Fall 2015

Heels on EarthAlumni Newsletter

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Department of Geological Sciences

Heels on Earth

Cover photo: Global dataset of river widths derived from Landsat satellite imagery, including more than 58M observations. Produced by George Allen and Tamlin Pavelsky.This page: GEOL 434 Carbonate Sedimentology Fall 2014 class field trip looking at modern and Quaternary deposits of the South Florida platform led by Joel Hudley.

Heels on Earth

As the sum-mer heat lifts, all Tar

Heel eyes peer for-ward to the coming year, full of anticipa-tion and excitement. The autumn colors will dazzle us with

displays of red, orange and yellow, and Carolina Blue skies will usher in the crisp fall winds. Soon the halls will be flooded with students working in labs, ferociously taking notes, learning the ropes and gathering their wits. As sum-mer slides once again into another beautiful Carolina Sep-tember, Geological Sciences gears up to stimulate curious minds and challenge youthful earth scientists. Course field trips have been scoped out, labs restocked, and comput-ers are humming with questions and answers to our most pressing environmental and geological issues.

Geological Sciences continues to lead in undergraduate research opportunities at UNC. Our undergraduate majors are often engaged in geologic investigation from the time they enter Mitchell Hall, providing them with exciting, hands-on experience in the field and laboratory. How we look upon those early days of exciting field work, explora-tion, and problem solving with envy!

Mitchell Hall continues to receive facelift improvements as older, fallow space is incorporated into teaching, re-search and meeting space. We encourage alumni to visit and join us in celebrating the traditions of camaraderie in Geological Sciences. Take a walk down memory lane and reminisce on the struggles and wonders of student life in Chapel Hill.

This year we welcome a new faculty member into our ranks, Assistant Prof. Xiaoming Liu, specializing in geo-chemistry. Read further to learn about her innovative approach to investigating isotopic studies of lithium. It is always exciting to expand into new, pioneering areas of investigation. Students and faculty are responding with enthusiasm, finding new connections and exploring novel paths previously untapped.

We applaud our recent graduates, at the BA, BS, MS and PhD levels. They are heading out to excellent positions in industry and academia, carrying on the Tar Heel reputa-tion for excellence. Please join us here and read about your friends and fellow Tar Heels.

FacultyLouis R. Bartek IIIsedimentology, stratigraphy, marine geologyLarry K. Benningerlow-temperature geochemistryJoseph G. Cartermolluscan paleobiologyDrew S. Colemanisotope geochemistry, geochronologyAllen F. Glaznerigneous petrology, tectonics, geoinformaticsJonathan M. Leesseismology, geophysical inverse theory, volcanologyXiaoming LiugeochemistryLaura J. Moorecoastal processes, geomorphologyTamlin M. Pavelskyglobal hydrologyJosé A. Rialgeophysics, climatologyKevin G. Stewartstructural geologyDonna Surgepaleoclimatology, paleoecology

Post-Docs & ResearchersC. Berk BiryolseismologyEvan Goldsteincoastal processes, geomorphologyChristine Lionglobal hydrology, remote sensingRyan Millsigneous petrology, isotope geochemistryMike Willisglaciology, geodesy, remote sensing

LecturersJoel HudleypaleoclimatologyMelissa Hudleygeoscience education

Faculty EmeritiPaul D. FullagarA. Conrad NeumannJoseph St. JeanDaniel A. Textoris

From the ChairTh

e Departm

ent of Geological Sciences

2

Heels on Earth

Honors & Awards

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Madelyn PercyPedogenesis in the Tropics: The Galápagos as a

Natural Laboratory

Geological Society of AmericaJohn A. Black Award

Ryan Frazer

Seismological Society of AmericaStudent Presentation Award

Daniel Bowman

Young Coastal Scientists MeetingBest Presentation Award

Margaret Jones

Roy Ingram & Anadarko Research Awards

George AllenMaggie Ellis

Anadarko First-Year Graduate Presentation Awards

Lauren GranieroJonathan Munnikhuis

Madelyn Percy

Anadarko Graduate Oral Presentation Awards

Maggie EllisGeorge AllenLaura Rogers

Anadarko Graduate

Poster Presentation Awards

Ryan FrazerAbhash KumarSean Gaynor

J. Robert Butler Scholarship Fund

Jesse Hill

Walter H. Wheeler Teaching Awards

Sanja Knezevic AntonijevicSeth Brazell

Graduate Awards

3

Heels on Earth

Anadarko Undergraduate Presentation Awards

Sarah CooleyJordan Bishop

Sarah Hinshaw

Anadarko Field Camp Scholarship

Matt McClanahan

Roy Ingram Geology Field Camp Scholarship

Sky Jones

Grover E Murray Fund

Amanda SutterColey Smith

Op White & Anadarko Award

Sarah Cooley

Tarr Award Sigma Gamma Epsilon

Sarah Hinshaw

Mims Research Fellowship

Chris Doorn

Pignatiello Research Fellowship

Kyle Bullins

Honors & AwardsUndergraduate Awards

Post-Doctoral AwardsPost-Doctoral Scholar Award for

Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduates

Evan Goldstein

Faculty AwardsWalter H. Wheeler Faculty Teaching Award

Melissa Hudley

4

Heels on Earth

Recent GraduatesBS Class of 2014

John Barefoot

BA/BS Class of 2015Kathleen CannyGleb Chupakhin

Sarah CooleyAaron Gross

Sarah HinshawAubrey Knickerbocker

Ronald Lipscomb

Matthew McClanahanJames Mize

William RudisillAnn ShieldsAaron Smith

Catherine Wesoloski

MS Class of 2015James Bridgeman

Janelle BauerTheo Jass

Laura Rogers

PhD Class of 2015Maggie Ellis

Abhash Kumar

Newly hooded PhDs, Drs. Maggie Ellis (left) and Laura Neser (right), with their ad-visor, Dr. Kevin Stewart.

5

Heels on Earth

New FacultyXiaoming LiuAssistant ProfessorPhD 2013, University of MarylandTrace Metal & Isotopic Geochemistry

I am very delighted and honored to join the faculty in the Department of Geological Sciences at UNC as an Assistant Professor. I specialize in trace metal (and

their isotopes) geochemistry. I have just arrived at Chapel Hill in July of 2015 from my previous post-doctoral posi-tion at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Wash-ington DC.

I was born and raised in a small beach town in eastern China, and I was always fascinated about the natural en-vironments in my hometown. There are various beaches, mountains, and rivers that I enjoyed playing in as a child. As a teenager, I enjoyed reading science books while do-ing lots of outdoor activities. I enjoyed all science class-es, including physics, chemistry, and biology during my high school years. During that time, I read a book called Interesting Geochemistry, which describes how elements move from the interior of the Earth to Earth’s surface and recycling back. What was more intriguing to me about this book was that the author described how a geochem-ist works: they go to the field collecting samples and back to the laboratories to analyze the chemical composition of rock, soil, and water samples. This made me set my heart on studying Geology when I decided to go to col-lege because it combines my interests in natural sciences and outdoor adventures. I got into the best university in China that specialized in Geology – China University of Geosciences (CUGB). After two years at CUGB, I joined the “2+2” program between CUGB and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. I spent the rest of my col-lege time at Waterloo, where I decided to apply to graduate schools in the United States to prepare myself to be a pro-fessional scientist.

During my time as a graduate student at the Univer-sity of Maryland, I developed an interest in investigating modern chemical weathering using “non-traditional” sta-ble isotopes. I enjoyed fieldwork, analytical geochemistry, and modeling approaches on outcrop weathering profiles that developed on Columbia River Basalts (CRBs), and river and groundwater chemistry of catchments that drain through only these basalts. Constructing mass balance geochemical models allowed me to quantify the chemical changes accompanying basalt (juvenile continental ma-terial) weathering using major and trace elements, min-eralogy, and lithium and magnesium isotopes as well as radiogenic isotopes. For my post-doctoral research at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, I became interested in the redox evolution of the atmosphere and ocean. So, I developed new geochemical proxies in well-characterized marine carbonate rocks to quantitatively constrain atmo-spheric O2 over the past 3.5 billion years. The secular evo-lution of atmospheric O2 is tightly related to the evolution of the biosphere.

I feel very fortunate to be working with excellent un-dergraduate and graduate students at UNC and joining a group of fabulous faculty and staff at the Department of Geological Sciences. I look forward to teaching both grad-uate seminars and undergraduate classes on isotope geo-chemistry, aqueous geochemistry, and introductory geolo-gy classes. I am very excited to build a dynamic program in teaching and research at UNC.

Faculty NewsLarry Benninger

My plans took an unexpected turn at the end of 2014. Ben Mirus surprised all of us by departing to take a job with the USGS. With Ben on the way out, Madelyn Per-cy (one of Ben’s PhD students) and I agreed that we could work together on soil. She is interested in pedogenesis, the formation and evolution of soil. I am familiar with some aspects of this, but I have a lot of learning to do – always an agreeable situation!

