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State University Department of Geological Sciences Newsletter 2019 Editor: Jeff Amato INSIDE THIS ISSUE We now have a depart- Phone: 575-646-3017 | [email protected] Inside this issue 1 mental Twitter account. Department Phone: 575-646-2708 Message from the Dept Head 2-3 Become a follower to keep Hall of Fame Celebration 4-5 track of our activities: Front cover: View of a 7.6 Ma Southern Institute 6-7 dike cutting in Field Trips & Conferences 8-11 @NMSUGeology the Prehistoric Trackways National Faculty Profiles 12-18 Monument. Graduate student Nick Field Camp 19-21 Richard was working on this project for Photos and Degrees 22 his MS degree which he finished in 2018. Giving Tuesday 23 Doña Ana Mountains and in the background. Photo by Jeff Amato.

Back cover: Emily Johnson at the 2019 “Space Festival”. This event was designed to educate the public about science and space-related activities.

The Starry Night event is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences. This year we honored Lee Hubbard, our Departmental Administrative Assitant. Lee Hubbard is, we all agree, the STAR of the Department of Geological Sciences. There is a reason that all of the graduate students thank her in the acknowledgements of their colloquia. There is a reason that every Homecoming event happens flawlessly. There is a reason that faculty and students feel welcome in the geology office. There is a reason that the administrative functions of the department run smoothly. Lee! She is the reason! Lee started at NMSU in 1990 and joined the Department of Geological Sciences in 1996. She masterminded and implemented the Department move from Breland Hall to Gardiner Hall in 2010. She certainly is the STAR of the Department. -NJM December 3! see p. 23. 1 Message from the Department Head Be bold. Shape the Future. That is the new NMSU catchphrase. I don’t know if the upper administration was thinking about the Department of Geological Sciences when this phrase was coined, but it is an excellent description of what we do, and what we have done, every day here in geology. Our alumni shape the future of energy, of the environment, of education. You all find the resources that the world’s population needs to survive and live at the high technologic level we have come to expect. Our alumni have been bold in furthering their education, securing resources, and discovering new knowledge. Awesome! Geological Sciences sets the bar for success at NMSU. Every day is busy in the department with teaching, learning, research, exploring new ideas in the field, in the lab, and in computer models. 2019 has been no exception! Here are some highlights. Dr. Brian Hampton received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. In addition, Dr. Frank Ramos earned promotion to Full Professor. These are major milestones in the lives of academic geologists…..congratulations to both professors! 2019 is the second year that ExxonMobil has included our students in their Tucson Recruiting Hub. This year three graduate students and one undergraduate were invited to attend the hub; we are still waiting to see if any of them will be offered internships. The department is exploring ways to work more closely with ExxonMobil. We are also increasing our outreach to Las Cruces. Dr. Emily Johnson led the department’s participation in the Las Cruces Space Festival. She led a field trip to that included a live art installation that celebrated NASA’s use of Kilbourne Hole as a training site for astronauts. We also collaborate with the Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science to offer Teen Science Café experiences for local high school students.

New Mexico State University geology.nmsu.edu

2 The Department collaborated with the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences to present an experiment on soil permeability to fifth- graders from a local grade school during NMSU for a Day.

The list of department activities goes on and on, as you will see as you peruse the newsletter. Our productivity depends on resources, and you, our alumni, are our most valuable resource. We would love to have you participate in the Energy Exploration Institute if you would like to give a short course on your area of expertise. We would love to see you at homecoming, and if you have a particular place you would like to go on the field trip, just let us know! Please contact me at [email protected], 575-646-5000, or [email protected]. Giving Tuesday is 3 December 2019. Please consider supporting our efforts in shaping future geologists and future ideas in geology. Areas of need include: • Geology Field Teaching and Research • Geology Lab Teaching and Research • Geological Sciences Department (general fund used to meet greatest needs) • Southern Rift Institute We’ll be in touch with more details. Thank you for considering a gift of support!

Nancy J. McMillan Department Head, Geological Sciences

New Mexico State University geology.nmsu.edu Homecoming 2019 The 2019 NMSU Geology Hall of Fame Honoree is Dr. Jeff Grigsby (MS ’84). Jeff has pursued a dynamic career in academia, serving Ball State University as Professor, Department Chair, Director of the PhD in Environmental Sciences, Associate Dean, and Interim Dean. His thesis research with Dr. Greg Mack on the Hayner Ranch and Rincon Valley Formations sparked a life-long interest in sedimentary petrology. Congratulations, Jeff! We are proud of you!

Dr. Jeff Amato led the Alumni Homecoming Field Trip to Bishop Cap. As usual, everyone enjoyed a beautiful October day and a lively discussion of sedimentation, structure and tectonics. Dr. Bill Seager joined the trip to share his amazing volume of knowledge of the area.

4 2019 NMSU ALUMNI FIELD TRIP

Here are some additional photos of our Homecoming Trip, which was led by Jeff Amato. The attendees went to Bishop Cap, south of the , to look at faulted strata and a barite mine.

Top left: Faulted strata. Top right, small offsets in layers in limestone. Middle left, Jeff Amato. Below left, Brian Hampton. Above: Bill Seager.

5 SOUTHERN RIFT INSTITUTE NEWS

The Southern Rift Institute (SRI) was formed in 2017 to support interdisciplinary field-based student research in the southern . Our location in one of the premier examples of a narrow continental rift enables work on important questions about rifting processes and the evolution of the Rio Grande rift. Thanks to funding from department alumni and friends, the SRI continues to support student research projects.

The big news from 2019 is that the SRI sponsored a well-received session at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Phoenix. This theme session included seven posters on Sunday afternoon, including two by NMSU graduate students. Dani Vitarelli presented on her research at Kilbourne Hole, and Mike SRI also started a tradition of sponsoring Wyatt discussed his project on the Schoolhouse Mountain caldera, a Colloquium each semester. In Spring which is outside of the rift but relevant to our interests on the 2019 we sponsored NMSU Geological relationship between extension and magmatism. Sciences Alumni Hall of Fame member Caiti Keegen’s talk on “Relating The following day was an oral session with twelve talks, including Organofacies/Oil Classifications to invited talks by faculty at UNM, NM Tech, and UTEP. Jeff Amato, Depositional Environments in Extensional the SRI Director, gave a talk on Nick Richard’s work on rift-related Basins” and in Fall 2019 we supported basaltic magmatism in the . Graduate student USGS Geophysicist Justin Rubinstein’s Shay Ridl presented on his work on the drainage evolution of the presentation on “Induced Seismicity in ancestral Rio Grande, and graduate student Ron Sholdt discussed New Mexico”. his ongoing project on using photogrammetry to investigate Late deformation across the southern Rio Grande rift. Part of the mission of the SRI is to eductate Overall it was a great meeting. students on issues relating to the Rio Grande rift, and these talks are great opportunities for other scientists to share their knowledge of rift-related science to our department.

Your donations will help further student education and research on these important topics.

See next page to learn how you can support the SRI.

Left: The SRI faculty outside of their technical session on the geology of the Rio Grande rift at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Geolocial Society of America. From left: Hampton, Amato, Burgette, Johnson.

6 SRI News, continued: Two SRI students finished their theses this year. Michelle Gavel successfully defended her NSF-funded research with Dr. Amato, using helium in apatite thermochronology to assess the timing and rate of deformation in the Rio Grande rift and its relationship to extension in the broader southern Basin and Range province. She is now working for the Alaska State Survey (DGGS) in Fairbanks, Alaska. That’s quite a change from the Chihuahuan Desert to the Arctic! Nick Richard, who was working at the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument (see cover photo), defended in the Spring 2019 semester. He is now in the Ph.D. program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Photo: Michelle Gavel and Amato’s dog Tela exploring the at the edge of the Rio Grande rift.

We welcome the scientific challenges associated with conducting research with our students in the Department of Geological Sciences at NMSU, and we ask you to please consider becoming involved by supporting ongoing and future field-based student projects in New Mexico. And many thanks to those who have already donated! Donations are tax deductible and can be made online or by check/credit card. See below for details. The Southern Rift Institute Personnel: Dr. Jeff Amato (Director): Structural Geology, Geochronology Dr. Reed Burgette: Neotectonics Dr. Brian Hampton: Sedimentology and Stratigraphy Dr. Emily Johnson: Volcanology Online Donations Link: https://advancing.nmsu.edu/ Your donations to the Or type in the following link: http://bit.ly/2zLcd1Q Southern Rift Institute are appreciated! All donations are TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!

Please support geology research at NMSU! For questions call Jeff Amato at: Mail Checks to: 575-646-3017

University Advancement If you pay by check, make it out to “NMSU Foundation” and include the fund number NMSU Foundation, Inc. or fund name in the memo line (address is shown at left). The fund number is 102199. 1305 N. Horseshoe Drive The name of the account is: Southern Rift Institute in Geology. Dove Hall, Room 212 P.O. Box 3590 If you want to pay by credit card over the phone, call the NMSU Foundation at Las Cruces, NM 88003-3590 575-646-1613 or 800-342-6678. The fund number is 102199. 7 2019 NMGS Fall Field Conference: Geology of the Raton-Clayton Area

In the first week of October, researchers doing work in northeastern New Mexico hosted the New Mexico Geo- logical Society’s Fall Field Conference out of Clayton New Mexico. NMSU Professor Frank Ramos teamed with Matt Zimmerer (NMBGMR) and Kate Zeigler (Zeigler Consulting) to host ~130 geologists in northeastern New Mexico. Thursday stops focused on the age and geochemistry of young Raton-Clayton cinder cones and basalt flows. We visited Capulin Volcano, Mud Hill, and Baby Capulin volcano and barbequed at the Folsom Museum (Folsom, as in Folsom points). Overviews of and vent migration patterns were accompanied by hands-on inspections of phreatomagmatic deposits at Mud Hill and a trek to the top of Baby Capulin with geologists and students from across the state outlining the rim of the cinder cone. In contrast, stops on Friday were along a transect through the Dry Cimarron. Discussions focused on the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the region with stops at landslide sites and at the Steamboat exposure in the eastern portion of the Dry Cimarron. On Saturday morning, we stopped at the Tinaja Dike located along I-25 (exit 435), which was along our 500 mile drive home from one of the most distant points from Las Cruces in the state.

All went well with graduate students David Morin, Anna VanDusan, and Dani Vitarelli seeing volcanic and sedimentary rocks in a fairly remote area of New Mexico. Undergraduates Jenelle Hansen and Kara Curley also joined us and were seen at the highest points of Baby Capulin. There were also some NMSU alumni that joined us including Bob Newcomer and Dan Cravens. The compliments are continuing to come in with many saying they knew so little about the rocks in this very isolated corner of northeast New Mexico. They sure enjoyed the show though. Most of us know the NMGS or have been supported by NMGS grants-in-aid and have attend- ed NMGS Fall Field Conferences. It is sure easier to attend one than put one on, let alone doing two in a row. Ramos says he is completely burned out and will only consider doing the 2028 FFC to be led by retired, but still plenty active, Dr. Greg Mack. We also received much support from Keith and Eileen Davis, who with Connie Apache, organized the drink truck. No one went un-snacked. We do appreciate everyone’s help in putting on the show and attending as it was definitely a group effort. Mount Taylor is on the docket next year, see you there.

Frank C. Ramos

Pictures: Left: Anna VanDusan and Dani Vitarelli enjoying the Steamboat outcrop in the eastern Dry Cimarron. Right: Anna VanDusan at the top of Baby Capulin volcano with NMGS participants lining the rim of Baby Capulin cinder cone with Mud Hill and Capulin Volcano in the background.

8 Neotectonics course eld trip 2019

e graduate neotectonics course is applying some new tecnonolgies to understanding recent deformation in the southern Rio Grande ri. Our department now has a quadcopter drone shared with Geography and Anthropology thanks to support from the College of Arts and Sciences. M.S. student Ron Sholdt is working with Dr. Burgette to use photos taken from the drone to produce high resolution topographic models of faulted alluvial fan surfaces along a transect across the southern Rio Grande ri.

e 2019 Neotectonics eld trip investigated fan surfaces oset across the Caballo north of Las Cruces. Students assisted with the drone survey and placing and surveying ground control points as well as mapping. Students will quantitatively analyze the morphology of fault scarps and write reports once the topographic data have been processed.

Ron Sholdt brings the quadcopter in from a survey ight along the foot of the . e GPS instrument in the foreground serves as a base station for surveying high accuracy ground control points

Class portrait taken from the air.

9 GSA Annual Meeting 2019: Phoenix, Arizona

Above: Graduate student Michelle Gavel and NMSU Geological Sciences Alum Sean Gaynor (MS ‘13) at GSA; both attended UNC–Chapel Hill for their B.S. degree. Below: Jeff Amato with Professor Emeritus Tim Lawton and his wife, Diana, at the Stanford Alumni gathering at GSA in September. Tim now works for the Bureau of Economic Geology at UT Austin.

Scenes from the GSA Poster Sessions. Top: Dani Vitarelli; middle: Jeff Amato with his student Mike Wyatt; bottom: Emily Johnson with her student Jamie Shaffer.

10 GSA Annual Meeting 2019: Phoenix, Arizona (cont.)

Above left: Undergraduate student Marie Gibson explains her research to Jacob Piper. Above right: undergraduate Jenelle Hanson presents her poster on provenance in eastern Antarctica.

Below Left: Graduate student Jacob Piper presented his work on provenance of Permian in New Mexico. Below right: Carrie Mullins presenting her mapping in Alabama.

Other students who presented at GSA included Ron Sholdt and Shay Ridl, who both gave talks in the Rio Grande rift session. 11 Faculty Profile: Dr. Jeff Amato 2018-2019 was my 20th year at NMSU. Follow me at @ZirconsForever on Twitter. The current (Nov. 2019) issue of GSA Today has a cover story co-authored by myself on determining subduction polarity in ancient arcs. Nick Richard finished his thesis on the rift in the Robledo Mountains. He determined Ar/Ar dates on several shallow intrusions and investigated the geochemistry of xenoliths as well as the host rock. He is now in a Ph.D. program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Michelle Gavel defended in August of 2019 and is now working for the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys in Fairbanks. Mike Wyatt is continuing his research on the volcanic history of the Schoolhouse Mountain caldera. Jose Marmolejo joined the Amato Research Group (ARG) and will be studying the faulting history associated with caldera collapse and subsequent Basin and Range extension. Undergraduate student Katie Moody is working on single- sanidine dating of tuffs in the upper as well as at Table Mountain, a flat-topped mountain just east of City of Rocks State Park. Colby Howland (MS ‘18) is now working at Golder in New Hampshire.

Personal news: Stephanie is now the Assistant Director of the Asombro Institute, a non-profit science education organization based in Las Cruces. Sofia is 11 and started middle school at Sierra. Wesley is 9 and in 3rd grade.

Top left: Former ARG students Joe Hecker (BS ‘11) and Chelsea Ottenfeld (MS ‘15) got married this year. Top center: Jeff’s dog “Tela” at White Sands National Park. Top right: GSA Today cover article. Lower left: Eric Gottlieb (MS ‘08) gave a departmental Colloquium in Fall 2019. Eric got his PhD from Stanford and now works for Kaiser-Francis in Tulsa. Center: Vanessa Swenton (MS ‘17) and Jeff at the GSA Cordilleran Section Meeting in Portland; she is in the Ph.D. program at Portland State University. Bottom right: Sofia and Wesley. 12 Faculty Profile: Dr. Reed Burgette I have had a good year, with members of my group making progress in understanding recent tectonic deformation in our area, southern California, and beyond. Our work from Austin Hanson’s M.S. thesis is now in press at Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and a paper based on Jascha Coddington’s work about folding terraces is in review in Tectonics. Both graduates are now employed in the geotechnical sector. Jonathan Ingram finished his thesis on the Santa Susana fault a year ago, and he is now working at a geotechnical company in California. Current student Mike Reed traveled to the PRIME Laboratory at Purdue University to process and analyze samples on the accelerator mass spectrometer, and we are now working to complete analysis of surface ages based on the laboratory data. Mike presented his work on the slip rate of the Santa Susana fault at the SCEC ad GSA meetings this fall, and plans to defend his thesis in the coming months. Current student Ron Sholdt is the department’s first drone pilot, and he has been collecting high resolution topographic datasets using a quadcopter acquired with support from the College of Arts and Sciences. Ron presented his work on the southern Rio Grande rift in an interesting session organized by the SRI faculty at the GSA meeting.

I enjoyed teaching field camp, guiding another group of enthusiastic NMSU students through the second half of their capstone mapping experience in northern New Mexico last summer. My projects spanned the time scale, from metamorphism and contraction to Neogene and Quaternary extension and landscape evolution.

Our family continues to enjoy southern New Mexico. We escaped the summer heat to visit my parents in eastern Idaho before school started. We returned via Dinosaur National Monument, which was a hit for our two young paleo-enthusiasts!

Left: Reed and the boys at the Carnegie Dinosaur Quarry.

Right: A drone’s eye view of Reed and Ron Sholdt working on the Alamogordo fault

13 Faculty Profile: Dr. Brian Hampton - Basin Research Lab 2019 has been a productive year in in Flagstaff, Arizona in early the Basin Research Lab at NMSU!! 2020. The group has been hard at work on a ....Finally, CONGRATULATIONS range of field-based, sed/strat, and to the research group for awards basin/tectonic-themed projects in the received, manuscripts published, Desert Southwest and southern theses defended, and life/family Alaska. In addition to research and milestones accomplished in 2019!! teaching, Hampton has been working Sam Bartnik received the award for with colleagues to plan the 6th Annual Best Student Presentation at the 2019 Conference on Alluvial Fans that will NMGS Spring Meeting. Sam take place in Las Cruces in May, published a first-authored paper (with 2020. He also began serving as the co-authors Hampton and Greg Mack) Vice Chair for the GSA Sedimentary on the provenance of Upper Geology Division in September. strata (i.e., Dakota Group) ,,,.Hampton had the opportunity to in northeastern New Mexico. coordinate the Departmental ….Shay Ridl received the James & Colloquium this past spring and Susan Clearly Grants-in-Aid Award hosted several former students as this past spring from NMGS for one speakers (Matt Malkowski and Ben of 2 top-ranked, student-research Johnson). Matt is an acting assistant proposal applying geochronology in professor at Stanford University and Graduate and undergraduate students in the New Mexico. He also received the Ben is working for Chevron Inc., in Petroleum Systems course working through a sequence stratigraphy project in Mescal SEPM Fluvial Sedimentology Award. Midland, Texas. Canyon (top photo above). Graduate ….Sam and her fiancé (Cody Weis) ....On the research front, M.S. student students, Jacob Piper, Sam Bartnik, Nick were engaged earlier this year and Samantha Bartnik successfully Butterfield, and Shay Ridl interpreting will be married in Wisconsin in 2020. seismic lines during at a salt tectonics course defended her thesis in November. hosted by UTEP (lower photo above). Former undergraduate research-group Sam completed a summer internship member, Makayla Jacobs and Wyatt with ExxonMobil and has accepted Christensen were married in Las full-time employment with them that Cruces this past October. Congrats to will start in early 2020. you everyone on these milestones!! ….M.S. student Shay Ridl started the ….On the home front, Michelle and I second year of his project focused on continue to enjoy our time in the provenance and sediment dispersal Mesilla Valley and get out/about as trends from Plio-Pleistocene syn-rift much as time permits. Michelle went strata of the ancestral Rio Grande down with an ACL/MCL injury axial-fluvial system in central and earlier this year but has had a steady southern New Mexico. Shay gave a recovery so far. Although this has cut talk on his research at the 2019 GSA down on our time in the mountains, Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona we had time to get out on the kayaks in September. Shay’s research was with a highlight being a paddle trip supported in part from The Glen down parts of the upper Brown NMSU Scholarship and he has River near Moab, Utah, this past been working with alumna Katriona Michelle (in the shadows) out for a kayak summer. If you find yourself back in Keegan on statistical analyses of his paddle on the Colorado River near Moab, southern NM, please check in with Utah. Exposed stratigraphy in the area data. Shay plans to present results at include - strata of the members of the Basin Research Lab the upcoming SEPM International Moenkopi, Chinle, Wingate, and Kayenta on some of our ongoing research Sedimentary Geoscience Congress Formations as well as the Navajo . projects!! Hope to see you in 2020!! 14 Faculty Profile: Dr. Emily Johnson

Emily and her research group have had a busy and exciting year. Her NSF-funded research in the Oregon Cascades is wrapping up; Emily spent part of the summer at the University of Oregon FTIR lab completing some final analyses of the H2O and CO2 contents of basalts from southern Oregon. MS student Jamie Shaffer, whose MS research involves estimating the contributions from subducting slab material to southern Cascades basalts, is defending his MS thesis this November; congrats to Jamie!

Much of Emily’s research group’s focus is now on volcanism in southern New Mexico. MS student Karissa Vermillion has been working hard to illuminate the temporal and spatial evolution in caldera volcanism in southern New Mexico around ~37-32 Ma. Karissa received funding from AGeS2 for the Ar-Ar geochronology and a GSA Lipman grant for geochemical analyses of the sanidines from these tuffs. MS student Daniela Vitarelli is also working nearby, but on the much younger eruption of Kilbourne Hole in the Potrillo Volcanic Field. Dani is putting her GIS expertise to great use, and is using a combination of satellite imagery and field work to map the extent of the Kilbourne Hole surge deposits and to calculate the volume of this eruption. Her work is also funded by a GSA Lipman grant. Congrats to Karissa and Dani on receiving these prestigious awards!

In addition to field and lab work, Emily and her research group presented at several meetings this year. Emily had an invited talk at the GSA fall meeting in Phoenix, and MS students Jamie Shaffer and Dani Vitarelli presented their research as well. Emily also gave a talk on her Cascades work at the GSA Cordilleran meeting in Portland, and MS student Karissa Vermillion had a talk as well, on her undergraduate research. Emily was also thrilled to have the opportunity to teach Field Methods this past Spring while Dr. Amato was on sabbatical. This was a great opportunity to get to know the undergraduate majors and to learn the geologic history of southern New Mexico, and surprisingly, how to map in the snow… Emily and Reed’s family had a great year as well. A family road trip through Utah and Idaho included a stop at Dinosaur National Monument – a huge hit with the kids (and Emily, who still loves dinosaurs). The dinosaur love continued through Halloween, when both kids wanted to be Pteranodons. Perhaps there will be more geologists in this family in the future!

Emily and Rowan with a dinosaur femur at Dinosaur National Monument Calder and Rowan on Halloween night.

15 Faculty Profile: Dr. Nancy McMillan Obsession with tourmaline…there’s really no other way to describe the fever in the McMillan LIBS lab in 2019. Nancy’s team worked hard during five lengthy visits to alumna Kate McManus’ LIBS lab at Materialytics to collect data for Nancy’s collaborative NSF grant with LSU colleagues Barb Dutrow and Darrell Henry. By August, they had completed analysis of 622 tourmaline samples from various rock types from globally distributed localities and 1,321 sand grains from the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, the Black Hills, SD, and the Picuris Mountains, NM. The photos around the edge of this page show analyzed tourmalines. The field of view is about 1.6 mm. Graduate student Jacob Piper continued his work on a method to analyze the entire detrital heavy mineral suite (including tourmaline!) with LIBS. This will allow easy application of mineral ratios to analyze sediment provenance. He presented his initial findings at the 2019 GSA meeting in Phoenix. Graduate students Carrie Mullins and Anna van Dusen were welcomed in to the McMillan team in August 2019. As a test of the LIBS method in sediment analysis, Carrie will apply Jacob Piper’s model to modern stream in the Organ Mountains as well as match detrital grains to the specific rocks from which they were weathered. Anna will work on strongly zoned tourmaline (more tourmaline!) to learn how to understand mineral zoning with all of the information in LIBS spectra. Undergraduate students Jenelle Hansen and Marie Gibson joined in the tourmaline frolic. They both contributed long hours at Materialytics. Jenelle was the mastermind behind separating tourmaline sand grains. Marie started work on a LIBS project on zoning in watermelon tourmalines (go figure....more tourmaline!). The photo below is one of her Namibian samples. Both Jenelle and Marie presented their results at the 2019 GSA meeting in Phoenix. And…..oh yeah. Nancy continued to teach Mineralogy and Optical Mineralogy (both classes include tourmaline!) and lead the department during the transition to a new and energetic upper administration.

16 Faculty Profile: Dr. Frank Ramos 2018-2019 was another exciting year for the Ramos research group. Nick Butterfield defended his thesis and headed back to Utah to look for a lab job. Undergraduate Sebastian Orozco is finishing his BS and co- authored a manuscript on the Tinaja Dike (located along I-25 just south of Raton, New Mexico), which was published in the NMGS 2019 Guidebook. David Morin, an undergraduate from University of New Mexico, joined the group in the fall and will be working on Taranaki volcano in New Zealand. Undergraduates Marc Westerfield, Victor Solano and Mariah Douds continued doing volcano-related research. Projects now include determining feldspar Ra ages of Yasur volcano plagioclases (Vanuatu) and Changbaishan volcano sanidines (China), and work on melt inclusions at Baby Capulin and Cerro Verde volcanoes (New Mexico). Derek Gurule, Bradley Pianka, Derek Breedon, and Kara Curley may also start projects in the near future. Plenty of undergraduates doing research here. The Ramos group made another big splash at the NMGS Fall Field Conference led by Matt Zimmerer, Kate Zeigler, and Frank Ramos. We had papers on the youngest Capulin phase volcanoes in the Raton-Clayton volcanic field and ages and isotope ratios of young dikes in the area. The Geology of the Raton-Clayton Area Guidebook also had the distinction of the first being available online a month prior to the Fall Field Conference. This was the second consecutive NMGS Fall Field Conference involving Ramos, who was Lead Editor of the 2019 Guidebook. Given the extreme time commitments of organizing FFCs, he will now only commit to helping the next Greg Mack conference scheduled for 2028 (make sure to tell Greg this). In addition to NMGS, Sean Scott also published a paper on U/Th ratios of Endeavour segment mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB) in Journal of Petrology. This resulted from his MS thesis research but it took a while to get the melt generation modeling right for publication. Ramos and Jake Buettner (and others) also published a paper applying Ra dating using a new model to estimate the distribution coefficient of radium (DRa) in feldspar. We are now testing the model on different potassium feldspar and plagioclase compositions in near zero-aged volcanic eruptions. This line a research will have a big impact on dating young, dangerous volcanoes and determining their eruption histories, which is a topic that is critical for accurate hazard assessments. In addition to research, the Johnson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory was humming along. We had to replace a water chiller recently but now the equipment is operating as expected. This year we hosted a range of scientists from Oregon State University where they had a fire in the building that housed their mass spectrometers (they are now being replaced). Ramos had given a talk there in April and offered the Johnson lab as backup for students and faculty needing isotope work done. We have had some takers on the offer and have done Sr and Pb isotope analyses for many MS and PhD students. I guess we have become a full-service lab. Many of our graduate and undergraduate students are also getting experience dissolving and purifying samples in the cleanroom and analyzing samples using the Neptune and Sector. Well, enough for now. If you come by Las Cruces, drop by and see the lab.

17 Visiting Faculty Profile: Dr. Evey Gannaway Dalton

Greetings! I am thrilled to be filling in as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department for the 2019-2020 school year while Brian Hampton is on sabbatical. I am both new at NMSU and back at NMSU – this might seem like a strange statement, so let me explain. I actually started my graduate studies in these very halls, spending one year at NMSU before following my advisor to The University of Texas at El Paso. It’s funny the way the world works sometimes, isn’t it? There I received my M.S. in 2014 and my Ph.D. this past spring, studying clastic and carbonate sedimentology and stratigraphy with specific application to salt tectonics. Because salt is prone to going missing – whether by dissolution, migration, or – I use the sedimentary record to investigate and interpret the influence salt structures have on the depositional and deformational patterns that develop above and around them. My graduate and ongoing research has taken me all over the world; from the Flinders and Willouran Ranges of South Australia to the Pyrenees of Spain to the Dead Sea in Israel to the Paradox Basin in Colorado and Utah.

Before jumping head first in to my new role here at NMSU, I spent some of this past summer as part of the Dinosaur Discovery Adventures team that leads a paleontological field school in eastern Wyoming for middle school students. They get their hands dirty, doing real scientific field work and contributing to ongoing research of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science – we flipped a triceratops femur this year, hunted for microfossils, and even got to touch the K-T boundary!

This fall, I am teaching introductory classes in both face-to-face and online formats, as well as Tectonics of Sedimentary Basins with most of our graduate students. As you might hope and expect, when in New Mexico, we make use of New Mexico geology! We’ve explored the Rio Grande Rift and we’ll soon be venturing to the Sacramento Mountains to learn about the Ancestral Rocky Mountain uplifts and their foreland basins. Likewise, I am very much looking forward to the field trip opportunities for the classes I will teach in the spring, including Sedimentology/Stratigraphy and Fossils and the Evolution of Life. I couldn’t be happier being back in Gardiner Hall!

18 Field Camp 2019 Photos

Introduction to Cenozoic ri sedimentation Dinner on a with Dr. chilly May Hampton evening

e group at San Lorenzo

An upgrade for the ‘99! Teamwork! 19 Dr. Hampton discussing the big picture at San Ysidro

e whole group on Pilar Mesa on the nal day of eld mapping.

A visit to the Rio Grande gorge e nishing touch on masterful eld curry! 20 Camping in the Rio Grande Gorge Mapping ri geology in the Pilar area

Dipping schist!

Dr. Burgette and the group discussing ri geology and landscape evolution on top of Pilar Mesa

Mapping Proterozoic quartzite

Everyone made it home! A special thank you to Keith Davis for help preparing amazing meals 21 Upper left: New graduate students Anna VanDusen, David Morin, and Jose Marmolejo. Upper right: Dani Vitarelli, Jacob Piper, and new student Carrie Mullins. Lower left: Emily Johnson and Visiting Assistant Professor Evey Gannaway Dalton. Lower right: First ever Halloween Costume Contest: Emily (The Dude) and Evey Gannaway (Liverpool Football Club player). MS DEGREES/DEFENSES 2019 STUDENT ADVISOR CURRENT POSITION Nick Richard Jeff Amato Ph.D. Candidate, U. Nebraska, Lincoln Nick Butterfield Frank Ramos Jamie Shaffer Emily Johnson Leonard Rice Engineers, Phoenix Samantha Bartnik Brian Hampton Exxon, Houston Michelle Gavel Jeff Amato DGGS, Alaska State Survey, Fairbanks

22 Giving Tuesday is December 3, 2018 Giving Tuesday is a global celebration of the many ways that everyone can help organizations meet their goals. It’s a time of giving back to the communities that have given to you. Please consider a gift to one of the Geology Scholarships, especially these three highlighted funds.

Southern Rift Institute The Southern Rift Institute was created this year to provide support for graduate and undergraduate field-intensive geologic research projects in the Southern Rio Grande rift (see p. 5-6 for more information). Your gift will be used to pay for research costs associated with student thesis projects.

Online Donations Link: https://advancing.nmsu.edu/ Or type in the following link: http://bit.ly/2zLcd1Q

Geology Lab Teaching and Research Fund:

Online Donations Link: https://advancing.nmsu.edu/givenow?fid=duvTT4gLP8Q%3d&fdesc=im31buQW4kvh3BUSSi- uF48XrlIUE6GyHzPIvylchubPl7eyocCUvdQ%3d%3d

Geology Field Teaching and Research Fund Your gifts to this account will allow us to fully or partially subsidence our undergraduates who are taking Field Geology in Summer 2019. