peak bloom of their 9-acre field of sunflow-ers. Steve Meyers, Brooke Norsted and Rich Slaughter used sunflower seeds (1 seed = 1 year) as way of taking folks back in time – to the Ice Age, Or-dovician Period and beyond. This effort was funded by Steve Meyers’ CAREER grant and, with the aid of a carefully constructed orrery, introduced visitors to the basics of astrochronology.

Collection Connections Museum Curator Carrie Eaton se-cured funds for two collections-related initiatives this year. The Conservation Assessment Program funded two outside advisors to visit for two days in September to examine our collection, exhibit area and storage rooms. They are producing a report with recommended improvements to our facility and methods. This is an important step in pursuing fund-ing opportunities to renovate and refurbish our repositories and exhibits.

Additionally, the UW2020 Dis-covery Initiative is supporting five UW-Madison natural history collections to create an online database of our collective nine million specimens. While the

physical specimens will still be housed in their current homes (geology, zoology, anthropology, entomology, and state herbarium) their records will be acces-sible in aggregate. This combined data repository will allow researchers to investigate the breadth of items across campus.

Vistas and Vertebrates in the Gros Ventre Wilderness Majestic vistas and tired legs abounded during this year’s field season for Mu-seum Scientist Dave Lovelace and the four undergraduate students he took to Wyoming. In total they hiked 100 miles of terrain to reach seven remote outcrops of Triassic rock that Dave had identified using satellite data. These are localities that were promising and had never before been prospected for ver-tebrate fossils. After an extensive search, they found multiple sites preserving footprints that warranted documenting and one vertebrate site. l

The museum has teamed up with Treinen Farm and Pumkin Patch in Lodi, Wisconsin to create a 15-acre trilobite corn maze with a cabinet of curiosities theme. Can you spot the galena, volcano, nautiloid and Charles Van Hise’s field microscope?

We set up shop with Steve Meyers at Pope Farm Park’s Sunflower Days to introduce folks to deep time and astrochronology.

The field crew takes a break to admire the Teton Mountains in the distance (Dave Lovelace, Brandon Price, Adam Fitch, Calvin So, and Aaron Kufner).

Students are an important part of the museum team. This crew gathered every Friday morning this spring to work on a variety of projects in the collection. From L to R undergraduates Kelly Martin, Emily Eichstedt Anderson, Amanda Heinsohn, Alyssa Rieger.


2017 Outcrop

Thank you for remembering us!

Please consider making a gift for graduate student research support, the Field Camp scholarship fund for undergraduates, or to your favorite fund.

UW FOUNDATION FUNDS Give online or make checks payable to the UW Foundation.

amount Fund Name Geoscience Annual Fund, 112421160 Geoscience Community Fund, 112427300 Geoscience Field Camp Fund, 112427719 Geoscience Student Field Experience Fund, 132424388 Robert and Nancy Dott Geoscience Fund, 132428095 Jane and Clarence Clay Geophysics Fund, 132427751 C. K. Leith Library Fund, 112427756 Charles Kenneth Leith Fund (structure), 132422383 Eugene N. Cameron Scholarship Fund (economic geology, mineralogy, petrology, geochem.), 132422228 George J. Verville Award Fund in Geology and Geophysics (paleontology), 132423014 George P. Woollard-‐Sigmund I. Hammer Memorial Fund in Geology & Geophysics (geophysics), 132425140 Hydrogeology Research Fund, 112424780 James D. and Stella M. Robertson Graduate Fellowship Fund, 132420001 James J. and Dorothy T. Hanks Memorial Fund in Geology (Best Geophysics Student Award), 132424984 Jay C. Nania Endowed Graduate Support Fund (graduate student support), 132427782 L. R. Laudon Geology and Geophysics Scholarship Fund (Outstanding Junior Major Award), 132427740 Lewis Cline, Lloyd Pray, and Robert Dott Sedimentary Geology Field Fund, 132423180 Lloyd C. Pray and J. Campbell Craddock Fund (sed/structure, graduate student support), 132426320 Mark and Carol Ann Solien Fund (graduate student support), 132426762 Paleontology Program Fund in Geology, 112420014 Paull Family Undergraduate Scholarship Fund in Geology and Geophysics, 132421408 Sharon Meinholz Graduate Student Fund (student travel support), 112424096 Shelburne Research Assistantship Fund (graduate student support), 112424782 Sturges "Bull" W. Bailey Scholarship Fund (mineralogy and petrology), 112422998 Tyler-‐Berg Teaching Assistant Fund in Geology and Geophysics (Outstanding TA Award), 132425200 Geology Museum Field Experience Fund, 112426058 Geology Museum Fund, 112426430 Geology Museum Klaus Westphal Public Education Fund, 132428142 Gerald Gunderson Geology Museum Fund, 132428011 Sherry Lesar Distinguished Chair of Geological Wonder Fund, 132420000

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