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A Yellowstone Guide to Mars P. 21

D r . W arren H uff â€™ s R etirement C oincides with S oviet I nvasion of C zechosolvakia P. 5

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Letter from the Department Head....................................................................................................................... Pages 1-2 Faculty & Students News................................................................................................................................... Pages 3-25 Dr. Warren Huff â€™s Retirement coincides with Soviet invasion of Czechosolvakia ............................................. Pages 5-6 UC Study finds no evidence of Drinking Water from Fracking........................................................................ Pages 9-10 A Yellowstone Guide to Mars........................................................................................................................... Pages 21-23 Geology Donor List................................................................................................................................................. Page 18 Alumni Advisory Committee.................................................................................................................................. Page 24 Undergraduate & Graduate Degrees 2017-2018.................................................................................................... Page 25 Alumni News.................................................................................................................................................... Pages 27-44 Call to Action.......................................................................................................................................................... Page 47

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Dear Alumni,

uch has happened over the past twelve months and it seems like it was just yesterday that I writing a note for the Upper Crust. We had another wonderful and productive year, and we hope yours was just as good and that you are all doing extremely well. Warren Huff has produced, with the help of Tim Phillips, another great issue of the Upper Crust to give you some insights into what we and your fellow alumni have been doing. I should like to sincerely thank Warren and Tim for their dedication and hard work in producing this newsletter.

the local region, many of which are supported by your generous donations to our endowments. In addition, we have had numerous research trips throughout the US and to distant parts of the world including Chile, Nepal, China, and Canada. Our students are increasingly being involved in our research both in the field and our laboratories. This is very important as it provides them with the additional skills and experiences needed to make them competitive in the work place.

Our undergraduate student majors have had a successful year. They are all extremely motivated and enthusiastic, and there is the strong camara- Enjoying the Himalayan sun in the Khumbu Our very talented and dedderie among them. In the past year, Himal last November! icated graduate students they have been active in organizing have continued to do a wonmany fun and stimulating events, including running derful job as teaching and research assistants while unbooths at the Cincinnati GeoFair and the SW Ohio Scidertaking world class research. They continue to be very ence Fair, visits to local schools, participating in scisuccessful in obtaining numerous grants to support their ence fairs, and arranging picnics and holiday parties. research, including support from the Geological Society of America, Sigma Xi, the Paleontological Society and hydroWe continue to have exciting fieldwork opportucarbon companies. The range of diverse topics in varied nities for our students, which has included a trip to environments that they are working on for their research is the Bahamas last summer led by Krista Smilek and impressive. Most present their work at national meetings to the Canary Islands last December led by Yurena and many have published it in international journals. Yanes. We have also run many field classes around

D e p e r t m e n t Our fall fieldtrip was a great success again this year. We spent the first day with the Ohio Geological Survey and explored the geology around Columbus. We examined excellent exposures of Paleozoic rocks and superb landscapes, and we were able to enjoy a particularly fine microbrewery at Buckeye Lake.

tion and provide invaluable resources for us to help train students for the future workforce. We have produced over fifty research papers in peerreviewed international journals, with most appearing in very highly ranked journals as PNAS, Paleogeography, Paleoecology and Paleoclimatology, Geomorphology, Quaternary Science Reviews, Journal of Geophysical Research, Lithosphere, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Quaternary Research, and Paleobiology.

Our colloquium series was very successful again this year thanks to Dylan Wardâ€™s hard work in overseeing its organization. Dylan did a wonderful job of having a mixture of students and faculty, and external speakers give presentations. Among the invited external speakers were Claire McLeod (Miami University, Ohio), Iain Stewart (University of Plymouth, UK), Henriette Linge (University of Bergen, Norway), and Missy Eppes (University of North Carolina, Charlotte). We held our Career Days event again this year in March. This was organized by Daniel Sturmer and our distinguished alumni, John Thaeler. An impressive group of alumni talked with our students and faculty about their work experiences and provided advice about employment in the geosciences. Again, their enthusiasm was contagious and it was exciting to see the breadth of their work and learn about their career paths. We are looking forward to next yearâ€™s Careers Days and hopefully we see some of you join us for that event. In January, Dr. Reza Soltanian joined us from the Ohio State University as our new assistant professor in groundwater hydrology. His research focusses on subsurface fluid flow and mass transport processes to help advance fundamental understanding of flow and solute transport through heterogeneous geological media. He develops theory and performs numerical simulations to clarify fundamental aspects of flow and transport. We are very excited to have him on our faculty. This past year we submitted an impressive number of research grant proposals; many of which were funded, including grants from National Science Foundation, USGS, National Geographic Society and industry. This is continuing to help boost our reputa-

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As many of you know, Professors Warren Huff and Arnie Miller retired at the end of this academic year. However, they will still be active in our department as emeritus professors. We all look forward to working with them in the coming years and taking full advantage of their incredible wealth of experience. Please accept my sincere thanks to all of you who have kept in touch with us and have generously supported our program throughout this and/ or previous years. Your support is extremely appreciated because it allows us to continue to do many exciting educational and life transforming things for our students. Please keep in touch with us and drop by the department if you are in town. If you would like to learn about our weekly activities, please check out our very informal weekly newsletter, Rolling Rocks, that is posted to the following website: http:// www.artsci.uc.edu/departments/geology/news-andevents.html. Best wishes,

Lewis Owen

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Although as of last July Nash is retired (profoundly retired as one of his colleagues is wont to say), he was delighted by the opportunity to participate in the operation of the CV Theis Groundwater Observatory. The observatory was officially named in honor of our distinguished alum, CV Theis, a pioneer and giant in the field of groundwater hydrology who earned his BS and MS degrees from UC Civil Engineering and earned the first PhD degree in Geology at UC in 1929. The observatory has been in continuous operation since March 2017 providing data at 15-minute intervals on groundwater levels, temperatures, specific conductivities, flow direction and gradient at the top and at the bottom of the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer adjacent to Great Miami River in Miami-Whitewater Forest, part of Great Parks of Hamilton County. The location, design, history, etc. of the observatory are available here (https:// bit.ly/2vXBpVI). An hourly summary of conditions at the observatory are available here (https://bit.ly/2JC4OqI). Nash encourages (begs) anyone even remotely interested in groundwater to download this (https://bit.ly/2r9meTS) windows app which displays all of the data collected by the observatory.

Greetings from sunny Portland. Actually it has been sunny here this year and much better weather than Cinti. I would like to say that we are all settled in here, but the construction boom is so intense that it is impossible to find contractors to do anything. My work on corrosion in water systems continues – gave a paper in Philadelphia and also attended the national Water Quality Technology meeting here. Both Jim and Lisa live in Portland so we see them often. Also Nathan Marshall has recently moved out here and we are re-starting our Kope manuscript with Carl on sedimentation rates. As you may know, our son Jim suffers from polycystic kidney disease. He’s the primary reason we moved to Portland. He is in dialysis (at best a stop-gap measure and very draining -- he can’t work) and in need of a kidney from a donor with a blood type O. This would be his second transplant. His first transplant failed because the cysts on his native kidneys became infected and affected the transplant kidney. He has since had his native kidneys removed (a serious surgery) so that will not be an issue for a future transplant.

We are urgently seeking a live donor. All expenses paid. If you are interested, please let me know (maynarjb@gmail.com); if you know of someone, please pass this message along. n

Nash was delighted by the hiring of Reza Soltanian as the department’s groundwater hydrologist. Reza has some wonderful ideas for research and teaching initiatives that can be done with the groundwater observatory. Reza earned his PhD with Bob Ritzi, a long-time friend of the department and a renowned and admired groundwater hydrologist. The tulip poplar planted in Kees DeJong’s memory (https:// bit.ly/1EMli7u) continues to thrive (you can see it grow in the bottom of the frame in Nash’s office window webcam https:// bit.ly/1EMli7u). Nash had hoped it would bloom before he retired but he’s still waiting. Kees’s son, Mark, had a one-man show, Swing House (https://bit.ly/2rg26zF), at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center. It features Mark’s creations constructed from materials recovered during the making of his Swing House in Northside (rebuilt from an old detached row house). n

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W arren H uff 2017-18 has been an unprecedented year for me in many respects. In addition to welcoming our new colleagues Reza Soltanian and Dan Sturmer in the department I was privileged to have the assistance of several excellent graduate teaching assistants in courses that continued to grow in enrollment. My 8:00 section of physical geology 1003 alone had 100 students in the fall while the online section grew to 150. The spring historical geology 1004 sections were proportionally about the same although slightly smaller in total registration. Most of the students in the online section are, in fact, full-time UC students, but many of them have jobs, longdistance commutes, family responsibilities and other schedule conflicts that make class attendance a challenge. However, there were also a few in the military, several on co-op section. I had ten students in clay mineralogy this winter, which made finding sufficient laboratory supplies a real challenge. Some other highlights of the year included participation in the Annual Meeting of the Clay Minerals Society, which was held in Edmonton, Alberta, and participation in the Annual GSA meeting in Seattle, Washington. Co-authored publications included a joint paper with Lewis Owen and colleagues Ken Tankersley, a former UC geology student and now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC, Vern Scarborough in Anthropology and Nick Dunning in Geography. Our

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project concerns the occurrence and distribution of volcanic minerals in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico and their archaeological significance. Several papers have been published and another is currently in review. I was extremely pleased to have Jeff Hannon (BA â€˜10) return to UC to pursue a PhD on Cretaceous bentonites in the western US. Jeff is exploring new frontiers in bentonite study by applying stable isotopic and trace element studies to determine the magmatic and tectonic history of these widespread beds. Beyond this, I continue as an associate editor for both the American Mineralogist and Clays and Clay Minerals as well as serving as Secretary to the Clay Minerals Society. But the true highlight of this academic year, in many respects, has been my retirement. As the attached poster indicates, the department organized a marvelous party on April 5 at the Cincinnati Observatory. It was a marvelous evening with some recent and not-so-recent alumni along with current students, faculty and staff members. Thanks to one of our grad students, Sourav Saha, there are a few photos at https://bit.ly/2Hg99lO. I hope to return as an emeritus faculty member to teach clay mineralogy in the fall. Music continues to be an important part of my life. I do bluegrass fiddle jamming just about every weekend, and am happy to step in with guitar or dobro whenever the opportunity arises. My wife, Atia, enjoys Scottish and English Country Dancing, so we are often off to events with live music plus interaction with colleagues who we normally see only at these events. n

UC professor Warren Huff ’s retirement coincides with the 50th anniversar y of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a day the geologist will never forget. Residents waving national flags converge on Wenceslas Square in Prague to protest Soviet Invasion By Michael

Miller

W arren Huff can still hear the gunshots over

Prague’s Wenceslas Square that summer day in 1968.

Huff, a retiring geology professor at the University of Cincinnati, was in Czechoslovakia (now called Czechia) for an international conference. All was quiet when Huff returned to his hotel room after attending a party with new friends that night. The next morning was chaos. “I was ready to start this conference when we heard gunfire. I went downstairs and the streets were full of tanks and soldiers,” Huff said. Overnight, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded their communist neighbor. More than 500,000 soldiers occupied the streets of Prague to stifle political dissension threatening the Eastern bloc. “They called it the ‘Prague Spring,’” Huff said. “Hundreds of people were out in the streets yelling and screaming at the soldiers in their tanks. To quell the crowd, soldiers were firing their machine guns over the heads of protesters.” Huff would spend the rest of the day documenting the tense street scenes while looking for safe passage out of the country. But dodging a military invasion wasn’t even the most memorable thing to happen to the geologist that day. Huff had met his future wife at the party.

Geology professor Warren Huff is retiring this year after 59 years at UC as a student and faculty member. Huff never expected to be a geologist when he left his Michigan home to study at Harvard University. “My father thought I would go to college and come back and take over the family farm because he knew I enjoyed it,” Huff said. “That sounded just fine to me.” Huff spent his teen years herding cattle, baling hay and driving a tractor around the cornfields. By serendipity, he found his calling while taking a geology class as a freshman. “We took a field trip. We were doing laboratory work. I really enjoyed it,” Huff said. “I told my parents at the end of my freshman year that I wanted to major in geology. I remember the expression on my father’s face. He could see there was no farming in my future.” Taking advice from a Harvard professor, Huff came to UC’s esteemed Geology Department to get his doctorate. He expected he would go off to work for an oil or gas company after graduation like so many of his classmates. Instead, his department chairman offered him a job teaching. “I am very happy with the way my career has gone. I’ve been very fortunate,” Huff said. He never regretted that decision, even on a hot summer day when he found himself in the middle of a city under siege.

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“CZECHOSLOVAKIA INVADED BY RUSSIANS AND FOUR OTHER WARSAW PACT FORCES; THEY OPEN FIRE ON CROWDS IN PRAGUE,” blared the banner headline in The New York Times. The story mentioned that among the Americans who were caught up in the pandemonium were 400 “delegates to an international geological congress” in Prague. The Cincinnati Post reached one of UC’s geologists for a front-page story on the crisis, but the report’s subhead was ominous: “Four Faculty Members Missing.” Huff and his hotel roommate, Ellis Yochelson, a paleontologist from the National Museum of Natural History, headed to the U.S. Embassy in Prague to find out what they should do next. The Soviet military had closed the train station and occupied the airport. “The embassy was in chaos. They said nobody knew this was coming — just stay in your hotel,” he recalled. But fighting in the city seemed imminent. Staying put was out of the question. Yochelson had friends at the British embassy so they went there. “They were beautifully organized. They said there was a train leaving for Germany but we had to get to this rural station,” Huff said. Soldiers seemed to be posted at every street corner. Huff used his camera to capture the incongruity of city residents waving national flags in open defiance of the invasion. One soldier who saw him documenting the scene gestured for him to approach. “He took my camera and opened it. He took the film out and put the camera back together and gave it back,” Huff said. Huff was undaunted. “I went back up to my hotel room. I had more film,” Huff said. “It took some nerve to do that.” Meanwhile, they were scrambling to find a way out of the city. “Anxiety was pretty high after they closed the train station. We were just panicked. That was the sense: We just need to get out — to escape,” he said. The two geologists asked a random driver in Prague to take them to the distant station. The man agreed. They piled into the car and were on their way. “We had $50 in Czech currency between us. We gave it all to the driver,” Huff said.Soon after they were on their way to the safety of Germany.

Whenever Huff goes to McMicken Hall, UC’s stately and steepled Georgian-style building, he thinks of his job interview with the dean. “He said, ‘Warren, you’re not married are you?’ I said no, I’m not. He said, ‘Then you won’t need a very big salary,’” Huff recalled. Huff returned to Cincinnati after his eventful trip to Europe. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Anezka, the woman he had met at the party. He wanted to write to her but he didn’t have her address. He remembered his party hosts and the name of the street where they lived, if not their precise address, so he sent them a letter. A week later, they wrote back with Anezka’s address. Over the next year, the two corresponded back and forth. Huff returned to Prague the following summer and they spent a week sightseeing around the city together. They got married a year later. n

Warren Huff, right, and his wife, Anezka (Atia), with her brother, Pepik during a trip back to Prague.

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C arl B rett This was another busy and very rewarding year; 2018 marks my 20th year at UC and my 40th year of teaching. I am busier than ever, very excited for the next installment, and delighted to be working with many colleagues and students at all levels on a number of exciting stratigraphic and paleontological projects.

In fall 2017 was elected Chair of the North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature (NACSN), and continued as Vice Chair of International Subcommission on Devonian Stratigraphy (SDS), and titular member of the Silurian Subcomission (SSS). I was also awarded the honorary title of Corresponding Member of the Senckenberg Institution, Frankfort, Germany where I have, for more than a decade, done research with German colleagues on Devonian bioevents under the auspices of a Humboldt award. I continued to work on several projects related to Paleozoic sequence stratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, paleoecology, and bioevents, with present and previous graduate students and colleagues here in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee as well as New York, Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada, and elsewhere. Two graduate students completed their Masters degrees in 2017. In August, Cameron Schwalbach completed a nice thesis on faunal gradients in Upper Ordovician Waynesville Formation on the east side of the Cincinnati Arch during a time of biotic change; he is presently teaching as a lab instructor at University of Dayton. In November, Tim Paton defended his very interesting thesis on the sedimentology and paleoecology of Upper Ordovician hardgrounds (cemented sea floors) from Ontario. Tim is now a PhD candidate at University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Research on Late Ordovician Stratigraphy and Paleoecology: Ohio-Indiana-Kentucky. In 2017-2018 several different projects continued to focus on the Upper Ordovician (453-450 MA) interval. This is a critical time because it includes the prominent Guttenberg C isotope excursion, the most widespread K-bentonite beds in the Ordovician, signaling the onset of the later tectophase of the Taconic Orogeny, a major sequence boundary (M4/M5 boundary), and biotic turnover.

