September 1997
Volume 2, Number 2
| Georgia Geology September 1997 Volume 2, Number 2 |
The Newsletter of the Georgia Geological Society
Editor: Tim Chowns, State University of West Georgia
President: L.T. Gregg: Atlanta Testing & Engineering
President Elect: Mike Higgins, US Geological Survey
Secretary: Burt Carter, Georgia Southwestern
Treasurer: Tim Chowns, West Georgia
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Elsewhere in this Newsletter you will find information about the recent formation of the Council of Georgia Earth Science Societies. I was honored to be elected Interim President. Contact me at (770) 476-3555 or Ron Wallace at (770) 587-0021 if you want more information about the activities of the Council. Some odds and ends:
**Mississippi has enacted professional registration for geologists. The grandfather period closes on December 31, 1998. Presumably, there will be reciprocity/comity with Georgia.
**Environmental consulting work is showing some signs of picking up. One of the "hot" emerging areas is remediation of groundwater contamination at landfills. Relatively steady areas continue to be wetlands, underground storage tanks, and Phase I environmental assessments for pre-purchase real estate transactions. Air quality is the big unknown but it could be a blockbuster if EPA's proposed new standards on ozone and particulate matter (PM 2.5) survive Congressional review.
**This may surprise many of you, but the mining business is alive and well. Where the action is, to name a few areas: Disseminated gold mineralization out west; gold (of any type) on every continent but Antarctica. Any comment from Gilles Allard?
**Sam Pickering, Vernon Hurst and Jessica Elzea led a first-class field trip on Georgia kaolin deposits on June 12-13. Many thanks to the organizers.
**The Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration will hold its annual meeting in Orlando from March 9-11, 1998. Industrial minerals will be a key theme at the meeting. Over 5,000 registrants are expected.
L.T.Gregg
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PIEDMONT
October 10-12
ATHENS, GEORGIA
Organized by Sam Swanson and Dave Wenner, University of Georgia
This year's trip will present an overview of geologic research in the Georgia Piedmont. Topics will range from igneous and metamorphic petrology, to groundwater, to saprolite, to geoarchaeology. The field trip will be based out of Athens on a nonfootball weekend. Participants will be able to enjoy some of the lively night scene in Athens on Friday and Saturday.
The trip will visit stops in the vicinity of Athens and eastern part of the Atlanta metro area and will cover a broad range of topics that should be of interest to the whole geological community. The following stops will be visited, and presented by the individuals noted in parentheses.
Municipal wells for the City of Lawrenceville: hydrogeology and environmental problems (Dowd, Wenner, Feild and Uddin: U.G.A.; Chapman and Crawford: U.S.G.S.; Mundy: Kemron Environmental Services; Faro: E&C Consulting Engineering).
Stone Mountain: petrology and tectonics of the Inner Piedmont (Roden and Whitney: U.G.A.)
Saprolite: formation and use for mapping of geological units of the Piedmont (Hurst and Schroeder: U.G.A.) Athens Gneiss: petrology and metamorphic history (Colberg: U.G.A.)
Scull Shoals (Green County): archaeogeology and shallow geophysics (Garrison: U.G.A.).
The trip will depart each morning at 8.00 a.m. from the Ramada Inn in downtown Athens and end after lunch on Sunday. There will be a short business meeting over lunch on Saturday.
Accommodations
We have reserved a block of rooms for October 10-11 at a group rate of $56.00 per night at the Ramada Inn in downtown Athens. Call 1-800- 448-4245 for reservations. All rooms must be booked by September 10 to receive the group rate. Please be sure to mention that you are a participant of the Georgia Geological Society Field Trip.
Registration
Registration, including transportation, guidebook and the Friday night Smoker will be $45 for professionals and $25 for full time students. This fee also includes membership dues of $5.00. Lunches should be ordered separately. Registration may be completed by mailing the form in the newsletter to reach the treasurer no later than September 26. Additional Information
For further information members may consult the Society's Web page (http://www.westga. edu/~geology/web_htm/ggs.html) or call the leaders at 706-542-2652.
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Check your shelves to see if you have a copy of the Society's 1985 Guidebook: Coastal processes and barrier island development, Jekyll Island, Georgia. by V. J. Henry & W.J.Fritz and Examination of the Altamaha Formation near Oak Park, Emanuel County, Georgia. by P. F. Huddleston: Georgia Geological Society Guidebook vol. 5. As funds allow, it has been the policy of the Society to reprint popular guidebooks. This is still the best geological guide to Jekyll Island and is now available once more at the original price of $10.00 from the treasurer.
