Quaternary Geology & Geomorphology Division Officers
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Quaternary Geologist & Geomorphologist Newsletter of the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division http://rock.geosociety.org/qgg Spring 2006 Vol. 47, No. 1 Are these boulders part of an old moraine or a mass wasting deposit? The granite boulders are located on Table Mountain, near Sinks Canyon State Park (over man’s right shoulder), southwest of Lander, Wyoming. J.D. Love related this material to the Paleocene-Eocene ‘unroofing’ of the Wind River Range (skyline) and assigned it to a coarse-grained (near-source) facies of the Eocene White River Fm (1970, USGS Professional Paper 495-C). Recent preliminary 10Be/26Al age interpretations from similar boulders on Table Mountain (back, left) suggest these may be associated with mid-late Pleistocene glacial activity in the Wind River Range (Photo & preliminary data, Dahms). 1 Quaternary Geology & Geomorphology Division Officers Newsletter Editor and Panel Members -- 2006 and Webmaster: Dennis E. Dahms Officers – 6 Members, three of whom serve one-year Dept of Geography terms: Chair, First Vice-Chair, and Second Vice-Chair; Sabin Hall 127 and three of whom serve two-year terms: Secretary, University of Northern Iowa Treasurer, and Newsletter Editor/Webmaster. Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0406 [email protected] Management Board – 8 Members: Division officers and the Chair of the preceding year; also includes the Historian as an ex officio member. Past Chair: Alan R. Gillespie Chair: University of Washington John E. Costa Dept Earth & Space Sciences U.S. Geological Survey PO Box 351310 10615 SE Cherry Blossom Dr. Seattle, WA 98195-1310 Portland, OR 97216-3103 [email protected] [email protected] Historian: (Appointed by the Chair in consultation with 1st Vice-Chair: the Management Board) John (Jack) F. Shroder, Jr. P. Thompson Davis Dept of Geology and Professor of Geology Geography and Climatology Univ of Nebraska-Omaha Dept of Natural Sciences Omaha, NE 68182 Bentley College [email protected] Waltham, MA 02452-4705 [email protected] 2nd Vice-Chair Panel Members Lisa L. Ely 2005-2007 Panel Dept of Geological Sciences L. Allan James, [email protected] Central Washington Univ. Sara Rathburn, [email protected] Ellensburg, WA 98926 Steve Wolfe, [email protected] [email protected] 2004-2006 Panel Missy Eppes, [email protected] Wendy Gerstel, [email protected] John Gosse, [email protected] Secretary: Janet L. Slate 2006 JTPC Representatives: U.S. Geological Survey Box 25046, MS 980 John E. Costa Denver, CO 80225 U.S. Geological Survey [email protected] 10615 SE Cherry Blossom Dr. Portland, OR 97216-3103 [email protected] Treasurer: Scott F. Burns John (Jack) F. Shroder, Jr. Department of Geology Dept of Geology and Geography Portland State University Univ of Nebraska-Omaha PO Box 751 Omaha, NE 68182 Portland, OR 97207-0751 [email protected] [email protected] 2 GSA Councilor/Division Liaison “have written a paper that is monumental, not because Representative: (Appointed by the GSA President) of its length, but because of the breadth and depth of its coverage.” Steve Wells states that the paper Carolyn G. Olson “highlights the accomplishments of two of the nation’s USGS-NRCS top scientists.” Frank Pazzaglia asserts, “The Gosse Federal Bldg, Room 152, MS 34 and Phillips paper is akin to a rudder that steadies a 100 Centennial Mall N ship during a storm. It is both a solid reference on the Lincoln, NE 68508 subject, as well as a guide to how, when, and where [email protected] cosmogenic techniques can be used to solve geologic problems.” Susan Ivy-Ochs says, “This paper is a generous gift of the years of experience of both John QG&G DIVISION AWARDS - 2005 Gosse and Fred Phillips” while Richard Alley simply calls the paper “monumental.” The following awards were given by the QG&G Anyone who reads “the bible” will be similarly Division of GSA at the Salt Palace Convention impressed. In this invaluable paper John and Fred Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 18, 2005. guide us through everything from hadron flux to how to read a “banana diagram”—and everything in between. ── Kirk Bryan Award ── These two leaders in the field of surface-exposure dating are outstanding geologists richly deserving of The Kirk Bryan Award for Research Excellence our division’s highest award. It is a great pleasure to was established in 1951. The award is given for a present the 2005 Kirk Bryan Award to John Gosse and publication (within the past 5 years) of distinction Fred Phillips. advancing the science of geomorphology or Quaternary geology, or a related field. The 2005 award was presented to John C. Gosse, Dalhousie University, and Fred M. Phillips, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, for their 