Assistant Professor Mea Cook, a paleo-oceanographer, attended the 10th International Conference on Paleoceanography in San Diego, California. Seven students worked in her lab during the summer and academic year reconstructing climate during the end of the last glacial period in the Bering Sea, New Zealand, and Brazil.

Professor Rónadh Cox continued her field research on enigmatic boulder ridges on shore-hugging cliffs in the Aran Islands with Nari Miller’12 and Brian Kirchner’12. She and her students also used Geographic Information System analysis to track movement of the boulder ridges since a detailed 1839 Ordnance Survey map was made. She and Aaron Bauer’11 continued numerical modeling of impacts onto ice crusts to improve understanding of structures on Europa.

Prof. David Dethier continued

Participants in Gulf of California Tectonics and Coastal Ecosystems (GEOS 254T) on a Pleistocene coral reef (Isla Coronados) led by Prof. Markes Johnson during the spring break field excursion to the Gulf of California (Mexico).

his NSF-funded investigation of weathering and erosion rates in the Colorado Front Range with Evan Dethier’11, Keith Kantack’11, and James McCarthy’11, in collaboration with University of Vermont Prof. Paul Bierman ’85 and University of Connecticut Prof. Will Ouimet ’01. Dethier is also the coordinator of data collection for weather, stream flow, and precipitation chemistry in Hopkins Memorial Forest.

Assistant Professor Lisa Gilbert, at Williams-Mystic, led a field study of marsh accretion, historic hurricanes, and sea-level rise in coastal Connecticut involving eleven students. Three of the students, Abigail Martin’11, Anna Syzmanski’12, and Herrick Sullivan’13, are from Williams College. She also collaborated with other scientists in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and worked with Daniel Gross’12 to measure permeability in gabbro.

Professor Markes Johnson worked with Dan Walsh’11 in the Oscar Range of Western Australia on a project funded by the National Geographic Society. During the spring semester he taught a new tutorial on the tectonics and coastal ecosystems of the Gulf of California. The course included a ten-day field trip to the Loreto area on Baja California funded by the Freeman Foote Field Trip Fund for the Sciences.

Professor and Chair Paul Karabinos continued fieldwork in New England and devoted much of his research to improving the three-dimensional visualization of the geology and topography in the Appalachians.

Professor Wobus celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Williams Alumni College in the Rockies, a Colorado-based week of geology and natural history field trips. He started this program in 1981 and has hosted more than 400 alumni, faculty, spouses, and friends. This field-based alumni program led to the extensive Alumni Travel–Study program that exists today.

The Geosciences Department continued to participate in the Class of 1960 Scholars Program. The lecture series was organized by Mea Cook and Markes Johnson and brought speakers to campus to describe their work on climate science and tectonics and ecosystems in Baja California, and the speakers’ talks were integrated with tutorials offered by both Professors Cook and Johnson.

Geosciences faculty, students, and alumni published widely in scientific journals and presented numerous talks at the National Geological Society of America meeting in Denver, Colorado, the American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco, California, and the Northeastern Sectional Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Buffalo, New York. Evan Dethier, Keith Kantack, Caleb Lucy, James McCarthy, and David Oakley, all class of’11, also gave research presentations at the Keck Symposium hosted by Union College.

The David Major Fund in Geology offered field camp scholarships to two of our majors during the summer of 2010. Daniel Perez’10 and Peter Tierney’10 attended the Albion College field camp. The Keck Geology Consortium supported fieldwork by Evan Dethier, Keith Kantack, and James McCarthy in Colorado; Caleb Lucy in Montana; and David Oakley in Wyoming. The Sperry Family Fund supported the summer research and thesis work of Dan Walsh’11, who worked in Western Australia with Markes Johnson. Clara Noomah’13 was the recipient of the Lauren Interess Fellowship. Clara traveled to Chile to study the environmental impact of salmon farming. The McAleenan Family Fund in Geology supported Dan Walsh and Lisa Merkhofer to attend the National Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado. Lisa presented a talk based on her thesis research with Paul Karabinos as co-author.

Seven honors students presented their research results on May 16, and Dan Walsh won the Freeman Foote prize for the best thesis presentation. David Oakley won the Mineralogical Society of America prize, and James McCarthy received the David Major Prize in Geology. Evan Dethier, Caleb Lucy, James McCarthy, Lisa Merkhofer, David Oakley, and Dan Walsh were inducted into Sigma Xi.

