April 1997
Volume 2, Number 1
| Georgia Geology April 1997 Volume 2, Number 1 |
The Newsletter of the Georgia Geological Society
Editor: Tim Chowns, State University of West Georgia
First, I'd like to express my personal appreciation to John Costello, Mike Higgins, Randy Kath, Tom Crawford, Tony Martin, Ken Nelson, and Jim DeCinque for the outstanding field trip they put together and led. Once again we had stimulating discussion (even a shade of controversy!) both at outcrops and during the evening social activities. Discussion at the latter was stimulated in part by Earl Shapiro's "water of life". And thanks, of course, to Tim Chowns and Sandy Pottinger for superb logistical support.
Some tidbits:
To wind this up, I'm looking forward to this year's field trip which is being organized by Sam Swanson at UGA; also to our Spring meeting in conjunction with the Georgia Academy of Science. See you in Carrollton later this month.
L.T.Gregg
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The Society's treasurer never did figure out quite how many people attended the Fall field trip in Cartersville but it was around 140 which is something of a record. We were pleased to see a number of members who attended the first field trip back in 1966, particularly Bill Fairley, who was one of the original leaders. Afficionados of Blue Ridge geology should check their school libraries for a copy of Bill's " Personal comments and reflections on the geology of the Blue Ridge province in Georgia with emphasis on the Murphy syncline."
John Costello reminded me that he was responsible for drafting the cover of the 1966 guidebook, back when he was an undergraduate! For those of you that who missed either trip, the Special Anniversary Guidebook contains both fieldguides and is available from the treasurer for $20.00
A big vote of thanks to all the organizers, but especially to Randy Kath and Mike Higgins who spearheaded the effort.
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President: L.T. Gregg: Atlanta Testing & Engineering
Past President: Burt Carter, Georgia Southwestern
President Elect: Mike Higgins, US Geological Survey
Secretary: Burt Carter, Georgia Southwestern
Treasurer: Tim Chowns, West Georgia
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The 1997 field trip will be hosted by UGA on the weekend of October 9-11. Athens will be the meeting headquarters. Dave Wenner and Sam Swanson are organizing the trip. The one and one half day field trip will cover a broad range of topics. Various stops will be lead by different.members of the Geology Department and should be of interest to the whole geologic community. We presently anticipate making the following stops, although other sites may be added. For up-to-date information about this trip, see the fall newsletter and refer to our department website at:
http://www.gly.uga.edu/ggs97/index.html.
Municipal wells for the City of Lawerenceville: hydrogeology and environmental problems (Dowd and Wenner).
Stone Mountain: petrology and tectonics of the Inner Piedmont (Whitney).
Saprolite: formation and use for mapping of geologic units of the Piedmont (Hurst, Swanson, Schroeder).
Athens Gneiss: petrology and metamorphic history (Patino-Douce).
Archaeogeology of Scull Shoals (Garrison).
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Balance in account March 31st 1996, $3830.89
| Income | Dues | 785.00 |
| Fieldtrip registration | 9620.00 | |
| Guidebook sales | 143.00 | |
| Total | $10548.00 | |
| Expense | Science Fair Awards | 150.00 |
| Academy Awards | 435.00 | |
| Field Trip Expenses | 8023.41 | |
| 2Newsletters | 430.63 | |
| Other | 210.72 | |
| Total | $9249.76 | |
Balance in account March 31st 1997, $5129.13
Thanks to the large attendance at this fall's field trip the balance in the Society's account rose by $1298.24. Following the recommendation of the membership at the Annual meeting in 1996, part of this money will be used to reprint Guidebook 5, "Coastal Processes and Barrier Island Development , Jekyll Island, Georgia", in time for the an upcoming field trip by the Atlanta Geol. Soc.
At the annual meeting in Cartersville the membership voted to raise the society's dues from $5.00 to $20.00 a year. On reflection the membership may decide this decision was hasty. The main argument for raising dues was to help subsidize student registration at the fieldtrip. Few students attended the Cartersville meeting, probably because of the high cost. However, there is another solution to this problem, which should be considered before raising dues. In the past student registration has been kept low by encouraging the use of department vans. I suggest we encourage this practice in future and reduce student registration fees accordingly. At times we worry about parking space at localities with limited access, but in fact three fifteen passenger vans carry about as many people as a bus and take up about the same space, but are more manueverable.
