Undergraduate Program Director Dylan Ward

Note from the Undergraduate Program Director Dylan Ward

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here at UC for a decade this August. In that time I’ve graduated five individual graduate students with four M.S. and two PhDs awarded between them, working in the Teton Range, the San Rafael Swell of Utah, the central Kentucky karst, and the Andes of northern Chile. These landscapes provide exceptional examples of landscape evolution: by glaciation, by stream incision through layered rocks, by dissolution. They are all great landscapes for adventure. Taking over as Undergraduate Program Director this past year has been a different kind of adventure. I’d like to start by saying that I got off to a good start thanks to Carl Brett; we have all benefited from all his years of service in the role and his deep care for and personal investment in our students. Carl showed me all the things he was doing for our students over the years and I was amazed, many that are well beyond the defined scope of the job, but, I think, vital to the community of the department. Carl, and Krista Smilek, always have the answer when I get in too deep. Thanks to Krista, too, who is always in touch with our students and makes this job possible, and irons out all the technical lumps that come up along the way. I come into this position as the department is going through a transition of sorts, (although such change is perhaps the more typical state of affairs). Our name change to the Department of Geosciences reflects the field of Geology outgrowing its name, or at least the common perceptions of its name. The geosciences comprise a broad and interdisciplinary field which is inclusive of classical geological methods and knowledge but is no longer defined by them. The relevance of the geologic deep-time perspective and systems-level understanding of the Earth to current societal needs and challenges has never been greater: from environmental protection and restoration, to a changing landscape of energy resources, water availability, natural hazards, and the context of ongoing climate change in Earth’s long history. This has created an opportunity for us to communicate beyond the classically geologically-oriented students, and also a challenge. How do we use our limited number of credit hours to develop students who have enough technical depth in one or a few narrow fields to call themselves experts, yet are broadly trained enough to work effectively with interdisciplinary teams, and to act as independent and flexible problem solvers? Looking to the future, we would like to maintain and strengthen the core Geology BS program, including a rigorous field component and a high co-required science and math requirement, while broadening the appeal and reach of the geosciences to students with interests in other sciences and engineering, planning, business, and even arts and music. We have noted a strong student interest in working on research projects, and in learning not just background knowledge, but how to do things. The ongoing development of the geochemistry teaching lab, the TEMMS groundwater research station, and the reintroduction of the departmental, alumnisupported undergraduate research grants program are all contributing to a reinvigoration of undergraduate research in the department. In addition, we are gearing up to re-envision our BA program to serve a larger number of interdisciplinary dual-majors who would like to gain the unique deep-time perspective that our department provides. And finally, I am always happy to hear what folks in various industries are seeing with regards to incoming employees, and how our program can help to make sure key hard and soft skills are in place.

Dylan Ward dylan.ward@uc.edu

Joshua Miller

The UC Office of Research is excited to announce the winners of the 2021-2022 University Research Council awards to faculty, who each received a $25,000 award for their two-year projects and to graduate students, who received up to $7,500 for summer research projects. The URC funding program is UC’s oldest and most prestigious internal funding mechanism. Since 1971, the URC has worked in partnership with the Vice President for Research to advance high-potential research, scholarship and creative work. As part of the Research2030 strategic plan for research, a new program focused on early-career faculty, the URC Faculty Scholars Research Award, was established last year. “Such faculty represent the bright future for UC, and this program seeks to bolster their efforts early in their career to help them identify solutions to the complex questions, problems and challenges facing society,” says UC’s Vice President for Research Patrick Limbach.

Awardees were selected based on the quality, novelty and impact of their research, scholarship and creative activities, along with a clear potential to make further, sustainable contributions to knowledge creation and improved societal outcomes. We are especially pleased that graduate students Megan Casey Corcoran and Madison Quinn Gaetano also received awards.

Project: When giants grow-up: Changes in dietary ecology and mobility of sauropod dinosaurs during their growth and maturity “Sauropod dinosaurs hatched from eggs no larger than soccer balls and could grow to be over 100 feet long, but the ecological and biological transitions necessary to accomplish this transformation are shrouded in mystery. Using a unique collection of teeth from Rapetosaurus krausei (Sauropoda; Late Cretaceous, Madagascar) ranging from recently hatched to fully adult individuals, I will use tooth shape, tooth wear patterns, and geochemistry to establish the most comprehensive test for how diet and individual mobility changed with sauropod growth and development.

Eva Enkelmann

Editor’s note: Our former colleague (2013-2017), Dr. Eva Enkelmann, who is currently at the University of Calgary has created a marvelous website entitled Rocky Voices at (https://www.enkelmann.org/blog). I invite you to have a look at it.

Warren Huff

One of the outcomes of having been associated with the clay science community for many years was a recent interview I was involved in with Kevin Murphy, a long-time colleague and the Executive Director of the Mineralogical Society of the UK and Ireland. You can watch the interview at (https://bit.ly/3vnGWC3).