Mea Cook attended the 10th International Conference on Paleoceanography in San Diego, CA, in August and presented her work reconstructing ocean circulation and the carbon cycle in the northwest Pacific during the transition out of the last glaciation using radiocarbon. She had an active lab this year, with seven students working on projects reconstructing climate over ice age cycles from Bering Sea, New Zealand, and Brazil Margin. Two of the students, Nari Miller’12 and Ian Nesbitt’13, traveled with Mea to UC Santa Cruz and Oregon State University in January to analyze marine microfossils with isotope-ratio mass spectrometry. Mea published a study on methane and climate in the journal Paleoceanography and gave a seminar on the project at the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU.

Rónadh Cox spent much of the summer in 2010 on Inis Meáin, one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, measuring boulders and piles of boulders with Brian Kirchner’12 and Nari Miller’12. They looked at the relationships between the boulder ridges, the coastal geometry, and the offshore bathymetry as part of the continuing investigation of how these deposits were emplaced. The largest single boulder they measured was 11.5 m long, with estimated mass of 78 tons, and local people told the group that this boulder had appeared in its present position after a large winter storm in 1991. Back at Williams, GIS comparison between modern orthophotos of the island and a detailed Ordnance Survey map made in 1839 showed that the boulder ridges have migrated inland over time, in places over-running old field boundaries. In summer 2011, Rónadh will return to the Aran Islands with Miranda Bona’13 and David Rapp’13, to collect more measurements and to re-photograph reference sites to investigate which boulders have moved over the last few years.

Aaron Bauer’11 continued his work on numerical modeling of impacts onto ice crusts, and he and Rónadh presented results at the Geological Society of America meeting in October 2010 and at the Lunar and Planetary Science meeting in March 2011. After 3.5 years of work, this project has yielded a comprehensive set of excellent results, which Rónadh plans to write up for publication during her sabbatical semester this fall.

Geosciences hosted a student from Madagascar this year, Ny Riavo (Voary) Voarintsoa, who worked with Rónadh to investigate the relationships between local slope, lithology, and the abundance of lavakas (gullies). Voary will continue to work on the project this summer, prior to fieldwork in Madagascar this August.

David Dethier continued his NSF-sponsored research in the Colorado Front Range, focused mainly on the measurement of processes in the Boulder Creek “critical zone” (CZO), which includes the mantle of soil and weathered material above fresh bedrock. In cooperation with the NSF CZO project, during July and August he supervised (with Will Ouimet ’01) a Keck Geology Consortium Project involving 10 students in the Boulder Creek area. Williams students on the project included Evan Dethier’11, Keith Kantack’11 and James McCarthy’11, all of whom subsequently did honors thesis work in Geosciences with Dethier. Paul Bierman ’85 (University of Vermont), Will Ouimet and Dethier continued investigations of Front Range weathering and erosion rates using meteoric and in-situ cosmogenic ¹⁰Be techniques. Dethier worked in the City of Boulder watershed with Matthias Leopold and other colleagues from the Technical University of Munich, using seismic refraction, resistivity and ground-penetrating radar to non-destructively image the shallow subsurface in a suite of study areas. Dethier also helped to supervise the honors thesis work (in Environmental Science) of JJ Augenbraun’11 on “Residential Solar Thermal Energy in Williamstown, Massachusetts.”

Dethier helps to coordinate ongoing collection of weather, streamflow, precipitation chemistry and other environmental data from Hopkins Memorial Forest and their analysis in the Environmental Science Lab in the Morley Science Center. Real-time weather and groundwater data and archived weather data from 25 years of monitoring are available at http://web.williams.edu/Geoscience/weather; archived watershed data (streamflow and temperature, stream chemistry and bulk precipitation chemistry) are at: http://web.williams.edu/Geoscience/weather/watershed/.