PhD student Allison Young, alumni Dr. Peter Holterhoff (Hess Corp) and Dr. Pat McLaughlin (Indiana Geological Survey) continued work on correlation of the Lexington Limestone, Point Pleasant Formation and Kope Formation of the shallow water Lexington Platform and its transition into dark, shale-rich facies of the “Point Pleasant” and “Utica” formations in the deeper water Sebree Trough. Newly studied drill cores from Ohio and Indiana are providing new information on submarine erosion and filling of this feature that will have strong implications for the tectonic origin of this topographic feature. We have established linkage of gamma ray, C-isotope, and sequence stratigraphy of outcrops of the Lexington Formation and subsurface cores from the “Point Pleasant-Utica” oil and gas field. Christopher Aucoin (PhD candidate), Dr. Ben Dattilo (Indiana Purdue University, Fort Wayne), avocational stratigrapher Kyle Hartshorn, and I are collaborating on sequence and event stratigraphy and a major biotic event-the Richmondian Invasion in the Upper Ordovician Richmond Group in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Chris hopes to complete a dissertation within this year. We will present a completely revised sequence stratigraphy for the classic Cincinnati Arch region and its implications for bioevents at an upcoming meeting on the Ordovician biodiversification held June, 2018 at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. I also continued research with UC Masters student Tim Paton, funded by a National Geographic Society grant, to document spectacular hardgrounds spectacularly encrusted by intact fossil communities from the Upper Ordovician of the Lake Simcoe area of Ontario, Canada. Carbon isotope chemostratigraphy documented the occurrence of these encrusted surfaces in relation to the famed GICE (Guttenburg isotope) excursion. The hardgrounds fall

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C arl B rett (Continued) between two parts of the GICE excursion, allowing detailed correlation with those in Kentucky. We intend to submit a second proposal to National Geographic Society to support a substantially larger project to test some of the preliminary hypotheses regarding taphonomy, paleoecology and paleobiology developed during the course of our work.

Silurian: Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana-Tennessee, Canada. (Funding by NSF (now completed) and Ohio Geological Survey) This year my efforts on the Silurian were largely focused on aspects of sequence and event stratigraphy in Ohio. I am continuing to work with the Ohio Geological Survey to extend these correlations into the subsurface. We have had three workshops aimed at integrating gamma ray profiles with drill core data on unit boundaries and this successful, at quite fine scale. I have also sampled several somewhat controversial intervals for both C isotopes and conodonts to be studied by Mark Kleffner (Ohio State University Lima). Our objectives include regional correlation of Silurian sequences across all parts of Ohio and bridging into adjacent states in the Appalachian, Michigan, and Illinois Basins and Nashville Dome. We also hope to standardize terminology and make Ohio a key reference area for Silurian studies.

Research on Devonian Sea Level and Bioevents: Germany; Czech Republic, Belgium, New York State During the summer of 2017, I completed a project with my colleague and UC alumnus Dr. James Zambito (Wisconsin Geological Survey; now with Beloit College) on sampling of new exposures of Middle Devonian rocks in Kentucky. New field work resulted in the discovery of Middle Devonian paleokarst, including a cave filled with black shale (also Middle Devonian age). Samples were processed for conodonts and C isotopes at the Wisconsin Geological Survey. Regardless, the results led to a more nuanced view of the interplay of eustatic and tectonic factors during a very volatile time in Earth history. We have a paper in press on our new findings. We will continue work toward establishing a late Givetian GSSP (stratotype) in Kentucky. I also spent a total of three weeks working collaboratively with, Czech colleagues, Prof. Ladislav Slavic and Prof. Jiri Fryda, in Prague, on a new research initiative on the comparative cycle, sequence stratigraphy, paleoecology and bioevents of the Devonian of the Prague Basin, Bohemia and North America. This program will compare the detailed patterns of stratigraphy, geochemistry, paleontology and paleoecology of bioevents in North

America with the classic type areas for these events in the Prague Basin. In this way, we hope to tease out the local vs. global signatures of these events and provide further insights into process. Research with Dr. Anne Christine DaSilva (Utrecht university, Netherlands) on the Devonian cyclostratigraphy of New York State. The objective of this research is to quantify evident cyclicity in the Early to Middle Devonian of the Appalachian Basin using magnetic susceptibility and astrochronology. A 37 meter section was photographed and sampled at 2 cm intervals for magnetic susceptibility. Preliminary tests for Milankovitch forced cyclostratigraphy indicate near perfect 6:1 bundling of decimeter scale and meter scale scales, which is the precise predicted ratio of precessional and short term eccentricity cycles. This will provide for a well-tuned geochronology for this portion of the Devonian. It also suggests that facies and biotas were responding to short, intermediate, and long term cyclicity mediated by climatic cycles and/or eustatic sea level. In the midst of this busy academic year, Betty Lou and I celebrated our 43rd anniversary. Our son, Kenton is flourishing as an artist and still working at the Cincinnati Playhouse as a chief stage scenery artist. We have been working a good to help our daughter, Leanne, and her family to purchase a home in Tennessee; we a good deal of time with the two grand kids and Betty Lou has retired from Cincinnati State College in April, 2018, to spend more time with the two grand kids, Eugene, 5, and Aurora, 2, (to whom Grandma is a super-hero). I canâ€™t wait to get them out in the field when they are a little older (their home is also in Tazewell, TN near where I have led students on field trips to the Valley and Ridge for more than a decade, including this April when we got 40 students and the grand kids together for lunch at the famous Clinch Mountain Lookout Restaurant; of course, [as all of my students would guess], we took a trip out back of the kitchen to see the worldâ€™s most spectacular trilobite burrows. I showed my 5 year old grandson, Eugene; he thought they might be dinosaur tracks. And things continue to be very busy. In a year where we are undergoing a departmental review, my students, my colleague Kyle Hartshorne and I are also collaborating with Dr. Alycia Stigall on a meeting of the IGCP (Intl Global Correlation Programme) to be held in June in Athens, Ohio. I am also organizing a major symposium (with 55 abstracts) on Devonian biostratigraphy and bioevents for the SDS and International Paleontological Congress in Paris in July, and with the Ohio and Indiana Geological Surveys on a two-day post meeting field trip following the Geological Society of America meeting in Indianapolis in November, 2018. n

UC Study Finds No Evidence of Drinking Water Contamination from Fracking By Michael Miller

The three-year study found no relationship between methane concentrations in groundwater and proximity to natural gas wells.

Photos by Jay Yocis/UC Creative Services

study of drinking water in Appalachian Ohio found no evidence of natural gas contamination from recent oil and gas drilling. Geologists with the University of Cincinnati examined drinking water in Carroll, Stark and Harrison counties, a rural region in northeast Ohio where many residents rely on water from private underground wells. The time-series study was the first of its kind in Ohio to examine methane in groundwater in relation to natural gas drilling. The results were published in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.

They found no increase in methane concentration or composition in groundwater over the four years of the study, despite the presence of new shale gas wells drilled in the study area. Likewise, they did not find higher methane levels in closer approximation to shale drilling. Researchers did find wide variability in methane concentrations in the drinking water, ranging from 0.2 micrograms per liter to 25.3 milligrams per liter, which is strong enough to catch fire in enclosed spaces. But researchers found no relationship between the methane observed in drinking water and the new gas wells.

“Clearly, additional monitoring “Some people had elevated conis needed to determine whether centrations of methane in their methane concentrations and source groundwater, but the isotopic signals in this region change as the composition showed it wasn’t number of oil and gas wells continfrom natural gas” said Amy ues to increase,” the study concludA portable device can quickly detect the presence Townsend-Small, associate proed. of methane in water. fessor of geology in UC’s McResearchers identified the chemiMicken College of Arts and Scical composition of the water using gas chromatography, ences. isotope ratio mass spectrometry, and radiocarbon dat“What we found is in most cases it was probably from uning in a UC geology lab. Understanding the chemical derground coal in the area or biological methane produced composition helps identify the source of methane found in groundwater.” in drinking water: from natural gas extraction, organic UC researchers collected 180 groundwater samples in decomposition or even from the digestive systems of total at homes in the three counties. nearby cows. Some of the sites were sampled multiple times. In parLead author and UC graduate Claire Botner said the ticular, researchers looked for evidence of methane, the study solicited participation by homeowners who were primary compound in natural gas. They also studied willing to let researchers test their wells. changes in the acidity or pH of the water, and changes The study area has seen increasing interest from natuto its conductivity. ral gas companies in recent years. It’s located above a

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geological feature called the Utica Shale formation, which is known to harbor oil and natural gas. When UC launched its methane study in 2012, Ohio had issued 115 drilling permits for the region. By the study’s end in 2015, nearly 1,600 permits had been issued, primarily for Carroll County.

Study co-authors included UC professor emeritus David Nash and UC assistant professor of geology Joshua Miller. Botner said if researchers were to replicate the study, she might recommend expanding it to include other hydrocarbons such as propane or look for carbonate isotopes associated with natural gas drilling.

Hydraulic fracturing is a process by which pressurized water, sand and chemicals are pumped into “It’s a controversial topic,” Botnatural-gas wells more than a mile ner said. “But that’s why science deep to break apart shale to re- UC graduate student Jacob Deighton uses a vac- is so valuable. Maybe another lease pockets of oil and natural gas. cum line to prepare a sample in a geology lab. study would confirm our findings Researchers hypothesized that or maybe they would find somemethane concentrations in the thing else. Regardless, we would drinking-water wells they samwelcome more well testing.” pled would increase over time Carroll County Commissioner with the growth of natural gas Robert Wirkner said the finddrilling in the area. This is a corings were good news for resirelation researchers observed in dents. Like many of his neighPennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale bors, he gets drinking water at region. his house from a private well on

But that’s not what UC’s water his property. tests revealed. The study conWirkner said gas companies cluded that methane observed UC students Jacob Deighton and Laurie Heldman test the drinking water of nearby in groundwater was “biogenic,” or pose with UC geology professor Amy Townsend- homes before and after they drill naturally occurring and indepen- Small. a well to observe any changes in dent of natural gas drilling. water quality. “The study researchers in Pennsylvania thought the con“My water has been tested multiple times,” he said. “So tamination issue was a failure of the well casings in the we’re happy to hear the findings.” fracking wells,” Townsend-Small said. Townsend-Small said protecting wells from contamina“Hopefully, that doesn’t happen often. And that appartion is especially important in rural areas because there ently didn’t happen with the wells of homeowners we are few alternatives for clean drinking water. Digging a worked with for our study.” new or deeper well is expensive and would not necessarTownsend-Small has spent much of her career reily solve a pollution problem. And there are few opporsearching groundwater and methane. She and other UC tunities in rural areas to connect to public water lines. geologists are studying the influence of the Great Mi“It would be great if homeowners had access to ongoing ami River on groundwater in southwest Ohio at UC’s C.V. monitoring,” she said. “In cities, you are reassured that your Theis Groundwater Observatory. She also has studied drinking water is safe. We pay the public water utilities to atmospheric methane in relation to algae blooms in the test the water every day. But if you have a private well, you Great Lakes and methane in arctic lakes in Alaska. just have to hope that it’s not contaminated on a day-to“Some people had elevated concentrations of methane in their groundwater, but the isotopic composition showed it wasn’t from natural gas. It was from a different source,” Townsend-Small said. “What we found is in most cases it was probably from underground coal in the area or biological methane produced in groundwater.”

day basis.” The study was funded in part with grants from the David F. & Sara K. Weston Fund and the Deer Creek Foundation. Instruments were provided with grants from the National Science Foundation. n

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The impressive clutter and chaos in my office suggests I’m a hoarder...this is not quite true. Those two large, black, rolling cases over there house two of the Department’s new Zeiss petrographic microscopes. They are fabulous, and one has a built-in camera which links to a wireless modem, which talks to the Zeiss LabScope app, which you have on your tablet, laptop, or phone. My iPad links to an Apple tv putting the image on the screen in front of 527, so we can all look at, talk about, and annotate the same image at the same time. Taking photomicrographs is a snap. Learning and teaching about minerals and rocks in thin section is fun, interactive, and seemingly, students learn more, more quickly. A jumble of rolled maps and two copier paper boxes (of which I am so fond) occupying valuable space on the table Kees DeJong custom built for this office. The boxes have field gear and other necessities from my latest trip to southwestern Connecticut: STATEMAP funding has propelled me back into bedrock mapping in western New England. This project is Shannon Neale’s M.S. project, which includes a heavy dose of whole-rock geochemistry of orthogneisses and lots of petrography (see paragraph above). Many sincere thanks to the CT State Geologist, Margaret Thomas, for supporting this project. We spent an enlightening day in the field with USGS field geologist Nick Ratcliffe who I first met and went into the field with when I was a grad student. Greg Walsh, Project Chief and Research Geologist with the Eastern Geology (& Paleoclimate) Science Center of the USGS has been a pillar of support for Shannon as she becomes an expert in digital cartography with ArcGIS. That new collection of mineral specimens on display taking up one of my many cluttered shelves (which has displaced books onto my office floor)? That is my growing, personal mineral collection. A new friend and colleague, Jason Glenn, of Stamford, CT got my collection started by giving me a couple of dozen “thumb nails” (including a lovely pair of Brazilian kyanite blades). Jason’s own collection is totally wow. BTW, if you know anything at all about the Department’s mineral collection (not the specimens used for teaching, the other ones), please contact me. Undergraduate Tom Uhl has spent some of his time this past year cataloging the collection and Tom is currently setting up a new mineral display for the 3rd floor museum.

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for the Origins of Mineralizing Fluids” which Josh defended in April. Congrats, Josh! Josh’s project benefitted greatly from John Rakovan (a real mineralogist) at Miami U and wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration of Jared Singer and his LA-ICP-MS lab at Rensselaer. Josh presented his results as a poster at the recent North-Central Section meeting of GSA held in Ames, Iowa (about 620 miles one way)...oddly my very first North-Central meeting. Again, a big shout-out to Paul Potter for getting this whole fluorite party started! The extra tall pile on my desk and the shorter one next to it have notebooks, papers, data, etc., etc., related to two other New England projects, with undergraduates Andrew Michel and Megan Brennan. Andrew is part of my collaboration with Ratcliffe using the geochemistry of meta-basalts to track Iapetan opening and test terrane affinities. Andrew has gotten a couple of departmental STEM grants this past year and was also awarded a $500 grant from the Geological Society of Connecticut. The GSC grant will support travel to Ryan McAleer’s lab at the USGS in Reston to separate zircon and hornblende from rocks from the Stamford-Pound Ridge quads for geochron (re: Shannon’s project). Megan was a member of UC’s WISE program last summer and continues to work on identifying minute inclusions in garnet from high-grade rocks from western Connecticut to determine the mineral assemblages that record the earliest metamorphism there. All of this work in New England was presented at the Northeastern Section meeting of the GSA held in very cold, but sunny Burlington, VT in March (about 900 miles one way...of course, we drove); Jon Kim was one of the meeting organizers. Among Shannon, Andrew, Megan, and myself, four talks and one poster. Summer project: de-clutter my office. Ha! n

One of the piles of papers on my desk and the pieces of fluorite here and there are related to Josh Bergbower’s MS thesis, “Trace and Rare Earth Element Chemistry of Fluorite from the Illinois-Kentucky Fluorspar District and its Implications

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L ewis O wen Another year has gone by incredibly quickly. I have continued my research and teaching that focuses on the Quaternary geology and geomorphology of tectonically active mountain belts and their forelands. This has involved fieldwork with students and colleagues in Norway, Nepal, Southern California and China, plus laboratory work in our geochronology laboratories. With my students and colleagues, we have published more than a dozen articles in journals and books. During this period, I continued to work on my NSF grant on the active tectonics of Walker Lane; and we got funding for two new projects in Nepal, Thailand and China. I had fun teaching classes on natural hazards, surface processes and the ge-

ology of the Himalaya. I continued to work with my doctoral students Sourav Saha, Liz Orr and Jeanette Arkle; all who are in the finishing stages of their dissertations. I also worked with post-doctoral researcher, Paulo Marques Figueiredo, on numerous tectonic projects, and we have been developing new studies the western US. My work as editor for Quaternary Research and an Associate Editor for the journal Geomorphology has brought lots of extremely interesting manuscript my way. I am looking forward to the year ahead with plans for fieldwork in the western US. n

