Geo Sciences - Field Notes, Fall 2019

FIELD NOTES Raman Spectrometer

Fall 2019

The Department of Geosciences continues to grow its analytical capabilities with the addition of a state-of-the-art Raman spectrometer. Our new (pricey) instrument was secured by Dr. Alexis Ault and is managed by Alexis, Dennis Newell, and Kelly Bradbury. It is housed with other researchgrade microscopes in the new Geoscience Microscopy Laboratory -- renovated and repurposed from a windowless, second-floor classroom many of us taught and learned in. The new Raman will be up and running this fall, as we await the arrival of a special anti-vibration table to ensure high quality data.

Hiking in Marble Canyon for the 2500 Trip, Spring 2019

Alex DiMonte checks out the new machine.

The Raman spectrometer (a Labram HR Evolution manufactured by Horiba Instruments) analyzes the chemistry of rocks and fluids down to the micron scale. Different wavelength lasers can excite molecules in the material, producing electromagnetic radiation diagnostic of composition (mineralogy) and structural integrity (amorphous vs. crystalline). Our new instrument also includes extra hardware and capabilities for fluid inclusions, so that we can analyze fluids that are trapped in rocks. These methods are rapidly becoming important tools to address questions in petrology, material science, and geochronology – and it especially adds to the capabilities of our faults-andearthquakes research group. Numerous faculty and student researchers here and elsewhere will integrate this exciting new technique in their research!

At Goosenecks State Park, Dr. Katie Potter uses her trusty travel-sized whiteboard to teach her Intro Geology class and several unsuspecting tourists. At the overlook, almost 300 million years of geologic processes are on full display. Teaching geology at the USU Blanding campus offers great opportunities to share the iconic geology of the Colorado Plateau with students.

Check out the rockin’ Geominutes on our YouTube channel: USU Geosciences Some current videos:  Fault Friction Experiments  Rock & Fossil Day  Logan Canyon: Stop 1

Geology Club road painting for Homecoming, 2019 “Of Quartz I Love Geology Club”

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Note from Department Head

Jim Evans explains how faults are made.

A Record Rock-n-Fossil Day Rock-n-Fossil Day held its 25th annual event in February of 2019. The record of attendees was blown out of the water: in 2018, attendees numbered around 450; in 2019, there were over 1200.

There were several new activities for guests to interact with. The freshly updated museum had a line throughout the day. The dinosaur and bone cookies were a huge hit with kids and adults alike. There were many rock creations and pipe -cleaner dinosaurs made. Guests brought samples they wanted identified. There was a set-up to show ground water levels, stream erosion & sedimentation, and how faults interact with each other. The Geology Club had geodes for sale, and the kids loved discovering the sparkles inside. The dino-greeters made many friends—and scared a few people as well.

Please joins us for the next event on February 22, 2020 from 10am2pm.

Clara teaches young guests about different types of rocks.

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The sign in front of our building seems confused: The name of the building and the name of our department do not match!

This is because our department has a new name starting this academic year -- Geosciences. This change stems from our recent strategic plan, and it reflects how our science and our people have changed over the past decades. We spend our time learning and collaborating across a range of sciences that involve water, climates, physics, and life, as well as minerals, rocks, topography and faults. The new name fits our science better. In the meantime, the degrees our students receive retain the same titles – Bachelor’s and Graduate degrees in Geology. And of course, our 100-year old home may forever be the Geology Building (at least until the next big earthquake).

This issue of Field Notes highlights the past year of changes, accomplishments, great students, and our new Ramen noodle for microscopy research. Also, among the faculty, Carol Dehler has been promoted to full Professor and Dennis Newell gained tenure and promotion to Associate Professor – congratulations! Another important development is some of our faculty deciding that there is life beyond higher education, and retiring. This academic year will be the last for our students to experience the amazing teaching and mentoring skills of Dr. Dave Liddell, Dr. Michelle Fleck in Price, and Sue Morgan, our longtime master Instructor from afar. Together they have dedicated over 100 years to USU, training many thousands of students, holding critical administrative roles, and forming the backbone of our department. We wish them the best of luck in their new adventures!

This academic year has started off with a bang. Our first Summit alumni field trip is taking place in Moab, more faculty are getting promoted, searches are underway for new faculty, we are planning a new workforce-oriented undergrad degree program, and key alumni are starting new endowments to support our students and researchers. As usual, there will be a lot to fit into this newsletter next year!

Drop a line sometime, Joel

USU’s IBA Team

Geo Club represented the Department at “Day on the Quad”, Fall 2019

Tammy Rittenour: NSF Research Tammy Rittenour is currently pursuing research with two National Science Foundation grants, both from the foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, awarded in 2017 and 2019.

“These awards are threeyear, collaborative grants with other institutions,” she says. “The 2017 grant supports a project to quantify landscape response to tectonic processes in southern Taiwan. The 2019 grant supports research in Sicily, investigating how the island’s uplift and glacial sea level change are recorded in the sedimentary record.”

Taiwan’s volatile tectonics and weather present a challenge for field work, Rittenour says, though the geologically young island is “a perfect place to study geology in an attainable window.”

“You can see geologic processes happening at an accelerated rate,” she says. “We aim to characterize and quantify rates of river incision and landsliding, in order to better understand the natural hazards of the area.”

“In comparison to Taiwan, Sicily has more well-preserved stratigraphy, which allows us more opportunities to collect sediment for dating,” says Rittenour, who serves as director of the USU Luminescence Laboratory, one of relatively few optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) labs throughout the world.

As with her previous CAREER grant studying the arroyos of Utah, Tammy’s new research sites afford further glimpses into powerful forces shaping the Earth, along with enticing research opportunities for students.

“Piecing together data – grain of sediment by grain – we’re exploring the timing of geologic processes,” she says. “And mapping out stories of a restless planet.”

The 2019 USU Geology IBA team placed 3rd in the Rocky Mountain region of the IBA (Imperial Barrel Award) competition.

This is a projectbased competition sponsored by AAPG, in which a team of five students are provided an industry-based data set to interpret. In 8 weeks, students experience a grueling effort of learning key software, interpret a range of subsurface data, and make a presentation to industry professionals in Denver. This years team consisted of Caroline Studnicky (MS 2020), Matt Ellison (MS 2020), Jared Bryan (BS 2020), Jordan Nicholls (BS 2019), and Devin Johnson (BS 2019). They worked on an offshore northwest Australia data set. Many thanks to USU Geo alum Dustin Keele for being the industry coach, and to USU Geo alum Dr. Elizabeth Petrie for help with software.

Coleman Hiett: NSF Awardee Coleman Hiett (BS Geology, University of Colorado) recently received a very prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF) to support his PhD research here in our department.

NSF-GRFs are awarded annually through a highly competitive proposal review process. Student proposals include a research statement, a personal statement of experiences and goals, academic transcripts, and letters of recommendation.

Applications are evaluated through a rigorous peer-review process that addresses the intellectual merit and broader impacts of the proposed research, and, importantly, the overall potential of the graduate student to grow as a researcher and scientist. The fellowship provides three years of support in the form of a stipend and cost-of-education allowance.

Coleman’s proposed research tackles important and challenging problems related to the geochemistry of fluids in modern and ancient subduction zones. Specifically, he will address the extent and impact of hydration of the continental lithosphere during flat-slab subduction along the South American arc. His novel approach will address both past and present signals of hydration using the isotope geochemistry of xenoliths in the Altiplano of southern Peru and Bolivia, and the geochemistry of hot springs in the Peruvian Andes. Broader impacts of his work will enable undergraduate research, promote international collaborations and education in Peru, and promote the educational outreach goals of USU Geosciences through development of a new xenolith display in our museum.

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Dr. Tammy Rittenour, Associate Professor & Graduate Coordinator In the last couple years since attaining tenure in 2015, Dr. Tammy Rittenour has continued to work with her students investigating fluvial and eolian deposits in the Grand Staircase in southern Utah. Kerry Riley has defended her PhD on the arroyo history of Johnson’s Wash and cosmogenic erosion rates of the region and she is currently teaching at Colorado Mesa University.

Alex Short has completed his research dating and describing piedmont gravels in the region and is in the writing phase of his MS thesis while he works as a Geologist for Barr Engineering in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Harriet Cornachione, a current PhD candidate, is working on the eolian record of aridity in region. Brianna Hill successfully completed her MS-AEG research on the North Salt Lake Parkway Drive landslide and began an internship with the BLM in Washington DC. Tammy worked with Evan Millsap (BS, 2018) and Andrew Perkins (BS, 2019) on undergraduate research involving mapping and dating a mammoth site in southern Utah. Both students graduated with honors. After USU, Evan was working on getting a PhD in paleontology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks when he died during a climbing accident in Denali National Park this past July. Andrew is a newly hired geologist at a mining company outside of Elko Nevada.

In the last several years Tammy has developed research projects in Antarctica, New Zealand and Australia looking at glacial and eolian records. Much of that work has wrapped up and she is preparing publications with colleagues. New research in the western Pacific includes a NSF-funded project looking at tectonic geomorphology, stream incision and hillslope erosion in southern Taiwan. New MS student Dominique Shore is working on that project. Tammy is also beginning a new research project looking at geomorphic and stratigraphic records of fluvial response to climate, tectonics and sea level change in Sicily. New collaborative research closer to home includes co-mentorship of postdoctoral researchers Margo Odlum and Tomas Capaldi. Margo is investigating the use of trapped charge luminescence measurements to characterize fault activity along the Wasatch and Hurricane Faults and Tomas is examining sedimentary records of Bear River diversion into the Lake Bonneville basin.

At the USU Luminescence Lab, things are still humming along in the dark and samples are being processed and electrons stimulated at a high-paced rate. The Lab Manager Michelle Nelson and Assistant Lab Manager Carlie Ideker are keeping a tight ship and are developing new projects of their own related to soil and regolith production (Michelle) and archaeological site formation (Carlie).

F A C U L t y N O t E s

Dr. Susanne Janecke, Professor Hi Alumni and Friends of the Department of Geosciences at Utah State University, It is exciting to use our new name (Geosciences Department) after a longish period of discussion. We earth scientists felt that it was time to switch to a more inclusive name.

The 2018-2019 year feels like a blur already and we are already very busy with our fall classes and research. I am teaching Field Methods and climate change produced three days of scalding temperatures in the mid 90s and one day of large hail and lightening. Fun stuff. Fall weather did finally arrive and Smithfield Dry Canyon is offering up some of its secrets to us.

A few highlights from this last year include more field work in the Salton Trough along the southern part of the San Andreas fault zone and the northern end of the Brawley Seismic Zone. We continue to explore how and where transpression changes southward into transtension. Stay tuned for the results of Clara Thomann’s thesis research there. We are finding that a suboptimal strike of the largest and most deformed fault zone in the transition could be holding up the entire rupture process.

The July 4-5, 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes in the Eastern California Shear zone nicely confirmed our last 15 years of work in dispersed and cryptic strike-slip fault zones.

I revisited the first 20 years of my research career in order to do some consulting for the Idaho National laboratory. That was satisfying because it resulted in my updating and testing my 2007 synthesis of the interplay of the Basin and Range province and the Yellowstone hot spot. I had published a syncline model of the Eastern Snake River Plain in 2007 but did not follow the literature to see whether the model is still correct. The model held up quite well and got even more compelling. As predicted, the Teton Range is now thought to be quite young, and I can now trace two major Basin and Range normal faults into the Yellowstone-influenced strain field, and show that NE-SW extension changes into N-S extension when the hot spot is nearby.

Idaho and Montana have some wonderful geology and geophysics.

Work in the Great Basin province has born new fruit as well. Nate Ellis and I identified 20-30 km of unmapped fault traces along the West Cache fault zone, and showed that the West Cache fault is linked up along several hard links in Mendon, Utah. The West Cache fault zone was thought to be entirely en echelon in its geometry. Instead, the fault zone is connected by newly identified Holocene fault scarps west of Cutler Reservoir. Clarkston and Mendon, Utah have fault scarps in the middle of town, and I mapped a low scarp between the Logan Airport and the old landfill.

Our daughter, Erica, is in her second year as a PhD student in geochemistry and it has been wonderful to share our love of rocks with her. She and her cat Widget, sometimes run a mass-spectrometer from home and together they have generated excellent Re-Os isochrons. (Actually, Widget just pretends to be using the computer). We enjoy having a nice gneiss in our remodeled kitchen. As you can imagine, we were forced to select a structural complex and multiple deformed “granite” counter -top when our formica one wore out. All the best to you and yours.

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F A C U L t y N O t E s

Dr. Michelle Fleck, Associate Professor-USU Eastern The Geosciences are alive and well on the USU Eastern campus in Price! As Associate Professor of Geology, I teach general education geoscience, Physical Geology, Earth Through Time, and Natural Disasters as face-to-face or interactive broadcast courses. USU students in Price are fortunate to be surrounded by the spectacular geology of the Colorado Plateau, so we take lots of afternoon field trips to the San Rafael Swell and surrounds. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a native of Tennessee, but followed my coal-geologist husband to Price in 1984. College of Eastern Utah (CEU) hired me as an adjunct instructor shortly thereafter, and I became full-time faculty at CEU in 1987. In the 2000s, I spent seven years serving as an administrator at CEU, but returned to full-time teaching when CEU merged with USU in 2010. I absolutely love teaching geology! Although my husband and I are both geologists, neither of our two children expressed any interest in rocks! Our daughter is a nurse practitioner at the University of Utah, and our son is a commercial pilot with SkyWest. Our family enjoys traveling together, and in recent years weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve visited Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, France, Costa Rica and the Caribbean islands.

Blair Larsen, Instructor I am originally from Virginia, and have lived in Logan for nearly 3 decades. I've been teaching general education geology courses to non-science majors at USU for 12 years. Generally, I teach high-enrollment courses that expose students from a variety of majors to the principles of science through the lens of geology. I also mentor several Undergraduate Teaching Fellows each semester, who in turn, help the students enrolled in my classes. Previous to teaching at USU, I taught middle-school science, and still enjoy sharing my love of science and geology with students. In my spare time, I love to travel, hike, garden, cook, read, and listen to folk music.

What is our Summit Initiative?

Association of Women Geoscientists hike in the Bear River Range, Fall 2019

Through a history of generosity on the part of our alumni and friends, our department is able to provide meaningful tuition, field camp, and research scholarships to over 20 students every year, and our students and faculty are very grateful.

Attracting the best graduate students and supporting faculty development are things we need and strive to improve.

Our goals are to: a) provide a fellowship to attract highachieving and underrepresented grad students (student access); b) meet rising costs for all students (student enrichment); and c) provide aid for the evolution of our teaching and research.

The Summit Initiative is a three-year effort to meet these goals by initiating and increasing select endowments. More information can be found on our website: https:// geo.usu.edu/information/giving-to-usu-geology/index.

Please be on the lookout for upcoming messages and letters about this effort!

Thank You

Some Geo Grad Students show off their scholarship, Spring 2019

to all who have donated to any of the USU Geosciences Department Funds <5>

Student Highlights Harriet Cornachione Madison Taylor Harriet Cornachione (PhD candidate) came to our department as a returning student following a diverse career variously as a professional geologist and professor of civil engineering. Harriet is working with Dr. Tammy Rittenour in the central Colorado Plateau, and reports “I appreciate this excellent opportunity to work in the spectacular, unique beauty of the coral sand dunes across southern Utah, doing science that has implications for climate adaption strategies for southwestern US.” Harriet is developing a chronostratigraphy of two dune fields in southern Utah using OSL (optically stimulated luminescence) and radiocarbon dating, with stratigraphy developed from field observations and laboratory analyses of physical and chemical characteristics of sediments. She is compiling the dune-activation history for individual dunes to determine the timing of dunefield-scale landscape response. Harriet’s work is in part supported by NSF grants through Dr. Rittenour. She has obtained further funding through grants from Association of Women Geoscientists, Colorado Scientific Society, and the Geologic Society of America.

Harriet is extraordinarily active in other ways. She is our graduate student representative to the department and the graduate student council for the College of Science. She is also active in the Ecology Center, as co-chair for the Ecology Seminar series. Recently she attended the Geosciences Congressional Visits Day on Capitol Hill, advocating with Utah congressional members for sustained support of geoscience research and STEM workforce initiatives. This fall, Harriet is presenting her research and participating in the Four Corners Science, Policy and Public Lands Symposium in Gunnison, Colorado. In addition to working in STEM education, she plans to pursue advocacy for geoscience in public policy in land and water management strategies for the future, working toward improved science communication to society.

Undergraduate Madison Taylor is learning that most dayto-day research efforts don’t yield heartstopping breakthroughs.

Sometimes, the geology major hits a wall as impenetrable as the rocks she studies.

“But you learn not to throw in the towel,” says Madison.

“Sometimes, you just need to hit the ‘pause’ button and get some fresh perspectives.”

Madison is among 11 undergraduates comprising the first cohort of Peak Summer Research Fellows and exploring the ins and outs of not only research, but learning how to fund, organize, communicate and present research efforts.

A recipient of USU’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunities (URCO) grant, as well as a College of Science Minigrant, Madison already has a solid foundation to launch her research efforts.

Working with Dr. Alexis Ault, Madison is investigating hematite, an iron ore found in southwestern Utah’s Hurricane fault zone. The Hurricane Fault is seismically active and hosted an M5.8 earthquake in 1992.

“Heat from past geologic events has left marks on the sample, which give us clues about Utah’s earthquake history.”

She uses several tools to examine her samples at the micro and nano scales. These microscopy tools allow Madison to identify potential earthquake texture in the samples. She then uses a technique called Uranium-Thorium-Helium or “(U-Th)/ He” dating to determine the time when the hematite formed on the fault or was deformed by an earthquake.

“I’m learning a lot about these tools, as well as how to interpret data,” Madison says. “I’m also learning the more research I do, the more I like it.”

Evan Millsap (1997 - 2019) Evan was a top student in our department, hailing from central Utah and completing a Bachelor’s degree in 2018. He was committed to an academic career in paleontology and was working on a PhD in Alaska. While serving as a field camp teaching assistant this past summer, he tragically died in a rock-climbing accident. We remember the remarkable brightness of Evan’s spirit and intellect. Plans are underway to have top undergraduate research proposals from our department awarded each year in Evan’s name.

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Courthouse Rock, Moab UT, Field Camp, Summer 2019

Dominique, Carlie, & Harriet talk with guests at Science Unwrapped.

Graduate Orientation Hike up Right-Hand Fork, Fall 2019

Geologically Unwrapped

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Utah State University’s Science Unwrapped, the public outreach program of the College of Science, carried a “Powers of 10” series last year. In November, the topic was “Planetary”, featuring USU geologist Carol Dehler.

Refreshments and hands-on learning activities were conducted by USU students and faculty members, along with community groups., In addition, guests were invited to bring their mystery rocks and fossils for identification.

Carol’s research interests include early Earth systems and the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis. Her teaching interests include physical and historical geology, stratigraphy, and sedimentology.

Initiated by the college in February 2009, Science Unwrapped introduces science in a relaxed, entertaining manner. Each event draws several hundred guests, with attendees ranging from preschoolers to senior citizens.

Utah State University Geology Alumni

NASA Grant Awardee This summer Rebekah received a Utah NASA Space Grant Consortium Fellowship for the 2019/2020 school year. This fellowship will help fund her research on the Hidden Spring Fault Zone in Southern California, a large component of which relies on data from NASA-JPL. A decade of uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR) data, collected by flights flown by NASA, will help inform regions of ground deformation and the magnitude of that deformation. This will help to create a more accurate map of this fault. This winter Rebekah will return to the study area to ground-truth her map, and verify the geologic expression of the fault.

Alumni Event at AAPG meeting, 2019. Left to Right: Dr. Elizabeth Petrie, Caleb Pollock, Dr. Dawn Hayes, Jason Kneedy, Elizabeth Horne, Ryan Sonntag

Advisory Board Current members of the Advisory Board are:  Yarrow Axford; Northwestern University; MS  Stephanie Carney; Utah Geological Survey; MS  Angela Isaacs; Sinclair Oil; MS, BS (Chair)  Paul Jamison; Logan School District; BS  Al Jones, Smiley Creek Lodge, MS, BS  Dustin J. Keele; Chevron Exploration; BS, MS  Mike Lowe; Utah Geological Survey; MS  Craig Nelson; R.G., C.E.G Western-Geologic; MS, BS  Elizabeth Petrie; W. State Colorado University; MS, PhD  Caleb Pollock; Pioneer Natural Resources; BS  Dan Rogers; Amsted Industries; MS  Andy Taylor; Anadarko Petroleum Corporation;

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Peruvian Hold Up”, Dennis, Coleman, & Natalie at Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Summer 2019

Additional Scholarships The Annual Graduation BBQ, Spring 2019

Graduate Students Completed in 2018-2019 Leslie Clayton, MS, Analysis of Small Faults in a Sandstone

Reservoir Analog, San Rafael Desert: Implications for Fluid Flow at the Reservoir-Scale (Dr. Jim Evans)

Garth Hesseltine, MS, Micro– to Macro-Scale Structural and

Lithological Architecture of Basal Nonconformities:: Implications for Fluid Flow and Injection Induced Seismicity (Dr. Jim Evans)

Nick McCarroll, MS, Evolution of the Book Cliffs Dryland

Escarpment in Central Utah—Establishing Rates and Testing Models of Escarpment Retreat (Dr. Joel Pederson)

Graduate Students: Harriet Cornachione: GSA Travel Award; GSA Science Communications Internship Matt Ellison, Rebekah Riemann, Dominique Shore: GSA Research Grant Nick McCarroll: GSA Farouk El-Baz Student Research Grant Coleman Hiett, Jesse Scholpp: GSA Lipman Research Award Kayla Smith,: GSA Laubach Structural-Diagenesis Research Award Carli Studnicky: GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division Student Research Grant Undergraduate Students: Joseph Bingham, AAPG Austin L. Weeks Foundation Program Scholarship Kaitlyn Crouch, Andrew Perkins: GSA Rocky Mountain Section Undergraduate Research Grant

Provow, MS, Ediacaran Depositional Age and Subsequent Fluid-Rock Interactions in the Mutual and Browns Hole Formations of Northern Utah (Dr. Dennis Newell) Ashley

Kerry Riley, PhD, Geomorphic History of the Grand Staircase Region of the Colorado Plateau (Dr. Tammy Rittenour) Brandt Scott,, MS, Structural Control of Thermal Fluid

Circulation and Geochemistry in a Flat-Slab Subduction Zone, Peru (Dr. Dennis Newell) Skyler Sorsby, MS, Mountain-Block Recharge to the Cache

Valley Principal Aquifer and Geochemical Controls on Groundwater Movement in Alpine Karst (Dr. Tom Lachmar)

Bob Oaks leads students on a campus expedition for the Geo Club opening social, Fall 2019

Follow us for current events & fun updates:

John Shervais, Joel Pederson, and Dennis Newell rock their graduation attire.

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Utah State University Geosciences Department

Contact Information: Utah State University Department of Geosciences 4505 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322 Office: 435-797-1273 Fax: 435-797-1588 Email: geology@usu.edu Website: geo.usu.edu