And for those of you who would like to scroll back through the department’s history, including former faculty and staff plus campus buildings, there is a link at (https://bit.ly/35X1o2o).

Reza Soltanian

Last year was another great year for me and my group here at UC. We have been productive both in terms of obtaining research funding and publishing peer-reviewed papers. Perhaps most notable accomplishment is obtaining $520k funding for our work on groundwater and surface water exchange at the Theis Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Site (TEMMS) from NSF. In summer 2022 we will perform variety of field work from GPR surveys, piezometer installation, and water sampling for water quality analysis to data acquisition for

river hydrodynamics using acoustic doppler current profiler. I have hired a highly computational postdoctoral scholar, Pei Li, who will join us in April 2022. Pei has been working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before joining UC. Below I highlight three of our important publications in 2021.

NSF postdoc fellow Corey Wallace finished his postdoctoral term and joined Geosyntec Consultant as a Senior Engineer. He will be missed but he is still collaborating with us at least. Corey’s last publication at UC focused on understanding spatiotemporal dynamics of reaction hotspots in heterogeneous riparian sediments. This work was published in Water Resources Research (volume 57, issue 12) where Corey showed that the interface between highly conductive sediments such as gravel and organic rich sediments such as silt are important in developing reaction hotspots. PhD student Reza Ershadnia has been really productive this year. I would like to highlight his publication in the Geophysical Research Letter (volume 48, issue 23). In this work Reza investigated mechanisms that enhance lateral methane plume migration in shallow aquifer systems. He showed that representation of capillary pressure heterogeneity controlled by multiscale sedimentary architecture is necessary to capture multiphase flow dynamics of methane plume. Tyler McGarr successfully defended his thesis and published a manuscript in Hydrological Processes (volume 35, issue 9). In this paper, Tyler coupled geophysical techniques with physical and chemical sediment analyses to quantify exchange dynamics between groundwater and river water in a compound bar deposit at TEMMS.

Photo Captions (Pages 30-32):

1. Conceptual model of surface water and groundwater exchange and nutrient transformation within heterogeneous fluvial sediments. Groundwater flow adjacent to a gaining river is primarily toward the river during baseflow conditions (b), but shifts away from the river as river stage rises during high-flow conditions (c), typically in response to storm events. As infiltrating river water delivers nutrients into the river bed and bank, aerobic respiration (green), nitrification (red), and denitrification (blue) hot spots develop in different facies based on their physical and chemical properties. Hot spots (orange) develop within intermediate conductivity facies adjacent to low conductivity, high organic matter sediments. Sediment grain size controls the magnitude of exchange and transport (indicated by the size and length of red arrows). From Wallace, Soltanian et al. (2021). 2. Example of multiphase flow and transport simulations of methane leakage in shallow unconfined aquifers by Reza Ershadnia. Two modeling scenarios in the left and right colums are the same in terms of permeability and porosity distribution and they only differ in capillary pressure (pressure difference at the gas-water interface) distribution. Comparing two scenarios shows that capillary pressure heterogeneity controlled by underlying sedimentary facies types places leading-order controls on lateral methane plume spreading in aquifer systems. From Ershadnia et al. (2021). 3. Example of geophysical data collected by Tyler McGarr. (a) Measured electromagnetic induction (EMI) data displayed on the compound bar adjacent to TEMMS and within the Great Miami River. (b) Inverted EMI data using numerical models by Tyler for each bottom of layer depth. Warmer colors indicate high electrical conductivity associated with finer grained sediments. Cooler colors indicate low electrical resistivity associated with gravel- and sand-dominated facies. Tyler found warmer colors correspond to cross-bar channels fills that are baffle to flow but are ideal sites for contaminant and nutrient transformation. From McGarr et al. (2021). 4. Corey Wallace and Tyler McGarr installing cameras at the Theis Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Site in Summer 2021. 5. Installing groundwater wells using a Geoprobe in April 2022 at Theis Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Site. Three new shallow monitoring wells were developed. 6. Tyler McGarr and Reza Ershadnia taking groundwater samples the Theis Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Site. 7. Tyler McGarr and Sage Peterson (from Targeted Compound Monitoring) working on installation of in-situ Vulink and Aqua Troll 200 In-Situ sensors in observation wells at the Theis Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Site. 8. A wonderful day outside at UC Science Day in May 2021. Corey Wallace, Reza Ershadnia, and Tyler McGarr demonstrating grounswater contamination and plume migration using our aquifer kit. 9. Portions sediment cores extracted from the Theis Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Site are now part of the ice age exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Beautiful demo of sedimentary architecture observed in glacial deposits!

Yurena Yanes

This academic year has been full of exciting events in my research group. My two PhD students, Catherine Nield and Ezekiel King Phillips, both passed their qualifying exams and are working on various new research projects to complete their dissertations.