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D an S turmer It has been an exciting and busy year here at UC. My first Master’s student Adam Jones joined in fall. He is working on a provenance study of the Pennsylvanian-Permian Oquirrh basin in northern Utah. The initial part of his project involved completing tectonic subsidence analysis across the basin, which showed a two-phase subsidence history: Pennsylvanian subsidence most pronounced in the eastern part of the basin and early Permian subsidence most pronounced in the western part of the basin. The subsidence analysis will be presented at the AAPG ACE in Salt Lake City this May. The summer he will be measuring sections and collecting samples for sandstone provenance and detrital zircon analysis across the basin to test the two-phase subsidence model. He obtained funding from The Geological Society of America and was awarded the Paul Potter scholarship at the banquet this year. My research is off to a good start. I have several other new projects that are beginning to take shape. I received a grant from the American Chemical Society – Petroleum Research Fund to evaluate mega-landslides in the Basin and Range province. Dozens of these large-scale landslides are exposed at the surface and range in age Miocene to Quaternary. These mega-landslides have also been found in the subsurface, where they locally act as some of the most productive petroleum reservoirs in Nevada. There are probably many more unidentified mega-landslide deposits in the subsurface, but imaging conditions are difficult and expensive. I will be working with Dylan Ward and my incoming Master’s student Nicholas Ferry to identify these buried landslides by analyzing their source area – the mountain ranges. We will use DEM analysis to evaluate know mega-landslide source areas and Landscape Evolution modeling to predict how rangefronts will respond to a mega-landslide events. These will in-turn be used to evaluate the rangefronts in the Basin and Range for areas with characteristics similar to known mega-landslide source areas. I am also starting a project with Wanda Taylor (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and Tandis Bidgoli (Kansas Geological Survey) to evaluate provenance of Cretaceous (?) to Eocene(?) conglomerates which crop out in scattered patches in southeastern Nevada and southwestern Utah. These conglomerates record drainage from the southern margin of the Nevadaplano and/or the evolution of topography during the Sevier Orogeny. We will evaluate these hypotheses with a combination

of conglomerate and sandstone provenance analysis, detrital zircon, and U-TH/He analysis, with the goal of unravelling the evolution of the landscape during Cretaceous to Eocene time. The new XRF lab is up and running too. Undergraduate student Greg Frommer is analyzing the geochemistry of chert samples from the Mississippian-Permian Bird Spring formation. He is testing the hypothesis that the silica has a volcanic origin by look for immobile trace elements consistent with a volcanic source. Expect more exciting news on the XRF front in the coming year. I taught several new classes this year. In the fall I cotaught Basin Dynamics with Dr. Paul Potter. It was an adventure and we all learned a lot. Paul and I are working on setting up learning modules for the next run of the course in fall 2019. In the spring I taught Careers in Geosciences and a Structural Geology for Field Camp seminar. In conjunction with the Careers class I hosted the 4th annual UC Geology Career Days in April. We had 8 alumni and friends of the department come and speak about their career paths in a variety of fields. I am trying to bring in a new crop of speakers each year, so if you are interested in speaking at next year’s event, please let me know! On the home front we are settling in to Cincinnati nicely. My wife Sarah Sturmer started working as a lab manager for Amy Townsend-Small. Sarah’s background is organic geochemistry and she worked as a development geologist for Shell and Oxy prior to us moving to Cincinnati. Our daughter Ivy is almost 2, and loves our cats, books, animals, and babies. This summer I will do a few weeks of field work on the mega-landslide and Oquirrh basin projects in California, Nevada, and Utah. I will be attending AAPG in Salt Lake City and I will present a poster on subsidence analysis of the Ely-Bird Spring basin in Nevada and Utah. This work was recently published in Tectonics. I will also host the UC alumni event at AAPG, so I hope to see you there! I am also running a 4-day field trip in northern and central Nevada this September for the Nevada Petroleum and Geothermal Society. This trip will be very special as it is in memory of my PhD advisor Jim Trexler, Jr., who lost his battle with cancer last year. Other than that, I will be writing, writing, writing. I am looking forward to a productive and educational summer and new academic year. n

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Y urena Y anes During the past year I have concentrated much of my efforts on working with my five students. Wesley Parker is a third year PhD candidate who just passed his qualifying exam in April 2018. His research focuses on climate change and human resource exploitation in the Canary Islands over the last two millennia. He has been a very productive and motivated student, who has already two publications and continues working hard in the field and the laboratory. Abigail Padgett just graduated in April 2018 with a Masters in Geology. Abbey has been studying an exciting archeological land snail record from Algeria, NW Africa expanding the last 10,000 years. She got really interesting results and is getting ready to submit her thesis to a scientific journal for publication.

Geology major and she is interested on environmental and anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity. She was just awarded a WISE fellowship and we will be working this summer in collaboration with Prof. Arnold Miller (UC) and Dr. Timothy Pearce (Carnegie Museum of Natural History) on land snail diversity along an urban to rural gradient in Ohio. Apart from working with my students, I have continued doing tons of research on land snails from North America as part of my NSF-funded project and have initiated a new stimulating international project on archeological records from the Iberian Peninsula funded by the European Research Council (ERC) grant.

Apart from all my research activities, I have been busy teaching several continuing courses on “Holocene EnEvan New is a second year Master student who plans vironmental and Cultural History”, “Tropical Islands: to defend this summer. Evan studies a newly discovered Endangered Paradises” and a new international course Quaternary record of land snails from Madeira (PortuI designed titled “Ecology and Paleoecology of the Cagal) and he is dating shells using nary Islands”. This new internationtwo methods to understand the al course has probably been the scale and structure of age mixing most rewarding teaching experion these assemblages. He finished ence since my arrival to UC. I took this project and is ready to submit a group of 14 undergraduates and this work to a journal in the coming they learned field-sampling methweeks. Evan is also working on a secods and collected ecological and ond project where he is trying to aspaleoecogical samples in fossil sess environmental drivers on snail sites and along environmental gradiversity and community structure 2017 Geological Society of America annual meeting dients. Students worked in groups from the Canary Islands. Richard and exposition, Seattle, WA. From left to right: Wesconducting semester-long research Javier Stephenson is a first year ley Parker, Donna Surge, Yurena Yanes, Nora Soto projects and collected real scienMaster student from the Philoso- and Evan New. tific samples and data to address phy Department. He is interested and tests previously formulated on understanding geographic biquestions and hypotheses. I feel ases in paleoclimatic proxy data. very satisfied with this course He has been compiling a global because the international exdataset of published land snail reperience has significantly augcords to examine biases and idenmented our students’ training tify spatial gaps on this proxy. In and education. I certainly plan a second project, Richard will be to continue implementing and studying this summer land snails expanding international educafrom Trinidad, a largely unstudied tion for our undergraduate sturegion that will resolve some of dents. I feel fortunate to teach the detected spatial gaps. in a school that supports studyFinally, I have continued work- 2018 GEOL/EVST4059c class in Tenerife, Canary Islands. abroad programs, which made ing with undergraduate student 14 undergraduate students from Geology, Biology and this course and field trip posNora Soto. Nora is a third year Environmental Studies visited the islands and enjoyed the sible. n international scientific and cultural experience.

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A aron D iefendorf The past two years (didn’t quite make last year’s newsletter) have been fantastic. My group has had a lot of great things to celebrate. Yeon Jee Suh successfully defended her PhD in November and is in the process of submitting her final manuscripts for publication. She’s now moved on to a postdoc position at the Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology. Erika Freimuth, Tom Lowell, and I were award an NSF grant to study the sourcing and transport of leaf waxes in the Adirondacks region. We completed several coring trips to the Adirondacks. Erika is finishing up this project and submitting manuscripts for publication before she heads off. Ben Bates, who is

advised by Tom, has been a key member on this Adirondacks work and just defended his MS earlier this week! Kristen Schlanser joined my group last year and has been working on a different NSF grant that we received to study the controls on leaf wax carbon isotopes through the Paleogene. Kristen just passed her PhD qualifying exam last week. My group has also had a number of incredibly hard working undergraduate students working on these projects, including Megan Brennan, Kelly Grogan, Hans Naake, Anna Schartman, and Lindsay Summer. My wife and I also added a daughter to the family this past year and that’s been keeping us extra busy. n

A & S S taff A dvisory B oard B ulletin

o happy to report Sarah Hammer gave birth to Isaac William. He is 9lbs 12oz and 20.5 inches. Sarah said it went well and is in good spirits! Congrats Hammer family!! Kate

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B rooke C rowley This past year has treated me very well. I was granted tenure in Fall 2017, and I enjoyed a fulfilling sabbatical in Spring 2018. Jenelle Wallace successfully defended her masters project in April. She used strontium isotope ratios in fossil teeth to investigate mobility patterns of horses from Florida during the Miocene. We are now in the process of preparing her thesis for publication in Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, and Palaeoecology. I also served on committees for several other students who either successfully completed their degrees or advanced to candidacy in 2017-2018, including Yeon Jee Suh, Erika Freimuth, Kristen Schlanser, and Jeff Hannon. It’s so exciting to watch our students mature scientifically! Speaking of which, my recent PhD student, Jani Sparks, has also been moving forward with publishing her dissertation research. One chapter is in press with the Journal of Archaeological Science Reviews and another has just been resubmitted to Oecologia. Both of these are about her work with sulfur isotopes on Trinidad (establishing the spatial distribution of marinederived sulfur in modern Trinidad and using spatial patterns in sulfur to investigate where historic Trinidadians foraged for terrestrial prey on the island). My own research continues to move forward. I have made particular headway with my work establishing the utility of bioavailable strontium isotopes in ecological research. I published a paper in December in Wildlife Society Bulletin in which I demonstrated that strontium isotopes in depredated lemurs can be used to track the foraging ranges of goshawks in Madagascar Here’s a story about the article available on UC’s website (http://magazine.uc.edu/editors_picks/recent_features/goshawk.html). I also have a paper in review that is co-authored by recent undergraduate Ian Castro. We used a suite of isotopes, including strontium, to investigate resource competition and mobility for endemic tufted-tail rats and introduced black rats and house mice within and adjacent to a small forest fragment in central Madagascar. Hopefully that paper will be published soon. I received small grants for two additional projects that (1) use hydrogen and strontium isotope ratios in feathers to establish where juvenile migratory raptors are born and raised in North America, and (2) track the spatial ecology of rare and cryptic carnivores using the isotope ratios in their feces. I will present

the latter project at the biennial “International Conference on the Applications of Stable Isotope Techniques”, which will be held in Chile later this summer. Colleagues and I have also received funding from NSF to reconstruct the Late Pleistocene and Holocene history of southwestern Madagascar using a variety of approaches including geochemistry and radiometric dating of vertebrate bones and speleothems. I am tremendously excited about this project, which will enable us to establish regional changes in climate, habitat, and foraging behavior at a resolution that has not been previously possible. Lastly, I have started a project examining the foraging ecology and extinction history of rodents on Hispaniola. Only one endemic rodent lives on the island today (a rather non-descript creature called Cuvier’s hutia). Next to nothing is known about this once-diverse radiation of now-extinct animals or the timing of their demise. My colleagues and I have preliminary data that suggest the now-extinct taxa occupied a range of foraging niches, and that some of the taxa were still present during the Late Holocene. We have a paper in review that will hopefully pave the way for future funding. Beyond my research, I have been actively involved in outreach. In November, both Amy Townsend-Small and I participated in a panel on “Defend and Beer” that was cohosted by the Environmental Defense Fund, The Ohio Environmental Council, and UC Department of Environmental Studies. I learned a lot preparing for this event, and I very much enjoyed interacting with the other participants. There are a lot of different variables that need to be taken into account when considering the “sustainability ” of beer production. I also participated in a new event called “Science Shots” for our local chapter of Sigma Xi in January. Coming up, I will be leading workMe feeding forester kangaroos at the shops on basic Unzoo on the Tasman Peninsula physical geology for a community outreach science day in Oaxaca, Mexico and vertebrate bones for the ExploreMore! Program at Covington Latin School in June. I’m excited about both of these opportunities. It’s always fun to share the wonders of science and discovery with others.

Looking down on the Tesselated pavement on the Tasman Peninsula. The pavement results from the weathering of an orthogonlly-jointed siltstone. Super neat!

Coastline between the Devil’s Kitchen and the Arch on the Tasman Peninsula.

Me in a tree fern forest in the Meander Forest Reserve, Central Tasmania.

Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

“The Three Sisters”, Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, New South Wales.

And I have just enjoyed a marvelous sabbatical. In addition to finishing up several projects and helping Jenelle wrap up her thesis, I took some time to decompress and travel a bit. I spent most of February in Australia (New South Wales and Tasmania), delighting in the biology and geology. Tasmania was particularly special. It’s full of geologic splendors; the few photos I provide can’t even begin to scratch the surface. My husband and I also visited the Australian National University in Canberra, where we both presented our research (see http://biology.anu. edu.au/news-events/can-spatial-variability-strontium-isotopes-help-protect-endangered-wildlife-madagascar). It was

fun interacting with researchers on the other side of the planet; our paths don’t normally cross at meetings. Coming up, I will be spending several weeks of May in Namibia. This is another region with spectacular geology, and I’m sure I’ll return with many stories and photos to share. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to take a few months to step back, catch up on some loose ends, and revive myself physically and emotionally. I feel refreshed and ready to return to the normal routine in the Fall. n

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Department of Geology Donors 2017 -2018 Thank You All for Your for Contributions to the UC Geology Departmentâ€™s Continued Excellence! Mr. Eugene J. Amaral

Dr. and Mrs. Brian L. Nicklen

Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Brockman

Occidental Petroleum Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Leland W. Burton

Dr. and Mrs. Lewis A. Owen

Dr. Jacek Jaminski and Dr. Marzena Cho-

Mr. Kenneth R. Owens

cyk-Jaminski

Ms. Mary L. Pojeta

Dr. Andrew D. Czaja

Dr. and Mrs. John K. Pope

Dr. Craig Dietsch and Ms. Elaine L. Ward

Dr. Paul Edwin Potter

Dry Dredgers, Inc.

Mr. Eric M. Redder and Ms. Michon D. Woods

Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. Effler

Dr. Stephen P. Reidel and Ms. Mary R. Knight

Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Elliott, Jr.

Mrs. Cornelia K. Riley

ExxonMobil Education Foundation

Mr. Edgar W. Roeser

Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Ferree

Mr. Tod W. Roush

Connie and Mark Fisher

Mr. and Mrs. Eric S. Rufe

Mr. and Mrs. John R. Ford

Dr. Jocelyn A. Sessa

Linda P. Fulton, PhD

Shell Companies Foundation, Inc.

Ms. Janet G. Gasper

Dr. and Mrs. Frederick E. Simms

Mr. and Mrs. Wayne R. Goodman

Mr. and Mrs. Erwin L. Single

Ms. Andrea J. Haas

Dr. and Mrs. James T. Teller

Mr. Dominique M. Haneberg-Diggs

Dr. Amy Townsend-Small

Mr. and Mrs. William L. Harmon

Mr. and Mrs. Victor V. Van Beuren

Mr. Edward F. Hawkinson

Dr. and Mrs. William A. Van Wie

Dr. and Mrs. F. D. Holland, Jr.