2001 paper, Terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclides: theory and applications, Quaternary Science Reviews, v.20, p. 1475-1560). – Citation by Ed Evenson John Gosse and Fred Phillips have been awarded the 2005 Kirk Bryan award for their seminal paper entitled “Terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclides: Theory and John Gosse, Ed Evenson, and Fred Phillips application” (Quaternary Science Reviews, v. 20, p. 1475-1560). This comprehensive review paper – Response by John Gosse provides a remarkable, in-depth summary of all I will never forget this day when I stand in front of so aspects of terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) many friends to be honoured by the Kirk Bryan Award. research from both theoretical and applied It is with sincere appreciation to the Division and the perspectives. Don Easterbrook and I nominated the Society that I accept it with Fred Phillips, a scholar and Gosse and Phillips paper because we thought any my advisor, co-author, and friend for 13 years. Thank team that could write a paper that is almost universally you Ed and Don for nominating our paper, which pales referred to as “the bible” is deserving of the Kirk Bryan in comparison with the 46 others before it. Our article Award. But we may be a bit biased – John was my simply integrated the accomplishments of physicists student (M.S. and Ph.D.) and the four of us are and earth scientists over the past century. The research collaborators and close friends. So perhaps cosmogenic nuclide method could have an impact on we should see what others have had to say about the just about every field of earth sciences, and I would like winning paper… Twelve pre-eminent scientists wrote to think that Kirk Bryan would have applied the tech- letters of support and I would like to quote from just a nique to help solve some of his many geomorphology few: David Bowen calls the article “not only a state-of- and archeology questions. the-art paper….but one of the major papers of the new The honour of this award should rightfully be century.” Don Rodbell says, “This paper, which could shared with several others who are not co-authors of easily have been a book (at 85 journal pages), is the paper, but who helped direct my research and remarkable.” Pete Knuepfer says Gosse and Phillips inspire my work in cosmogenic isotopes. At Memorial 3 University of Newfoundland I was enticed into geology support have sustained me throughout all of my when Martin Batterson convinced me that a great endeavors. glacier, not my shovel, had made the striations in I would like to take a moment to reflect on our central Labrador. Rod A. Klassen of the GSC hired me journey as a scientific field. I remember vividly one day for three more summers of Labrador field work and 25 years ago when I was a brand-new assistant instilled in me the excitement of pursuit of knowledge— professor at New Mexico Tech. I was standing in the any knowledge. Ed Evenson, my Ph.D. supervisor and department office scanning the contents of the journal close friend, honed my field skills in glacial geology and Geomorphology. One of the senior professors in the provided the opportunity to delve into the world of department (he happened to be an economic exposure dating. The integrity of these mentors geologist) took me aside and warned me “I hope you motivated me to co-author this paper. I owe a great don’t do that kind of thing. Back at Cal Tech, we never deal to Jeffrey Klein at U. Penn. for his impact on my considered geomorphology to be a real science.” This career and life. His ability to reduce complexities to incident might be dismissed as no more than the simple physics and then explain it to a field geologist is prejudice of a crotchety old man, but let us remember a beautiful gift. My contributions to the paper are too that upon Kirk Bryan’s death in 1950, Harvard did not often incomplete echoes of Jeff’s distillations. Chuck replace him with another geomorphologist, but instead Harrington at Los Alamos and Eric McDonald at the completely abandoned that discipline. By the time of Desert Research Institute lured me from glacial Bryan’s death, geomorphology had evolved from being geology and into arid-region surface processes. The a centerpiece of geology to being shunted to its fringes. breadth of the paper would not have been possible What had happened? The answer is that other without their contagious love for desert landscapes and geological fields had developed quantitative conceptual soils. Frank Pazzaglia at Lehigh had just begun to models and experimental or observational methods teach me classical geomorphology and the intricate that yielded data to test those models. Geomorphol- balances of nature when the revisions of the paper ogy, for the most part, had neither. It was drifting into a were due.