University of Memphis, Earth Sciences News 2015
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Earth Science News Fall 2015 activities we have acquired another van, a From the Chair…… 2016 Ford Transit, which will help with our field camp and field school programs. 2015 has been an Starting this fall we will construct an eventful year for Earth outdoor rock garden to display our treasured Sciences at the and voluminous rock collections from University of Memphis. around the U.S. and other countries. We Our faculty members have initiated a colloquium speaker series in have been busy on Earth Sciences in which we invite prominent many research fronts researchers and professionals to give and mentoring lectures to the students and faculty. Please undergraduate and review the departmental web page, Dr. Dan Larsen graduate students http://www.memphis.edu/earthsciences/, for toward becoming tomorrow’s professionals. more information on upcoming speakers, We have worked on improving our departmental activities and events. introductory courses, re-formulated our Interested in visiting campus, meeting M.A. program as a non-thesis degree for faculty and students, and seeing what is professionals, and made a number of happening at Earth Sciences? Please join us improvements to the facilities in Johnson for our departmental open house, Earth Hall and the academic experience in Earth Sciences Day, on Saturday, October 24th, Sciences. 2015 (see announcement below). I Some of the exciting improvements in encourage you as well to explore the many Johnson Hall include replacement of our old facets of our program through our web site globe in the lobby area and installation of a and feel free to contact me or any of the video monitor with information on our other faculty members – we would love to program and upcoming events and activities. hear from you! We also became a partner in the WREG, Channel 3, Weatherbug Schools network Earth Sciences Faculty with the installation of a new weather station Dr. Angela Antipova – During the fall on the roof of Johnson Hall. You can access 2014, I participated at the UT Health weather information for the University of Science Center on exposure research in Memphis at weather.weatherbug.com. To Memphis. My participation resulted in facilitate field trips and student research preparation of a series of maps used in the University of Memphis, Earth Sciences News 2015 writing of the grant proposal, e.g., a location of all schools in Shelby County for which air quality ranking was provided by the USA Today Special Report. The maps were also used for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Port Community Resilience meeting held in July 15, 2015 at the U of M. I was also a presenter and a convener of a session titled “Re-theorizing the Urban: Rights and Urban Form” at the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association of American Dr. Angela Antipova with graduate students Geographers (AAG), April 21-27, 2015, in Daniel Guerra-Monje, Lauren Goddard, and Chicago, IL. Zeb Wallace, and alumnus, Jian Chen, at the 2015 AAG meeting in Chicago, IL In 2015, I published the following papers: 1) Antipova, A., Black, White, male, and female concentrated employment: the effect Dr. Jerry Bartholomew – I was coauthor of spatial and aspatial labor factors in the on two papers published during the past journal Cities, and (2) Antipova, A., and A. year. Pujol et al. (2015) and Feng et al. Curtis, The post-disaster negative health (2015) were published early in 2015. The legacy: pregnancy outcomes in Louisiana second paper was a product of Lian Feng’s after Hurricane Andrew in the journal research, Lian received her MS degree in the Disasters. spring of 2015. Talks at the upcoming Annual GSA in early November for the Currently I am collaborating with colleagues “Bridging Two Continents” sessions will be at University of Memphis and UT Health presented by Guifen Chen and Taylor Science Center, Memphis on: (1) a spatial Armstrong, which are related to our work on approach for assessing correlations between large earthquakes in China. school performance and unhealthy environments in Shelby County, (2) In April I completed a chapter on the history environmental exposure and maternal health of Wintergreen (the designed recreational in Shelby County using CANDLE data, and community in the Virginia Blue Ridge (3) urban built environment accessibility and which was developed after Hurricane satisfaction in Germany. Camille devastated the area in 1969). As one of the five surviving members of the folks involved in the development of Wintergreen, I recounted my work there from 1969 to 1973. The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen had a “Founders of Wintergreen” plaque Page 2 University of Memphis, Earth Sciences News 2015 placed at an overlook about mile 15 on the involved in the field phase of her MS project Blue Ridge Parkway in 2010. The author, on the assessment of landslide hazards in the Mary Buford Hitz, is a Virginia native and area around the Chimney Rock State Park, grew up at Royal Orchard and has written North Carolina. Chris is considering a MS several books. The