Union College Fall 2009 Newsletter Geology Department
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Union College Fall 2009 Newsletter Geology Department A Letter from the Chair Special points of interest: Dear Alumni and Friends, these life- Things are going well here in the Geosciences at changing field Blown away in Montserrat Union. As a result of our recently completed programs. external review, the Department entered the Analytically we Union joins the Keck Consortium Keck Geology consortium. This move validated moved forward our progress at becoming one of the leading with the acqui- geosciences departments at a liberal arts col- sition of a new Hollocher studies Big Garnets lege. Our focus on building a research-rich envi- Scanning Elec- ronment has resulted in an exciting field pro- tron Micro- Fly fishing in Tibet gram and world-class laboratory facilities. Keck scope, which Geology consortium is a cluster of 18 highly se- allows for Students “Living on the Edge” in lective liberal arts colleges with leading geology quantitative Alaska programs. As a member of the consortium, our elemental John Garver, Chair top students are accepted to the fantastic re- mapping and search programs offered every summer. Last cathode luminescence. Support for this in- Understanding Climate Change summer the consortium ran projects in Mongo- strument came from the National Science in Peru lia, Svalbard, Oregon, Colorado, Alaska, and Foundation, and it is a welcome addition to others. Recently ExxonMobil has helped fund the specialized arsenal of analytical tools Geology on YouTube part of the Consortium efforts, which is a wel- available to our students. come interest from industry. Students entering Union with an interest in We welcome the addition of Holli Frey Environmental Science has become a major (University of Michigan) and Jackie Cockburn component of our student population. It is (Queen University) to the Department. Holli is a not surprising that the students entering Un- volcanologist/petrologist/geochemist and she ion with a declared interest in the geosciences comes to Union as a tenure track professor. Her has remained flat (near zero), and this trend PhD research involved a detailed understanding reflects the national situation. In fact nation- of Volcan Tepetiltic, Nayarit, Mexico. She re- ally there has been a decrease in students in cently led an interesting departmental trip to the sciences overall, so we are lucky that this Montserrat, where students were blown away by has not dramatically affected our student en- several volcanic eruptions (article in this news- rollment. letter). Jackie studies watershed hydrology and Nonetheless it feels like there has never been the impact of climate change on watershed proc- a better time to be a student in the geo- Inside this issue: esses and she is with us as a visiting assistant sciences given some key pressing national professor. Her PhD work involved understanding issues: Global Climate Change, Energy, Natu- sediment transport in the Cape Bounty Arctic ral Resources, Natural hazards, and Water Faculty Updates 2-9 Watershed Observatory, Nunavut, Canada. She resources. Right now and for decades to has been very involved with the Environmental come, Global Climate Change and Energy Science program here at Union and is a major Resources will be the defining issues of our Mohawk Watershed Research 9-13 driver in the effort to form cohesive group of time, and our research efforts and curriculum Group, Mini-terms & Field trips students and faculty looking into the Mohawk is starting to reflect this shift. In response to Watershed. student interest we have developed a number Keck Consortium 13-15 The Department finds itself as a clear leader on of courses and focal points in the curriculum campus in terms of integrating research into the aimed at understanding these crucial issues. classroom and providing a rigorous ongoing field Enjoy the newsletter. It is the result of the Fly Fishing in Tibet 16-19 program. Last summer 23 of our students went hard work and editorial skill of our new Ad- into the field, a Departmental record and a ma- ministrative assistant, Deb Klein who has jor achievement that reflects strong growth and been with us for less than a year. She has Gifts, Awards & Geoscience 20-21 a commitment to the field sciences. We ran taken on this job with gusto and she will be Video Project exciting programs on Climate change in the An- very glad to hear from you about what you des, and Geologic hazards in Alaska. Individual are doing, and if you have industry contacts Recent Union Graduates 22 Keck projects took students and faculty to look for our graduates. at water-rock interactions in the Oregon Cas- Cheers, cades, and terrane evolution in SE Alaska. Vir- Alumni News 23-27 tually all of the students had some sort of finan- cial support from the Geology Field Fund, which is a permanent endowed fund supported by you, our alumni. This newsletter highlights the suc- cess of a few