At present the majority of dues is collected in the form of the fieldtrip surcharge. Thus the main effect of raising dues is to increase the apparent cost of field trip registration, to the point where we may discourage attendance: killing the goose which lays the golden egg! One of the most difficult jobs for the field trip committee is guaging the requisite number of bus seats for the field trip. Underestimate, and you have disappointed members, overestimate and a trip goes in the hole. The addition of a number of University vans, often with a few empty seats, adds flexibility and allows one to be conservative in renting high priced buses. As may be seen from the budjet figures the society's finances are sound without an increase in dues.
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Don't forget to attend the Spring Meeting of the Society which will be held at the State University of West Georgia, in Carrollton on April 25-26, concurrent with the Georgia Academy of Science. As you will see from the program on page 6 Jeff Tepper and Drew Hyatt have organized two lively sessions including 30 papers and several posters.
Everyone is invited to the open house to be held in the Geology Department on Friday between 5.00-6.30 pm. and then to barbecue and beer. If you can't make it Friday think about driving over Saturday morning to hear the papers. On Saturday afternoon there will also be a short field trip to examine local pavement outcrops of gneiss with pools and wild flowers
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With comet Hale-Bopp making a spectacular display in the evening sky (morning too for you early-birds), I decided to check out our closest meteor impact crater at Wetumpka near Montgomery, Alabama. The occasion was a field trip led by Tony Neathery and David King in connection with the Southeastern Section of GSA in Auburn, Alabama. About twenty like-minded geologists set out across the coastal plain accompanied by newspaper reporters and a television crew. I wish I had worn my vest-of-a-thousand-pockets. It would have looked more National Geographic on TV!
What did I expect from an 80 million year old crater in the Coastal Plain? Not much really. After all how much relief could be preserved by loose sand? I was in for a surprise. 6.5 km in diameter, the structure has a raised horseshoe shaped rim of Piedmont metamorphic rocks, a crater filled with brecciated Cretaceous rocks and a central uplift of more brecciated metamorphic rock. Although the crater is relatively small, the dimensions are stunning. The thickness of brecciated rock preserved in the crater is unknown, but water wells have proved at least 120m of chalk (more than three times the normal thickness). Add to this 90m of relief between floor and rim and one arrives at a total depth of 210m still preserved. With slopes rivaling those in the Blue Ridge, this is a spectacular site, especially considering its location at the Fall Line.
However, what is even more surprising is the lack of interest shown in this area of "disturbed strata" up until Neathery and Bentley began their work in 1972. Also the reaction of some members of the geologic community. After submission and favorable reviews it took three years before "The Wetumka Astrobleme" was published by the GSA in 1976. Apparently the executive secretary refused to publish such "pseudoscientific trash". What a difference twenty years and an iridium anomaly from Italy has made.
There is surely a moral to this story of a buried crater. How many other natural wonders are buried in our individual consciousnesses by our prejudice against the unusual? Rather we should be alert to the significance of anomalies, and search out their causes. Open-mindedness is preferrable to blind dogmatism.
Tim Chowns
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A volcano is a mountain which blows it's top and ends up making an ash of itself!
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Dr. Sandra Wyld joined the staff at UGA in September of 1996. Sandra is a structural geologist. Her undergraduate studies were done at the University of Illinois. Her graduate work was done in California with a Masters from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Sandra's graduate work focused on the structural and tectonic evolution of volcanic arc and.marginal basin assemblages in the western U.S. Cordillera. For her master's research, she worked.on deformed Jurassic ophiolite and flysch sequence in the Klamath Mountains of northern.California, which she interpreted to reflect intra-arc rifting followed by marginal basin collapse in.response to changes in plate motion. For her doctoral research, she moved into the Black Rock. Desert region of northwestern Nevada, where she worked on magmatic arc assemblages constructed on the continental margin in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic. Her goals were to determine how plate margin tectonism was recorded in the structure and stratigraphic architecture of the arc, how deformation is accommodated at different structural levels in an intra-arc.environment, and how plutonism influences deformation and metamorphism in a magmatically-active setting. More recent studies are concentrating on the back-arc region further east and seek to integrate relations from the cordilleran plate margin to craton. In 1991, she had a temporary position as Visiting Assistant Professor and Research Associate in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Houston, Texas. Then she moved to Rice University in Houston, where she was a Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Geology and Geophysics from 1992-1996. During this time, she continued her research on the Mesozoic structural geology of northwest Nevada and the tectonics of the Cordillera, expanding her studies down into the Pine Nut Range near Reno and spending many summers camped out in the desert escaping from the humidity of Houston. She also participated in a project in far-east Arctic Russia, working on the evolution on the Cretaceous Okhostk-Chukotsk volcanic belt near Providenya. At UGA, she has been busy this year setting up facilities to carry out her research here. She is currently teaching introductory physical geology and will soon be teaching courses in structural.geology, continental tectonics and regional geology of North America. She continues her.research in Nevada, with an ongoing project on the deformational evolution of the Mesozoic fold-and-thrust-belt in the central part of the state. She is also excited about being in the midst of one of the most famous orogenic belts in the world, the
Appalachian mountain system, and is looking forward to exploring the geology of this fascinating area. It will take her awhile to get used to all the vegetation though - she's used to working in areas with practically none!
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On September 10, 1997 the Georgia Board of Regents gave approval for Valdosta State University to offer a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Environmental Geography. This new major has a built in minor in geology and explores interactions between people and the environment through.courses in physical geography, cultural geography, geographic information systems, and planning. Student interest in the new program is strong: introductory sequences in physical geography and geology are over-subscribed; 26 students have declared environmental geography as their major; and enrollment in some junior level classes exceeds 50 students.
The four geography and two geology faculty members involved in this new major are also active in research. James A. Hyatt is a physical.geographer/geomorphologist with research interests in the Canadian Arctic, as well as the hydrogeomorpholgy of south Georgia. Peter M. Jacobs, a physical geographer and soil scientist, will be leaving Valdosta to join the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater at the end of the current academic year. A replacement position is currently being advertised seeking a physical geographer with expertise in climatology, biogeography, or hydrology, and the ability to teach soil science. Charlie Lieble teaches cultural geography and has ongoing research interests in the culture and.physiography of Appalachia. Newcomer Larry McGlinn applies his expertise in Geographic Information Systems to the inter-state transport of toxic wastes as well as the analysis of immigration patterns. Geologist Jeffrey H. Tepper is a petrologist with ongoing research examining the geochemistry of Cascade granitic plutons, as well as the trace element geochemistry of lake sediments.near Valdosta. Edward Chatelain is a paleontologist with research interests in gastrolith production, as well as new work examining the sensitivity of west-coast alpine glaciers to climate change.Drew Hyatt
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As the Geology Department at the State University of West Georgia enters its 30th year, we are going through a number of changes, but most are very positive. Revising the curriculum, revamping courses, fighting for a spot in the new Core, and preparing for the transition to the semester system has kept us occupied as the process has for all departments in the University System. We are very proud that the Department and its faculty have been recognized for their excellence in teaching in 1996. Tim Chowns is the UWG nominee for the Regents' Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Department is UWG nominee for a similar system-wide award at the departmental level. Johnny Waters was selected as the first Regents' Distinguished Professor from UWG. So we have swept all three awards for teaching excellence given at UWG this year.
This year was a tremendous year for the department in terms of long-needed building renovation and equipment upgrades. The Callaway Building served as the renovation poster child during the legislative update on campus last year, and after 36 years of service, funds were allocated to revamp the third floor labs. We hope you will visit the department during our open house at the upcoming meeting of the Georgia Academy of Science, when you will be able to see the "before renovation" state of the labs. Next Fall, we will offer the "after renovation" open house viewing of the labs. Hopefully this will be your last chance to see our locally famous fume-hood-vented-out-a-window, which has been the star of several renovation presentations! Plans for renovating the geochemistry and ICP labs are well under way, with demolition and construction slated to be completed by the beginning of Fall Quarter. When completed, the labs will feature new fume hoods, new casework, plus a laminar flow hood and stable isotope extraction line. The total construction budget including HVAC and lab renovation exceeds $400,000 plus additional funds that will be spent adding an elevator and remodelled bathrooms for ADA compliance. Among the major pieces of new equipment appearing this year is a new x-ray diffractometor which will be in operation by the time the Academy meets, and two new research-grade microscopes. Using funds from Waters' Distinguished Professorship, we have equipped one of our lecture rooms with an LCD projection system and Bose surround-sound speaker system. The sound effects from Jurassic Park come across very well! New student microscopes, computers, printers, and GPS receivers are among the new gizmos appearing this year. To put this in perspective, I think we received more equipment and renovation money this year than we have in the previous 21 years that I have been on the faculty.
The three new faculty members that we hired two years ago, Randy Kath, Dave Bush, and Jim Mayer, have already made a major impact on the department in teaching and research. In addition, we have hired another new faculty member this year. Dr. Julie Bartley (BA, Bryn Mawr, MS & Ph.D., UCLA) will join us in the Fall. Julie is a sedimentologist/stable isotope geochemist who is currently completing a two year post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard. We are looking forward to Julie's arrival, and are constructing the isotope extraction line in geochemistry for her use. We are also looking for a GIS person to replace Bob Hickey who left for Australia in January. We hope to have this search completed by the time you arrive for Georgia Academy.
We have been very active on the research front. Dave Bush and colleagues have published three books on "Living by the Rules of the Sea" at the Duke University Press. Dave has received major funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency again, and has been awarded more than $170,000 in grants since coming to West Georgia. Randy Kath and Tim Chowns did yeoman's work on the GGS fieldtrip to Cartersville in the Fall. Randy and Jim Mayer (along with Tom Crawford - retired but not forgotten) are in the initial phase of establishing a crystalline rock hydrogeology research and teaching station on the UWG campus I am awaiting the publication of my first monograph on the Late Devonian echinoderms from northwestern China which should be out this month, and preparing for another field season in the Gobi in May. For those of you who travel to Carrollton for the Georgia Academy of Science meeting, we welcome you to our open house. Best Wishes, Johnny Waters
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The main predator of our our time here is dealing with the technicalities of semester conversion. While most state institutions were doing this we were looking for a president, and now we're way behind the game. Now it's a Division Chair and a V.P. for Academic Affairs we're lacking. Nevertheless, we're all finding time to do some research as well.
Phil Manker continues to chair the department. He's also the principal investigator on a project funded by the US Wildlife and Fisheries to provide sea surface temperature maps of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The maps are used to monitor environmental changes and to provide baseline imagery for the Everglades Rehabilitation Project. The Remote Sensing and Satellite Imagery Facility he set up with a NASA grant a few years ago is thus still keeping him busy. Phil has also been serving as co-investigator on a NASA grant to develop an X-ray diffractometer for a mars lander.
I have been writing up old research results and dreaming about new ones. I was asked to submit a manuscript on the systematics of echinoids in the Salt Mountain Limestone (Paleocene) of southwest Alabama to a dedicated volume of Tulane Studies in Geology and Paleontology. It is now finished, and will appear in the penultimate number of that journal. I've also just finished and submitted a manuscript for the Paleontological Society's annual short course to be held in Salt Lake city at the annual G.S.A. meeting in October. Johnny Waters and Chris Maples ( presently and formerly of West Georgia, respectively) are chairing this year's course on echinoderms. That done, I'm now revising a paper on the comparative diversity of Cenozoic echinoids and molluscs that should have been finished two or three years ago. In my spare time I'm plotting a trip to the type Upper Eocene outcrops at Priabona near Verona.
Tom Weiland has been building a departmental GIS/GPS lab and learning how to make alien machines talk to each other. He has had a flock of students digitizing data ranging from structural geology (near Birmingham) to water quality in the vicinity of the abandoned Sumter County Landfill (including, gulp, sampling MY well water). Fortunately he's described "vicinity" in a very loose sense. He's presently reviving our dormant Field Methods class, with emphasis on both classical techniques (tape measure and plane table) and medern ones (GPS/GIS)
Dan Askren led the department's student's on a tour of the desert southwest last year, and he and I will be running them up the western Appalachians and down the eastern this summer. Dan has been kept busy with the occasional big pile of XRF analyses for the local clay and alumina company; a job he shares with Tom Weiland.
Michael Pangia is off at Georgia Tech for two quarters on a visiting professorship. He teaches one course per quarter and spends most of his remaining time learning from Tim Long how to upgrade our seismic station to a digital system, and maintain it. The intro. students are already missing the big rolling drums and jiggling pens, and I don't know how to break it to them that they may be gone for good.
Bill Anderson spent last summer travelling. He included a long trip to China to do some lecturing and experiments. He went to the AGU meeting in the Fall to present the results of that experimental work. He has received a second NASA grant supporting the "Stardust Mission", a project to develop a way to use aerogel (a highly rarified sort of quartz jello) for capturing micrometeorites. Bill has also instigated a faculty seminar series here, so don't be surprised if he calls you.
Frank Jones is back part time, but as the director of institutional research, not faculty.
Bud Cofer is still consulting for the college on an environmental matter, and writing up results for the Lake Blackshear research he stays involved in.
Dan Arden was on last year's field trip, but we haven't heard from him since. We're assuming that no news is good news.
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If there have been any changes in your address please send the following information to:
Tim Chowns, Department of Geology, State University of West Georgia , Carrollton, GA 30118.
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Have you paid your dues for 1996-97? $5.00__________________________________