GEOSCIENCES DEPARTMENT

By the end of fall 2000, contractors had completed the renovation of the old Clark Hall library and the map room, allowing Geosciences faculty and students to begin to use several “new” rooms. Books, periodicals and maps moved to Schow Science Library, and rock and mineral collections found new homes throughout the building. With the addition of a computer projector (summer 2001), the old library will have been completely transformed into a reading room and a modern laboratory/seminar room. Markes Johnson, freed from his duties as Departmental Chairman, returned to full-time teaching and research, and David Dethier took over as Chairman in July 2000. Bud Wobus and Rónadh Cox, both on leave for the fall semester, returned to teaching full time in the spring semester as Paul Karabinos went on leave. During the next two years, the department will be at full strength.

Six seniors finished field studies by the end of summer 2000 and began their school year work as thesis students. Alan Baldivieso ’01 worked with David DeSimone on well-log compilation and mapping aspects for a hydrogeology project in the Arlington, Vermont, 7.5' quadrangle. Carissa Carter ’01 and Marlene Duffy ’01 worked with David Dethier and David DeSimone, respectively, on glacial geology research as part of a Keck project at the Mendenhall Glacier, near Juneau, Alaska. Steve DeOreo ’01 (and Carla Chokel ’00) did field studies under the supervision of Rónadh Cox on a project involving dating and structural studies of Proterozoic rocks in central Madagascar. Anne Hereford ’01 studied the development of jointing at the City of Rocks National Monument, southern Idaho, with Paul Karabinos as part of a Keck project. Will Ouimet ’01 studied sediment transport and storage in the Birch Brook catchment, Hopkins Memorial Forest, under the supervision of David Dethier.

During Winter Study Period, Markes Johnson and David Backus took Williams students on an extended geologic field trip to Baja California and David DeSimone managed a Winter Study course that studied and traveled to the Adirondacks, climbing several of the High Peaks. David was assisted by Will Morgan ’96.

Three faculty members (Cox, Dethier, and Karabinos) gave papers at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Reno, Nevada, in early November 2000. At least ten Williams alumni also presented results of their research at the conference. Mid-December saw another dozen alumni present their research at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California, where Professor Wobus acted as the Williams host and organizer for West Coast geology alums. The spring term was a busy time for the department as faculty and students presented their research results at the March Northeastern Sectional Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Burlington, Vermont, and at the 14th annual Keck Research Symposium in Geology held in early April at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Paul Karabinos gave two talks at the Burlington meeting and Alan Baldivieso, Carissa Carter, Marlene Duffy, Kristen Lee, and Will Ouimet gave poster presentations with their faculty advisors. Paul Karabinos and David DeSimone traveled with Sarah Barger ’02, Carissa Carter, Marlene Duffy, and Anne Hereford, who gave presentations at the Keck Symposium. Student participation in the various meetings was partially supported by the McAleenan and Labaree funds in the Geosciences Department and by the Keck Geology Consortium.

Over Commencement weekend, Carissa Carter ’01, Steve DeOreo ’01, and Will Ouimet ’01 were inducted into Sigma Xi, the national scientific research society. Will Ouimet also received the Scholar/Athlete award at Commencement. Kristen Lee ’01 was named as an “Outstanding Teaching Assistant” by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the first time a Williams student has ever won this award. Steve DeOreo ’01 will begin graduate studies in the fall at the University of California, Santa Barbara, joining Martin Wong ’99.

Nathan Cardoos’02 will accompany Bud Wobus to Vinalhaven Island, Maine, to work on a Keck project studying the Paleozoic volcanic rocks exposed on the island’s rocky shores. In addition, Nick Nelson ’03 will do field work with Rónadh Cox in Madagascar and Matt Jungers ’03 is studying the fluvial geomorphology of streams in Hopkins Memorial Forest under the sponsorship of the Center for Environmental Studies. Karl Remsen ’03 will participate in an NSF-sponsored REU program on lacustrine environments at the University of Minnesota over the summer.

Research Scientist Gudveig Baarli organized a poster on the “Silurian Stratigraphy and Paleogeography of Baltica” for presentation at the Third International Symposium on the Silurian System held July 13-15, 2000, in Orange, New South Wales, Australia. The text and maps from this project have been submitted for publication in a future volume on Silurian correlation and paleogeography in the New York State Museum Bulletin. She also participated in a post-conference workshop on carbonate buildups offered July 21-25 at the marine labs of the University of Queensland on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Gudveig taught a Winter Study course on dinosaurs, entitled Science of Jurassic Park in January 2001. Based on fieldwork conducted in 1999, Gudveig was a co-author on a paper published in the February 2001 issue of the Chinese Science Bulletin on the discovery of a Silurian island in Inner Mongolia. During the spring, Gudveig was elected to Corresponding Membership in the Subcommission on Silurian Stratigraphy (under the International Union of Geological Sciences). May 31-June 3, 2001, she attended the International Conference on Paleobiogeography and Paleoecology held in Piacenza, Italy.

Rónadh Cox spent late summer 2000 doing fieldwork with students in Madagascar. Steve DeOreo ’01 collected samples and data for his senior thesis, and Carla Chokel ’00, who had just completed a thesis with Rónadh and graduated in June, came as a field assistant. The field season consisted of a one-month traverse through a roadless area, looking at highly deformed Proterozoic metasediments. The group included 18 porters. Normally on this kind of trip, loads get lighter as food gets eaten—but we substituted rock samples for the consumed food, so there was no respite! The porters were wonderful, and we couldn’t have done the work without them.

Rónadh was on leave in the fall of 2000, during which time she wrote up results from the 1998 Arizona Keck project, which have been submitted to GSA Bulletin. She gave a talk at Reno GSA on the Madagascar work, with Carla Chokel ’00 as a co-author, and also spent a week at Stanford University gathering U-Pb ages from metamorphic and detrital zircon in quartzites collected during the summer field season.

Rónadh returned to teaching in January 2001 after an 18-month hiatus (academic and maternity leaves). She found it fun being back in the classroom again. Spring semester was busy but enjoyable, and as the weather finally warmed, our thoughts and feet moved to the out-of-doors. The Oceanography class (all 60 students!) was hosted by the Williams Mystic Program for an all-day fieldtrip on the beaches and marshes of southern Connecticut and Rhode Island, a new and very successful addition to the syllabus. Early attempts to do fieldwork with the Sedimentation class were frustrated by massive snowfalls, but we did manage to spend the last five labs outside.

Steve DeOreo ’01 has just graduated, having completed his thesis, and Rónadh’s student lab is sadly empty, but not for long. This summer Rónadh will host a Malagasy student, Tsilavo Raharimahefa, from the Université d’Antananarivo. He will spend the month of July at Williams, working on a remote-sensing project.

In August, the Gondwana Field Group 2001 – Rónadh, Tsilavo, and Nicholas Nelson ’03 – will spend a month in Madagascar, again funded by the National Science Foundation. This year they will be going to an entirely new area in the far north of the island, which should be exciting. Information about this and other ongoing projects (including the Owen Project!) can be found on Rónadh’s home page at http://madmonster.williams.edu/rcox.html

Dave DeSimone was full time for the 2000-2001 year and assumed more teaching responsibilities during the fall. In addition to co-teaching GEOS 103 with David Dethier, he brought back a thoroughly revised version of GEOS 200, Weather & Climate. The 42 students enrolled were a happy group of winter-loving folks and sharing this passion made for a most satisfying class. Extensive use of Internet resources for almost daily analyses of the weather maps and incorporating online data and graphics to discuss ozone depletion, acid deposition, El Niño, and the Arctic Oscillation enabled Dave to share the most current information on these varied climatic issues. We dealt with difficult and complex issues in the workings of our climate system, but it is a complex climate system that we need to understand if we are to understand our own impacts upon it. Dave was happy to simplify the presentation of the climate system’s dynamics in a way the class could grasp and appreciate.

During January 2001, Dave DeSimone and Willard Morgan (’96) again taught The Winter Landscape. This has been an interesting blend of geoscience, ecology, and cultural history presented largely in an outdoor setting while snowshoeing locally and in the Adirondack Mountains. It is an unusual experience to talk about such varied topics while teaching snowshoeing and cramponing techniques during an ascent of an Adirondack peak in winter. The look of awe and personal achievement on the faces of the students when they have summitted a modest peak for the first time in winter has been worth every worry about twisted knees and broken ankles. Landforms of glacial and post-glacial origin, recent and historical rock/debris slides, and ecological succession in fire ravaged, logged and uncut areas were topics of discussion around the ADK Loj fireplace at the end of the day. Dave and Will will offer this course again in 2002.

Professionally, DeSimone continues his consulting activities and has again contracted with the State of Vermont to prepare surficial geologic and hydrogeologic maps of the Arlington 1:24000 quadrangles during 2000-2001. There were sufficient funds to hire Alan Baldivieso (’01) to assist in the project. Alan turned his efforts into an honor’s thesis, “Applied Hydrogeology: Protecting the Groundwater Resources of the Arlington Quadrangle, VT.”

DeSimone visited Marlene Duffy (’01) on a Keck glacial project during July 2000 in Juneau, Alaska. Marlene’s thesis looked at the microscale and macroscale impacts of a large rock rib on the bed of the Mendenhall Glacier. Marlene presented the results of her work at the Keck Symposium held at the Goddard Spaceflight Center, a meeting attended by DeSimone.

Both students joined Dave at the spring meeting of the Geological Society of America’s Northeastern Section in Burlington, Vermont. DeSimone co-authored abstracts with each student and the students presented the results of our efforts during poster sessions.

David Dethier became chair of the Geosciences Department on 1 July 2000. He continued his U.S. Geological Survey-supported studies of late Cenozoic deposits along the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico. He analyzed Pleistocene fluvial incision rates across the western USA using the 640,000 year-old Lava Creek B volcanic ash bed and cosmogenic isotope techniques, in conjunction with Taylor Schildgen ’00 and Paul Bierman ’85 (University of Vermont). Dethier and his co-authors presented results of some of the cosmogenic work at the Geological Society of America National Meeting in Reno, Nevada, in November 2000.

Dethier worked near Juneau, Alaska, with Carissa Carter ’01 on her senior-thesis study of silt-rich coatings preserved on bedrock recently exposed by retreat of the Mendenhall Glacier. This work was part of a summer project sponsored by the Keck Geology Consortium. He also worked with Will Ouimet ’01, whose senior thesis analyzed sediment transport and storage in the Birch Brook catchment, Hopkins Memorial Forest. Carter, Ouimet, and Dethier presented results of the thesis studies at the Northeastern Sectional Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Burlington, Vermont, in March 2001; Carter also presented her thesis work at the Keck Geology Meeting at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland in April 2001.

Dethier continued his long-term studies in Hopkins Memorial Forest, helping to coordinate on-going collection of weather, streamflow, precipitation chemistry, and other environmental data from the Forest and their analysis in the Environmental Science Lab in the Morley Science Center.

Professor Markes Johnson attended the Third International Symposium on the Silurian System held July 13-15, 2000, in Orange, New South Wales, Australia, where he made a presentation entitled “Significance of a Paleoisland and Related Rocky Coastline from the Upper Silurian (Ludlow) of the Sino-Korean plate.” A manuscript was submitted for future publication in a volume of the Records of the Australian Museum. With Gudveig Baarli and son Erlend, he attended the post-conference workshop on carbonate buildups offered July 21-25 at the marine labs of the University of Queensland on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. The Australia trip was preceded by a visit to the North Island of New Zealand to initiate a project with a colleague from the Auckland Museum on Miocene rocky shorelines. November 1, Markes gave a departmental seminar on “Images of Rocky Shores from New Zealand and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.” During the January Winter Study Period, Markes was joined by David Backus in leading a field course for six Williams students to Baja California, Mexico. The group concentrated on mapping the geology of the El Mangle area near Loreto in Baja California Sur. On February 7, Markes gave a post-inaugural lecture titled “Walk Through Time” based on the Walk-Through-Time permanent exhibit in the science buildings on campus.

During the academic year, a research paper on coastal carbonate dunes in Baja California Sur was published with Patrick Russell ’97 in the Journal of Coastal Research. Markes was the senior author on a paper published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology with field partner Jorge Ledesma-Vázquez on Pliocene-Pleistocene rocky shorelines in the Concepcíon Bay area of Baja California Sur. Markes was also a major contributor to a paper published with Gudveig Baarli and several Chinese geologists on a Silurian island in Inner Mongolia in the Chinese Science Bulletin. The editor favored the authors with a full-page color photo of the field locality in Inner Mongolia on the front cover of the February 2001 issue. From May 31 through June 3, Markes attended the International Conference on Paleobiogeography and Paleoecology held in Piacenza, Italy, where he presented a paper under the title “Ancient Islands in the Stream: Island Paleoecology Reflects Regional Paleogeography.” Over the coarse of the academic year, Markes reviewed several grant proposals for the National Science Foundation and the Petroleum Research Fund (American Chemical Society). He also reviewed manuscripts for the Journal of Paleontology, Sedimentary Geology, and the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

During the summer of 2000, Paul Karabinos worked with Professor Kevin Pogue (Whitman College) and six students, including Anne Hereford ’01, in southeastern Idaho on a project entitled “Landscape Development in the City of Rocks National Reserve.” This research, supported by the Keck Foundation, was the basis for Anne Hereford’s senior thesis. Karabinos also continued his work in the Chester dome in southeastern Vermont to document low-angle normal faulting and extension during the Acadian orogeny. He was awarded a two-year $30,000 grant from the Petroleum Research Fund, administered by the American Chemical Society, to continue his research in Vermont.

Karabinos served the second of a three-year term on the Tectonics Panel of the Earth Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation. The panel assists the Tectonics Program Director in awarding approximately five million dollars in research grants twice a year. Karabinos was also elected to serve as vice-chair of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America.

Karabinos attended the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Reno, Nevada, in November 2000, where he presented a talk entitled “Tectonic Significance of Textural Unconformities in Garnet from the New England Appalachians.” He also attended the Northeastern Sectional Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Burlington, Vermont in March, 2001, where he presented two invited talks: “Acadian Extension in Western New England” and “Competing Models for the Origin of the Shelburne Falls and Bronson Hill Arcs, New England Appalachians.” In April 2001, he attended the Fourteenth Keck Research Symposium in Geology at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, where he was a co-author with Kevin Pogue on a talk entitled “Landscape Evolution in the City of Rocks National Reserve, Southern Idaho.” He also attended a workshop at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York, April 19-21, on Carbon in the Earth’s Crust and gave a presentation: “Fault-controlled Fluid Flow and Graphite Precipitation in the Taconic Thrust Belt, Western New England.” On May 10, he gave a talk at Syracuse University entitled “The Shelburne Falls Arc: the Lost Arc of the Taconic Orogeny.”

Prof. Reinhard A. (Bud) Wobus completed his 35th year of teaching at Williams – a year that began with hip-replacement surgery and a previously scheduled one-semester sabbatical in the fall. Activities the prior summer were necessarily curtailed due to the hip problem, but recovery was swift enough to allow attendance at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December, where he organized a reunion of (mostly) West Coast Williams alums. During the sabbatical, he completed two papers based on previous Keck Geology Consortium projects. One, entitled “Precambrian Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks in the Florissant Region, Central Colorado: Their Topographic Influence, Past and Present,” has recently been published as Bulletin No. 5 of the Pikes Peak Research Station. It will be available for visitors to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and to the Colorado Outdoor Education Center. The second, submitted to Rocky Mountain Geology, is “Geochemistry and Tectonic Setting of Paleoproterozoic Metavolcanic Rocks of the Southern Front Range, Lower Arkansas Canyon, and Northern Wet Mountains, Central Colorado”; co-authors are Martha Folley ’97, Kate Wearn ’98, and Prof. Jeff Noblett of Colorado College. In April, he was co-author with Rebecca Atkinson ’00 of a paper presented by Prof. Diane Smith of Trinity University at the Rocky Mountain Section meeting of the Geological Society of America in Albuquerque: “Geochemistry of Volcanic Units of the Bonanza Caldera, Central Colorado: Implications for Magma Sources and Vent Locations.” He also provided editorial assistance in the preparation for publication by the Maine Geological Survey of the geologic map and report on Vinalhaven and North Haven Islands in Penobscot Bay, Maine, by Olcott Gates, who passed away a year ago before his report could be published.

During the academic year, Prof. Wobus continued as campus representative for the Geological Society of America, relaying to students the news of GSA initiatives that have led to summer internships and jobs. He also continued as the Williams representative to the governing board of the Keck Geology Consortium (http://Keck.carleton.edu), a position he has held since the founding of the consortium in 1986. In mid-winter he served on the selection committee that chose 55 students from institutions nation-wide to participate in year-long Keck Consortium research projects that begin this summer.

During the summer, he will be co-director for a second year of a Keck-sponsored project on Vinalhaven Island in coastal Maine. Joining him will be Nathan Cardoos ’02, who will help to continue the research in this remarkable geologic locale which contains a shallow granitic magma chamber of late Silurian (?) age lying on its side, with the eruptive products from the pluton beautifully preserved at the north end of the island. One of his former students, Prof. Rachel Beane (Williams ’93) of Bowdoin College, will also participate in the project with one of her students. The seven Keck students will return to Williams for several days of sample preparation at the end of their month of fieldwork. In August, Prof. Wobus will be the faculty representative on a Williams alumni travel-study trip to the Galapagos. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the alumni travel-study program, which he initiated in 1981 with the first of seventeen (and counting) programs known as the Alumni College
of the Rockies in central Colorado. (See www.williams.edu/admin-depts/alumni/relations/travel.html).

Dr. William B.F. Ryan, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Sperry Lecture Series in Geosciences

“Using an Autonomous Robotic Vehicle to Image the Birth of the Ocean's Crust”
“The Catastrophic Flooding of the Black Sea: Any Resonance to the Story of Noah?”
Catherine Riihimaki ’00

“Sediment Transport and Subglacial Channel Development at the Bench Glacier, Chugach Range, Alaska”
Dr. Peter Birkeland, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
Class of 1960 Scholar

“Application of Soils to Geological Research”
Dr. Markes E. Johnson, Williams College

“Images of Rocky Shores from New Zealand and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia”
Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
Class of 1960 Scholar

“Paleoclimate Record from a ‘Deep Impact’ Crater in NE Siberia”
Dr. Daniel Muhs, U.S. Geological Survey
Class of 1960 Scholar

“Desertification on the Great Plains During the Holocene: The Record from Sand Dunes”
“The Last Interglacial Period in North America: Marine and Terrestrial Records of Global Warming”
Dr. Arthur N. Palmer ’62, State Univ. of New York-Oneonta
Class of 1960 Scholar

“Karst Science and Hydrogeology – Recent Developments and Career Opportunities”

Darius E. Mitchell ’01, Lauren Interess Fellow

“My Winter Study in Pakistan”
Alan P. Baldivieso ’01

“Applied Hydrogeology of the Arlington Quadrangle, VT”
Carissa L. Carter ’01

“Understanding Glacier Sliding from Subglacially Deposited Silt Skins”
Stephen B. DeOreo ’01

“Evidence for a New Neoproterozoic Metasedimentary Sequence in Central Madagascar”
Marlene F. Duffy ’01

“Deflection of Glacier Flow by a Bedrock Ridge”
Anne G. Hereford ’01

“Jointing in the City of Rocks Dome, Southern Albion Range, Idaho”
William B. Ouimet ’01

“Sediment Budgets and Stream Terraces: Reconstructing the Effects of Historic Land-Use Changes on Sediment Transport in the Birch Brook Catchment, Massachusetts”

Markes E. Johnson

“Significance of a Paleoisland and Related Rocky Coastline from the Upper Silurian (Ludlow) of the Sino-Korean Plate”
Third International Symposium on the Silurian System, Australia

“Ancient Islands in the Stream: Island Paleoecology Reflects Regional Paleogeography”
International Conference on Paleobiogeography and Paleoecology, Piacenza, Italy
Paul Karabinos

“Fault-controlled Fluid Flow and Graphite Precipitation in the Taconic Thrust Belt, Western New England”
American Museum of Natural History, New York

“The Shelburne Falls Arc: The Lost Arc of the Taconic Orogeny”
Syracuse University