of our students who participated in Page 2 Union College Holli Frey our newest faculty member Holli Frey is the newest faculty member in The inclusions appear to be affected by our department and specializes in igneous boundary layer enrichments and deple- petrology and volcanology. She was an tions during rapid crystal growth, fol- undergraduate at Franklin & Marshall Col- lowed by diffusion of different elements lege and did her doctoral work at Univer- at different rates. sity of Michigan. Her research has taken Holli’s new research efforts are based in her from Maine to Mexico and involved central Oregon, examining the physical petrography, geochemistry, electron mi- and chemical breakdown of volcanic rocks croprobe analysis, argon chronology, and in the eastern Cascades and how these GIS. She has recently led field trips to processes affect soil and water chemistry. Montserrat (see pg. 12) and Iceland, and She led a Keck project (see pg. 15) to the visited classic volcanology sites in Hawaii, area this summer, coordinating the re- Scotland, and Chile. search projects of seven undergraduates. Holli has involved students in her research Matthew Kissane ’10 and Rebecca Gronc- at Union and took two senior geology ma- zniak ’11 worked on this project and jors (Leigh Mastin ’08 and Danielle Wine- collected ~75 rock samples for weather- Holli Frey, Mt. Cook in the background. berg ‘08) to western Mexico, where they ing studies. They will be using a variety examined and sampled tephra deposits of analytical techniques, including de- from Volcan Tepetiltic. Using deposit thick- tailed petrography, ICP-MS and SEM. Recent scholarly products from Holli: nesses and pumice and lithic clast sizes, In addition to teaching Natural Disasters, Lange RA, Frey HM, Hector J (2009) A they determined the airfall distribution and Senior Seminar, Mineralogy, and Petrol- thermodynamic model for the plagioclase height of the eruption column. Their geo- ogy, Holli has developed a new volcanol- -liquid hygrometer/thermometer. Ameri- chemical analyses showed that the explo- ogy course. The course examines the can Mineralogist, 94, 494-506. sive eruption had at least two distinct science of volcanic eruptions and moni- Frey HM, Manon MRF (2009) Montserrat: pulses, tapping different levels of the toring, but also delves into the effects of The classroom to the field and back magma chamber. eruptions on societies. The interplay of again. Geological Society of America Ab- Holli has also been continuing work looking volcanoes and society was exemplified in stracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. 7, p. at phenocryst compositions in crystal-poor the December field trip to Montserrat 601 lavas and how they act as a proxy for wa- (see pg. x). The trip was a once in a life- ter content in the pre-eruptive magma. time experience, in which the students Crabtree S, Lange RA, Frey HM (2009) A She has developed a plagioclase hygrome- had the opportunity to witness explosive Kinetic barrier to plagioclase nucleation in ter/thermometer, which utilizes the anor- eruptions and pyroclastic flows. While degassing andesite and dacite liquids thite component of plagioclase and the she can’t promise the same spectacle on during rapid ascent. Geological Society of bulk rock composition to calculate water every trip, Holli hopes to continue to America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. content. The initial findings were published bring students into the field for a more 41, No. 7, p. 416 in April in American Mineralogist. A follow- hands-on approach to volcanology. Lange, R.A., Frey, H.M., Hall, C., Delgado up paper demonstrating the application of In November Holli will be going to New -Granados, H., 2007, Evidence From a the hygrometer on several cinder cones in Zealand to lead the field trip portion of Crystal-Poor, Zoned (Rhyolite-Andesite) Mexico was submitted to Contributions to the Australia/ New Zealand term abroad. Pyroclastic Deposit From Volcan Te- Mineralogy and Petrology in August. She She’s excited to share her knowledge of petiltic, Western Mexico for Rapid Gen- is now looking at the composition of melt volcanology on the North Island at White eration of Silicic Melt by Partial Melting of inclusions in plagioclase and challenging Island, Taupo, and Ruapehu, but is Granitoid and not by Segregation From a the idea that melt inclusions can be used equally excited to re-visit the spectacular Long-Lived Crystal-Rich Mush, Eos Trans. to infer magmatic liquid compositions. scenery around Aoraki/Mount Cook. AGU, 88 (52) John Garver Much of my research effort is focused on date grains with very high track densites, three main projects. The first is using our which are otherwise not countable using newly developed approach to Fission Track an optical microscope. Using this new (FT) dating to understand the thermal technique, we’ve determined the late history of the Cambro-Ordovician platform Proterozoic thermal evolution of the Adi- deposits in NY State.