Publisher, Nancy project resolving Laramide versus Blackwell Marion, is owner of Blackwell Cordilleran fold-thrust development in Press in Lynchburg, Virginia and has southwestern Montana. Alberto and Lian are published many notable books including both in the early stages of developing their some about Nelson County, Virginia. The PhD proposals. I am also continuing my Nature Foundation at Wintergreen, which field work along the Beartooth fault in has the copyright, has funded preparation of Montana/Wyoming and collecting fracture the book which is expected to be released in data in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. October, 2015. Dr. Dorian J. Burnette – Over the last year I am working with five current graduate I have been concentrating on the students, Graham Ellsworth, Avery Soplata, development of web-based analysis and Chris Loyacano, Alberto Jimenez, and Lian visualization tools for current, new, and Feng. Graham is finishing the field phase of forthcoming tree-ring reconstructed drought his MS research on the Heart Mountain atlases. For example, the map below shows detachment fault in Wyoming. Avery is also average summer (June-August) Palmer Page 3 University of Memphis, Earth Sciences News 2015 Drought Severity Index (PDSI) values across Mexico during ‘El Año del Hambre’ (The Year of Hunger), when pronounced drought, depicted by the negative PDSI values, significantly affected crop yields and led to one of the worst famines in Mexican history. These drought atlas websites will allow interdisciplinary groups of researchers to explore the spatial and temporal variability of droughts and pluvials (prolonged wet periods) over the past 500 to Dr. Robert Connolly – C.H. Nash Museum 2000 years depending on the region. Our Director, Dr. Robert Connolly returned to undergraduate and graduate students have Peru for his third field season this been using and beta testing these websites. summer. He was accompanied by Museum Feedback from them has resulted in graduate assistant Elizabeth Cruzado adjustments to the websites for clarity and Carranza, who is pursuing her MS in Earth bug fixes. These drought atlas websites will Sciences and Museum Studies Graduate start going live in 2016 with the publication Certificate at the University of of an invited Quaternary Science Reviews Memphis. Connolly and Cruzado along paper highlighting the new Mexican with their colleague Rebecca Bria have Drought Atlas. The Mexican Drought Atlas collaborated for the past few years on is a smaller part of a larger National Science linking research opportunities in the United Foundation funded project where my and States and Peru through the Proyecto de colleagues, Dave Stahle (Arkansas), Ed Investigación Arqueológico Regional Cook (Columbia), Ben Cook (NASA GISS), Ancash (PIARA). In the summer of 2014 and I will reconstruct cool and warm season they opened a small museum in Hualcayán, moisture across much of North America Peru. Connolly’s 2014 Museum Practices back to at least AD 1500 and possibly to AD graduate seminar created a suite of exhibits 1000. We will perform the first calculation and other products that were installed in the of this North American Season Drought Museo de Hualcayán in January of this year. Atlas in December. In addition, Dr. Connolly has had another busy year with several submissions for publication and professional service to several organizations, including an invitation to serve on the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journal, Advances in Archaeological Practice, from 2016-2019. Dr. Randy Cox – My students and I did quite a bit of field work again this year. We have continued our paleoseismology Page 4 University of Memphis, Earth Sciences News 2015 investigations in the Valley and Ridge Province near Knoxville and into northern Georgia. This work involves assessing the seismic hazard of the eastern Tennessee seismic zone and is funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The work involves tromping through a lot of sand and gravel quarries and around miles of muddy lake shore and canoeing mountain rivers looking for deformed Quaternary sediments as evidence of paleo-earthquakes. We had a fairly exciting canoe trip this summer on the Little River that flows out of the Smoky Mountains, during which my student Eric Dr. David Dye – This past year I published Gamble found an exposure of a Quaternary three journal articles: Anthropocene (with thrust fault and we had to carry the Markus Dotterweich, Andrew H. Ivester, equipment and canoes through the forest Paul R. Hanson, and Dan Larsen), North quite a distance around a log jam. Even American Archaeologist (with Charles H. more recently while scouting a field trip for McNutt and H. Terry Childs), and Tennessee the Eastern Section of the Seismological Archaeology (with Marlin F. Hawley). In Society of America, Gary Patterson (CERI) addition I published a book chapter in and I found an exposure of Eocene clay Picture Cave: Unraveling the Mysteries of thrust several meters over Pleistocene sand the Mississippian Cosmos, and an and gravel in Tipton County, Tennessee encyclopedia entry, “Conflict and War, (photo below).