Madelyn had expected to base her dissertation in the Galápagos Islands, and she spent an inaugural field season

there this summer. This fall we’ll review what she has done and work together to develop a dissertation proposal. Not only is the proposal required internally by next April, but we intend to use it as the basis for an external proposal to support Madelyn’s work. Whether Madelyn will work exclusively in the Galápagos is unclear. We have planned some preliminary work at local sites for this fall. Besides the obvious advantage of being able to drive to the field area on short notice, North Carolina dirt does not attract the suspicious attention of the US Department of Agricul-ture.

6

Heels on Earth

Genevieve Allan (undergraduate) is starting her third year of working on the stream sediment samples that we collected for gamma spectrometry. This fall we’ll work on additional mineral separation so we can try to identify the phases that carry elevated uranium, thorium, and rare earth elements. This effort will be aided by the fact that we’re both taking (not for credit in my case!) Allen Glaz-ner’s course in Geological Research Techniques.

In collaboration with Andreas Teske (Marine Sciences) I’m starting a project in the Guaymas Basin of the Gulf of California. The long-term goal of Andreas and his usual collaborators is to lure the Integrated Ocean Drilling Pro-gram (IODP) into the Guaymas Basin. Last fall they col-lected a suite of short (meters) sediment cores. German colleagues analyzed sediment pore waters, discovering very high barium in some of them. Where barium is high, radium may be high also, and that’s what I’m looking for.

To conclude with my annual plea, I am still very inter-ested in receiving samples (cuttings, rocks) from logged wells. It could be instructive to compare lab gamma spec-trometry results with those obtained from downhole gam-ma-logging. For this purpose, of course, I don’t need to know where the well is located. And I will gladly share our data with the donor.

Drew S. ColemanThe UNC Isotope Geochemistry lab (geochem.unc.

edu) is chugging along and very active. We needed to step

up our productivity this year in order to keep both mass specs fully sated. I am not sure if we are quite there yet – the Phoenix is young and has a lot of room for growth. This week, we are mourning the loss of our Unitek 1-016-04 Weldmatic that faithfully provided the lab with filaments for more than 45 years. Those of you who worked in the lab will remember the Weldmatic fondly, I am sure.

In order to keep both specs happy, the lab staff continues to grow. Emeritus Professor Paul Fullagar is still a regu-lar worker in the lab. Dr. Ryan Mills is handling a lot of the daily operations and manages all of the staff. Graduate students Tom Chapman (MS), Ryan Frazer (PhD), Sean Gaynor (PhD) and Connor Lawrence (PhD) are keeping more of the detailed work in the labs under control. All four are blasting through zircon for one reason or another, so the Pb lab is a consistently busy place. As usual we are supported by a large group of undergraduate students in-cluding Erik Bolling, Kyle Bullins, Phoebe Castelblanco, Ashley Cocciadiferro, Ethan Dinwiddie, Alex Kintner, Shannon Moyer, Emma Rosenthal, Lauren Scott, Navina Venugopal, and Aleah Walsh.

Research in the lab involves everyone from Paul on down. Paul continues his collaboration with the archaeol-ogists at Wisconsin, studying human migration patterns. Ryan Mills is still tinkering in the Aetna caldera (CO) do-ing some dating of the “resurgent” pluton that appears to have been assembled before and after the caldera-forming eruption, but is curiously quiet during the eruption. Ryan

Image from a camera on board a prototype solar-powered hot air balloon launched by PhD students Danny Bowman and Xiao Yang. The photo was taken at an altitude of 72,000 ft above Chatham County, North Carolina, on May 29, 2015.

7

Heels on Earth

is working closely with all of the graduate and undergrad-uate students in developing and completing their research as well. Tom is focusing on the geochemistry of partially melted amphibolites. Ryan Frazer is pushing new tech-niques to date zircon and obtain high-precision Nd iso-topes on the same grains. His GSA proposal on this earned him the inaugural John A. Black Award from the Society. Sean, collaborating with former student Josh Rosera, sub-mitted his first paper on the Questa caldera. The contribu-tion focuses on time-space development of the ore system. At the most recent lab meeting, Connor flooded us with new geochronologic data from the Thompson Creek mine – he is ready to write his first paper as well.

Undergraduates in the lab are working on an eclectic array of projects ranging from hard rock, to soft rock, to no rock. Four of those projects received external support over the past year. Amanda Sutter (BS 2015) had research into the source of the Castle Rock and Ogallala Formations (CO) using detrital zircon geochronology supported by the Davis Fund (a gift from Jesse Davis, PhD 2010). Oth-er students earned summer funding including two IDEA (Increasing Diversity and Enhancing Academia) grants (Emma and Phoebe) and a SURF (Summer Undergradu-ate Research Fellowship) award (Kyle). Phoebe’s research on the sources of waters in Croatan National Forest was extended to an academic year IDEA award. Kyle’s research on geochemically linking feeder dikes to supereruption ig-nimbrites earned him the Pignatiello Fellowship (support-ed by a gift from Dan Pignatiello, BS 2004). It is a real pleasure to work with such an energetic, thoughtful and creative group!

Allen F. GlaznerHighlights of the past year include, as usual, travel and

field work. I spent a week in California in September doing field work and brought Mary along. She used to field-assist for me a lot, and we had a great time and beautiful weath-er. In February I made a quick trip to Death Valley to be filmed for the NHK Great Nature series—their equivalent of PBS programs such as Nature. I made some new friends and we agreed that Mt. Fuji is a must-see. In April I attend-ed the State of the Arc Meeting in Montserrat and got to see an island devastated by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and then pounded by eruptions from Soufrière Hills volcano starting in 1995. That was an eye-opener; about 90% of the population left after the disasters, and the island is far from recovered. Mary and I made a non-geological trip to Italy in May, and attended Roger Putnam’s wedding in Califor-nia in July, seeing current and former students Ryan Fraz-er, George Allen, Adam Curry, and Maggie Ellis there.

Jonathan M. LeesThe volcano seismo-acoustics group has grown this

year – we are working on volcanoes in Chile, Galapagos,

Japan, as well as the upper stratosphere. We had a large scale field operation this last January where we installed 26 broad-band and 40 short-period seismic instruments on Llaima Volcano, Chile. The expedition involved grad-uate students and undergrads from UNC, as well as alum-ni (Jake Anderson, BS 2009, now at Boise State). A short and fun documentary was produced by Mary-Lide Parker of the UNC Office of Research Communications and can be seen at: http://www.unc.edu/spotlight/to-the-heart-of-the-earth. In the field we had collaborations with research-ers from Boise State University, Michigan State University and Georgia State University. The effort in Chile was part of an on going research project called VolcanoSRI, where we are developing and applying new technologies to vol-cano monitoring. To this end, we have started a new proj-ect to investigate the atmosphere with our infrasound mi-crophones. UNC PhD student Danny Bowman has now launched a suite of UNC instruments for the second time to elevations of 35 km – that’s in the stratosphere! We re-corded incredible signals, the first time this has been done with modern digital instrumentation. We have collaborat-ed with electrical engineers from NC State to improve the fidelity of our recordings and have found the connection across UNC campuses very fulfilling. We continue to work on volcano magma imaging, exposing the inner workings of Sierra Negra volcano in the Galapagos via tomographic inversion (MS student Rebecca Rodd). Our work in seis-mo-acoustics is taking a new turn this year with a new ini-tiative directed at analysis of the infrasound signature of raging flood waters in western North Carolina. New MS student Tim Ronan braved the wild storms related to Hur-ricane Joaquin to explore the pounding rapids in Linville Gorge.

Laura MooreThis summer the Coastal Environmental Change Lab

(CECL) congratulated (now former!) MS students Laura Rogers and Theo Jass on the completion of their degrees and submission of their theses for journal publication (An-thropogenic controls on overwash deposition: Evidence and consequences and Environmental controls on the growth of dune-building grasses along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic coast-line, respectively). Postdoctoral Associate Evan Goldstein, PhD student Elsemarie deVries and MS student Margaret Jones continue their studies as members of CECL assisted by UNC-CH undergraduate Francesca Peay and under-graduate Sara Hahne of Wheaton College (who is con-tinuing to work with data she assisted in collecting as an undergraduate research assistant this past summer). Else-marie and Sara spent the summer at a research station on the Virginia coast to oversee our ongoing field experiment (funded by the Geomorphology and Land-use Dynamics Program at NSF). Our goal is to better understand how feedbacks between the physical processes and process-

8

Heels on Earth

es involved in dune building affect the response of barri-er islands to climate change. Adding to our experiment, Elsemarie installed groundwater wells to test hypotheses arising out of Theo’s work and Evan has been integrating data from the first two years of our experiment into the

coastal dune model, tackling development of a multi-spe-cies component. Margaret and collaborators continue to make progress on our work with The Nature Conservancy by coupling a coastline model with a barrier island mod-el to investigate how coastal processes and management strategies interact to affect future coastline response under a range of climate change scenarios (funded by the Hur-ricane Sandy Resilience Fund). This fall Evan, Elsemarie and I, along with collaborators Peter Ruggiero and Sally Hacker from Oregon State University, begin a new project (funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration, NOAA) to characterize dune evolution along the North Carolina coast and adapt the coastal dune mod-el to assist with coastal management decisions in NOAA’s North Carolina Sentinel Site and Cape Lookout National Seashore. This year I am also excited to continue working with many of my colleagues and Springer as we continue to develop an edited volume on Barrier Island Response to Climate Change.