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It is well known that the cumulative effects of mutation and natural selection normally require the passage of hundreds of generations before they become visible as evolution. Organisms with short life cycles, such as insects and bacteria have generally provided the most fertile ground for evolutionary studies. It, therefore, comes as a surprise to find evidence of changes in human ontogeny, particularly gestation, within just a few generations. The clearest evidence comes from a comparison of the dates of marriages and baptisms during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The date of baptism is used as a proxy in the absence of exact birth dates. The difference between date of marriage and first birth gives a direct measure of gestation period. The average length of gestation for members of the species H. sapiens during the latter part of the twentieth century is 267 days. From calculations of populations in rural Oxfordshire, England, between 1724 and 1821 it is clear that the gestation period was quite variable but with a mean close to 134 days. Because, baptism usually succeeds birth the true mean is probably less than 134 days, but some uncertainty exists on this account. At least we are safe in assuming that gestation periods have doubled in the last two and a half centuries. Such a doubling implies that infant characteristics are being transferred into the embryonic stage. In other words that paedomorphosis is at work. There are other signs that ontogeny is changing. The age at which schooling ends has risen steadily over the last century from around 12 years of age in 1900, to 16 at mid-century, and now about 30 years at the millennium. Marriage is also occurring later and later with many couples now delaying child rearing indefinitely. As a result life expectancy has increased dramatically. The exact reasons for these changes are unknown, but it is probable that the delay in birth, graduation, and marriage are an adaptation to stress placed on the individual by our modern environment. Astute mathematicians will observe that an exponential increase in gestation with doubling every 250 years implies one second pregnancy in 4004 BC. (The timing of secs. was critical back in those days). It also indicates that by the year 4000 two centuries of gestation is not unlikely. These results suggest that Americans should proceed with caution in attempting to reform Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
Tim Chowns
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A cute bisectrix for optical measurements. Nice figure preferred. No offcentered or obtuse figures need apply. Please send resume and refractive indices to either Becke Line or Bertrand Lens (bgneiss@school.edu)
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COORDINATING COUNCIL BORN
At a meeting of the presidents of various Georgia geological societies on June 25, 1997 a Council of Georgia Earth Science Societies was formed. According to L.T. Gregg, interim president, the purpose of the Council is to serve as a unifying and coordinating body for Georgia earth science organizations, including:
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The Georgia Geological Society met jointly with the Georgia Academy of Science at its April Meeting in Carrollton. Participation was encouraging with 30 papers on diverse aspects of Earth Science presented. Jeff Tepper and Drew Hyatt are to be commended on an excellent program. Winners of the best student paper awards were: Rachel Boulay (West Georgia) for "Applying GIS technology to coastal risk assessment: Jekyll Island, Georgia" and Gerald Ingle (with Richard Sanders) (West Georgia) for " The accumulation of metals in the flood plain of Buffalo Creek, Carroll Co. Georgia". Both these students will receive copies of the AGI Glossary of Geology from the Society, now that this reference is back in print. Renowned metamorphic petrologist, Tim Chowns, led a brief field trip to make first-hand observations of the effect of rain on pavement outcrops of gneiss.
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SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING FAIR Each year the Georgia Geological Society makes two cash awards for the best Earth Science projects in the Senior and Junior divisions of the State Science Fair. This year's winners were: Aloys F. Seegers Jr. of Savannah High School (Senior Division) for a presentation on fossil shark teeth; and Daniel J. Berry of Crabapple Middle School, Roswell (Junior Division) for an investigation of foliage and soil erosion
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Increase your exposure around the state by sending news of your department or business to the editor. As you will note he needs help bad!
Dave Schwimmer writes that he has been doing museum work on the Deinosuchus crocodile project funded by National. Geographic. He still has over a year's work before its done, but lots of new information (e.g., there seems to be a single population of giant Cretaceous crocodiles ranging from Big Bend, Texas to New Jersey). Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!
He has a paper in press on Late Cretaceous dinosaurs from the eastern U.S., and a couple of papers with coworkers and G. Dent Williams on Cretaceous sharks (Palaios and Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology).
He is also giving a paper at the SVP meeting in Chicago this October on North American Late Cretaceous biogeography.
He was recently licensed as a PG in Alabama
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Our newest faculty member, Dr. Pamela Burnley, comes to us from UC Davis and is an authority on deformation-induced mantle phase transitions. She is currently finishing up a Research Associate position at University of Colorado, and will join us in January. Pamela fills a recently created position that has a significant component in Geoscience Education. She was chosen because of her excellent record of education outreach while carrying on an impressive research program. She will not only be squeezing (a la Griggs) and TEMing rocks, but will also be studying innovative ways to bring the joys of earth science to more students, teachers, and other citizens.
Dave Vanko is off in France for six months, supposedly doing research in fluid inclusions. But we have it on good authority that sampling French wines and food is the real reason he has embarked on this excursion to the continent. Luckily Dave could take his family along, wife Carol, and kids Elena and Alex. Our Business Manager, Chris Russell, is set to visit them there for a couple of weeks later this month. Bon voyage!
While Dave is away, Tim LaTour is acting chair. He's already claiming to be overworked, but so far has received little sympathy.
Crawford Elliott, our clay and soils expert, has a Visiting Research Scientist from Bonn, Germany, Dr. Achim Bechtel. Achim's visit is supported by the Max Kade Foundation.
This summer's field camp was another rousing success. We had sixteen students, all of whom did a very good job. Hassan Babaie joined Bill Fritz and Tim La Tour for the first time in Dillon to co-teach the course. We think he has fallen in love with Montana, and this may keep him on this side of the globe for a while.
The department is practically ready for semesters to arrive. Bill Fritz has been serving as GSU conversion czar, and has kept us abreast of the shenanigans occurring at all levels. Tim LaTour
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I am very pleased to have been asked to provide an update on the activities of the Department of Geology and Geography at Georgia Southern University. It was in October of 1996 when I last did this, and many things have been accomplished here (in addition to semester conversion). I must begin my report with an apology to one of my staff - the one I left off of last years faculty list! After sending the text to Tim Chowns I realized to my horror that I had failed to include Craig Oyen's biographical sketch. This was due to one thing only - the mental decrepitude of the Department Chair. Since Craig will be with us again this year, in the third of three full-time temporary appointments, I want to be sure he is recognized front and center this time. Craig graduated from North Dakota State University in 1985 with a degree in earth science (he is a native of Williston). He is working on his Ph.D. at the University of Florida, where he is conducting research on the paleontology and evolution of echinoids. Craig intends to complete the dissertation and defense in January or February and will be available for a staff position somewhere in 1998-99.
The biggest news items for our department this last year were mixed, good and bad. We were all terribly saddened by Dick Petkewich's rapidly declining health, and subsequent death. Dick was one of the founders of this department, and was the kind of friend and colleague that one only rarely encounters. Dick is most well known for having been the preparator of the mosasaur which stands as the emblem of the Georgia Southern Museum. In recognition of his many hours of unselfish devotion to the Museum a special award was established in Dick's honor, the Richard M. Petkewich Award for Service.
The good news for our department was the receipt, jointly with Chemistry, of a $900,000 NSF Academic Research Infrastructure grant. When coupled with state matching funds the total value to both departments will be $1.38 million. Among other things, we will get much needed renovations to our hard rock and soft rock labs. This is, or was one of the rare grant programs which would purchase bricks and mortar, so to speak, and will allow us to bring our research teaching facilities up to date.
There have been some personnel changes in our department again this year. We are continuing our search for a structural geologist this year, and we will initiate a search for a new Chair. In July of 1998 it will have been ten years since I took this post. I don't regret anything we have done here, as it has been a period of constant growth and improvement, but I'm ready for someone else to take charge. This fall we will welcome two new faculty to our ranks, as follows:
Samuel Couch is a cultural geographer who comes from a position he held at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. Sam received a B.A. in speech/theater, and an M.A. in education from Chadron State University in Nebraska. He completed his doctorate in geography at the University of Idaho in 1996. His specialty is topophilia, "love of place", a complex human behavior which is founded on the many subtle environmental qualities which the "home place" has. Sam also runs an archeological field camp in the mountains near Warren, Idaho, and intends to continue with, and expand that research. Furthermore, Dr.Couch has a very sincere interest in Irish studies, so we anticipate him bringing much diversity to our department.
Pranoti Asher is an igneous petrographer who comes from a position she held at Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Bombay, then earned her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut in 1995. Pranoti specialized in the geochemistry and petrography of diabase dikes and the Deccan Traps and will team up with Kelly Vance and Denise Battles in offering our hard rock courses. Dr. Asher is also a very active member of the Association of Women Geoscientists and has a reputation for being an energetic and enthusiastic teacher.
The rest of us remain pretty much as we were a year ago. We have an excellent group of geology majors to work with, new facilities, and the support of the GSU administration, so what more could we want? We hope to have two successful searches this year, and then a peaceful transition to the semester system. Perhaps that's not asking too much.
Fred Rich, Chair
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There are now between 40 and 50 students in our undergraduate program in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and the number of graduates from the fledgling program is now about 20. Because our graduates are finding jobs appropriate to their field of study here, we are expecting the program to continue to grow during the next several years.
Our capabilities for geochemical analysis have increased markedly during this year.Hope Jahren's stable-isotope laboratory is up and running, as is the ICP-mass spectrometer in Flip Froelich's marine geochemistry laboratory. Stagg King, who is in charge of the ICP-MS, will be investigating Ge/Si diagenesis in deep South Atlantic siliceous oozes, as geochemist on Ocean Drilling Program Leg 177 (Dec 97-Jan 98).
Several of our faculty have been involved in a multidisciplinary study of the Sapelo Island salt marshes. This program includes biologists, geochemists and geophysicists from several organizations, including the EPA and University of Georgia as well as Georgia Tech. Results were presented at a workshop here July 24.
Glenn Stracher, of East Georgia College, was here last fall under the auspices of a faculty development program headed by Tech's Colleges of Science and Computing. He taught our geochemical thermodynamics course then and will do so again this fall, and he is beginning some potassium-argon work here.
Bill Waggener is chairing the Grants and Scholarship Committee of the Atlanta Geological Society (this year and this coming year), which is in charge of the Society's MiniGrant Program. AGS and the Georgia Mineral Society distributed more than $1700 in earth science grants to teachers in the metro Atlanta area during the 1996-1997 school year. The committee is accepting applications for the 1997-1998 school year. Marion Wampler
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DeKalb College is working toward semester conversion, but will have a new name soon. There is a list of five possible names that are finalists, but no announcement of a new name yet. The final list of names are all non- geographic in nature (things like Heritage College, Beacon College, Gateway College Summit College, and Evergreen College). We should have our new name by this Fall 1997.
Geology is still going strong, with John Anderson and a slate of part-timers teaching on the North Campus (including Tim Welling and Carol Gelbaum). Pamela Gore and Lynn Zeigler are both still on Central Campus, along with Jim Smith as a regular part-time instructor, and several other part-time instructors.
Pamela Gore is delivering Physical and Historical Geology to the Gwinnett Campus using GSAMS technology as well as course notes on the Web and e-mail. Her course was written up in the June 30, 1997 issue of the GSAMS Update. She has also been working on her Connecting Teachers and Technology grant from the Board of Regents this year, and has developed an extensive web site called GEORGIA GEOSCIENCE ONLINE for Physical and Historical Geology, with syllabus, assignments, lecture notes with original photos, and links to outside sites. She is currently working to develop DeKalb's first totally online Geology courses which should be ready when semesters are implemented next fall. She has a paper on "Using the World Wide Web in the Geology Classroom" in the May 1997 issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education, and is writing several papers on distance learning.
Lynn Zeigler has been busy taking the Science Club and Science Faculty on field trips to places such as Providence Canyon, and Cades Cove (including Tuckaleechee Caverns), and the NASA Space Center in Huntsville. She visited the Grand Canyon in August 1997 with the club in an exciting cross-country drive.
Pamela Gore visited the Big Island of Hawaii for a tour of Kilauea and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and to present a paper at the Second International Geoscience Education Conference at the University of Hawaii, Hilo in July/August 1997. The currently erupting vent on Kilauea made for some interesting sight- seeing. Look for volcano pictures coming to the web site this fall! She is also working on a paper on Newark Supergroup carbonate rocks in eastern North America with Carol de Wet, Claudia Mora, and Elizabeth Gierloski- Kordesch. Pamela Gore
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Tony Martin has just returned from Brazil, where he gave an invited talk at a symposium on trace fossils and helped teach a short course. This year he has been working with Stephen Hasiotis of the University of Colorado on vertebrate trace fossils from the Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park. He presented a paper on this work at the South-Central/ Rocky Mountain G.S.A. meeting. He is particularly proud of Allison Wahl, his undergraduate assistant, who won second place in the Student Poster competition at the same meeting.
Tony has a new undergraduate course involving classes and field studies of geology and ecology on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. It will be team taught with Steve Henderson of Oxford College and is intended to attract both science and non-science majors.
He continues to work on Web development for the Geosciences Program including an ichnology page (http://www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/HTML/TFW3.HTML) and a page on dinosaur trace fossils (http://www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/Dinotraces.htm). The latter has had 10,000 site visitors since it went online in July 1996!
Bill Size & Tony Martin
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