Lisa Gilbert led a team studying marsh accretion, historic hurricanes, and sea level rise in southeastern Connecticut. In the summer of 2010, they used a vibracore to recover peat and sediment cores up to 7 meters long at Barn Island Marsh, in Pawcatuck, CT.  During the summer of 2011, they continued the work with an intense mapping effort. Among the eleven Williams-Mystic students participating in the Barn Island Marsh project this year were Abigail Martin’11, Anna Syzmanski’12, and Herrick Sullivan’13. Gilbert also continues her involvement in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program as a shore-based participant for Expedition 335, an attempt to deepen the first hole drilled to gabbro in normal oceanic crust at Hole 1256D. For part of that study, Daniel Gross’12 examined the permeability of some of the rocks as an indicator of crack size and hydrothermal fluid flow. This year Gilbert traveled to Macalester College in Minnesota to collaborate on an NSF-funded research project examining the importance of the affective domain in introductory geoscience courses; some of the initial findings of the research were presented at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Denver.

Professor Markes Johnson returned to teaching in the Geosciences Department, after a richly rewarding sabbatical year of travel and research on modern and ancient rocky shores with a focus on Europe, Asia, and Australia. The last phase of research entailed a month of fieldwork in the Oscar Range of Western Australia along the Devonian Great Barrier Reef (June/July 2010) under a grant from the National Geographic Society. With additional support from the Sperry Fund, Dan Walsh’11 participated in this project and took on many aspects to launch his senior honors thesis for the ensuing academic year. During the fall semester, Markes revised manuscripts on Miocene rocky shores from the Balearic Islands (Spain) in the western Mediterranean and the Madeira Islands (Portugal) in the North Atlantic. The Iberian research group, to which he and spouse Gudveig Baarli (Williams Research Scientist) belong, was awarded a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology to expand research on island rocky shores to the Canary Islands (Spain) and Cape Verde Islands (former possession of Portugal) over the next three years. Fieldwork on those islands will be initiated during the summer of 2011, to include ongoing studies in the Madeira Islands.

During the spring semester, Prof. Johnson offered a new tutorial course on the tectonics and coastal ecosystems of the Gulf of California (GEOS 254T). The 10 students in the course joined Markes and David Backus (Williams Research Scientist) on a 10-day excursion to the Loreto area on the Baja California peninsula during spring break. The trip was supported by a grant from the Freeman Foote Field Trip Fund for the Sciences. Students visited geological sites on Isla Coronados and Isla del Carmen and began a new mapping project at San Basilio, north of Loreto.

During the course of the academic year, Prof. Johnson wrote peer reviews on manuscripts submitted to Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecololgy; International Journal of Earth Sciences; Geologica Acta (Spain); and the Geological Journal. He also joined the editorial board as Associate Editor for the Journal of Coastal Research.

At the conclusion of the academic year, Prof. Johnson was awarded a Nelson Bushnell Prize from The College for excellence in scholarship and teaching.

Professor and Chair Paul Karabinos, along with R.Tollo, M. Bartholomew, and J. Hibbard, edited a Geological Society of America Memoir entitled From Rodinia to Pangea: The Lithotectonic Record of the Appalachian Region. At 956 pages, it contains thirty-six original articles tracing the geologic history of eastern North America from 1200 to 200 million years ago.

Karabinos continued research on a three-year $144,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support an educational initiative visualizing strain in rocks with interactive computer programs. This project, in collaboration with Chris Warren from the Office of Information Technology, aims to create new computer programs written in Java, and accompanying modules for classroom and laboratory use, to enhance student learning of fundamental concepts of strain analysis in rocks. Lisa Merkhofer’11 also worked on this project during the summer of 2010 and used her research for her senior thesis in the Geosciences Department.

Karabinos attended the National Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado, in October 2010 where he gave an invited presentation at a theme session titled Virtual Tectonics, and was co-author on another presentation with Lisa Merkhofer’11 in the same session. He gave another presentation in a theme session called “Garnet and its Use in Unraveling Metamorphic and Tectonic Processes.” In January 2011, Karabinos attended a Penrose Conference in Mountain View, California, at Google Headquarters on “Google Earth: Visualizing the Possibilities for Geoscience Education and Research” where he gave a presentation on using Google SketchUp for teaching and research applications. He also attended the Geological Society of America joint Northeastern/North-Central Section meeting in March 2010 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he organized a theme session called “Devonian Orogenesis in the Appalachian-Caledonian Mountain Belt—Where, When, and What Caused It” and gave a presentation on his recent research in western Massachusetts.

Nari Miller ’13 and Brian Kirchner ’13 measuring cliff-top boulder deposits on Inis Meáin, Aran Islands, Ireland

Professor Reinhard A. (Bud) Wobus celebrates this year the 30^th anniversary of the Williams Alumni College in the Rockies, a Colorado-based week of geology and natural history field trips he organized in 1981 that led to the extensive Alumni Travel-Study program that exists today. The Rockies week has hosted more than 400 alumni, faculty, spouses, and friends in the twenty-some offerings; the 30^th anniversary gala will be in July this summer. Wobus has run similar field programs in the Pikes Peak region for many other groups, particularly those from the Geological Society of America. Most recently he led a two-day trip for two dozen geologists through the Pikes Peak region after GSA’s annual meeting in Denver in early November.

While at the GSA conference Wobus represented the college for the 24^th year at the fall meeting of the governing board of the Keck Geology Consortium. He organized a gathering of about 25 Williams geology alumni at the GSA meeting, and was co-author of a poster presented by his honors student last year, Allie Goldberg’10, on young pyroclastic deposits at Makushin Volcano in the Aleutians.

At the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco he attended an oral presentation by his honors student for next year, Katie Kumamoto’12, based on her petrologic internship at the Geophysical Lab of the Carnegie Institute the previous summer. As in previous years, he organized a noontime reunion of some 20 Williams alumni who were attending the meeting and/or working in the Bay area.

In April he, Prof. David Dethier, and five Williams seniors participated in the 24^th Keck Geology symposium hosted by Union College. His honors student, Caleb Lucy’11, presented a poster giving the results of his research on Precambrian meta-igneous rocks in the Henrys Lake Mountains on the Montana-Idaho border west of Yellowstone. Wobus visited that field site for several days last summer.

The Keck Consortium, now 18 geology departments at liberal arts colleges coast-to-coast, received notification in April of the renewal of its NSF-REU grant for three more years for $783,894. The grant, along with contributions from the member colleges and Exxon-Mobil, will enable the Consortium to continue its direction of intercollegiate student-faculty research collaboration on projects worldwide. The Consortium was founded in 1987 in response to a proposal to the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, submitted by Wobus and Prof. Emeritus Bill Fox. Since then more than 1100 geology students, including 80 from Williams, have been part of some 150 research projects.

Class of 1960 Scholars in Geosciences

Geosciences Colloquia

Dr. Joann Stock, California Institute of Technology
Sperry Lecture Speaker and Geosciences Class of 1960 Scholar Speaker

“The Continent-Ocean Transition in the Gulf of California Region”
“Tectonic Evolution of the Northern Gulf of California”

Dr. Markes Johnson, Williams College

“Miocene Orange-Hill Deposits on Porto Santo (Madeira Archipelago) Compared with Pliocene Rhodoliths of Baja California Sur”

Dr. Lee Kump, Pennsylvania State University
Geosciences Class of 1960 Scholar Speaker

“The Last Great Global Warming Event”

Dr. Ken MacLeod ’86, University of Missouri
Geosciences Class of 1960 Scholar Speaker

“Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/T) Boundary in Ocean Drilling Program Cores”

Dr. Jochem Halfar, University of Toronto
Geosciences Class of 1960 Scholar Speaker

“Global Occurrences of Rhodolith Facies with a Special Emphasis on the Gulf of California, Mexico”

Dr. Richard Busca, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona
Geosciences Class of 1960 Scholar Speaker

“Biodiversity and Conservation Issues in the Gulf of California”

Geosciences Student Colloquia

Off-Campus Colloquia

Mea Cook

“Methane Release from Bering Sea Sediments During the Last Glacial Period”
Oregon State University College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences

Rónadh Cox

“Boulder Ideas, Some Far-Fetched: Cliff-Top Deposits on the Aran Islands, Ireland”
Smith College
Williams-Mystic, Mystic Seaport

“Hydrocode Modeling of Impacts at Europa”
42^nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

“Geomorphology of Chaos Areas on Europa”
42^nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

R. A. Wobus

Leader of a two-day field trip through the Pikes Peak Region, Colorado, for two dozen geologists

Postgraduate Plans of Geoscience Majors