Catherine Nield is planning fieldwork this summer to collect fossil land snails in Alaska. We plan to collect samples throughout various Quaternary Loess, permafrost, and archeological deposits around central Alaska. Ezekiel (Zeke) King Phillips is working hard in the lab analyzing the stable isotope composition of numerous modern and fossil land snails from Ohio and Kentucky to assess their dietary ecology. Both students are working really hard to graduate next year. Together with Catherine and Zeke, I organized a technical session on “Actualistic Paleontology: Learning from the modern to better interpret the past” in the North Central/Southeastern Geological Society of America (GSA) sectional meeting, celebrated in Cincinnati OH. The session was a success, covering a broad range of topics, and included many student presentations.

I have continued working with undergraduate student Kaaviya Muruganantham. She completed a research project and presented her results in two scientific conferences, the 2021 GSA annual meeting in Portland OR through a poster presentation, and the 2022 NC/SE GSA sectional meeting in Cincinnati OH through an oral communication. Kaaviya did a fantastic job and showed outstanding oral communication skills and handled questions professionally. Well done, Kaaviya! I am proud of our UC students and feel fortunate to work with highly motivated and enthusiastic students who keep me engaged and teach me how to become a better mentor and scientist.

I am looking forward to starting my new role as editor-in-chief of the journal PALAIOS, a bimonthly academic journal dedicated to the study of life through Earth history, published by the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) since 1986. In this position I have the chance to read and handle numerous peer-review articles on scientific topics ranging from paleontology to sedimentary geology. Finally, my career has taken a turn after accepting a position as a rotating Program Director in the National Science Foundation (NSF), where I manage the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology program (SGP) of the Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) under the Directorate of Geosciences (GEO). This new professional opportunity is allowing me to expand my scientific and administrative skills, and augment my training and education in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion issues in STEM fields. I’m looking forward to seeing what new opportunities may come in the near future.

Amy TownsendSmall

About to present to City Council about the importance of reducing #methane emissions!! Our landfill is the largest methane emitting landfill in the USA! @CityOfCincy

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David Nash

Attila Kilinc

As some of you know and many of you don’t know, David Nash has (had) a brain tumor. It came on very sudden and he had surgery this morning. He was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday, as he was having problems moving. After a lot of testing, he has a brain tumor that was fairly large and fast growing. Ruth Anne called me last night to tell me David was going to have surgery this morning. I was waiting to share the news until after I heard back from Ruth Anne. Please see her note below:

David is certainly a loved member and character in our department and community! Please keep him in your prayers, thoughts, or whatever to you to bring good energy! It was a very long day of surgery, but David’s surgeon told us that it went as he had expected. They resected his tumor, removing 90+%, which is what the surgeon had told us to expect. The tumor is very near parts of the brain that control motor function and sensation on the left side, so they could not get all in that area. David withstood the surgery pretty well, and when I saw him at about 7pm was alert and pretty well-oriented but in a great deal of pain at the surgical site. I am hoping that they can get the pain under control, so that he can rest more easily and maybe even sleep. (Some of you know he spent four days and nights in the ER waiting for a bed, and essentially had no sleep this past week.) It was hard to judge his motor function tonight; his surgeon thinks that there will be a little more weakness on that left side initially, but that it should subside over the courses of days to weeks. The tissue samples have been sent to pathology and for DNA testing. Those results should take about 2 - 3 weeks, after which we will know more about next steps. In the meantime, he will need in-patient rehab (they are still talking about Tuesday for that transfer, but that seems really fast - hopefully, he’ll seem more able tomorrow). Again, I want to thank you all for your love and support, and ask that you continue to send it our way. Right now, we have things pretty well in hand. Nathan is here with his girlfriend Andrea, who is basically managing the home front. David’s sister and her husband arrive tomorrow. Because of COVID protocols, visitors are really limited, so we will just have to continue to let you know how things are going this way. I am grateful to you all. Ruth Anne

This is my last Newsletter before retirement. On April 12, 2022, I gave my last lectures in my courses “Physical Geology” and in “Earthquakes and Society”. It was a bittersweet experience for me. I felt relaxed thinking that I do not have to prepare to teach and at the same time I felt, after 52 years of teaching at UC, I will no longer be with students. I was fortunate to be a member of this department. But, as they say, “life is short, eat desert first”. I feel our department is in good hand with many very talented faculty who will continue to add to the reputation of the Department, College, and the University. Our immediate plans include flying to Athens, Greece in August and taking a cruse which will stop at several Greek Islands including the Santorini. A volcano that I always wanted to see. Perhaps, a year later we plan to fly to Los Angeles and take a cruse trip which will go through the Panama Canal. George Rieveschl used to tell me more than 20,000 people died from malaria during construction of the Panama Canal and he was suggested to work on malaria rather than the drug he invented: Benadryl. Since then, I wanted to see the Panama Canal. I will continue my research on thermodynamic analysis of silicate melts and perhaps learn more on artificial intelligence and machine language.