Dr. Roy B. VanArsdale and Mrs. Stephanie K. VanArsdale

Dr. and Mrs. Warren D. Huff Ms. Elizabeth A. Krebes

Dr. and Mrs. Steven M. Warshauer

Mr. Evan M. Krekeler

Dr. Julia L. Wise

Mr. and Mrs. Jerome H. Lipsky

Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Wolf

Mr. and Mrs. Michael G. Loudin

Ms. Jenea L. Woods

Lucile and Richard Durrell Special Fund Mr. Jack E. Mase

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R eza S oltanian I was born in Shiraz, Iran. I have an undergraduate degree in Irrigation & Drainage Engineering. After obtaining fourth place in the Iranian National Examination, I pursued my Master’s degree in Water Structure Engineering at the University of Tehran, where I started looking into contaminant transport problems in soils and sediments, as well as swelling and shrinkage of clay rich soils. After graduating from the University of Tehran, I worked as a civil engineer for a South Korean company called DAELIM at the South Pars Gas Field Development. I started my PhD study in Earth & Environmental Sciences at Wright State University in the Fall of 2011. I was fortunate to work under the supervision of Robert Ritzi who taught me Hydrogeology, as well as David Dominic who though me Sedimentology. As a part of my doctoral research I studied a component of the groundbreaking natural gradient solute transport experiment performed by Stanford University and the University of Waterloo at the Canadian Force Base, Borden, Ontario in the 1980s. Data from the experiment inspired numerous papers over the years. One of the vexing questions was: why did the reactive solutes behave “non-ideally?” While a number of researchers have attempted to tackle this question; I hypothesized that the non-ideal transport behavior is controlled by the sedimentary architecture at the site, and I have done extensive model development and applications to put forward a convincing explanation. After my PhD I joined Subsurface Insights, LLC as a Subsurface Modeling Lead working on groundwater-surface water exchange and uranium biogeochemistry in an Uranium Mill Tailing site at Rifle, CO. In September 2015, I joined the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University, collaborating with David Cole on the modeling of carbon sequestration related problems. Specifically, in my postdoctoral appointment, I worked on numerical modeling of CO2 injection and transport of multiple tracers (e.g., perfluorocarbons, isotopes) related to CO2 injection in saline aquifers with specific applications to the Cranfield site CO2 injection pilot project. The main conclusions of my work on the Cranfield pilot project was that flow and transport pathways created by fluvial channel deposits, strongly control the CO2 transport and therefore, properly characterizing the formation heterogeneity (i.e., sedimentary architecture) should be an essential part of future carbon se-

questration projects. Borden and Cranfield are two important examples of my past research in which I learned that detailed geologic investigation is a central part in studying hydrogeological processes, and that the “Geologic Architecture” is the controlling factor. In January 2018, I started as an Assistant Professor of Hydrogeology in the Geology Department. I plan to continue my work on groundwater as well as water-energy related subjects. Part of my research is devoted to the CV Theis Groundwater Observatory. The observatory is an invaluable resource and was established, as you know, by David Nash’s hard work and dedication. As a hydrogeologist, it is an honor for me to do groundwater research in an observatory that carries the name of CV Theis. As an undergraduate and a graduate student, as well as a scientist every time I opened my groundwater text books (or use computer codes to analyze a pumping well data) I saw name of CV Theis and used his elegant methods. I hope I can honor CV Theis’s name in continuing cutting edge research work at the groundwater observatory for years to come. As I look to the future, I will pursue any opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and disciplines. To better understand fundamental aspects of groundwater flow and mass transport, I believe in interdisciplinary research. For instance, in hydrogeological sciences we need to integrate novel computational methods (and high-performance computing), fluid mechanics, physics and chemistry of fluids, and microbial biogeochemistry (among others) with different branches of geoscience (e.g., mineralogy/petrology, sedimentology) in order to illustrate and better understand the subsurface system. This will in fact be my future direction. In the Fall 2018, I will begin teaching “Fundamentals of Groundwater”, and in the Spring 2019, I will teach “Groundwater Flow and Transport Modeling”. At the end, I would like to thank everybody in the Geology Department for their kindness and support during my interview process in 2017 and also their continuous support in 2018. My special thanks to David Nash and Lewis Owen for their help and support. n

Dear UC Geology Alumni

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Friends,

The Geological Society of America 2018 Annual Meeting will be held November 4-7, 2018 in Indianapolis, IN. (http://community.geosociety.org/gsa2018/home/). I would like to invite you to attend and to join us for an alumni get-together on November 5 from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM at the JW Marriott Indianapolis, White River Ballroom, Section I. Hope to see you in Indianapolis, Warren D. Huff warren.huff@uc.edu

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C hris A tchison Broadening participation research in what I call “Inclusive Geoscience Education” continues to build. This past year, our own Ivan Carabajal completed his masters project looking into the accommodation practices of geoscience programs across the country. Ivan is now continuing on to his doctorate studies here at UC. Additionally, I was on committee for Anita Marshall, who completed her dissertation at the University of South Florida focused on accommodations for students with physical disabilities in the field. Her study was conducted in part during our 2017 fieldwork in western Ireland. Together, Ivan and Anita are catalyzing a reevaluation of the traditional approaches to field-based learning and adding their research findings to the much needed literature base on access and inclusion in the geosciences. I was pleased to work with them on the first truly extensive synthesis of access and inclusion in the geosciences: Carabajal, I.G., Marshall, A.M., & Atchison, C.L. (2017). A synthesis of access and inclusion in geoscience education literature. Journal of Geoscience Education, 65, 531-541. DOI: 10.5408/16-211.1. This year, I was excited to again lead an accessible field trip during the Geological Society of America annual meeting, this time to the Mt. St. Helens region. I was also invited to give research presentations at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Wright State University, and Western Michigan University. I have two active NSF-funded projects. One that is studying the use of mobile technologies to enhance real-time audio-visual communication across inaccessible field sites, and the other looking at mentoring and the development of Social Capital in students from underrepresented groups in Earth System Science disciplines. My calendar is already filling up for the coming year. This fall, I am excited to be teaching a section of GEOL 1003 that will be aligned specifically to the content needs of our Early and Middle Childhood and Special Education majors who are preparing to take their Ohio state licensing exam in science. I will also be working with colleagues from the University of Leeds and Plymouth University on an eight-day accessible field course in NW Wales for students with disabilities in the UK. Additionally, I will be leading another accessible field trip during the 2018

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GSA annual meeting in Indianapolis, IN; this time we will spend two-days in and around the region of Mammoth Cave National Park. Finally, I am already scheduled to give four university research presentations during the fall and spring semesters. I am happy to report that the International Association for Geoscience Diversity [www.TheIAGD.org] is now in its tenth year. The IAGD, a 501c3 non-profit organization based here at UC, is working to raise awareness and improve access to the geoscience disciplines for students, teachers and faculty, and geoscience practitioners with disabilities. The IAGD community is recognized in over 30 countries around the world. This past fall, the IAGD became an Associated Society of the Geological Society of London, and I will travel to the Burlington House in London on June 4, 2018, to launch the first IAGD Chapter, in the United Kingdom. The IAGD Foundation continues to raise funds to provide many opportunities to promote inclusion across the geoscience disciplines, including support to: • Enable students to engage in research and travel to present their findings; • Develop professional development workshops and field courses for geoscience instructors and faculty on inclusive instructional strategies that provide; and • To create after school programs to keep elementary and middle school students excided in learning about the Earth who might otherwise be dissuaded due to their diverse physical or sensory abilities. This past fall, the IAGD awarded the Inclusive Geoscience Education and Research Award to a faculty member working to break down barriers to access and inclusion in her Geology courses. We also recently provided funding to the Geology Club at Western Michigan University to include three students with diverse physical abilities on a field trip to Iceland. And we’re just getting started! For more information about the IAGD Foundation, to donate, to volunteer, or partner with us, please visit: www.TheIAGD.org/Foundation, or stop by and visit us at Booth 532, in the 2018 GSA Annual Meeting Exhibition Hall in Indianapolis, IN. n

A Yellowstone guide to Mars

UC geologists are exploring silica hot springs in America’s first national park to help NASA look for ancient life on Mars. By Michael Miller

Photos by Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is home to one of the world’s most active geothermal areas, featuring mud pots, erupting geysers and boiling springs that give the Firehole River its name. (Michael Miller)

Doctoral candidate Andrew Gangidine is working with UC geology professor Andrew Czaja to develop a marker for ancient bacterial life on Mars. The research could help scientists put to rest one of our most fundamental mysteries. “We’re trying to answer the question: How rare is life in the universe?” Gangidine said. Andy Czaja, an assistant professor in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, UC graduate student Andrew Gangidine serves on a NASA advisory committee that holds a piece of Yellowstone silica containwill decide where on Mars to send the next ing bacterial life like the kind scientists may remote-controlled rover. Among other objec- one day find on Mars. tives, the rover will look for evidence that life once existed on the red planet. The advisory committee has narrowed the list of landingsite candidates to three and will recommend a finalist later this year. UC geologists studied steam cone geysers that deposit layers of silica over thousands of years. (Photo by Annie Gangidine)

“If I want to create a biosignature, I have to prove that it persists throughout time. It exists in these relatively younger samples. But does it exist in these ancient samples, too? That will be crucial to figure out.” UC geologists think if life ever existed on Mars, NASA might find evidence preserved somewhere around the red planet’s geothermal areas. Today, we know that life cannot exist on Mars, at least not on its dry surface. Solar radiation split most of its surface water into its elemental parts nearly 3 billion years ago when the red planet lost its protective magnetic field. But scientists are debating whether life might exist somewhere deep underground, among pockets of water trapped around geothermal areas similar to Yellowstone’s geysers.Finding evidence of life on Mars is surprisingly complicated.

If Mars ever sustained life, it’s possible Meanwhile, Gangidine is studying microGeyser basins can be dangerous. Hot that it was wiped out when most of its atbial life in silica hot springs to come up with springs such as this one viewed for a park boardwalk form a thin crust over a boiling mosphere vanished in the solar wind, Czaja a useful indicator of life on Mars. For the past hydrothermal pool said. two years, he has conducted fieldwork in the geyser basins of Wyoming’s Yellowstone NaSo NASA scientists must be prepared to look for fossil evitional Park to examine what elements are associated with bacdence of bacterial life dating back that far. Gangidine said the teria that live in these geothermal pools. good news is that similar fossils of early bacterial life more than 3.5 billion years ago have been found on Earth. This makes him “We want to remain objective. Some people think there has to be optimistic that if similar life ever existed on Mars, NASA has a life on Mars,” Gangidine said. “Others think there certainly isn’t life chance of finding a fossil record of it. on Mars. And either side has a good chance of being correct. Both have valid arguments. Which is why if we go there and don’t see “We can look at life being preserved in these silica deposits toanything, it won’t be ‘mission fail.’” day. We have evidence of this happening throughout geologic time,” Gangidine said. “What we’re trying to do is catch fossilizaGangidine presented his research April 25 at the Second Intion as it happens. What happens to the microbes themselves? ternational Mars Sample Return conference in Berlin, Germany.

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And what happens to the trace elements we think are associated with them while they’re alive?” “People working on these projects now may never see the results. But they’re still willing to put in the work because it’s such a fascinating question.” To unearth clues about ancient life on Mars, geologists look to hot springs such as those found in America’s first national park. Gangidine and his colleagues need permits to collect samples in the park’s backcountry. But exploring the geyser basins can be tricky and dangerous. A tourist died in 2017 after falling into one of the basin’s boiling pools while hiking off-trail. “These things really can strip the flesh off your bones,” Gangidine said. “At the bottom of hot springs we study you see skulls of bison and other animals that were unfortunate enough to wander too close.” Gangidine’s team includes an experienced backcountry field researcher, UC postdoctoral fellow Jeff Havig who is now with the . They pick their way carefully across the caldera. Sometimes, they can see where a bison’s hoof has broken through the thin crust to reveal steaming mud. The geology work takes them across “quaking bogs,” a thin layer of peat and grass covering deep shifting mud. Gangidine was walking alongside a colleague on one such hike when he sank above his knees in the treacherous mire. “Luckily, that place wasn’t super hot. But I was walking just a foot away from someone else. The ground can really change quickly,” he said. “When we go into these settings, we have to be very careful.” Boiling acid and lava-like mud aren’t the only hazards for researchers in the geyser basins. They also have to be careful not to spend too long around the steam vents, which contain a mix of gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and methane that can asphyxiate a person under the right conditions. The U.S. Geological Survey documented this phenomenon in 1888 in part of the park nicknamed “Death Gulch,” a natural depression between two steep hills where toxic gases bubble up from Cache Creek. Harvard University geologist T.A. Jaggar

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Ne ws Jr. returned to the area in 1899 and found six bears, an elk and various small animals that died apparently after succumbing to the toxic fumes. But even in the fresh air, the gas rising from the ground can have a cumulative effect, Gangidine said. “These hot springs emit a lot of gases you don’t want to breathe in. They bind to the hemoglobin that carries oxygen through your body. Breathing that in, you get very fatigued,” Gangidine said. “That’s why we try to schedule a day out of the field for every three days we work in the field. If you’re there for four days, you can really feel like a zombie. It’s really hard to think, hard to move.”

As a biology undergraduate at UC, Gangidine worked with UC biology professor Dennis Grogan to examine microbial life called extremophiles that live in hostile places such as Yellowstone’s acidic or alkaline hot springs. Now as a geologist, Gangidine is studying the fossils these hardy single-celled creatures leave behind. “Hot springs make silica deposits that preserve life really well,” Gangidine said. “When left exposed on a planet’s surface, it doesn’t crystallize and doesn’t metamorphose. So these samples should be relatively well preserved if we find them.” In UC professor Czaja’s geology lab, Gangidine peers through a microscope at slides he prepared from chunks of Yellowstone silica he took from a mountainous steam cone geyser. The bacterial filaments from samples taken at the top of the geyser are full of color. But the older samples, some perhaps thousands of years old, are colorless, even if they hold their shape. So for more clues about this basic form of life, Gangidine subjects the bacterial samples to elemental analysis using a secondary ion mass spectrometer. The analysis renders the elements in vivid color: deep yellows, reds and greens representing chromium or gallium perhaps associated with the bacterial life. If Gangidine finds a correlation between the concentrations and spatial distributions of particular elements and the bacteria, it might serve as a biosignature that scientists can use to identify past life on Mars. “The reason we chose gallium is it’s not known to be associated with life. But when we look at the fossilized bacterial samples, we find it, so there must be something going on,” Gangidine said.

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“Do the bacteria store certain elements preferentially as opposed to what you would find elsewhere in these rocks?”

Ne ws their hunches about where best to look for life on Mars were correct. Helping to frame a question that you may never live to see answered is one of science’s most selfless pursuits, Czaja said.

UC graduate student Andrew Gangidine used a secondary ion mass spectrometer to identify elements found in geothermal deposits.

“One thing I like about these NASA missions is the long-term thinking and planning,” he said. “People working on these projects now may never see the results. But they’re still willing to put in the work because it’s such a fascinating question.”

Gangidine is working with researchers in Australia, home to some of the world’s oldest fossils, some dating back 3.5 billion years. “If I want to create a biosignature, I have to prove that it persists throughout time,” Gangidine said. “It exists in these relatively younger samples. But does it exist in these ancient samples, too? That will be crucial to figure out.”

Gangidine is looking for an elemental marker that could help NASA identify ancient life on Mars during its upcoming Mars 2020 mission.

Professor Andy Czaja

The Mars 2020 mission will not be a failure if scientists find no evidence of life. Quite the contrary, Gangidine said.

Gangidine also plans to build an artificial hot spring in a lab aquarium using similar elements found in geysers. By introducing a super-saturation to the water, the excess silica will precipitate much the same way it does in nature. Then he can add trace chemicals associated with life and study what happens in a miniature world absent of life.

“If we find it, we can say maybe life is not that rare among planets,” Gangidine said. “But if we don’t find life in places that would be the most ideal and best preserved candidates, then maybe life is pretty rare.”

“To prove we found a biosignature, we have to prove the signature doesn’t occur without life,” he said. “Gallium is the one we were surprised by,” Czaja said. “It is associated with silica near the bacteria but isn’t in the bacteria.” Like Gangidine, Czaja got his start in the sciences by studying biology before pursuing a career in paleontology. Czaja’s NASA advisory committee will meet in October to decide where on Mars they would like to send the rover among the three preferred destinations. The rover is tentatively slated for launch in July or August of 2020, arriving on Mars about seven months later. “NASA tends to like to go new places to push the frontier. Geologists like to go back to the same places over and over to ask new questions,” Czaja said. The rover will collect samples in sealed containers for shipping back to Earth in a later mission. So it could be many years before geologists such as Czaja and Gangidine know whether

But if NASA does find evidence of life on Mars, that might suggest that sparking life from a primordial soup isn’t so extraordinary after all. And the first question will be how life on Mars compares to life on Earth, Czaja said. Was there a common ancestor? “Maybe we’re all Martians,” Czaja said. Any claim about the existence or absence of life on Mars will be subjected to worldwide scrutiny and skepticism. Czaja said researchers must be prepared to provide a wealth of evidence to fortify their findings. “It’s not nearly enough to find something that looks like a bacterial cell,” Czaja said. “There are nonbiological things that could look like that. But if you have a cascade of traits — this and this and this added together — it’s hard to explain it any other way except for life.” n

D o you have any recollections of field trips, social events, classroom experiences or other experiences during your UC days that you would like to share with your alumni colleagues?

Send them to Warren Huff, email: WARREN.HUFF@UC.EDU or Dept. of Geology, UC, Cincinnati, OH 45221 and we’ll include them in next years’ issue.

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Alumni Advisory Committee Wayne Goodman (MS ’76) wrgnle@alphacomm.net

Consulting Geologist/Board Member/ Owner Associate at Core Energy LLC Owner at Northern Lights Energy, Saginaw, MI

Edward O’Donnell (MS ’63) Edward.ODonnell@nrc.gov

Senior Geologist in the Regulatory Guide Development Branch in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Research

Thomas Klekamp (MS ’71) klekamp@bellsouth.net

Past-President of the New Orleans Geological Society. Senior geologist with Amber Resources LLC

Mike Effler (BS ’73, MS ‘76) msmr1974@gmail.com

Retired Geologist at ExxonMobil

Steve Wells (MS ’73, PhD ’76) stephen.wells@nmt.edu

President of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Tim Agnello (BS ’82, MS ’02) agnello@cinci.rr.com

Professional geologist in the Cincinnati area http://www.ohiovalleylandslides.com/

John Rupp (BS ‘78) rupp@indiana.edu

Senior Research Scientist at Indiana Geological Survey. Consulting Geologist at John A. Rupp Consulting

Mark P. Fisher (BS ’78, MS ’81) mpfisher@marathonoil.com Marathon Oil

Chad A. Ferguson (MS ’03, Ph.D. ’09)chad. ferguson@bhpbilliton.com

Exploration Geologist/Stratigrapher at BHP Billiton Petroleum

Jennifer J. Krueger (MS ’91) Jennifer.Krueger@gza.com

Associate Principal / Office Manager at GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.

David Lienhart (BS ’61, MS ‘65) dlienhart@armorstone.com

Consultant at DAL Engineering Geologic & Petrographic Services

John Thaeler (MS ‘79) john.thaeler@vexpl.com

COO at Vitruvian Exploration II, LLC

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In Rememberance

Willis Eugene Conatser (BS ’55, MS ’58) Willis Eugene Conatser, PhD, beloved husband of Marjorie Reed Conatser passed away on October 24, 2017 at Ochsner Hospital. He was the loving father of son, Kelly (wife, Dr. Leslie Blake), and daughters, Dr. Tracy Hale (husband Tim), and Dr. Shannon Pickens (husband, Richard). His grandchildren, James and Clara Conatser and Lainey, Jessie, and Ricky Pickens were the lights of his life. He cherished his brother, Ken Conatser of Youngstown, Ohio. He was predeceased by his mother, Virginia Conatser Dean and his father Dillard Conatser. Will grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and was an avid athlete. He pitched the winning State Championship game for his high school and played football there as well. He was inducted into the Price Hill, Cincinnati Hall of Fame for baseball and into the Western Hills High School Athletic Hall of Fame in Cincinnati. He entered the University of Cincinnati on a full football scholarship under coach Sid Gillman, setting a number of records, and graduated cum laude with a B.S in Geology. He served as a second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps from 1955 to 1957, playing football for the Marine Corps as well. He then returned to the University of Cincinnati for his Masters Degree in Geology. He was hired by The California Company (later Chevron) as a geologist and moved to New Orleans. During his tenure at the company he earned his Ph.D. From Tulane University. He worked at several other companies as well and then formed his own company, W E Conatser, Inc. He was a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He served as President of the New Orleans Geological Society from 1997-1998. Will was an avid tennis player and continued to play in his later years. He enjoyed the comradery of his partners as much as he enjoyed the game. He played in his last match on the Saturday before his death. He loved nothing more than to attend the various musical performances, athletic events, and other activities in which his grandchildren were engaged. He was an enthusiastic traveler in his younger years and enjoyed many trips to Europe and throughout the United States.

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Undergraduate Degrees Spring 2018

Fall 2017

Madeline Howard, Geology Minor

Salem Al-Ateeqi, BS Camden Goland, BS Kayla Parr, BS David Bohm, Geology Minor Ryan Hay, Geology Minor John Hizman, Geology Minor Caesar Osegueda, Environmental Geology Minor Quintin Sticklen, Environmental Geology Minor

Dominique Sparks-Stokes, Geology Minor

Summer 2018

Benjamin Kehres, BS Zachary Panzeca, BS Victoria Thomas, BS Jessica Johnson, BA Hayden Owens, BA

Greg Frommer, BS

2017-2018

Graduate Degrees Summer 2017

Spring 2018

Ivan Carabajal, MS

Abigail Padgett, MS

Julianne Fernandez, MS Michael Lees, MS Cameron Schwalbach, MS Kathryn Hedrick, PhD Janine Sparks,PhD

Fall 2017 Timothy Paton, MS Yeon Jee Suh, PhD

Summer 2018 Joshua Bergbower, MS Benjamin Bates, MS Zoey Dodson, MS Shannon Neale, MS Evan New, MS Jenelle Wallace, MS Sonia Sanchez-Lohff, MS Erika Freimuth, PhD

Henry Schoch (BS ’66) Warren:

Emeritus -- a milestone and an honorific. Thinking back, I believe you earned your PhD about the same time my eldest child was born. David will be 52 in May, a lot of trips around the Sun. If my memory is in the ballpark, then yours has been a very lengthy career and, I trust, a rewarding one. I have distant memories of your folk renditions at department parties and of a dark metallic green Corvette coupe. Even in retirement, I’d imagine you’ll still have a presence around the department. George Barbour was extant when I began my studies there, an inspiration to all, albeit more grandfatherly and philosophical than geological. Most of all, I hope you or someone very much like you maintains the Upper Crust. It’s the glue that keeps our alumni family together. Judy and I remain active. Last August, we served two weeks as volunteer docents at the Museum of the National Park Ranger. It’s housed in the old Norris Soldier Station, a log edifice dating back to 1912 when the Army still administered Yellowstone. Open from May through September each year, the museum is staffed entirely by retired rangers. It was great being back in the saddle again, and we enjoyed the opportunity to interact with all manner of visitors. Having four days off in the middle

of our tour to explore the park was an added bonus, though it would take four lifetimes to scratch the surface of such an immense and varied resource. There is poster displayed at the museum, one of a series depicting various ranger activities. It’s a likeness of a ranger-geologist (if indeed there is such a thing) ostensibly taking a clinometer reading with a Brunton transit. The position of its hinged lid, whose mirror would be reflecting something other than the face and workings of the instrument -- an example of either artistic license or ignorance. I never missed an opportunity to share my little discovery with those visitors who identified themselves as geologists. Please keep in touch, and if your trajectory ever brings you into western Colorado, give us a holler. We can at least promise dips which exceed 1/4 degree. Best of luck. Hank n

In Rememberance Arvid Johnson Arvid M. Johnson, Age 79 passed away Friday, May 11, 2018 in Indianapolis, IN. Born August 12,1938, in Stevenson, Washington, to Alfred M. and Ethel M. Johnson, Arvid was a 1956 graduate of Wy’East High School in Odell, Oregon. He married his high school sweetheart Deanna Dunn on August 30, 1958. She survives. Arvid received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The University of Oregon and then went on to Penn State University to get his Ph.D. After his schooling, Arvid and Deanna moved to Palo Alto, California, where Arvid was a professor of Geology at Stanford University. While in California, they added four children to their family. In 1978, Arvid and his family moved to Cincin-

nati, Ohio, where he was professor at the University of Cincinnati. After 10 years in Cincinnati, he moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, where he had a short stint as head of his department and tenure as professor at Purdue University until his retirement in 2006. Arvid’s career was highlighted by his influential textbook, Physical Processes in Geology, which established a new field and trained at least two generations of students. When he wasn’t busy attending his grandchildren’s many sporting or school events, which he loved doing, Arvid enjoyed gardening and spending time at their log cabin in Shipshewana, IN. He also had a passion for his Swedish heritage. n

Igor Effimoff (PhD ’72) Dr. Igor Effimoff is a Member at American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a Member at Society of Petroleum Engineers, Inc., a Member at Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and a Member at Geological Society of America. He is on the Board of Directors at Chiron Refineries Ltd. Dr. Effimoff was previously employed as Independent Director by Harvest Natural Resources, Inc., Chief Operating Officer by Teton Petroleum Co., President by Pennzoil Caspian Corp., and Chief Executive Officer by Larmag Energy Assets Ltd. He also served on the board at Truestar Petroleum Corp. He received his undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and a doctorate degree from the University of Cincinnati (Ohio). 2008 Biography Dr. Igor Effimoff is founder and principal of a firm which provides upstream and midstream consulting services since 2005. From 2002 until 2005 he was Chief Operating Officer

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for Teton Petroleum Company. Between 1996 and 2001, he was President of Pennzoil Caspian Corporation, managing their interests in the Caspian Region. Between 1994 and 1996 he was the Chief Executive Officer of Larmag Energy, NV, a privately held Dutch oil and gas production company with its primary assets in the Caspian Sea. He has served in senior executive roles with Ashland Exploration Inc., Zilkha Energy Company and Kriti Exploration, Inc. Dr. Effimoff has authored numerous technical and business articles. He is a member of American Association of Petroleum Geology, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and the Geological Society of America. Dr. Effimoff served on the audit and compensation committees of TrueStar Petroleum Corporation in 2007. He currently serves on the board of IPC Oil and Gas Holdings Ltd. He has a Doctorate in Geology from the University of Cincinnati and completed the Harvard Advanced Management Program. n

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Fred M. Schwartz (BA ‘59) Fred M. Schwartz, age 84, of Portland, Oregon, passed away on July 27, 2017. Fred was born on August 28, 1932 to Fanny and Pascal Schwartz of Cincinnati, Ohio. Fred graduated Hughes High School in 1951. He joined the Navy and served in the Korean War aboard the Diphda, an attack class supply ship. After being honorably discharged in 1955 he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati where he majored in Geology and met his future wife, Esther Casuto. Fred and Esther married in 1959. Their son, Todd Adam Schwartz, was born in 1962 and daughter, Gail Frances Schwartz, in 1967. Fred, Esther and Todd moved to Los Angeles in 1963 where Fred went to work in aerospace for the next seventeen years. In 1980, Fred pursued an opportunity with Walt Disney Enterprises where he used his expertise in project management to help build Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. In 1986 Fred and Esther started Business Solutions Unlimited, a computer and business systems consulting firm. Around the same time Fred was contacted by the University of Phoenix to become an Adjunct Professor of Business in their newly launched online campus. He was invited to help develop the business curricula. Fred continued his online teaching career well after he and Esther retired to the central Oregon coast in 1998 to be closer to their children and grandchildren. While living on the central coast of Oregon Fred pursued his passion for Freemasonry. He was raised to the degree of

Master Mason in his father’s Lodge in Cincinnati. He joined Taft Lodge #200 in Lincoln City, Oregon and served as Master for several years. During the next few years, he served as a District Deputy, as the Grand Lodge Representative to the Grand Lodge of the State of Israel, and as Grand Chaplain of Oregon under Past Grand Masters Ed Bousquet and Mike Wick. He was a member of Beaverton Lodge #100 at the time of his death. During Fred’s youth in Cincinnati, he obtained his amateur radio license and served as part of the Queen City Emergency Communications Network. He was an avid bridge player and enjoyed fencing during his days at the University of Cincinnati. He was also a stamp collector and became the family genealogist. He never lost his curiosity for new things and experiences. At the young age of 84 he became a Bar Mitzvah. His family was the most important thing in his life. He will always be loved, held in cherished memories and greatly missed. He is survived by his wife of almost 58 years, Esther; his son, Todd; his daughter, Gail.; his three grandchildren, Moriah, Joshua and Kaylen, his brother, Jerry Schwartz of Los Angeles, his niece, Elissa Ben-Naim of Los Angeles, and his nephew, Paul Schwartz, of Chandler, Arizona. Should you wish to honor Fred’s memory with a charitable donation, please consider the Oregon Food Bank or the Oregon Health & Sciences University Foundation. n

Gary Taylor (MS ‘74) Editor’s note: Gary and his singing partner T.C. Smythe recently posted a video of one of their many excellent songs at https://bit.ly/2IIAn1H. n

Gregory Hinterlong (BS ‘78) The year in review has been quite interesting on the home front. I will reach 40 years of marriage to the same woman in December, middle daughter got married, youngest daughter bought a house in Austin TX, and second son is Digital Media Manager for a local radio affiliate. As you can guess they get their smarts from their mother. On a sad note my wife fell and broke her femur in October, but happily is on the mend. I continue here in Midland with Chevron right at the heart of the Permian Shale play. The work on the DOE project with Drs Pryor, Potter, and Maynard really paid off (just took 30 years but worth the wait). I am the geologic advisor to a rather large team which seems really strange some days. Still involved with the community with “Dr. Petro” at the Petroleum Museum and as an adjunct professor at Midland College. Best wishes and great success to all alumni! n

Phil Clymer (BS ‘75) Hey WarrenI hope all is well up your way, i hear it has been cold up your way. It’s kinda chilly here today but at least there is no snow. Several months ago, I signed onto Linked-In and changed my profession from geologist to artist. I am feeling somewhat vindicated as I had two of my works accepted for a show at our local art gallery, Gallery Main Street of Tyler. the lower one is Supernova, upper is Sunflower. both are technically mixedmedia leaded art glass (stained glass) and glass-on-glass mosaic. The show opened Saturday and it was well attended. there were 40-some works on display from 18 local artists (local being East Texas). My glass was the odd entry, the rest were paintings, drawing, and photographs. I was very impressed with the quality of the entries. I’m a little shell shocked to have been included! The gallery had never displayed art glass before and didn’t know how to handle it. They wanted to hang it on the walls as if a painting. I built the frame out of scrap 2x4s and had it placed in this alcove next to the front door where it would receive adequate transmitted light. I am honored to be in the show, the real test will be getting more works accepted for future shows. All for now, take care Phll n

In Rememberance

James Elvin Conkin (PhD ‘64) 93, “shrugged off this mortal coil” on Dec. 3, 2017. “He told all he knew, and more.” He was born Oct. 14, 1924, in Glasgow, KY, to Rachel Pauline (Hicks) and Basil Conkin. He grew up in Louisville and found his life’s vocation as a geologist, mentored under the guidance of Col. Lucien Pearson Beckner. He graduated from Male High School in 1943, and joined the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, serving in Okinawa and the occupation of North China. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Kentucky in 1950, master’s degree at the University of Kansas in 1953, and his doctorate from the University of Cincinnati in 1960. He founded the Geology Department at the University of Louisville in 1964, served as its first chairman until 1968, and taught there from 1957 until 2001 before becoming professor emeritus. He held a Senior Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, accompanied by his family from 1964 to 1965. He also received Fulbright grants for travel to Britain and a Lectureship to India. He had a research fellowship to the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China and grants to study in Sweden, Egypt and Belgium. He was named Kentucky Geologist of the Year in 2001 by the American Institute of Professional Geologists. In 1973 he postulated (along with his geologist wife Barbara) the concept of a peneplane called a paracontinuity, in which a rock face of apparently continuous strata is interrupted by a thin layer of heavier detritus that represents a significant loss of time. He was preceded in death by his youngest daughter, Lisa Carol Otoum. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Barbara Ellen Conkin; daughters, Deborah (Michael) Walton, and Anne Conkin; son, David (Maureen) Conkin; granddaughters, Jessica Bookin, Lauren Conkin, Madeline (Jonathan) Brennan, and Kirsten Conkin; grandsons, Eric Bookin, Riad (Sara) Otoum, Ramsey Otoum, and Ethan Conkin; and son-in-law, Jamil Otoum. He is also survived by his step-brother Bob (Charlene) Akins; and their children, Kelly AkinsAllen and Scott Akins. In his autobiography, “A Geologist’s Ramblings through the Labyrinths of Time,” Jim quoted for his epitaph from the movie “Love at First Bite”, “OK, I’ll go, but when I am gone, the world will be as dull as Bucharest on a Tuesday night.” n

o you have any recollections of field trips, social events, classroom experiences or other experiences during your UC days that you would like to share with your alumni colleagues? Send them to Warren Huff, email: WARREN.HUFF@UC.EDU or Dept. of Geology, UC, Cincinnati, OH 45221 and we’ll include them in next years’ issue.

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R e m e m b e r a n c e

Dr. Jojok Sumartojo (PhD ‘74) Jojok (Yo) Sumartojo passed away due to congestive heart failure on June 6, 2018. Yo was born in Surabaya, Indonesia, on July 5th, 1937. After completing his B.Sc. in Mining Engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology in 1961, he received a scholarship from the US Agency for International Development to study engineering at the University of Kentucky. Once there, Yo discover that his true calling was geology, and he completed an M.Sc. at U.K. in 1966. Yo started his doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati, supervised by Dr. Frank Koucky in 1966, but was compelled to return to Indonesia in 1968. In 1969 he accepted a teaching assistantship at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, and carried out his doctoral research on the Tindelpina Shale of the Adelaide Geosyncline. He received his doctoral degree from U.C. in 1974. In 1975, Yo, his wife, Esther, and their two young daughters moved to the United States, where he began a Visiting Assistant Professorship at Vanderbilt University. During his five years there, he developed courses on Environmental Geology that served him well professionally later in his career. In 1980, Yo joined a newly-formed shale research group at Exxon Production Research Co. in Houston. The Exxon program ended in 1986, and in 1988 the family made a final move to Atlanta, where Yo consulted on a wide range of environmental projects.

Though much of his career involved applied research, he authored numerous journal publications and conference presentations, and as a consulting geologist produced over 200 proprietary reports. Yo was always active in professional organizations, was vice president and founding member of the Atlanta Geological Society, and assisted in planning conferences of the American Institute of Professional Geologist’s section on Innovative Environmental Assessment and Remediation Technology. Yo had many interests, but in his later years he was particularly passionate about classical guitar, and studied and performed locally. He was an accomplished cook, and was known for his delicious Indonesian dinners. Yo was known by his family, and many friends and colleagues as an intelligent, gentle, and generous man. Throughout his life, he remained true to his Javanese background, and to the integrity and high values of his family of origin. He was admired by colleagues, loved by friends, and had an enduring influence on his children and grandchildren. He is survived by Esther, his wife and life companion of 51 years; his daughters, Shanti and Rini; grandchildren, Adi and Ria; sons-in-law, Ben and Ray; sister Tries; and brother j36.

James Teller (BS ’62, PhD ’70) Thanks for your nice comments, Warren. We did not do the clay mineralogy on the sequence, and I wonder if there would have been much alteration of the parent material in these embryonic soils. Previous research I’ve done on Holocene paleosols in lacustrine sequences suggest that some may have formed in shallow water during [brief ] low-water stages after lake waters were frozen to the lake bed (see for example, Teller & Last, 1982, Pedogenic horizons in lake sediments: Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, v. 7, p. 367-379), so little mineralogical or chemical pedogenesis may have occurred, only physical alteration by freezing. Having said that, perhaps some insight might be gained by doing the clay mineralogy across several of the paleosols. All those cores are stored at the Limnological Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and subsamples could be taken across several of the pedogenic zones. I pass through Minneapolis every time I drive to Cincinnati, so could stop for a day to sample if you think the effort might be worthwhile. Another paper on the Lake of the Woods cores has been submitted, but it relates mainly to diatoms in one core, and a paper is also in press for Quaternary Research on the OSL dating of Lake Agassiz beaches. I’m also attaching a new paper just published in Geology on the routing of Lake Agassiz overflow. My best for 2018. Jim P.S. After I finally recover from the heart attack I had in late September after returning from Uzbekistan, and a concurrent kidney stone seizure, I hope to be heading back to Cincinnati -- probably in the spring.

Ronald Broadhead (MS ‘79) Author of: Energy and Mineral Resources of New Mexico: Petroleum Geology, Broadhead, Ronald F., 2017, 104 pages, ISBN: 978–1–883905–37–8.

Frank Ettensohn (BS ’69, MS ‘70) The December 2017 issue of the AAPG Explorer carries an announcement that Frank Ettensohn is a recipient of the 2017 Grover E. Murray Distinguished Educator Award. This award is presented for distinguished and outstanding contributions to geological education, both at the university level and toward education of the general public.

In Rememberance

Orville Naegele (BS ’58, MS ’60) Orville Dale Naegele, 86, of Monumental, passed from this life Wednesday (Dec. 27, 2017) at the Fairmont Regional Medical Center after a brief illness. He was born in Dillsboro, Indiana, on Dec. 1, 1931, a son of the late Charles William and Hazel Mae Hehe Naegele. He retired from Fairmont State University as an Associate Professor of Physical Sciences with 34 years of service. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army and served in combat in the Korean War. He enjoyed spending time with his children and grandchildren and had a unique sense of humor. He also enjoyed woodworking, gardening, bird watching, cooking, reading, and working crossword puzzles. Mr. Naegele is survived by his loving wife of 61 years, Rose Wilson Naegele; three daughters and one son-in-law, Mary (Wade) Hinkle of Annandale, Virginia, Willa Vealey of Morgantown, and Paula Naegele of Chestertown, Maryland; one son and daughter-in-law, Ernest (Bernadette) Naegele of Middletown, Maryland; one brother and sisterin-law, John (Evelyn) Naegele of Batesville, Indiana; one sister, Mary Cheshire of Pompano Beach, Florida; seven grandchildren, Willa Rose Naegele, Megan Vealey, Leah Naegele, Casey Anne Vealey, Madeline Blouch, Joe (Chelsea) Naegele, and Lucas Vealey; and one great-granddaughter, Anna Naegele. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by two brothers and sisters-in-law, Carl and Margie Naegele and Lloyd and Peggy Naegele; one sister and two brothers-in-law, Verna and Warren Craven and William Cheshire. Friends may call from 11 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Frey Home For Funerals (Historic Chapel), 320 Madison St., Fairmont. His service will be at 1:30 p.m. with his daughter, Mary Hinkle, officiating. Interment will be at noon on Wednesday in the WV National Cemetery at with his procession leaving the funeral home at 11:15 a.m. Military honors will be conducted by the U.S. Army and the Grafton Honor Guard.

Wayne Goodman (MS ’76) Hi, Warren, First of all, I am so glad I got to come to U.C. and the Observatory to celebrate with you and all of our U.C. geoscience community friends and honor all you have been for U.C. Geology. Always know how much we alumni appreciate all you do (and expect you to continue doing) to keep our alum community together and informed. Let me tell you what joyful thing I got to do last Thursday, in lieu of coming back for the Geology Department banquet. For about a year, several of us in the Michigan geoscience community have been planning a surprise for Bill & Linda Harrison, as a thank you for all they have done for the geoscientific community here over the years. That dates back to their work as faculty member (Bill) and instructor/liaison (Linda) at WMU and to the present. (Bill has himself become Emeritus in the past few years, but remains engaged more than ever!) When Bill came to WMU in 1973 (after having the singular responsibility of sharing a grad student office with me in the Geology Museum bullpen in Old Tech!), he made it an immediate priority to continue the scholarly research of the Michigan Basin that had, for so long, been spearheaded by the late professors Louis and Darinka Briggs at the University of Michigan. WMU became a cornerstone of Michigan Basin research and studies under Bill’s guidance. Linda, among her many passions at WMU, became a vanguard instructor of secondary Geology/Earth Science teachers as part of the WMU geology community, and many young people have benefited from Linda and her students over the years. Going back to their days in the “traditional” bowels of the oldest building on the “old” WMU campus, the two have worked tirelessly for

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decades to acquire, catalogue, and archive core data, well samples, well logs, and other information from thousands of Michigan wells. Through Linda’s ardent engage and fund-raising efforts and Bill’s continuing outreach, this eventually led to the creation of MGRRE, the Michigan Geological Repository for Research and Education, in a dedicated and more accommodating building at a satellite WMU location. It would never have happened without the tireless work of them both. MGRRE has become, perhaps, the largest repository and collection of its kind in the Midwest, and continues to generate scholarly research of benefit to the Michigan Basin’s fossil fuel and mineral resource industries, as well as a source point for many student theses and dissertations. The follow-up to all this that was realized last week at an annual meeting of the Michigan Petroleum Transfer Technology Council (PTTC), a one-day scholarly symposium of papers and core workshop annually put together by MGRRE, WMU, and through the hard work of the Harrisons. During an afternoon break in the proceedings, we were able to make a special presentation to Bill and Linda that included a $ 15,000 check to them personally, as well as a pledge of another $ 10,000+ to MGRRE, as a way to say thank you for their four-plus decades of dedication to their task and help to us all. This culminated a “surprise” fund-raising effort that has gone on for roughly a year. Over 60 individuals and corporations were a part of this gift. When I have pictures, I will be forwarding them your way for what should make a very special item in a future Upper Crust. Cheers, Wayne

R e m e m b e r a n c e

Gregory A. Schumacher (MS ’84) Gregory A. Schumacher, 59, of Sunbury lost his four-year battle with brain cancer on Thursday afternoon, November 30, 2017 at the Ohio Living Sarah Moore Home surrounded by his loving family. Greg worked 30 years as a geologist for the State of Ohio, Division of Geological Survey. His love and passion for geology started when he was a young boy and never waned. His other passions included his family, military history, do-it-yourself projects, and all living creatures, especially cats. He was a founding member of Spay and Neuter Abandoned Cats and Kittens, Inc., a nonprofit organization. Celebration of life services

will be held on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 at 11:00 am at the Snyder Rodman Funeral Center, 101 Valleyside Drive (formerly 1510 W. William Street), Delaware. Following the services, friends and family are invited to spend additional time together celebrating Greg’s life enjoying a meal including some of his favorite foods – pizza, pie, and cookies in the Snyder Rodman Community Room. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Greg’s memory to Ohio Health Hospice, 180 E. Broad Street, Columbus, OH 43215 or your favorite animal welfare organization.

Bill (PhD ’74) and Linda (BS ’70, MS ’72) Harrison, Wayne Goodman (MS ’76) Friends of Bill and Linda Harrison make surprise gift presentation during April 12 PTTC workshop ACME, Mich.-A well-kept secret resulted in a big surprise April 12 at the Michigan PTTC workshop at the Grand Traverse Resort. Bill and Linda Harrison, the director and administrator, respectively, of the Michigan Geological Repository for Research and Education (MGRRE), who have conducted Petroleum Technology Transfer Council (PTTC) workshops and seminars in Michigan for more than a quarter century, were presented with a check for $15,000, contributed by a large group of their friends in industry, academia and regulatory agencies as thanks for all that the Harrisons have done over the years to foster geological research in the state. Longtime friend and independent petroleum geologist Wayne Goodman announced the gift during an impromptu ceremony squeezed into a busy agenda of presentations at the Michigan PTTC at the MGRRE, Western Michigan University Geosciences Department, Michigan Geological Survey and Michigan Oil and Gas Associationsponsored “Michigan Basin Going Forward - Focus on the Traverse Group” workshop, which took place this year in conjunction with the MOGA and Northern Michigan API Michigan Petroleum Conference. “We know you both like to be world travelers these days when you· get the chance and that Linda is a very good shutterbug who takes world class photographs,” Goodman said in presenting the gift, which the informal group that clandestinely organized the fundraising effort intended to be used to fund another trip or trips for their friends. “Oh, my god!” exclaimed Linda Harrison when Goodman presented them with the check, “I’m stunned.” Tim Maness, one of the ringleaders of the conspiracy to secretly solicit donations and make the gift noted recently that the idea for the project was first conceived about five years ago by petroleum geologist and Michigan industry icon, the late William J. Strickler, who died Feb. 18, 2018. The fundraising challenge began in earnest in the past year, Maness said, with the aid of Strickler, his son and business partner, William D. Strickler, Tim’s brother and business partner Dave Maness, Goodman and MGRRE staff geolo-

gist Jenny Trout. The industry group carefully contacted scores of friends and associates of the Harrisons in Michigan and other parts of the country, while Trout helped plan the surprise while working daily with the unknowing recipients. In accepting the gift, Bill Harrison commented on the support of the “three Bills,” referring to the late Bill Roth, Bill Strickler and Bill Stelzer, who worked on a MOGA committee organized by its former president, Frank Mort!, to raise funds to help make the MGREE a reality. “The three Bills were the impetus for that, the industry raised over a million dollars and we still have that endowment going. It’s kept us going for the last 10 years at MGRRE.” “So, there’s a big, strong relationship we have with you guys. We really appreciate it,” Bill Harrison concluded. Roth, Strickler and Stelzer have each been recipients of the MGRRE’s Lifetime Achievement Award, presented annually during the spring P’ITC workshop. Roth, who died last October, became the first to be honored posthumously on April 12, while Strickler was presented with the award in 2013 and Stelzer in 2014. Coverage of the acceptance of Roth’s award by his son, petroleum geophysicist and former business partner Bryan Roth and members of their family will be published in the April 27 Monthly Report Edition of Michigan Oil & Gas News. Goodman noted during the April 12 presentation that the generosity of those solicited had gone beyond the $15,000 gift. More than $8,000 in additional funds raised will soon be used to make a contribution to the MGRRE in honor of the Harrisons. The gifts to the Harrisons and the MGRRE comes with a price, Goodman said. “When you take that special trip or trips to see something cool, no later than next year’s YITC, you’ll be required to present your adventures to us.” The account used for the gift contributions will remain open for the time being should anyone else wish to participate, Maness said. Those interested may contact him at Maness Petroleum Corp. at 989- 773-5475 or Bill D. Strickler at Michiwest Energy at 989-772-2107.

Ken Caster awith former students at Retirement party.

To right of KEC is Ozzie Nye, and in background, Bruce Bell on left and John Pojeta on right.

KEC, PhD, “Greatest of the all”.

Annie and Ken Caster at KEC Retirement Party at Kani and Dave Meyer’s house.

In background, former Caster student Craig Clement.

P hotos

from the

70-80’ s

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provided by

G reg W ahlman (P h D ‘85.). T hank Y ou G reg !

R e m e m b e r a n c e

Ronald W. Manus (Ph.D. ’68) Ronald W. Manus, Ph.D. died unexpectedly on May 11, 2015. Ron was born in Jamaica, New York on May 3, 1934 and was a long-time resident of Kent and Akron, Ohio. Ron held geology degrees from University of Alabama, University of Tennessee, and University of Cincinnati. He was employed by Amoco Production Company, stationed in Texas and Oklahoma. He came to Ohio in 1970 to teach at Kent State University and subsequently formed Earth Resources Exploration and Development Co (ERED) as a vehicle for his consulting work in oil and gas. He left Kent State in 1978 with the rank of Associate Professor (tenured) to devote his time to his exploration efforts. He sold ERED in 1983 and became President of Yankee Exploration Co. (Ohio) and a Senior Vice President of The Yankee Company (Boston). He was also a Director of Yankee and a Director of Columbine Exploration Co (Denver). He also formed Frontier Resources, Inc. a consulting firm specializing in Ohio drilling. He was also the President of Celtic Resources LLC, though which he drilled wells in Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, and Texas. Ron was a member of many professional organizations, Delta Tau Delta, and the Portage Country Club in Akron.

Ron touched the lives of so many people and enjoyed sharing his wisdom with a smile and a dose of humor. He will be remembered as a man of integrity. He believed in working hard and took pride in his professional accomplishments, but remained compassionate and caring. He was a loving father and grandfather. He is survived by his children: Gabrielle Manus of West Palm Beach, Fla. (Allen Greene), Danielle Manus-Hoben of Minneapolis, Minn. (Dan Hoben), and Matthew Manus of Ravenna, Ohio; and his grandchildren, Shane and Caelin Hoben, and Conor and Peyton Greene. The family requests that donations be made in Ron’s memory to the Northern Ohio Junior PGA Foundation in support of the “Junior in Need” program. Golf was very important to Ron and he believed that golf taught respect, integrity, and good manners. He spent many years watching and encouraging junior golfers in the Northern Ohio Junior PGA and was pleased to hear that the Jr. NOPGA won the Joe Haase Cup at Firestone Country Club on May 10th with his grandson playing as the #1 ranked player on the team.

Frank Gehrling (1978-1981) Warren: It was good to hear from you. It was very good to see that the Geology program has survived and prospered since I was there. I have had a decent career since leaving UC. I spent 5.5 years in Midland, Texas working for a company called Geomap. We produced basin wide subsurface structure maps for most of tht e major petroleum provinces in the US. I worked the Permian Basin, Bend Arch, Eastern Shelf of the Permian Basin and Fort Worth Basin. An area from about Midland, Texas to Forth Worth. I “slid” (correlated) LOTS of elogs across my desk during my stay at Geomap. I saw a lot of the small gas shows in the Barnett Shale before someone found out how to properly frac those shale formations. Fun times. In August of 1986 I was laid off as we closed the Midland office. That was the petroleum bust that started in 1982 and lasted for years. Geomap treated everyone VERY well in the layoffs, far better than just “good luck”. I ended up in Maine (my wife’s state), did some material testing and eventually ended up with Maine DEP Response Services. What a blast! In a poor state, with only about 10 professional fire departments state wide a lot depends on you. You arrive at a Caustic tanker or 6 oil tanker spill, and realize you are the only full time professional on site. That lasted 14 years, it was a young persons’ gig. In 2006, I came down to Long Island, NY, my home town, and found environmental work, doing mainly UST remediation, planning and site safety stuff. After a year, I went to a small

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engineering firm, Galli Engineering. Doing what we call geology, but is mainly project management with some geologic interpretation (is it silt or clay?). I have been with Galli for over 10 years managing environmental work at construction sites and brownfield clean ups. Things may be getting interesting as NY State has a new Professional Geologist program. Since the program is new, no one had to take the ASBOG test. Which is a good thing as I barely know the difference between gabbro and diabase. (grain size, chemistry is equivalent, correct?). But, I can rattle off the various Soil Clean-up Objectives for Part 375 Table 6.8b. So, I have been waiting to see if I qualify for the PG for 7 months. I keep telling the Engineers “wait until I get my Stamp”. It is interesting being the only Geologist in the office. We have very “healthy” discussions on lots of topics in the office. In the grand tradition of healthy competition between Engineers and Geologists, I see it as a target rich environment. I am going to be 64 this year and I’m looking forward to retirement in 3-4 years. I’ve made a living, and had an interesting life, but that is about it. My wife Bridget and I have three great sons, one an accountant in Minneapolis, one an Iraq war veteran and fabricator (in Maine) and our youngest is a legal medical marijuana farmer in Maine. One grandchild and one due in about 2 weeks. I look forward to spending more time with them in the future. I hope things are going well for you and the department. Take care, Frank Gehrling

R e m e m b e r a n c e

Richard M. McCandless (BS ’72, MS ‘76) Richard M. McCandless, 60, of Cincinnati, Ohio, formerly of Butler,PA died Oct. 26, 2009 as a result of a sudden tragic accident. Born in Butler, PA, March 29, 1949, he was the son of the late Melvin C. McCandless and the late Helen Weisenstein McCandless. Richard had a master’s degree in geology and civil engineering and was a licensed professional engineer in three states and a professional geologist and surveyor. He worked for PSARA Technologies as chief environmental engineer in the hazardous waste field. While participating in the University of Cincinnati Cooperative Education Program, his assignment was working with NASA during the Apollo missions. He was one of the first people to see and work with the first moon rock samples from that historic lunar landing. As a young Eagle Scout, Richard earned the Order of the Arrow, the highest level in scouting, for saving a young boy from drowning at the Butler pool.

He enjoyed woodworking, bow hunting and camping as well as many other outdoor activities. Richard was interested in the NASA space program, politics and firearms, becoming a certified NRA pistol instructor. Surviving are his loving wife, Deborah McCandless; a devoted daughter, Arynn (Joel) Blazer; and a granddaughter, Ester Blazer, all of Cincinnati. Also surviving are a brother, Bruce McCandless of New York; three sisters, Karen McCandless Forcht of Butler; Susan (Jim) Underwood of Virginia and Joyce (Robert) Carrier of Virginia; one uncle, Karl D. (Helen) Weisenstein; his stepfather, Ellsworth Johnson; and a number of nieces, nephews and cousins. Preceding him in death were his stepfather, Fred Brown; a nephew, Anthony “Tony” Michael Russo; and a brother-in-law, Ronald E. Forcht.

Victor V. Van Beuren (BS ’76, MS ’80) Hi Warren. The past year has been a world of change for the Virginia VB’s. My work at the American Diabetes Association continues. (It’s hard to believe I’ve been here 13 years!). The Book program has expanded, as have my responsibilities. I now run the program in the Home Office (Crystal City, Arlington, VA). Retirement? I have honestly forgotten the definition of that term. My spouse, Amanda (the quintessential editor), recently got federal security clearance, so now she can edit classified reports. Let’s just say, I have no idea what she does, and I’m afraid to ask. Having come of age in the 60’s, I lived in a few communes. But, they are nothing like living in the world of Millennials. My three sons are sharing our commune (house). They all have jobs, are focused, in school, and ready for what the world throws at them. But I often

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R e m e m b e r a n c e

Jennifer Thies Loos (MS ‘88) Jennifer Lee (Thies) Loos, formerly of Ft. Thomas, KY, passed away Sunday April 8, 2018 at her home in Lakewood, CO after a lingering illness. Jennifer was born October 9, 1958 at St. Luke Hospital in Ft. Thomas, KY. Survivors include her partner Peter Purrazzella Denver, CO, Jennifer’s precious children Jonathon Loos Seattle, WA, Katherine Loos, Denver CO, Claire Loos, Denver, CO, Peter’s children, Mia Purrazzella, Rebekah Purrazzella, Julianna Troiani, Jennifer’s father, Robert J. Thies Cincinnati, OH, mother Anne (Thies-Deuschle) Coffey, Moore Haven, FL, her twin sister, Genevieve Conroy, Pompano Beach, FL/Bahamas, sister Celeste Keeney of Delhi, OH, Marie Thies of Coral Springs, FL, brother, Terry Thies, Boca Raton, FL, mother-in-law, Beatrice Loos, Williamsburg, VA, brothers-in-law, Colin Conroy, Pompano, FL, Jerry Keeney, Delhi, OH, Karl Loos, Falmouth, MA, Steve Caputo, Summit, NJ, Charles Gildehaus, Concord, MA, sister-in-law, Ann Loos, Falmouth, MA, Sasha Thies, Coral Springs, FL, Jeannette Thies Boca Raton, FL, Peggy Loos, Williamsburg, VA, Penny Loukakos, Williamsburg, VA, Patty Caputo, Summit, NJ, Bea Alice Loos, Acton, MA, Pamela Gidehaus, Concord, MA, aunts, Cathy Humphrey-LaCour, Somerset, KY, Peggy Thies-Mahoney, Florence, KY, Marianne Thies, Bellevue, KY, uncles David Humphrey, Latonia, KY, Michael Humphrey, Carrollton, KY, James Thies, Bellevue, KY, Lee Weddle Somerset, KY, Paul Mahoney, Florence, KY. She is also survived by many loving nieces, and nephews, cousins, and dear friends.

find them discussing their life plans in front of my open refrigerator. So, a challenge for all my classmates, and more recent alumni of the Department of Geosciences at UC, I am interested in the personal experience of studying, doing, and living geology. As an editor for 30+ years, I’d love to help geoscientists share their passion for our beloved science. Whether it’s their field notes (with a few personal comments thrown in), or narratives of field studies, or (my personal favorite) poetry, it is so necessary to share the excitement of living on the earth. Please excuse my gushing, but, honestly, most people have no idea what they are walking on. `It is our responsibility to bring the excitement of understanding natural systems back to our communities. Vic

She was preceded in death by her husband, Kenneth, Loos, and her sister, Deborah Deuschle. After graduating from Highlands High school in 1976 with academic and track honors, Jennifer received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Northern Kentucky University and a Master’s Degree in Geology and Paleontology from the University of Cincinnati. Jennifer married Kenneth Dingwell Loos, of Bethesda, MD, also a geologist and graduate of University of Cincinnati where they met. After having their children, they spent several years in Stavanger, Norway and Cario, Egypt, where Kenneth was employed by the Amoco Oil Company. Kenneth died of natural causes suddenly in Cario at 42 years of age. She moved to Denver in 2011 with Peter, where she enjoyed trail running, hiking, biking and attending concerts. A gifted Geologist; she was employed at Ageiss, Inc in Denver. She took great pride in her work and will be missed by her co-workers. Jennifer had a sense of adventure, and a fierce, indomitable, independent spirit. She had a sharp wit and contagious laugh, always looking for a great prank of good pun. She was a scholar and creative artist. But most of all, Jennifer was timeless in her support and love of her family. She fought to stay with them with strength and courage that will forever be her legacy.

Danita Brandt (MS ’80) Editor’s note: the May 2018 issue of GSA Today carries an article by Danita Brandt (MS ’80) entitled Charting the geosciences with Google Ngram Viewer. A copy is available at https://bit.ly/2rcVd1I.

WaynePryor’s Gulf Coast Field Trip 1977

Back row l( to r) Wayne Pryor, Tom Stenbeck, Jack Staley, Doug Jordan, and Mike Lewan. Front row: (l to r) Paul Lundegard, Ron Broadhead, Brad Nelson, Neil Samuels, Greg Wahlman and Dave Meyer.

Grad students on Old Tech steps watching teh activity on the Union Bridge, with Wayne Pryor (wearing one of his famous hays) walking behind, circa 1976-77 Back row (l to r) Tom Stenbeck, Jim Harrell, Greg Wahlman and Ron Broadhead. Front row: (l to r) Fred Schauf, Paul Lundergard, and Frank Gehrling.

Geology Department, Halloween party, Oct. 1979 Back row l( to r) Mary Lou

Motl, Wayne Pryor, Joani Wahlman, Greg Wahlman, Ghulam Sarwar, Front row: (l to r) Danita Brandt, Todd Stephenson, unknown girl.

P hotos

from the

70-80’ s

provided by

G reg W ahlman (P h D ‘85.). T hank Y ou G reg !

A P hotos

from the

70-80’ s

provided by

G reg W ahlman (P h D ‘85.). T hank Y ou G reg !

Former Caster students Bruce Bell and John Pojeta in the mid1979’s - Reunited in Cincinnati helping to exacvate newly discover edriostraeroid bed in northern Kentucy (John Pojeta passed away in 2017) Greg Wahlman and Tom Gardner freezing in Basic Sciences - 1976

H alloween

party at

W ahlman

apartment ,

O ct , 1976

Greg Wahlman with “borrowed” skeleton from Paleo room in Old Tech. Photo by Bob Lenhart. Susan and Tom Garedner

Mike Short and wife to be Joy O’Dea

S teven D ent

(PhD ’95)

Hi Warren, My position at UT is a temporary one. I’m filling in while the current coordinator is on maternity leave through early May. OnRamps is a very cool program. High school students are dual enrolled in a high school course and college course. They elect if they want UT college credit (and the type of credit) in the spring. Here is the main website: https://onramps. utexas.edu/ I was an instructor for them at Austin High my last two years of teaching there. I’ll send you an update soon. Thanks for the kudos.

E lif M uftuoglu Dear Dr. Huff,

(MS ’98)

For the last year my experience was to build a new structure from scratch. Again, nothing related with Geology: We got seperated from the organisation we had been functioning since 1988, and reformed as a non-profit foundation. Apart from the Global Organisation structure change needs as the economic, consumer and industry trends are shifing sharply, trying to form a new structure with agile needs of industry and global perspective was quite challenging. Thanks God that I was lucky that all the new employees of the foundation are such great people that it was also a smooth process. So I also learned how important it is to work with great people and probably it is the most important luxury in someone’s life :) Other than the local changes we have been through, I’m learning a lot from my international colleques, especially during the executive committee works. I should say that it is fun and a great experience to work with people all around the world and try to establish a system that will be strong both locally and globally. I hope everything is allright with UC also, miss you too much. Best regards, Elif

F orest G ahn (MS ’99)

B urlington is the crinoid capital of the world , and a native geologist wants to write a book about it . By Will Smith For someone who loves crinoids, Forest Gahn couldn’t have been born in a better place. Burlington is considered the crinoid capital of the world, and Gahn has de voted much of his life to studying to the marine animals that look like plants. “People are still finding new species in Burlington,” Gahn said. “There are over 300 species. Burlington has the most diverse crinoid assemblage in all of time and space.” Gahn, a Burlington native, is a professor of geology at Brigham Young University-Idaho, and his knowledge goes well beyond crinoids. But when he tells people about his particular passion in thefield, he often fields the same question. What the heck is a crinoid? “ They’re related to starfish and sea urchins,” Gahn said. “Echinoderms (the phylum that crinoids fall under) are the only species that hasn’t left the ocean.” Gahn has been back in his hometown for the past three weeks studying the crinoid scene inBurlington — something he’s done many times before. But this time he’s writing a book about Burlington’s connection to the little -recognized species, and spending far more time in the library than in the field. While crinoids aren’t too difficult to find, tracing their histor y through Burlington has been anexercise in frustration for Gahn. Ironically enough, many of the limestone houses that are left in Burlington are packed with crinoids. Burlington is the crinoid capital of the world, and a native geologist wants to write a book about it “ You go into the city directory and city records, and they talk about how much pork they sold, how many bricks they made. Even through there were stone ma-

sons in the city, they say nothing about (crinoids),” Gahn said. Crinoids are believed to have been around for the past 500 million years, putting them in the unique position of being fossils while still sur viving in the ocean. “Crinoids appeared before the dinosaurs, and unlike dinosaurs, they are still alive,” Gahn said. “We knew about crinoids as fossils before we knew about them as living things.” Though Burlington recently made histor y when “Ripley ’s Believe It or Not” recognized Snake Alley for it crookedness, Gahn said Burlington is more globally famous for its crinoids. An entire display is dedicated to them at the Heritage Center Museum in Burlington, attracting archaeology enthusiasts from as far away as China. “ The banks (of the Mississippi River in Burlington) are loaded with exceptional rock exposures,” Gahn said. “Crinoids are older than mountains, they have greater diversity, and they crawl, eat, evolve, reproduce, and swim without brains. That’s impressive. Besides, you can’t throw a mountain in your pack and take it home.” Gahn has quite an extensive collection of crinoids at home, but many of the best examples from Burlington are sitting in the Smithsonian Institution. Gahn plans to include large photos of the samples in his book, connecting them with local histor y. It’s Burlington’s abundance of rock quarries in the late 1800s that turned it into the crinoid capital of the world. Gahn said Iowa used to be located near the equator hundreds of millions years ago, and it looked a lot more like the Bahamas than a Midwestern state. That atmosphere fostered a booming crinoid population, and geologists argue that rocks were deposited around Burlington about 350 million years ago. What was once under water be came part of the limestone. Some of the limestone around Burlington is com-

F orest G ahn ( continued ) prised of up to 95 percent of crinoid fossils, many of them unearthed in the quarries. Acting as amateur scientist, locals took to collecting the fossils for themselves in the mid 1800s. Gahn said even more were dug up with the construction of U.S. 34 through Burlington in the 1970s. “ There are literally thousands and thousands of exceptional specimens that are now behind locked doors that are only available to researchers,” Gahn said. “ This is such

a cool story, and it’s a story that has yet to be told in a comprehensive way.” Gahn is looking for local photographs of now-de funct quarries that used to be in Burlington, such as the one in Bonn’s Hollow. Anyone with information, historical pictures or questions is encouraged to email him at. Gahn is hoping to get his book out in about three years.

A lex B artholomew (P h D ’06)

J acalyn W ittmer M alinowski (MS ’09)

Dear Warren,

So sorry for my late reply, you caught during a very busy time. I have started a new position at SUNY Geneseo as an Asst. Prof. in the Geological Sciences department. I have also had another child (total 2) this year and I have moved across the country to Geneseo, NY. My new address is 4399 Hammocks Dr. Geneseo, NY 14454

Over the past year things have gone well. Our department has moved into new digs in the New Science Building on campus and the Geology Dept. was very proactive in making our space needs known and we got most of what we asked for, so our teaching and research labs are all decked out and we have students beavering away on a wide variety of projects. I have been looking at the Upper Silurian local stratigraphy with students, along with continuing to work with Carl on projects like Lower Devonian orbital time scale calibration from rocks in the Hudson Valley and Middle Devonian stratigraphy revisions across NYS. Hope you have a great day! Alex

M ichael D e S antis (P h D ’10) Hi WarrenWe just had a paper on galvanic corrosion published in Environmental Science and Technology. Interestingly, a Science News reporter contacted me about it last week, before I had even finished correcting the proof copy. I have to say that learning to do XRD in Clay Mineralogy set me down the path in developing this skill set. Many thanks for that! Also, another paper from our research group (Lauren Wasserstrom, UC Geology alumna (BA ’12, MS ’14), is the first author) just won the 2018 AWWA Water Science & Research Division Best Paper award.

M elissa M c M ullen

(BS ’09)

Hi Dr. Huff, This last year has been one full of all sorts of changes. In Dec. I bought a house and moved back into the town of Elko. It’s been nice owning my own home, but non-stop projects. I’m working on getting all my gardens set up at the moment. I also changed positions in Dec. and became the interim senior of a different geology group than the one I had been working with for the last five years. As of March, I am now officially the Senior Ore Control Geologist over a team of three. We oversee the routing of all the material that is mined out of the open pit. It’s a mix of geology, planning and engineering. The change has been good, but there is a ton to learn. I haven’t had a slow day since Dec. Thankfully the guys in my team are really great and we all seem to mesh really well. That’s the quick summary. I hope you are doing well, and have had a wonderful year. Melissa

Now on to the next manuscript… Regards- Mike

G ary M otz (P h D ’15) I’ve spent the past four years as the Paleontology Collections Manager at Indiana University, but have recently taken a new position as the Assistant Director for Information Ser-

vices in the Indiana Geological and Water Survey. I’m finishing up three federally funded grant proposals and looking forward to a new chapter with the IGWS!

A dam P iestrzeniewicz (MS ’15) Hi Dr. Huff, This year, I finished two years working at Haley & Aldrich as a Senior Geologist focusing primarily on geotechnical and environmental projects in southern California. I will be moving to the Bay Area this summer and will transfer offices within Haley & Aldrich as part of the move. My girlfriend and fellow alumnus, Katie Dunn, and I had the opportunity to travel quite a bit this past year. We visited Peru where we climbed up to Machu Picchu and backpacked the Ausangate Trek, which took us as high as 17,000 feet above sea level. We explored Colombia and took a winter trip to Banff, Canada, where we met up with our former advisor, Eva Enkelmann. Cheers, Adam Piestrzeniewicz

A lex R ogaski (BS ’16) Hi Warren, It’s good to hear from you. I heard that your retirement party was a huge success and that everybody had a great time. My thesis work here at the South Dakota

I n

School of Mines is coming along great. Dr. Gokce Ustunisik and I will begin running our experiments and collecting data next week. My thesis research is focused on understanding the interaction of volatiles in Martian magmas and the partitioning behavior between trace elements in the melt and vapor phases. As you know, I was selected to participate in the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Exploration Science Summer Internship down at NASA Houston. “This summer, students will be involved in activities that support missions to the Moon that utilize the Orion crew vehicle, the Deep Space Gateway, and robotic assets on the lunar surface. It is a unique opportunity to integrate scientific input with exploration activities in a way that mission architects and spacecraft engineers can use. Activities may involve assessments of landing sites and traverse plans for multiple destinations that are responsive to NASA objectives.” All this will result in a bit of a rush to finish my thesis work in the Fall, but I’m confident that it won’t be any trouble. With any luck I’ll graduate with my M.S next spring and then I’ll either try to stick with working for NASA or go on to get my PhD. Best wishes, Alex

R e m e m b e r a n c e

V ictoria F onticiella (BS ‘17) Victoria Nicole Fonticiella (Tori Thomas), 25, of

Anderson Township, passed away Thursday, February 22, 2018 at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital – Liberty Campus. She was born October 21, 1992 in Pisa, Italy, daughter of Dwane Thomas and Melissa (Steve) Mays Caldwell. She was married to her loving husband, Nelson Fonticiella, whom she married May 7, 2017. Tori had a strong faith and was a firm believer in education. She attended Miami University and University of Cincinnati where she received a Bachelor of Science with a Geology specialty. Her world was complete when she was able to build a happy home with her husband and canine children. She will be remembered as a loving and caring person who loved everything Disney. In addition to her husband and parents, she is survived by her 3 sisters, Meghan Thomas, Joscelyn Caldwell and Alliandre Caldwell; paternal grandmother, Karen Thomas; paternal greatgrandmother, Lilian Williams; step-grandparents, Le-

tisha and Reed Caldwell; nephew, Lucas Ray Fonticiella; her canine children, Ares, Percy and Zeus; her feline child, Kiya and several aunts, uncles, cousins and an enormous number of friends. She was preceded in death by her maternal grandparents, Robert and Barbara Mays and her paternal grandfather, Ronald Thomas. Tori’s wishes were to be cremated. Family and friends may visit for a memorial gathering Saturday, March 3, 2018 from 2:00 PM, until the time of the memorial service at 5:00 PM at E.C. Nurre Funeral Home, 177 W. Main St. (SR 125), Amelia. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution in Tori’s name to the Dream Street Foundation, 324 South Beverly Drive, Suite 500, Beverly Hills, CA 90212; the Tori Thomas Geology Scholarship, https:// foundation. uc.edu/give or Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, https:// giving.cincinnatichildrens.org/SSLPage.aspx?& pid=184 , select “other” and type in “Dr. Pressey Sarcoma Research”. Please sign her online tribute wall at www.ecnurre.com.

M allory S tanton (BS ’11)

M ackenzie E nglish (BS ‘11)

Hi Dr. Huff,

As for me, I have mostly spent the last year continuing to educate the young minds of the Dayton area at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery. I mean who wouldn’t want to blow things up and freeze fruit with liquid nitrogen for a living? I have been working with our collections department by helping identify fossils and rocks the public wants identified. I have also been working on preparing a limb bone of a Hadrosaur (probably). Right now we are gearing up for Geekfest (next week) and then summer camps. This year I will be teaching a camp on our collections materials on display and helping with a field camp where I will teach kids how to read a map and compass as well as teaching about any rocks we may come across. On a side note if you know any kids (9-14 yrs as of June 1st) in the North Cincinnati area that would be interested in a field type week long camp point them my way. I hope all is well with you.

Hope all is going well in the geology department! Since graduating in the winter of 2011, life has been in the fast lane. After graduating I was trying to decide if I should go to grad school or get a head start in the workforce . I got a job offer as a muddlogger with Nomac Drilling which was an affiliate of Chesapeake Energy and decided to take the leap. After reading many Alumni’s bio’s, it looks like a lot of us have taking this path as a start. This job gives you a ton of experience and also puts some hair on your chest ha. After working there for about a year I got a job with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in the Oil and Gas Division as a Geologist. I worked there for about 3 years approving well permits and other tasked projects. My job entailed me to work very close with Oil and Gas companies which lead me to received a job offer to move to Denver and work for Antero Resources as their Permitting Supervisor. I have been with them now for over 2 years and really love what all I have learned from a growing company. Antero operates in the Utica and Marcellus formations which is great because I get to travel back to Ohio some for work, I also get to keep in touch with former colleges from ODNR. Having experience in both regulatory and now industry has really helped me succeed in my role. Living in Denver has truly felt like home and I plan on staying here and making a life. I very much appreciate the foundation the University of Cincinnati set me up with in order to achieve these career steps.

D o you have any recollections of field trips, social events, classroom experiences or other experiences during your UC days that you would like to share

It is good to hear from you, Mackenzie

A lex R eis

(BS ’15)

Good Morning Dr. Huff, This past year has been pretty busy, I successfully defended my M.S. thesis in April at the University of Kentucky and will begin my PhD. at UK this fall. In addition to defending my thesis, I attended the Flügel Carbonate Microfacies course in Erlangen, Germany. Last fall I was staffed as a Petrophysics Specialist conducting downhole measurements on IODP Expedition 378 in the South Pacific for two months. I will be using samples from this expedition for my dissertation research looking at changing ocean circulation and climate as the Tasman Gateway opened. I was also accepted into the IODP Petrophysics Summer School in Leicester, England to learn more about petrophysics and how it can be applied to paleoceanography. Cheers, Alex

with your alumni colleagues? Send them to Warren Huff, email: WARREN.HUFF@ UC.EDU or Dept. of Geology, UC, Cincinnati, OH 45221 and we’ll include them in next years’ issue.

Thank You All for Your for Contributions to the UC Geology Department’s Continued Excellence!

N atashia M etz (MS ’13)

N athan R asmussen (BA ’13)

Hi Dr. Huff!

Hey Dr. Huff,

Of course! My company was recently purchased by another company and we are going through the transition. I now work for a company called APTIM, though I have the same responsibilities as before. My work covers environmental assessment of sites and inspection of aboveground storage tanks within commercial buildings. As far as home life goes, Bryan and I have been working on projects around our house, which has been an adventure in and of itself. In addition, we will be going to London for our second anniversary. We are very excited for the trip! Also, a very happy birthday to you! I also read that you are retiring. So excited for you! I wish you tons of relaxation and adventure in your retirement!

I hope all is going well with you! I heard you are retiring at the end of the year? Are you excited?

R ajarshi D asgupta

(MS ’14)

Hello Dr. Huff, How are you? Hope all is well in Cincinnati. It is always a pleasure to write an update for the alumni newsletter. In 2017-18, I have continued teaching geography in a local undergraduate college in Kolkata, where they also have a graduate program in the subject. So lots of classes and student field trips have kept my plate pretty full. I enjoy nurturing them and get to learn a lot, which is always good. I am also supervising a few students for their MS theses this year and hopefully, they will all graduate over the summer. It’s a daunting task, but an enriching one nonetheless!! Meanwhile, I am continuing to work on local geomorphological issues with colleagues in local universities. Thus, research also keeps me busy and it is good to see some of these projects yield exciting results. The highlight of the year for me, however, was to attend the 9th International Conference on Geomorphology, which was held in New Delhi in November. This is a quadrennial conference and I had the opportunity to present both a talk and a poster and received great feedback from some of the luminaries of the discipline. My co-authors and I plan to pursue them further in the near future. It was an enjoyable, insightful and humbling experience.

This past year has been a very good one for me. I am working as a Geologist 1 at Weatherford Laboratories running the X-Ray Diffraction lab. It has been a fun few months as we have been developing our own methods for calculating quartz crystallinity, carbonate chemistry, and more specific clay speciation. I also got married last September to a wonderful woman named Cathy, I think you may have met her several years ago at one of the geology department’s Christmas parties. Then I bought a house in November at 10,000’ elevation in the Rocky Mountains on Squaw Mountain. The thin air took a little getting used to but now that we are acclimated to it we love it up there. We are backed up to Arapahoe National Forest and are able to hike and explore frequently, the dog especially loves it after a heavy snow. If you are ever out in the Denver area please let me know! I hope all is well with you and the department!

N athan S chriner (BS ’13) I am now the Sales Manager for KC Bier Co in the state of Kansas the 2nd largest brewery in Kansas City and largest locally owned. We make authentic German biers by importing our ingredients from Germany and follow strictly by the Reinheitsgabot German purity law. I oversee 5 distributors, 1000+ accounts, and enjoy life.P.S. Tell Jeff Hannon I said hello!

Overall, it’s been a pleasurable year and I look forward to finishing this semester and welcoming the next academic year. Sincerely, Rajarshi.

Dear UC Geology Alumni

and

Friends,

T homas (T.J.) M algieri (MS ’16)

S tella M osher (MS ’15)

I just started as an associate geologist with a small ocean survey company out of Norwood, New Jersey called Alpine Ocean Seismic Survey. They typically do shallow to deep water geophysical and geotechnical surveys as well as biological and coastal assessments. Right now we have a large project based out of New Bedford, Mass. We are Surveying the ocean floor to profile and doing geotechnical work (mostly vibracoring) for laying cables to a new windfarm off the east coast

Hi Dr. Huff,

Thomas Malgieri Associate Geologist,Alpine Ocean Seismic Survey Inc.

S onia S anchez

(MS ’18)

Hi Dr. Huff, I am working at a startup called FracGeo here in Houston. They have developed an software that integrates geology, geophysics, geomechanics, and engineering to create 3D models of the subsurface to optimize landing zones within specific shale layers when fracking. I am a geology intern here and my job will be to learn how to use the software and travel to various countries to give demos in Spanish as well as taking on a few projects. Hope this helps and thanks again for reaching out. Hope all is going well in Cinci. Thanks, Sonia

K atie D unn (BS ’17) Hi Dr Huff, Congrats on your retirement! Not much has changed for me this past year. I am still living in the Bay Area and working as a lab manager in the school of earth sciences at Stanford University. However, I had the opportunity to do quite a bit of traveling this year with follow alum Adam Piestrzeniewicz. Our favorites were Peru, Colombia, and visiting with our former advisor Eva Enkelmann in Banff, Canada. I hope you’re doing well! Katie

Thank you for reaching out, it is great to hear from you! After graduating with my M.S. in 2015, I moved back to Juneau, Alaska, where I worked as a contract fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. I primarily studied the bioenergetics of Arctic and sub-Arctic larval fish populations and I was fortunate enough to participate in field work in both Barrow and Dutch Harbor. I greatly enjoyed visiting these diverse landscapes and seeing parts of rural Alaska. Towards the end of 2016, I moved south to Salt Lake City, Utah, to chase new opportunities and drier weather. I worked briefly as a lab technician in a paleoecology lab at the University of Utah, and am now managing several STEM tutoring centers as well as teaching Physical Geography, Natural Disasters and Introductory Geology as an adjunct at Salt Lake Community College. It has been rewarding and meaningful work, and has provided me with many personal and professional growth and development opportunities. In my free time, I am working on a publication with Dr. Crowley and spending as much time rock climbing in the desert as I can! I hope all is well at UC, and warm regards to you and the rest of the Geology department!

F rida A kerstrom Hi Warren! I am still living in southern Sweden where I’m continuing to pursue my Olympic dreams in shot put. Last August, I went to Taiwan to compete at the World University Games, which was a lot of fun and I’m currently ranked second in the nation. My main goal for this summer is to compete at the European Championships in Berlin in August. After taking some time off school, I have been working part time at a sporting goods store while applying for jobs in the environmental field. Right now, I’m waiting to hear back from a job as an environmental researcher for the county office regarding contaminated groundwater and soils. So fingers crossed that I will get it. All the best, Frida

Desktop seismology: How a maker-inspired device is changing seismic monitoring Written by S arah D erouin

Earth groans and shimmies constantly, producing everything from occasional building-collapsing earthquakes to subtle shaking humans don’t even feel. There are many ways to track this shaking, ranging from sensitive, expensive seismograph stations to various citizen-science approaches, including the U.S. Geological Survey’s “Did You Feel It?” program, through which people can report what they felt during an earthquake using an online survey. On the more expensive side of things, professional-grade seismographs require substantial funding to purchase as well as the scientific know-how to install, monitor and analyze the constant rumblings they pick up. (“Seismograph” and “seismometer” are often used interchangeably, but they actually refer to different things: a seismometer is the sensor that detects an earthquake, while a seismograph is the whole unit, including the means to transmit the shaking data.) The sensor packages — which pick up Earth’s vibrations — within seismographs typically range in size from a soda can to a basketball, depending on the measurement precision for the instrument. Costs for high-grade seismographs and installations start around $5,000 and can easily exceed $100,000. Complicated operation, and the software needed to run it, can also deter even the most curious amateurs who want to maintain their own sensitive seismic monitoring. Enter a novel personal seismograph: the Raspberry Shake. Named after the computer that powers the instrument (the Raspberry Pi), the Shake was invented in 2016 by a hobbyist. “I got into [seismometers] as a hobby in the late ‘90s, and I always wanted to make something for home use and for school use,” says Ángel Rodríguez, founder of OSOP, a geophysical instrument company that manufactures the Raspberry Shake as well as seismographs for professional use. Rodríguez, who has a degree in oceanography, taught himself the science behind geophysical instrumentation and says that through that process, “you can’t help but pick up some seismology.” He is a self-described “maker” who set out to develop a small, affordable seismograph for hobbyists who were curious about earthquakes and seismic shaking. He and his team at OSOP quickly learned that interest in personal seismographs reached beyond the backyard seismologist. The Shake is also a way to supplement the coverage of professional seismic instruments with low-cost equipment —something seismologists call densifying — and it

(P h D ‘08)

for EARTH Magazine.

captured the attention of state and federal agencies in the United States and elsewhere around the world. It turns out that a seismograph smaller than a box of tissues has become a very useful tool for scientists and educators alike. The Raspberry Shake is a desktop seismograph suitable for the earthquake-curious or the seismologist on a budget. Each Shake costs between $100 and $1,200 — depending on whether optional features are included — and consists of a seismometer and the electronics needed to collect and transfer data to theuser, all of which is mounted on a small circuit board. The sensor, called a geophone, is about the sizeof your thumb; it is essentially a magnet suspended on a string that is wrapped with a coiled wire. “You can imagine: Earth starts moving and the magnet starts going up and down with the motion; that generates small voltages in the coil running around it — that is the output,” says Branden Christensen,director of OSOP and the Raspberry Shake Project. This electrical output is then processed by a tiny computer that powers the unit, resulting in the same sorts of spiky data plots commonly produced by high-grade seismographs. When encased in a custom plastic box, the whole unit is still smaller Development of the Shake emerged from a combination of curiosity and timely technology advances. About 10 years ago, Rodríguez put his geophysics-focusedm hobby into action and formed OSOP, which was originally headquartered in his house. With a second employee added, the company moved into Rodríguez’s garage. And as new team members were hired, the company expanded out of the garage, eventually settling into an office in Volcán, Panama. Until about five years ago, OSOP only sold professionalgrade seismographs made by other companies, including expensive broadband instruments that can detectmearthquakes on the opposite side of the world. Eventually, the OSOP team decided to create its own product, focusing on providing quality instruments for local and regional seismic monitoring that were more affordable than broadband systems. To read full article go to: https://www. earthmagazine.org/article/desktopseismology-how-maker-inspired-devicechanging-seismic-monitoring

Departmental Spring Awards Banquet, 2018.

Distinguished students receiving awards and recognitions. Back row l to r); Chris Sheehan, Allison Young, Anna Schartman, Andrew Gangidine, Sam Little, Lessica Boling, Brendon Meyers, Shannon Neale, and Antonis Votur. Front row (l to r); Nora Soto, Andrew Michel, Tara Lay, Greg Frommer and Adam Jones.

Dear UC Geology Alumni

and

Friends,

Departmental 4-Day Fall Field Trip. Photos by Lewis Owen

A CALL TO ACTION! Your contribution to some or any of the following endowments is greatly appreciated and strengthens the Department of Geology. Gifts enable us to better serve our students, staff and faculty. They help support a wide array of programs and services, including undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships.

ndowment

Bucher Walter Fund: All-purpose fund for research and teaching.

.00

Fenneman Nevin H. Fund: Supports research and travel.

.00

Support for graduate students in paleontology, including a summer $ fellowship.

.00

Student Sedimentology Research Fund: Support for graduate students in stratigraphy and

Rawlinson George and Frances Fund:

sedimentology. Graduate fellowships.

Caster Kenneth E. Fund:

Cook Walter and Kathryn H. Scholarship Fund: Used for scholarship awards to under-

graduates, and for field-camp scholarships. $

.00

Hoholick-Potter International Fieldwork Travel Fund: to be used for international fieldwork. $

.00

Durrell Richard H. and Lucile Fund:

Public education, including outside speakers.

Geology Alumni Graduate Fellowship Fund: To support graduate fellowships.

Klekamp Thomas C. Student Travel Fund: A relatively new fund, to be used for undergraduate $

.00

Larsen Leonard Fund: Instructional field trips.

.00

Student Field Experience Fund: Used for field camp, as well as other field experiences of students.

.00

student travel for research.

Research in Geology Fund: A primary repository for annual gifts. Open for investments of

any sort in research.

For additional assistance making your gift, or for more information, please contact: Shelly Deavy, Associate Director of Development, Kathleen Collins McMicken College of Arts and Sciences 513.556-6435 DEAVYRE@ucmail.uc.edu, COLLINKN@ucmail.uc.edu

Mail checks to: The Department of Geology University of Cincinnati PO Box 210013 Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0013 Geology Office: 513.556.3722

http://foundation.uc.edu