Tamlin PavelskyI was promoted to associate professor with tenure on

July 1st, so I’m now a more permanent fixture in UNC Geological Sciences. It’s been a busy year in the Pavelsky lab. This past summer, I led a major field campaign in Central Alaska that used a new NASA airborne instru-ment to measure variations in water surface elevation and inundation extent. The campaign will help to answer questions about how water moves through complex envi-ronments like interconnected river-wetland systems, and it will also help prepare for the NASA Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. I’m continuing my leadership role on this mission, which is scheduled for launch in October, 2020. This international mission (a partnership between NASA and the French space agency) seeks to provide the first high-resolution maps of water surface elevation in the world’s oceans, rivers, lakes, and wetlands. George Allen, a PhD student working with me, has published the first high-resolution dataset of riv-er widths derived from satellite images for North Amer-ica, and he’s now finished with the whole globe (see cov-er image!). This work was featured as a NASA Image of the Day and in an article published on wired.com, along with several other media outlets. In addition, I co-led a NASA-funded workshop for North Carolina high school teachers on using remote sensing to track water resourc-es. I taught classes this past year on the science of climate change and on remote sensing and GIS for earth scientists.

José A. RialThis last year my research group has been very active

quantifying everything we can about the history of climate change over the last ice age. PhD students Elizabeth Reis-chmann and Xiao Yang started the year by successfully

Top: UNC undergraduates Jordan Bishop and Patrick Gouge in-stalling a seismic station at Llaima Volcano, Chile, in January, 2015. Llaima was very active in 2008. Middle: New UNC grad-uate student Tim Ronan (left) and Prof. Jonathan Lees (middle) with Lei Shi (right) from Georgia State University, installing VolcanoSRI equipment at Llaima Volcano, Chile. VolcanoSRI is a collaborative effort between UNC, GSU and Michigan State University. Bottom: UNC students gather seismic equipment in January, 2015, in preparation of a deployment of new seismic stations for volcano research at Llaima Volcano Chile.

9

Heels on Earth

presenting their work at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, by the end of April, 2014, and then in December to the AGU meeting in San Francisco, CA. This year they are presenting their research at the 2015 PAGES workshop “Scale and Scaling in the Cli-mate System” in Montreal, Canada in October. Last August I presented a keynote address at the workshop on “Advanc-es in Climate Theory” at the Royal Meteorological Obser-vatory in Brussels, Belgium. Three peer-reviewed papers by my research group were published during last year in GRL, Quaternary Sci. Rev. and Seism. Res. Letters (visit us at www.dynamicpaleoclimate.org).

Our research on paleoclimate and climate change fo-cuses on the interactions (teleconnections) between the polar climates over time. Assuming that each stable iso-tope proxy time series from ice cores can be thought of as the input and/or output of an unknown coupling process, we developed ad-hoc spectral deconvolution techniques to estimate the ‘transfer function’ that converts the signal from one pole to the other. The results reveal the presence of a non-decaying sinusoidal oscillation likely internal to the ocean/atmosphere system. This remarkable finding concretely quantifies the oft-suggested but thus far un-proven presence of periodic oscillations in the millennial circulation of the ocean (the thermo-haline circulation or THC). We are now using a larger dataset (see Figure) to detect transfer functions at intermediate latitudes.

This summer, IDEA student Maryam Kazemza-deh-atoufi joined our group. A Physics major, she will present results of her research with Elizabeth and Xiao in Montreal and at the 2015 San Francisco AGU meeting this December. Maryam earned a nice award from IDEA on her paleoclimate poster presentation this summer. Oth-

er undergraduates who have joined our group are Min “Col-lin” Koh and Travis Broadhurst, who work with Xiao and Elizabeth, respec-tively. Molly Fisher is another under-graduate who has been working on the Narnea project (http://www.newen-ergyera.org/) for the past year. Future plans for our group are equally packed, if not more so, and the pace of research is steadily increas-ing.

Kevin G. StewartI had a busy year getting three graduate students fin-

ished. Jay Bridgeman (MS 2015) completed a thesis combining zircon thermometry and geochronology in amphibolites and eclogite from the Blue Ridge. Much to our surprise, Jay seems to have identified a previously un-known Silurian metamorphic event and has also shown that eclogite-facies metamorphism in this area was prob-ably not widespread. Jay spent the summer as an intern for Anadarko and just accepted a permanent position with Anadarko in their Denver office. Laura Neser (PhD 2014) completed a dissertation based on her many months of field work in Wyoming. Laura was able to piece togeth-er a great story that combined structure and stratigraphy, and she started a position this fall as a Lecturer at Chowan University. Maggie Ellis (PhD 2015) finished her project on tectonic geomorphology in Nevada and is now a post-doc at UT-Austin. I’m also continuing to work on Neogene tectonics in the southern Appalachians with PhD student Jesse Hill.

Donna SurgeSometimes serendipty presents itself and results in new

research directions. While trying to come up with a field-based project for Corey Moore, one of our undergraduate students who is doing a senior thesis with me, we watched as The Weather Channel’s meteorologists reported on the predicted path of Hurricane Joaquin, wondering whether it would hit the Carolina coast. As it turned out, it didn’t hit the Carolinas, but the Carolinas got hammered by a

Visualization of the collected database of ocean sediment core paleoclimate proxies. All proxies were regularized and each sample point plotted with by an assigned core index and the published age model. While striking trends are visible, outliers are also made clear by contrast. It is unclear whether these vari-ances are due entirely to local climate behavior or to differences in age models. Inter-proxy comparisons will require a standard-ization of the latter.

Left to Right: PhD student George Allen, Clair Nelson (Junior), Jonathan Witten (Junior), Dr. Tamlin Pavelsky.

10

Heels on Earth

storm of biblical proportions that drew its moisture from the tropics to the south and Hurricane Joaquin to the east, with cool air flowing down from the north. With reports of the impending historic rainfall and flooding, we jumped on the chance to collect rain water and water from the Eno River to document changes in oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios through the duration of the storm that ulti-mately lasted from October 1-6, 2015. During the height of this historic storm, Corey collected rainwater samples from his backyard in Durham every 2 hours. Once a day starting before the storm and continuing for several days after the storm, he collected water from the Eno River near where a USGS monitoring station measures discharge and rainfall amount. Our goal is to use rainwater isotope ra-tios to trace how the evolution of this storm is recorded in water isotope data, and how river water isotopes changed with the progression of this historic storm.

My new PhD student, Lauren Graniero, is also inter-ested in rivers and will be investigating seasonal variations in nitrogen and carbon sources to an impacted river, the Neuse, and its estuary by calibrating nitrogen and carbon isotope ratios recorded in bivalve shells with that of riv-er and estuary water. As part of a related project, Aleah Walsh is also working with me on a senior research thesis. Drew Coleman and I are co-advising her on this project. Aleah is measuring oxygen and strontium isotope ratios in river/estuarine water and in estuarine clam shells from the Neuss River and its estuary to calibrate a new paleosalinity proxy. I’m very much looking forward to this new collabo-ration with Drew. My other PhD student, Justin McNabb, and I resubmitted an NSF proposal this summer for our

Plio-Pleistocene project. He is investigating bio-logical consequences of climate change by deter-mining relationships be-tween lifespan, shell size, growth rates, and warm vs. cold climate states in a genus of marine bivalves from the western North Atlantic. Justin did some of his field work this summer aboard one of NOAA’s research vessels, which you can read more about in the Research Corner.

I’m still collaborat-ing with archaeologists and using limpet shells as archives of seasonal variability in sea surface temperature (SST) and season of harvest. My colleagues in Tierra del Fuego are taking water samples for oxygen isotope analysis near a new archaeological site on the Atlantic coast. I’m hoping the oxygen isotope ratios will be relatively stable, so that we can use the oxygen iso-tope ratios in the archaeological shells to reconstruct SST. If not, then we can still use the shells to estimate season of harvest.

Post-Docs and ResearchersC. Berk BiryolThe lithospheric structure of the Southeastern United States is governed by earlier episodes of continental col-lision and continental break up. In the present, the region is located in the interior of the North American Plate, far away from active plate margins and the associated tecto-nism. However, there is ongoing tectonism in the region with multiple zones of seismicity, uplifting related arches and escarpments and Cenozoic intraplate volcanism. The mechanisms controlling this activity and associated state of stress for this region and similar plate interior settings remains enigmatic. Important controlling factors are pre-existing structures inherited from earlier episodes of tectonism and plate strength, which is mainly determined by the thickness of the lithosphere. I investigate the up-per mantle structure of the region using seismic tomog-raphy. This provides insight into possible connections be-tween upper mantle structures and the ongoing tectonism in the region. My tomographic images reveal large-scale structural variations in the upper mantle, pointing at the

lithospheric complexities that are possibly inherited from earlier plate tectonic episodes. Examples are the relative-ly thick lithospheric mantle of stable North America that abruptly thins beneath the Paleozoic Appalachian orogen and slow upper mantle of Proterozoic Reelfoot rift. Most importantly, my results indicate distinct fast seismic ve-locity patterns that can be interpreted as ongoing litho-spheric foundering in the region, which provides a viable explanation for seismicity, uplifting and young intraplate volcanism. Hence, my results postulate that the ongoing activity/complexity of the region long after it became a passive margin may be controlled not only by tectonic in-heritance but also by continuing lithospheric foundering. Based on distinct variations in geometry and thickness of imaged lithospheric mantle and foundered lithosphere, I propose that a piece-meal delamination has been going on throughout Cenozoic, removing significant amounts of re-worked/deformed mantle lithosphere in the east of stable North America. The lithospheric foundering continues to-day beneath the eastern margin of stable North America,

Dr. Donna Surge (middle), with PhD students, Lauren Graniero (left) and Justin McNabb (right), and statue of Johann Strauss in the background. They were at-tending the 2015 EGU General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.

11

Heels on EarthRyan Mills with his wife, Liz, and 4-year-old son, Walter.

Aerial image capturing dune building using a camera attached to a kite held by Dr. Evan Goldstein.

explaining significant variation in thickness of lithospheric mantle across the former Grenville deformation front.

Evan GoldsteinMy work with Dr. Laura Moore (Coastal Environmen-

tal Change Lab) is focused on exploring the feedback be-tween plant growth and sand transport on the beach. This feedback gives rise to vegetated coastal dunes, which pro-tect habit (including human infrastructure) from storms and high water. My work is a mix of measuring these pro-cesses on the beach (in NC and VA) and modeling these processes (back in the office). I also have a strong interest capturing dune building using a camera attached to a kite (see picture above).

Ryan Mills (MS 2008, PhD 2012)I have just completed my first year running the mass

spectrometer facilities working with Drew Coleman. It has been a fun and productive year in the labs. My family has greatly enjoyed being back in North Carolina. We are expecting a second child in October, which we are very ex-cited and nervous about.

Mike WillisI am a glaciologist concentrating on how land ice is

contributing to global sea level. My NSF supported work involves making time-series of digital topography using

peta-scale computing and imagery from spy satellites. President Obama talked about some of my work during a press conference on his recent trip above the Arctic Circle in Alaska. We are in the process of making a 2-m reso-lution digital topography for the state of Alaska and will release this to the public in June 2016. We are working on expanding this workflow to the entire Arctic, with a digital product to be released via Google in 2017. Other research is concentrating on changes occurring along the southeast coast of Greenland and surprisingly rapid changes occur-ring to the glaciers in the Russian Arctic.

12

Heels on Earth

Documenting the Bounty of Earth’s RiversBy Mejs Hasan, George Allen, and Tamlin Pavelsky

Research CornerWorking with NOAA in the Pursuit of Knowledge

Doctoral student Justin McNabb spent part of this summer on the E.S.S Pursuit, a NOAA fisheries vessel, on the Atlantic Ocean to help with bivalve

identification for fisheries surveys. This trip also furthered his own research goals by allowing him to collect live bi-valve specimens from the Atlantic Ocean 200 miles off shore. McNabb left port out of Atlantic City, New Jersey on the E.S.S Pursuit to spend a week out at sea. While working his midnight-to-noon shifts, McNabb sorted out econom-ically important bivalves, commonly known as surf clams (Spisula solidissima) and ocean quahogs (Arctica islandi-ca), as well as his targeted research species, Astarte sub-æquilatera. The added challenge for McNabb was having to do most of the species identification at night. “It definitely is a great way to get very familiar with identifying key spe-cies,” said McNabb. “As they are speeding by you on a con-veyor belt, you become very good at sorting out the targets from the bones, fish, and trash that comes up.” The bones McNabb is referring to are from two big cholera outbreaks in New York City that occurred in 1832 and 1849. He also became quite adept at shucking clams to measure the meat weights of these tasty commodities, having to do hundreds at each sampling site.

McNabb was interested in collecting Astarte specimens to determine their lifespan at this latitude, having already obtained samples from higher latitude localities in the White and Baltic Seas. McNabb said, “By tracking changes in the lifespan of an organism, you can make inferences about changes in the population’s health and response to environmental change through time.” The long-term goals of his project are to examine the responses of these bi-valve’s lifespans to changes in climate through time using Plio-Pleistocene shells from fossil deposits in North Caro-lina, Virginia, and Florida.

The reason that NOAA sends out these surveys is sim-

ilar to McNabb’s interests, as they are tracking changes in populations in the active coastal fishery areas. This is accomplished by looking at changing average sizes of in-dividuals within populations, total individuals per sample site, and the location of economically viable populations. Fisheries are already feeling the effects of warming waters penetrating farther north into the Atlantic and are watch-ing populations of surf clams and ocean quahogs shift slowly northward. The bivalves are likely following the re-treat of the cooler northern waters.

The information from the shells that McNabb has col-lected will be analyzed and then presented at the annual Ocean Sciences AGU meeting in New Orleans in February 2016. He will also be reporting his findings in a larger pub-lication describing the dynamics of this genus in the North Atlantic region.

PhD student Justin McNabb in front of the E.S.S Pursuit before heading out to sea. The ship has a crew of 8 in addition to the NOAA science team. She is specially outfitted with a NOAA sci-ence lab used to survey bivalves. The back of the ship houses the engine and two dredges for different sized catch loads.

Standing on the banks of a river, a curious-minded person will see all kinds of complexity. A river flows faster in some places than others, it has eddies and

backwaters, it’s deep along cutbanks, and shallow near point bars. And yet in an atlas (or today’s digital equiva-lent), that same river may well be represented as a one-di-mensional blue line. One of the major goals of modern hydrologic science is to move our understanding of rivers around the world beyond that simple blue line and towards a fuller picture of their real-world complexity. As folk sing-

er Patty Griffin wrote in her 2013 song “Ohio,” a “river is a river, not a line.”

Students and faculty in the Department of Geological Sciences at UNC are currently in the process of adding a new dimension to the hydrologic toolbox for millions of kilometers of rivers around the world. The width of a river may seem like a simple thing to measure, but river width reveals crucial information about everything from water scarcity to tectonic processes influencing river form.

In September 2011, Tamlin Pavelsky submitted a grant

13

Heels on Earth

Figure 1. Example Landsat imagery used to build the global width database (Lena River, Siberia). Classified river pixels are in white and all other water is in yellow.

proposal to NASA to develop and analyze a dataset con-taining the widths of all the world’s major rivers, which would later be christened the Global River Widths from Landsat (GRWL) database. The project was ambitious and complex. It would involve thousands of satellite images de-rived from the venerable Landsat system, which has been collecting images of Earth since the early 1970s via a se-ries of eight satellites, and thousands of hours of work. But Tamlin believed that the necessary technical knowledge and labor could be found at UNC.

The NASA reviewers were unusually divided on the pro-posal—half felt that it was an exciting project that needed to move forward, and half felt that it couldn’t realistically be completed. However, in September 2012, NASA agreed to fund the proposal for a year to see how things progressed. In order to get started, Tamlin found a graduate student, George Allen, to begin the hard work of completing the North American portion of GRWL. George said he was drawn to the venture “because it was a novel, global-scale project where I could work with a team of other students.” George wrote computer codes to automatically black out land, clouds and ice from satellite images, so that the only remaining features would be the surface water (Figure 1). Tamlin also contributed computer code, a program called ‘RivWidth’ he had written when a graduate student him-self. This piece of software scans Landsat images and cal-culates the width of each river (Figure 2).

It is not immediately clear why a computer code is necessary to measure the width of a river when the same measurement can be made in the field. It turns out that that river width often changes dramatically from place to place along the same river. For example, if you measure the width of the Haw River where Chapel Hill Road crosses it near Pittsboro, it won’t be the same width of the Haw River 100 miles upstream near Greensboro or even a stone’s toss away. Rivers are always changing though space and time. So to have a satellite image that shows the entire river, and to pair it up with the RivWidth code, is a phenomenal sav-ings in time. Combined, Landsat and RivWidth will return the width of the river approximately every 30 meters, no

fieldwork neces-sary.

