The academic year recently ended has been one of considerable progress and some frustration, fortunately mostly the former. The year began with the announcement by President Morris of his resignation effective at the end of the year. The search for a new president occupied most of the year, and the effect on the geology department was to put some initiatives on hold, in particular the addition of a fourth faculty line to the department. I am still hopeful that the college will recognise the wisdom of further strengthening a program which is making tremendous strides. The number of geology majors continues to increase, along with demand for geology courses. One freshman is entering this fall as a geology major, the first in more than two decades. Although we had no students graduating last June, next spring we expect to grant five bachelor's degrees in geology. I hope we will continue to average a similar number of graduates in the coming years.
John Damanti, who was a visiting lecturer in the department, will be starting as an assistant professor at Miami University of Ohio in the fall. We are all delighted with his success in obtaining a permanent position, and wish him continued success. While he was with us he taught environmental geology, physical geology, and geomorphology. Next year we will have another visiting lecturer supported by the PEW Foundation. Raymond Gildner from Cornell University will be joining us in September. Ray will teach environmental geology, physical geology, and paleontology.
Mark Flumerfelt joined us in early December as our new technician. However, he left us in late July to return to Minneapolis to get married. Mark's bride-to-be is a biomedical engineer, and her employment prospects in the Schenectady area are not nearly as good as Mark's prospects in the Twin Cities. While we are sorry to lose him, we are also very happy for him, and wish the newlyweds a happy future. As a result of Mark's departure, I have had to search for another technician, and I am pleased to say that the search is already complete. William Neubeck will join us on October. He comes to us from a position in a local consulting after deciding that the academic life offered more than the regulatory environment!
One of the most exciting "events" of the past year has been the installation of our new "Plasmaquad" (that's short for "Inductively Coupled Plasma Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer"). Starting in October and extending through May, parts (and eventually an installation technician) arrived in the department. Major renovations to our mineralogy/petrology laboratory were necessary for proper installation, at significant cost to the department. Finally, in May, we had an operating instrument. And what an instrument!! We are still learning how to use it and evaluate its operating characteristics, but already we are enthralled by the possibilities. I will relate a few examples of what we have been doing to give you some idea. Kurt has measured rare earth elements in rocks at the sub parts-per-million level. My own measurements on apatites from bentonite layers give REE concentrations at the hundred ppm level with precision of 1-2%. A student is analysing water from streams for a variety of trace metals at the part-per-billion level (and lower), and we have run samples of Schenectady drinking water which clearly indicate the presence of uranium at a level of about 200 parts-per-trillion (not a hazard, of course, but interesting!) At this moment Kurt is continuing some analyses on borates to determine the fractionation of the two boron isotopes which result from natural geochemical processes. In only a few months we have started a variety of projects ranging from isotope geochemistry to petrology to stratigraphy to environmental geology, based upon this new equipment. Students are already getting hands-on experience with one of the most sophisticated analytical tools used by geologists today.
The faculty have been busy in the usual ways, with teaching, attending meetings and short courses, a variety of research and field activities (mostly involving students), public service and administrative duties. The second floor of Butterfield Hall is one of the busiest places on campus, and even the students have commented about it. We are all excited about what we are accomplishing here, and I hope you share our enthusiasm for geology at Union.
(There was a considerable response to my last request for alumni information. I will include some items in this newsletter and more in the future. If the response continues I will try to get out the newsletter twice a year. Many thanks for your continued interest in the department.)
Raymond F. Robinson, '36, says: "I'm semi-retired but in fact am actively engaged in consulting work on mining and exploration largely related to gold/silver in the western USA."
B. D. McGrath, '47, recently became President of Triton Oil and Gas Corporation in Dallas.
Richard W. Reeks, '48, is retired after 15 years of teaching Junior High Science (mostly Earth Science) following 27 years in the Navy. He was here for his 40th class reunion in June of 1988 but couldn't find any geologists! [We were here, but you will not find us at the old location. Look for us on the second floor of the old chemistry building - Butterfield Hall.] He was also wondering about the locality of a "shale hill, right next to one of the locks of the canal - couldn't remember the number - tried lock 5 - wasn't right - but the shale had lots of graptolites..." [If any of you have information about this locality I would like to know so that I might send him some samples.]
E. Ross Sawtelle, '52, retired in 1986 after 28 years with Mobil. He was an exploration and production manager, Mobil Producing, Nigeria. In 1987 he was a petroleum consultant to the government of Chad, and is now a country director for the Executive Service Corps.
Donald H. Zenger, '54, is chairman of the Department of Geology at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. He is also the assistant coach in women's softball.
Edward Zimmerli, '55, is now Vice President - Personal Trust Investment Officer for the Bank of New England, Boston.
John F. Shroeder, Jr. (Jack), '61, is the new chairman of the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. He has been involved in research with the National Park Service on "Sedimentation in Snake River from Yellowstone Fires."
Jeffrey A. Smith, '68, is presently exploration manager for Strata Energy Resources Corporation of Newport Beach, CA. "The oil business has been kind to us this year (our investors are happy) and the prospects... are very optimistic."
Norman Thomson, '74, asks: "What happened to "Zimmy"? I took several geology courses from him while at Union and we remained friends for many years thereafter." [For Norm and those others who think of Zim when they think of geology at Union, he is now at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C.. He visited us a couple of months ago on his way to Greenland. His current address is: Herman Zimmerman, Director, Polar Studies Program, Earth Sciences Division, National Science Foundation, Washington, D. C. 20550.]
Joshua Hooker, '89, met his sister in Bozeman, MT and drove back across the country visiting Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota Badlands, and Pipestone (which is in Minnesota, Josh!) He has to take paleontology at U. of Rhode Island (where he is working on a Master's ) to make up a requirement. [I hope we will have a paleontologist on the faculty to offer that option to interested students in the future.]
As a matter of interest, here is a map showing where the Union geology alumni may be found. Not surprisingly there is a fair concentration in the northeast, but there is a pretty good distribution around the country.
by John Garver
Nearly a decade ago, geologists working in Alaska recognized that Alaska and the adjacent Canadian Cordillera could be mapped as an intricate collage of seemingly unrelated terranes or fault bound crustal elements with different geologic histories from their neighbors. The terrane concept enabled geologists to lump similar "packages" of rocks and as a result great strides were made in understanding the tectonic evolution of the Cordillera. Most significant among these was the realization that the many terranes which comprise the Cordillera are far travelled and have been added to North American during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Indeed, some of these terranes bear the signature of formation at or near the Asian continent and have subsequently travelled on Pacific plates to eventually become accreted to North America. Probably one of the most significant outcomes of recent research is the recognition that the movement of terranes is intimately associated with the velocity and convergence angle of offshore Pacific plates. In addressing problems concerning terrane formation, translation and accretion, I have focussed on the basin development related to terrane movements.
The development of the Canadian Cordillera is inferred to have been a two-stage event in which successively younger "superterranes", or composite crustal fragments, were accreted to the North American margin. The youngest and perhaps most controversial event is the accretion of the Insular superterrane to the North American margin in the mid-Cretaceous. My research during the past five years has been focussed on the sedimentological ramifications of this event.
The Methow-Tyaughton basin, in southern British Columbia and northern Washington state, is interpreted to be a syncollisional basin that records the underthrusting of the Insular terrane beneath the North American margin. The basin strata recorded this shortening event and then were caught up in the the collision zone as it continued to close. Eventually the basin strata were deformed. The key to understanding the basin is to recognize the provenance of the sedimentary fill, and the nature of basin infilling. One can "link" several large terranes by interpreting the provenance of the sedimentary fill of the Methow- Tyaughton basin. These links suggest that the Intermontane terrane and the Omineca Crystalline belt, both of which formed the margin of North America at ca.100 Ma, can be tied to the Insular terrane and various "miniterranes" (Figure 1).
The nature of basin infilling is characteristic of an east-west contracting margin. Coarse clastic east and westward prograding sedimentary wedges indicate local relief. These wedges of sediment become more pronounced as the collision progresses. Additionally, turbidites derived from the Omineca Crystalline Belt (see Figure 1) are transported longitudinally (north-south) within the basin; this type of transport and the inferred basin orientation is consistent with margin-normal contraction. This period of collisional tectonics is probably driven by rapid subduction of young oceanic plates under the North American margin. The collision and accretion of the Insular terrane was probably driven by the Farallon Plate which is known to have been subducting at very rapid rates (ca. 100 -150 mm/yr) at this time (Figure 1).
After the basin was formed and then deformed the entire region was cut by a pervasive strike slip fault system at about 85 Ma and the main phase of contractional deformation abruptly terminated. Eight-five million years ago the Kula Plate was born, and the relative movement of the Kula plate relative to the North American plate was almost completely tangential, and strike slip faulting should be expected.
This recent work suggests that the geology of the marginsof continents that are characterized by convergent tectonics may be dominated by the movement of different terranes that are quite sensitive to the convergence speed and angle of the downgoing slab.
Figure 1: Cartoon at about the latitude of the US/Canadian border (looking north) at about 100 Million years ago. The city of Vancouver would lie above the words "Insular" and Calgary would be slightly off the right edge of the diagram. This figure shows the inferred tectonism and sediment distribution in the Methow-Tyaughton basin as the Insular terrane was accreted to North America. The Farallon Plate is inferred to have been the subducting plate at this time.
British Columbia Geological Survey to Garver - $5000+ for work on newly discovered Triassic blueschists and adjacent Cretaceous rocks in an important gold district in British Columbia.
Faculty research fund to Hollocher and Shaw - $1860 for preliminary work on boron and lithium isotope fractionation in minerals and rocks.
IBM (matching equipment funds from alumni gifts) - $22,700 for purchase of a RISC system 320 computer for image processing.
Prof. Garver attended the GSC meeting in Vancouver, B. C. where he presented a paper entitled :Tectonic setting of mid-Cretaceous strata in the Methow-Tyaughton Basin (southern B.C. and northern Washington): a provenance link between the Insular Terrane and the Omineca Crystalline Belt" He was first author on a paper presented at the AAPG meeting in San Francisco entitled "Pre- to syncollisional sedimentation in the Middle Jurassic to Cretaceous Methow-Tyaughton basin, northern Washington, southwestern British Columbia." John also attended a NSF/NAGT field conference at Humboldt State University.
Prof. Hollocher attended a short course on X-ray Diffraction at the St Louis meeting of GSA. He has presented lectures at the Schenctady Museum and the Plotterkill Reserve on "Geology of the Adirondacks" and "local Geology" respectively. He was a judge at the Linton High School Science Fair. Kurt also attended a training course on the ICP-MS given by the manufacturer so he could teach the rest of us how to use it! While he was at the NE-GSA meeting in Syracuse he heard some favorable and highly interested comments concerning the activities in the geology department at Union.
Prof. Shaw continued his activities in public policy as a member of the AGU committee on public affairs and the AIP committee for public policy. He also presented testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on behalf of the American Geophysical Union. His testimony opposed the practice of earmarking of federal funds for particular academic institutions ("pork-barrel science"). In the spring he gave a talk on "Waste disposal: What geology has to say" at Alfred University. Last fall, following the Loma Prieta earthquake near Santa Cruz, he had an article on earthquakes and public policy published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He recently returned from a geological rafting trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, during which he recharged his batteries.
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