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Caitlan N. Howard, GIT, Chapter Secretary We continue our efforts to provide informative presentations, coordinate yearly field trips, provide networking opportunities for our members, pursue funding for the Chapter, and recruit members from throughout the professional geologic community. We were pleased to have Richard Wooten as our featured speaker for our November Seminar hosted on Zoom. His Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer Series Presentation topic was Going Against the Grain: Linking Brittle Cross-Structures with Landslides, Hydrogeology, and Earthquakes in the North Carolina Blue Ridge and Piedmont. Wooten’s forty years of experience in his profession showed during his presentation, and the announcement of this lecture led to a spike in attendance from members of our Austin Peay State University Student Chapter.

The AEG Nashville Chapter fall field trip was held On October 2–3, 2021, at the Hamilton Valley Cave Research Center and Onyx Cave. We wish to thank Dr. Chris Groves of Western Kentucky University for volunteering to lead the cave tour that evening and for giving us several great lectures on the research being conducted by the Crawford Hydrology Lab and WKU at stops throughout the cave. Several WKU geology students were in attendance and assisted with the tour. The evening included presentations on karst given by Maggie Brosky of WKU and Bruce Rogers. A big thanks to Dr. Pat Kambesis of the Cave Research Foundation for the use of the research center facilities.

We held an in-person holiday social at the Bavarian Bierhaus in Nashville on December 11, 2021. It provided our members the opportunity to connect with their local AEG cohorts and share ideas about content and events for the coming year with our officers. A few of our younger members expressed an interest in a virtual ASBOG study group, and other members

Fluorescent minerals observed with black light

AEG Nashville members touring Onyx Cave during the October 2021 field trip

discussed the possibility of a field trip to a local mine with the Environmental Health & Safety Manager of a mining company.

Chapter Chair Katherine Clifton has secured additional funding through sponsors for our Chapter. Our Chapter Sponsors are AEG Past President Bill Paris, Waypoint Analytical, and Envirowerks LLC, at the Titanium Level; Barge Design Solutions at the Gold Level; and Geotech Environmental Equipment Inc. and TTL at the Silver Level. Our local Student Chapters, members, and programming for FY 2022 will reap the benefits from these additional funds.

We continued our educational outreach activities with a student presentation competition on February 24, 2022, which provided geology students from regional universities to gain valuable experience sharing their research in a professional forum. Our meeting on March 18, 2022, featured a presentation by our Treasurer, Mark Elson, entitled Sonic Drilling on Embankment Dams and Levees.

Later in the spring when pandemic conditions allow, Caitlan Howard, the Young Professional Outreach Chair and Secretary, will hold in-person career development meetings at some of the universities within our region. We have purchased learning supplies for our K–12 Educational Outreach Chair, Bruce Rogers, to provide to the Pine Mountain Settlement School and Leslie County Middle School. Bruce has developed some in-person lectures for those schools and will be establishing a geological sciences lab for them using materials that have been donated by our Chapter members.

The Nashville Chapter is looking forward to a very active year in 2022 and appreciate the support of the AEG Regional Directors and our sponsors who make our outreach programs possible.

St. Louis Chapter

Jessie Goodwin, Chapter Editor The St. Louis Chapter was excited to hold events in person in November and December of 2021!

Dr. Bob Criss of Washington University presented at the St. Louis Chapter’s first in-person meeting in more than a year on November 10, 2021. In his presentation entitled Urban Flooding, Dr. Criss discussed the scale dependence of floods, showed data-based inundation mapping work, and presented a rainfall-runoff model that describes basin-level timescales for flooding. Dr. Criss emphasized both the impacts of human intervention on flash flooding and the human impact of the floods, from homes damaged to lives lost. The recommendations that Dr. Criss presented included additional research and management of storm water that delays or diverts waters from urban streams prone to flash flooding, as well as recognizing the effects of channelization and other floodplain developments.

On December 8, 2021, two graduate students in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at St. Louis University presented their research to the St. Louis Chapter.

Carly Finegan’s talk, Using Low-Cost Measurements of Optical Brighteners for Rapid, In-Situ Reconnaissance of Wastewater Inputs to a Water Resource, explored the issue of untreated wastewater entering streams and difficulties with existing tracers. Optical brighteners, which are present in paper products and detergents, were examined as a low-cost alternative with few interferences from other sources that can also be tested while in the field. Carly’s results indicated that optical brighteners show promise as a robust tracer that correlated with wastewater infrastructure frequency and are a useful field screening tool that can be used to identify areas for further investigation of wastewater leaks.