Before any satel-lite imagery could be downloaded a problem needed to be solved: riv-er width changes depending on riv-er discharge. A river can be more than twice as wide during a big flood as it is under ordi-nary conditions. The goal of the project, though, is to build a static map of river form. River width at mean discharge is argu-ably the most useful product for scientists, so using a glob-al database of over five thousand stream gauges, George calculated the time of year rivers were most likely to be at mean discharge for each Landsat satellite tile (Figure 3). Landsat images that were captured during these times were then preferentially downloaded and analyzed by a team of UNC undergraduates.

In October 2012, three UNC undergraduates joined the team and began downloading and analyzing Landsat tiles. They learned how to navigate the USGS’s Landsat data-base and how to use satellite analysis software, like ENVI. Christina DeStefano recalls those early days. She had first been intrigued by geology while taking a class with Dr. Kevin Stewart as a first-year student, and as a junior, had continued by taking a class with former geology professor Ben Mirus called Water in Our World. One day, Tamlin gave a guest lecture, and Christina was intrigued by the satellite work he described. So she asked Tamlin afterwards if he had research opportunities, and he got her in touch with George.

Christina said that her involvement on the project led to tremendous academic growth, among the most she expe-rienced during her entire time at UNC. She learned about remote sensing and how to analyze satellite imagery. She learned about different bodies of water and what they are expected to look like. And she learned about the way river width reflects many hydraulic and ecological processes of a river. The speed of water flow is related to river width, and based on width, one can also make predictions about the amount of discharge and sediment load. After all, Tam-lin did not concoct the idea of downloading thousands of satellite images and measuring the river width at 30 meter increments just for pure cosmetic purposes.

And so it went. Bit by bit, the undergrads and George pieced together the technical know-how and datasets

Figure 2.The RivWidth program calcu-lates a river centerline (blue) from clas-sified river water (black) derived from Landsat imagery (figure modified from Miller et al., Hydrology and Earth System Science, 2014).

14

Heels on Earth

needed to get the job done. Things like: how to keep every-thing organized, because with multiple computers, thou-sands of images, and a growing crew of undergrads, things are going to get messy; if the USGS server crashes while or-dering Landsat images, well, wait a little bit and cross your fingers and hope that it unfreezes. Sam Dawson, a 2014 UNC geology department graduate, remembers learning how to “break up a seemingly large problem into manage-able steps.”(Sam is now in his second year of a masters in geology at Oklahoma State University).

After one year of work, the team completed the North American portion of GRWL (nearly 8 million measure-ments in total), which is published and freely available for download at http://gaia.geosci.unc.edu/NARWidth/. NASA was sufficiently impressed that they agreed to two more years of funding to tackle the rest of the world. The work went smoothly. First the team analyzed Africa, which was relatively easy because of a dearth of rivers through the Sahara, Kalahari, and Namib deserts. Then they tackled South America. That was a larger task because of the high drainage density of the Amazon, Orinoco, and La Plata basins. As senior undergraduates graduated, new students joined the group.

In the meantime, Tamlin and George pursued a side in-vestigation. They had read a new article in Nature, led by Yale University’s Peter Raymond, that discussed the pas-sage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from rivers into

the atmosphere. Respiring microbes supersaturate ground-water with carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as it moves through the ground. As this groundwater emerges into churning streams and rivers, it diffuses into the atmosphere. Gaseous efflux from rivers has typically not been accounted for in atmospheric carbon budges, but the Raymond paper estimated that rivers are a significant source of greenhouse gasses (1.55-2.05 petagrams of car-bon per year). And a key concept is that this estimate is in-trinsically linked to river widths because the larger a river is, the more area over which the carbon dioxide can pass into the atmosphere.

The Raymond study was published before the GRWL database was complete and relied on modeling river width using data from stream gauges and digital elevation mod-els (DEMs). DEMs take account of where mountains, hills and higher slopes are located, and use that information, and the fact that water always flows from higher to lower ground, to predict where the flows will gather, and what pathway they will take to the sea. By extrapolating width measurements made at stream gauges, they estimated how wide each river should be. These DEM-derived width data-sets, like all modeled data, are simplifications of the real world. For example, they assume that river width will al-ways increase downstream.

Tamlin and George embarked on a formal comparison using their newly completed North American portion of

Figure 3. The month that North American rivers are most likely to be at mean discharge at each Landsat tile.

Figure 4. River surface area for North America binned by river width. A power function was fit to observed data from widths 100 to 2000 m (solid line, C = 3.22×104) and used to extrapolate total surface area of rivers less than 100 m wide (yellow polygon). Error bars denote the upper and lower width threshold used in the surface area extrapolation (1.6±1.1 m). The extrapolated sur-face area was then added to observed surface area (gray bars) to estimate total river surface area of North America.

15

Heels on Earth

GRWL. By simply summing the product of all the river width and length measurements (length of 1 river cen-terline pixel or 30 meters, see Figure 2), they were able to estimate the surface area of the North American rivers in their dataset. The last touch was extrapolation to rivers and streams that were narrower than what GRWL could con-fidently measure. Statistical power law relations between river width and surface area populations filled in the gap (Figure 4).

The total river surface area of North American rivers, as estimated from GRWL, is ~1.24 × 105 km2, or 0.55% of the continental land surface. The GRWL estimate is ~20% greater than those used by Raymond and are likely to be conservative because they still don’t include some of the smallest streams. The consequences for this revised esti-mate of fluvial surface area is that stream and rivers may be contributing even more greenhouse gasses to the atmo-sphere than previously thought.

Over the years, dozens of hydrological studies have re-lied on DEMs for estimating their river widths. GRWL will allow these researchers to, for the first time, use a database that actually reflects the natural fluctuations in hydrologic and geomorphic conditions that govern a river’s form as it moves downstream.

It is now September 2015. It has been four years since Tamlin first wrote the river widths proposal to NASA.

The team of undergrads, at one point as large as six, has now been whittled down to just two. GRWL has over 50 million measurements of river width accompanied by the geographic coordinates of the river centerline and a riv-er braiding index (see this issue’s cover art). Worldwide, it contains observations of over 2.1 million kilometers of riv-ers. George estimates that in a few months, the final touch-es will be complete and he will be able to focus more fully on scientific applications of the database. Already, inter-actions with scientists at other universities are generating new studies of flood wave modeling, global carbon dynam-ics, and monitoring of water resources. GRWL is also help-ing to lay the groundwork for a planned NASA satellite co-led by Tamlin, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission that will monitor not just the width of the world’s rivers but also variability in their height and dis-charge. As novel a dataset as GRWL is, it remains just one component of a groundbreaking set of measurements of the water cycle from space. As new satellites are launched, and as scientists from UNC and beyond develop new methods to take advantage of them, our scientific concep-tions of rivers in even the remotest parts of the world will increasingly transform from static lines on a map to the dynamic drivers of human societies and the natural world that we see when standing on their banks.

Class Notes1950-1960Ted Moore (BS 1960) Ted Moore is supposed to have retired in 2004 from the University of Michigan, Department of Earth and Environ-mental Sciences. However, they made the mistake of allowing him a modicum of office space and ac-cess to a laboratory, a computer, a microscope, and the library. So he is still plugging away, pursuing research on the paleoceanogra-phy during the Eocene-Oligocene transition and the radiolarian stra-tigraphy of various intervals. Why stop when you are having fun? He has also started a small tree farm in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. You would think raising trees would be easy, but it turns out you have to coddle them a bit

when they are young and 17,000 trees take a lot of coddling.

Charlie Todd (BS 1950) In No-vember 2012, Alice (my first wife) and I attended a wonderful home-

coming at the Department of Geo-logical Sciences hosted by Profes-sor Kevin Stewart. I was the oldest participant by some 20 years and entertained with stories of Drs. Prouty, White, Ingram, and the redoubtable Raoul C. Mitchell of UK, who gave wonderful lectures and tests that no one could pass. We found the Geological head-quarters with our GPS, remem-bering that it occupied New East in another era. After graduation in 1950, the U. S. Army asked me to map the Mojave Desert and parts of Palawan and Mindanao Islands. This experience led me to teaching and school administration, and in retirement, to lobbying at the VA General Assembly where represen-tatives may allow uranium mining in southern Virginia, which could poison NC rivers. I’ll be watching!Charlie Todd and his wife, Alice.

16

Heels on Earth

Photo taken on October 7, 2015 at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY. Five near-ly fossilized UNC geologists, all of whom earned PhDs in 1968-1970. Left to Right: Tillman Cooley, Tony Randazzo, Al Curran, Phil Justus, and Paul Benson. We and our wives try to meet once a year, this year in the Finger Lakes region, NY.

1961-1970Charlie S. Bartlett (BS 1951, MS 1966) We found about 25 bones in the ancient river underly-ing the Saltville Valley. In the grav-el, we recovered a small tooth of the extinct wooly mammoth and two teeth of the musk ox. Our find-ings were featured in the Smyth County News & Messenger. I was presented the William and Martha DeFriece Award at the May com-mencement services at Emory & Henry College. Sorry I won’t be able to attend the GSA meeting in Baltimore in November. Drink one for me!

Tillman Cooley (BS 1965, PhD 1970) Tillman recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Volunteer Department at the Perot Museum of Nature and Sci-ence in Dallas. In over 15 years of volunteering at the Perot and pre-decessor museums, Tillman has accumulated nearly 4000 hours of service. When the Perot opened in 2012, he was the first Docent in our fantastic Tom Hunt Energy

Hall. It’s a spectacular new muse-um which has received national acclaim, well worth a visit when in Dallas. Lots of geology!

Tillman spent his career in the petroleum industry, working for Shell, Superior, and Mobil Oil Companies. Since 1986, he and Margaret have resided in Dallas, and also now spend their summers at Nags Head, which offers their 3 children and 8 grandchildren (all Texans) a ready-made place to va-cation. They have always loved to travel and cruise somewhere in the world (last was to Brazil) at least once a year. A highlight of each year is getting together with their wonderful friends from the UNC Geology graduate school: Paul and Judy Benson, Al and Jane Curran, Phil and Myrna Justus, and Tony and Lynne Randazzo. This fall we’ll be in the Finger Lakes area and the New York wine country – we all drink a lot of wine. Our best to all of you Heels – hope to see you at the Perot!

Al Curran (MS 1965, PhD 1968) I’m definitely enjoying re-

tirement and trying to make the most of it from all angles – pro-fessional, leisure, travel, and fam-ily. I have a small office in the Geosciences Department on the Smith College campus where I can continue to pursue my research interests in ichnology, fossil and modern coral reefs, and Quater-nary carbonates of the Bahamas. Geo-related travels this past year with my spouse, Jane, included at-tending the 4th International Pa-laeontological Congress in Men-doza, Argentina, with a side trip to Santiago, Chile and north to the Atacama Desert. I had always wanted to see at least a part of the Andes, and we weren’t disappoint-ed! While there, we set personal elevation records of 4,500+ m in the high Atacama. This past winter was one of the toughest on record in New England. Fortunately, Jane and I were able to escape much of it via 3 weeks of fieldwork in the Bahamas and then 6 weeks in Flor-ida, on the beach just south of St. Augustine, where we were able to visit with UNC geo-friends Tony

Al Curran contemplates purchasing a lot in a poorly sited development cleared of mangroves and at sea level on Ambergris Caye, Belize (…not really!!!).

17

Heels on Earth

and Lynne Randazzo. In May, we spent 2 weeks in Japan, with the focus being attending an interna-tional ichnology workshop at Ko-chi University, in Kochi City, and field trips on Shikoku Island. Our side trips included touring in Kyo-to, the Nara area, and a bullet train back to Tokyo. I was secretly kind of hoping to be able to experience my first real earthquake (don’t all geologists have this wish?). Again, we weren’t disappointed; in fact, we were doubly “blessed,” with one earthquake occurring on our first morning in Tokyo when we were waking up in a high-rise hotel (34th floor of 35), and another one two weeks later while we were in Nari-ta Airport waiting for our plane to depart from Tokyo for home. For-tunately, there was no real damage or injury from either quake, but the thrill was there! I look forward to the GSA annual meeting in Bal-timore this fall and to visiting with UNC faculty, grads, and current students, plus attending some of their research presentations.

Win Goter (BS 1970) I’m still working full time. Now with PanAtlantic Exploration Co. ex-ploring for oil and gas and drilling wells in onshore Colombia and off shore Romania. Left Shell after 32 years in 2010 and flunked re-tirement. We have two daughters, both married and living in San An-tonio. First grandchild will soon be here. We are all in good health and doing fine. I still feel fortunate to have attended a great geology de-partment at a wonderful universi-ty. Over 40 years ago, whew!

Steve Kesler (BS 1962) Steve retired from the Department of Earth and Environmental Scienc-es at the University of Michigan

in 2012 where he has been since 1977. Since retiring, Steve has writ-ten two books. One, called Mineral Resources, Economics and the Envi-ronment, is an extensive update of the 1996 book of that title. It was done with Adam Simon, who re-placed Steve at Michigan, and will be published in late 2015 by Cam-bridge University Press. The other book, called Resources Minerales, deals with ore deposits in great-er detail. It was written with Nick Arndt and Clement Ganino and was published in French by Dunod. An expanded version in English will be published by Springer-Ver-lag. Now that book writing is fin-ished, Steve will return to playing golf and taking care of grandsons.

Tom Pickett (PhD 1965) My news is mostly involving my signif-icant other, Marguerite Davenport, who I met on line in California where I live several years after the death of my wife Suzanne Stein-metz. We have traveled recently to Budapest for a river cruise on the Danube to Nuremberg and also traveled to New England where my family originated. I am spending the summer with her at her sum-mer home in Jackson, Wyoming. It’s a great life for a retired geolo-gist!

1971-1980Lee Avary (MS 1976) We had a nice John Dennison Memorial Session at the SE GSA Meeting in Chattanooga, TN last spring. Rick Diecchio and I chaired the session. Rick, Ken Hasson and I are putting together a Dennison Memorial volume, to be published as a GSA Special Publication. Anyone who is interested in submitting a pa-

per can contact me or Rick. Ken, a Dennison PhD student from the University of Tennessee, is the main driving force behind this ef-fort. I just completed a 3-year term as co-chair of AAPG’s PROWESS (Professional Women in Earth Sciences) Committee. I continue to serve as a Member-at-Large on AGI’s Executive Committee and as the Eastern Section AAPG Imperi-al Barrel Award coordinator. Look-ing forward to seeing everyone in Baltimore.

Byong Kwon Park (PhD 1971) I have worked on polar issues since 1987 and served at SCAR and IASC as Korean delegate. And I have served at IASC as vice-Pres-ident from 2004 to 2012. I went on a field trip at last year’s ES AAPG meeting in Ontario. While there, got to visit with Ione Lindley Tay-lor and Al Taylor during the field trip and meeting, which was great!

Joan Roberts Barminski (MS Candidate 1977) In a press re-

Tom Pickett

18

Heels on Earth

lease on October 14, 2015, Joan was named New BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) Pa-cific Regional Director.

Gus Wilson (PhD 1971) Helen and I are leaving London (rather late this summer) and hope to get enough good weather to make it to the Orkneys. We are late because I have been revising a paper I wrote in 2014 for the journal GeoAra-bia, and the reviewers suggested expanding it. I have spent the last six months, literally, working on it. The Geological Society of Lon-don library is a remarkably good resource, and also the British Mu-seum. I also had some help from the Cambridge archives. I just returned from a special night at the Geological Society. This the 200th anniversary of the publica-tion of William Smith’s geologic map of England, “The Map That Changed the World”. Tonight was billed as the Geologist’s House – a walk through stages in Smith’s coming aware of geology, the stag-es in the making of his map, and

the competition with the map by Greenough and the newly formed Geological Society of London. Library staff were dressed in vin-tage clothes. One station had two women paleontologists from the British Museum. That room had tables with drawings of the fossils characteristic of different Jurassic intervals. On each table were six pages of these drawings. We were in accidental groups, formed by whomever gathered in front of each table. There were three box-es on each table with 3-5 fossils or pieces of rock, and the idea was to match these to the appropriate pic-ture. My group got 2 of the 3, and narrowed the 3rd to two choices when the gong rang (reminiscent of taking a test in a classroom and hearing the bell all too soon). There were four timed starts to the walk through, so when the gong rang we were herded into the next room to make room for the next group. We saw original prints of the maps, segments of the maps, cross sec-tions, the topographic map that provided the base, and more, along

with interesting talks about how these fit into the picture of making THE MAP. Great fun, and far more satisfying than I expected it to be – one of those times that made me feel really good about being a ge-ologist!

1981-1990Susan Fairchild (BS 1988) I still work at the Environmental Protection Agency, and in July fin-ished up a final rule regulating the Wool Fiberglass and Mineral Wool industries, which was a culmina-tion of three previous proposals. The industry uses chromium re-fractories (made from chromite ore and other minerals) to con-struct furnaces that operate con-tinuously at temperatures around 5000ºF, processing a melt that is chemically reactive and thermally corrosive to the furnace walls. As a result, chromium emissions from the manufacture of wool fiberglass can be elevated and most of this is in the hexavalent state.

We welcomed our 4th grand-child (and first girl) into the fami-ly on January 31, 2014 and life has not been the same since. We took the kids camping and hiking at Hanging Rock State Park, and they seemed to appreciate that the rock was not “hanging” (like in the coy-ote vs. roadrunner cartoons) but was a tiny speck of a huge forma-tion deeply rooted far down and only the tip of it was above them. The kids ran down to – and up from – the waterfalls, and I wasn’t more than a half mile behind them by the end of the second hike!

I’ve been thinking about what I might do for my second career, as this one is about to come to a close in another 5 years. Campground

Lee Avary on a field trip at last year’s ES AAPG meeting in Ontario.

19

Heels on Earth

host (with the National Park Ser-vice?) is my favorite so far: you live on the campground and mosey along in a golf cart greeting new campers, offering them firewood for a small fee, and telling them about all the interesting things in the park and across the area. You move about every 6-8 months and start over in a new campground. Some of the more seasoned veter-ans have been hosts at parks across the US.

1991-2000Bart Cattanach (BS 1995) I have been working in the Ashe-ville office of the North Caroli-na Geological Survey since 2001, primarily doing detailed geologic mapping with some geohazards work thrown in for good measure. I have an amazing family – we love the mountains and are adding to the population explosion in the region: our first son was born in

2014, and we are expecting anoth-er little boy to arrive this October.

Jennifer Godwin-Wyer (B.S. 1996) & Paul Wyer (Interna-tional Student 1995-1996) Paul and I will be celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary in August, and 20 years of first meet-ing each other in Mitchell Hall! Who knew that first meeting would lead to a lifetime of happiness! Paul is still working at ExxonMobil and working on many projects that are

Featured Alum: Shaena Montanari (BS, 2008)

I still can’t believe it’s been over 7 years since those late nights in Mitchell Hall working on Structural Geology homework with my classmates! It’s true

time flies when you are having fun, but I am always missing Carolina no matter where in the world I am. After graduating in 2008 with my BS and com-pleting my senior honors thesis with Donna Surge, I have been on one non-stop geological adventure. After field camp that summer, I moved to New York City to begin a PhD program at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. It was a brand new program that year, and I was a member of the first cohort, but it ended up be-ing a big risk that paid off in wonderful ways. While there, I was able to travel the world on paleontological expeditions, most notably spending two summers in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert looking for dinosaur fossils at renowned fossil localities like the Flaming Cliffs. My time in New York was truly remarkable and would not have been possible without my UNC Geology educa-tion.

After finishing my PhD at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History in September 2012, I started as a Columbia Science Fellow at Columbia University, continuing my research at AMNH and teaching a first-year sci-ence course to undergraduates at the university. This was a wonderful experience and hopefully was an in-troduction to my future career as an educator.

In February 2015, I left that position because I was awarded a Newton International Fellowship from the Royal Society in the UK, and now I am carrying out that two-year fellowship in the School of GeoSciences

at the University of Edinburgh. I am working on char-acterizing the stable isotope paleoecology of Paleo-cene mammals of the San Juan Basin in New Mexico in order to understand the dietary radiations of early mammals following the K/Pg boundary. In addition to that, I’m making sure to get out and do some ex-ploring of Scotland’s wonderful geology. I’ve already done some field work in the Isle of Skye, and I brought my Carolina hat with me as you can see in the picture!

In other exciting news, in January 2015 I was named one of Forbes Magazine “30 Under 30” in Sci-ence, which is a tremendous honor. Since May 2015, I have been a contributing writer on Forbes blogs where I write about paleontology, so hopefully some of my fellow Tar Heels will come read the latest fossil news from time to time. If anyone is passing through Scotland or the UK let me know; I only live about a 20 minute walk from Hutton’s Section!

Shaena at one of her paleontological field localities on the Isle of Skye, Scotland taken in April, 2015.

20

Heels on Earth

keeping him super busy. I came out of “retirement”, as I joking-ly say since deciding to be a full-time mom, and have been happily getting back into geology again. My son’s teacher found out I was

a geologist and asked if I would teach geology and do science labs for the 3rd and 4th grade classes. I unpacked my geology gear, and rock and fossil specimens, and had a blast! I also helped out with a dinosaur summer camp recently and enjoyed teaching the students about the different dinosaurs. Our son has been getting into geolo-gy as well, and we went rock and fossil hunting in the limestone of San Antonio for Spring Break. We showed him normal faults, geodes, fossils, and crystals. He then took what he found and presented it to his science class. We also started raising Monarch, Swallowtail, and Gulf Fritillary butterflies – a lot of hard work believe it or not! For this school year, I will be my son’s school’s head for PSIA (Private Schools Interscholastic Associa-tion) and will be working hard get-ting all the students ready for their various scholastic competitions.

Lewis Land (PhD 1999) I’m still working for the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources in their satellite office in Carlsbad, and also still work-ing as the Bureau’s liaison with the National Cave and Karst Research Institute. Most of my work involves local and regional investigations of karstic aquifers, most recently the Capitan Reef aquifer, which is also the host formation for Carls-bad Cavern. In recent years, I have done a fair amount of near-surface geophysical investigations of karst geohazards such as sinkholes, and have been deeply involved in orga-nizing the 2013 and 2015 confer-ences on “sinkholes and the engi-neering and environmental impact of karst” (for obvious reasons it’s usually referred to simply as “the sinkhole conference”).

After eight years of marriage my wife, Amie, and I are still cra-zy about each other. Amie teach-es world history at Carlsbad High School and is loved and feared by her students. We have a beautiful home in Carlsbad and in warm weather, which we have a lot of around here, we spend a great deal of time gardening and landscap-ing the place. Since Amie moved to New Mexico in 2008, we now have eight garden beds yielding immense crops of vegetables, flow-

Top: Jennifer Godwin-Wyer teaching a geology class and lab to 4th graders. Mid-dle: Jennifer and Callum celebrating the last day of school before summer break. Bottom: Callum and Paul looking at a fault in San Antonio, TX.

Top: Lewis Land and his wife, Amie, shortly after completing a whitewater run on the Rio Grand south of Taos. Bottom: Lewis standing next to some electrical sensitivity equipment he was using as part of an investigation of sinkholes north of Carlsbad, NM.

21

Heels on Earth

ers, and fruit trees, instead of the one little vegetable garden I was cultivating as a lonely single guy. Our summer vacations are usually spent enjoying the beautiful south-ern Rocky Mountains. In the past three years we’ve taken up white-water kayaking and have had some amazing kayaking adventures on the Pecos, Rio Grande, Colorado, and Gunnison Rivers.

Since southeastern New Mexico is part of the greater Permian Basin oil patch, we are surrounded by oil field activity. Now, with the price of oil hovering around $40/barrel, I am reminded almost daily of how lucky I am not to have my career intimately intertwined with the petroleum industry, as it was in a previous professional incarnation back in the ‘80s.

Keith Robertson (MS 1994) Hafa adai and greetings from Guam! I am writing to you from the jungles of northern Guam and my fifth UXO (unexploded ord-nance) remedial investigation here in the Pacific. I have been working for AECOM Corp., a subcontrac-tor to the US Navy, for 7 years, and now find myself as the technical lead and field manager for the AE-COM Honolulu office’s Munitions Program. We currently have on-going projects in Hawaii, Guam, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, and sev-eral of the smaller Marianas Is-lands (Tinian, Saipan, Pagan, and Kwajalein). The job is challenging and represents a nice mix of office and fieldwork. And then there’s the weather...it’s currently winter and a frosty 87ºF! Should any UNC geo alums find themselves in the Pacif-ic, please drop me a line.

Thomas Rossbach (MS 1987, PhD 1992) I am starting a new position in the Department of Earth Sciences at Indiana Univer-sity-Purdue University at India-napolis (IUPUI).

2001-2010Stephen Hughes (BS 2009) I’ve survived my first year as a profes-sor in Puerto Rico. Life is definitely different here, but awesome. Al-though I’ve still got a little bit of the impostor syndrome going, I think I’m settling into a nice role here. And I’m happy because I’ve secured teaching the structural ge-ology course annually. I’m keeping my Appalachian research rolling with undergraduate projects, field trips, and a planned master’s stu-dent, and I’m having undergrads focus on small local projects as well.

Trevor Nace (BS 2008) I am currently a geologist in Houston working for Shell. I recently rotat-ed to the Permian West Texas as-set where I work on field develop-ment, well planning, and regional mapping. My wife recently finished her degree in Occupational Thera-py here in Houston. As a hobby, I enjoy writing about tech on http://appamatix.com. My wife and I are excited to spend time in Europe this fall and attending weddings around the country.

2011-2015Travis Courtney (BS 2013) In August, I started my first year as a

graduate student at the Scripps In-stitution of Oceanography study-ing the impacts of climate change on coral reefs. I’ll be focusing on how changes in seawater carbon-ate chemistry may provide a useful tool for monitoring reef metabo-lism and overall reef health.

Martin Reed (BA 2012) I am currently beginning my fourth year teaching high school Honors Algebra 1 and Geometry in the west side of Chicago. I also antic-ipate finishing my MS Ed from Johns Hopkins University in May, 2016 focusing on educational poli-cy and school law. I anticipate stay-ing in teaching for the next four to five years as I finish my masters and begin a PhD in Education Pol-icy.

Stephen Hughes on the north side of Cul-ebra, Christmas Day, 2014.

22

Heels on Earth

Our alumni receptions at the annual Geological Society of America meetings have been a great way for old and new friends of the Department to meet or reconnect. Baltimore hosted the GSA annual meeting this fall. The turnout at our alumni event was fantastic! About 40 of our departmental friends were able to reconnect over food and libations.

Here are some of the folks we saw in Baltimore, in addition to about half a dozen of our current undergraduates who attended the meeting:

Baltimore GSA Alumni Reception

Stephen HughesJennifer PooleMichael AckersonKarin OlsenWright HortonThomas ChapmanWill OdomPhilip JustusBill RansonLisa PrattAl CurranDaven Quinn

Katie WootonKyle SampertonRyan FrazerMargaret JonesMadelyn PercyMiquela IngallsStewart EdieGeoff FeissRoger PutnamDrew ColemanLaura MooreDonna Surge

Remembering Our Former Tar Heels John J. W. Rogers William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus John J.W. Rogers passed away Wednesday, January 14, 2015. John joined the Geological Sciences faculty in 1975 and remained active in supporting stu-dents and research in the Department until his death. John supervised 25 graduate students and countless undergraduate students at Carolina. After retiring, he remained a constant fixture in the Department. Even after he was no longer able to visit the Department, he continued his financial and intellectual support of ju-nior faculty and students whom he entertained in his home. A gift in John’s honor can be made to The John & Barbara Rogers Fund for Excellence in Geochem-istry in Geological Sciences. Those wishing to make a donation can access a giving page on the University website here and search for fund 105519. You may also

send a check payable to “Arts & Sciences Foundation, Inc.” with “John and Barbara Rogers Fund – 105519” in the memo line to The Arts and Sciences Founda-tion, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 134 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.

Current students who attended the 2015 GSA meeting in Baltimore. Left to Right: Seth Brazell (PhD), Margaret Jones (MS), Madelyn Percy (PhD), Tom Chapman (MS), Eric Barefoot (BS) in front of his poster, Ryan Frazer (PhD), Michelle Gavel (BS), and Elsemarie DeVries (PhD).

23

Heels on Earth

College of Arts & Sciences Reception in Cypress, TX Hosted by Elijah White on May 16, 2015

Left to Right: Andrew Mehlhop (BS 1993, MS 1996) and his wife, Delynda, with Kristie Bradford (MS 1995).

Left to Right: Tonya Hamilton, Kevin Barris, Elijah White (MS 1984), Henry “Hank” Hamilton, and Susan Barris.

Left to Right: Julie Kickham (BS 2000), John Foudy (MS 2002), Jennifer Foudy, Kate Moss (wife of Corey Moss, PhD 2002).

Left to Right: Elaine Mims (MS 1985), Sr. Associate Dean Kevin Guskiewicz, Francis Rollins (BA 1981, MS 1985), Charles Mims (BS 1984, MS 1989), and Allan Chiulli (BA 1978, MS 1988).

24

Heels on Earth

Corporations, Foundations, Estates& Trusts Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Apache CorporationBP Foundation Colgate University LibrariesDonaticExxonMobilEstate of Sue Himelick FisherGR Baum & Associates, LLCJohnnie P. WangerLaw Living TrustEstate of James N. MurdockNew Market Corporation Occidental PetroleumShell Oil CompanyVerizon

Diamond Donors ($1,000 or above) R. Alan & Irene T. BriggamanBrian Stewart CarlGinger & Brian CoffeyJesse William DavisJohn Patrick FoudyAndrew MehlhopSally Marie MurrayDaniel Craig PignatielloCaleb Joseph PollockNancy Marie RodriguezFrancis O. & Lydia E. RollinsElijah White, Jr.Thomas Whitehurst

Sapphire Donors($500-$999) Charles BartlettWesley & Betty BattenStephanie Marion BriggsEllen Kay Brundage

Jane & Allen CurranCharles & Joanne FrankelStephen HurstJohn MonradAlbert StaheliHolly SteinIone & Carl Taylor

Topaz Donors($100-$499)Mark AlspaughGerald BaumRonald Benson & Nellie HansenSusan BowenKevin & Christine BradfordMont BrightCharles & Patricia BrownWilliam BurkJames & Joanne ButlerArthur CaderKristelle CastiglioneWilliam ColeTillman & Margaret CooleyEdward CusterRobert DavidsonMark & Elizabeth FairmanLaura FisherJerome FrankelMae GustinSteven & Barbara HauckDon HermesFrancis HillsWright & Beverly HortonWilliam HufGregory IcenhourStephen KeithStephen KeslerJames & Sara MadisonRobert McGimseyTed & Wanda OakleyEmily & Michael PatilloTod & Jody Podl

William RansonKaren ReynoldsJean & Russell SeamanBonita SonichElanore SonichDavid SwensonDaniel & Linda TextorisPaul TietzCharles & Alice ToddKenneth WalkerDavid & Ruth WalzLarry & Jane WardNancy West & Geoffrey FeissBetsey WingfieldMartha & Joseph Wooden

Opal Donors(up to $100) Melia AllenBrian & Jennifer BauerThomas BeamanRichard & Sheila BeaudryWaneta BensonPatricia BogdanskiPhyllis BrothersRobert BrownSusan & David CampbellSarah CooleyGuy & Caitlin CurrentChristopher EstesJohn FergusonSally FerreeJohn GagnonJulia GeniacTammie GrantTimothy GriffinPhilip & Eugenia HirschJoan HoneymanZebulon & Sonia JacksonFred & Roberta LangGeorge & Delores LangHenry & Nancy Latimer

Department of GeologicalThank you! The Department of Geological Sciences gratefully thanks our generous donors who have supported its students, faculty, research, and programs in fiscal year 2015.

25

Heels on Earth

Gerry LawAnn MarrinerGene MaynardMary & Gene McGuinnessMarjorie McKinneyScott MeyerAmy MontanariKent Nielsen

Thomas PickettCarol & Karsten RistKim Salisbury-Keith & Darryl KeithFrederick SechlerSophie ShiffmanJim & Ellen SlavinAlan & Jean Smith

Amber StricklandScott Van CampMark WaltmanRonald & Tracy WeathersNancy WilliamsMax Woodbury

This list recognizes donors who made gifts to the department of geological sciences between July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015 and does not include anonymous donors, or those with pledges, bequests or other planned gifts. This list was prepared with great care to ensure accuracy. To report a mistake, please contact Stephen Keith at (919) 843-0345 or Stephen.Keith@unc.edu.

State funds and tuition pay only part of the costs to recruit and retain the best faculty and gradu-ate students and support the unique liberal-arts

undergraduate programs that are the hallmarks of the Carolina experience. Private funds sustain and en-hance these extraordinary opportunities for students and faculty. Despite budget cuts, the Department of Geological Sciences continues to provide the best possible education for our undergraduate and grad-uate students. Each year, private support provides the funding that helps support Carolina’s margin of ex-cellence. Private giving is now more critical than ever. Please make your gift today via our secure website: http://www.geosci.unc.edu/page/support-unc-gs or by using the enclosed pre-paid envelope.

We continue to welcome your gifts to any fund in the Geological Sciences department and we hope you will consider one of these funding priorities:

Geological Sciences Department Unre-stricted Fund (101221): Provides the Chair with the most flexibility to apply support to the depart-ment’s most immediate needs, such as graduate stu-dent and faculty research, field camp scholarships, and equipment.

Elijah White, Jr. Faculty Excellence Fund in Geological Sciences (100204): Supports fac-

ulty research, including pilot project seed funds and competitive research leave awards.

The John & Barbara Rogers Fund for Ex-cellence in Geochemistry in Geological Sciences (105519): Supports student and faculty re-search, as well as the geochemical facilities.

For questions about creating scholarships and pro-fessorships, stock or estate gifts, specific programs, and suggestions on how you can support the Depart-ment of Geological Sciences, please contact:

Stephen Keith, MPAAssociate Director of Development

The Arts & Sciences FoundationStephen.Keith@unc.edu or 919-843-0345

Editor: Donna Surge

Invest in Geological Sciences at Carolina!

BACK COVER: Peaks emerging from the fog, White Mountains, Alaska. Photo by Tamlin Pavelsky.

Sciences Honor Roll 2015

The University of North Carolina at Chapel HillDepartment of Geological SciencesCampus Box 3315Mitchell Hall

NONPROFITU.S. Postage

PA I DUNC-Chapel Hill