Teresa Baraza spoke about Quantifying Microplastic Debris Transport and Sourcing for a Karstic Cave System. Teresa discussed microplastic (<5mm) transport in groundwater as an understudied area, including in karstic systems and cave ecosystems. Water sampling and in-situ monitoring were performed at the outlet of a cave with an urban catchment area that showed a fast flood response to rainfall. Teresa found that microplastics were present in most samples, and microplastic transport increased during high flow events, especially after longer periods of dry weather.

AEG St. Louis Chapter/Geotechnology Biannual Student Workshop

Every two years, the St. Louis Chapter of AEG partners with Geotechnology in St. Louis, Missouri, to hold the Biannual Student Workshop. The Student Workshop is an opportunity for students to get a taste of what field work looks like while they are still in school. I attended the workshop when I was a

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DUANE KRUEGER AND LUKE DUCEY, BOTH OF GEOTECHNOLOGY

Ryan Smith and Keith Armon teach drilling methods and safety.

Students learn about GPR. A pipe is buried in the Geotechnology yard to use for demonstrations of the GPR technology.

Dr. Eugene Torgashov and Tim Wilson show geophysical equipment. David Forseth demonstrates laboratory equipment in the soils laboratory.

Jessie Goodwin shows environmental sampling methods at a groundwater well installed in the Geotechnology yard.

student and found it very valuable. I am now Chapter Chair of the St. Louis Chapter and a Senior Engineer with Geotechnology, and I am excited to be able to provide this opportunity to current students.

The most recent workshop was held on October 23, 2021. Twenty-seven students from four local universities came to the Geotechnology headquarters to spend their Saturday learning about field work. Students rotated between four stations: geophysics, soils laboratory, drilling, and environmental sampling. This workshop was sponsored by Teklab, Inc., of Collinsville, Illinois, who have been on our workshop team for many years. They also supplied sampling containers for the environmental sampling station.

Dr. Eugene Torgashov and Tim Wilson showed students geophysical methods such as ground penetrating radar (GPR), radio frequency locating instruments, seismic (multichannel analysis of surface waves), and electrical resistivity tomography. Students had the chance to push a ground-penetrating radar receiver and look at real-time data on rebar in concrete.

David Forseth taught students about what happens in a soils laboratory, from sieves to Atterbergs. Students had an opportunity to see how Shelby tube samples are extruded and prepared for testing.

Luke Ducey teamed up with Ryan Smith and Keith Armon to show students what it looks like behind a working drill rig. Students saw standard penetration tests, Shelby tubes, and hollow-stem auger drilling, while learning about drilling methods, logging soils, and safety around the rig.

Jessie Goodwin talked to students about environmental soil and groundwater sampling and testing at a monitoring well at Geotechnology’s headquarters. Students had a chance to bail water from a well, bottle-up a groundwater sample, and learn about the importance of safety when working with contaminants.

Our group leaders kept our day running on schedule and helped our students get to each station. Duane Kreuger, Dr. Anna Saindon, Bob Haefner, Sean Garcia of Geotechnology, and Dr. David Rogers of Missouri S&T kept the student groups on track through the day.

The Student Workshop looked a little different this time with masks, social distancing, and the “meeting room” set up in the

The “meeting room” for this workshop was the drill shop with the bay doors open, giving school groups room to space themselves out.

drill shop with the bay doors open, but just like with field work, we found a way to make it happen. The St. Louis Chapter is grateful to our volunteers, Teklab, and Geotechnology for continuing this tradition, and to the students who came to the event, which is what makes it a success.

Texas Chapter

Marie Garsjo, Chapter Member

Cynthia Palomares Feted by Texas Chapter

Members of the Texas Chapter gathered Saturday, March 12, 2022, to celebrate Cynthia Palomares, AEG’s 2019–20 President. The evening was sponsored by Bob Traylor, a longstanding Texas Chapter member, and held at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Houston. During Cynthia’s term as President, Covid overtook the nation. She led us through all the difficulties of that strange year, keeping our membership numbers steady, and hosting AEG’s first virtual Annual Meeting. We appreciate her hard and diligent work, and we recognize that she was unable to enjoy some of the benefits that go along with serving as AEG President such as presiding over the Annual Meeting in person, which was to have been in Portland—giving all those speeches, hosting the President’s Reception, and in general networking with us all.

We did our best to make up for that with great company, great food, great wine, and, of course, speeches. We appreciate her continual promotion of AEG, her consummate professionalism, and her many years of hard work for both the Texas Chapter and national association.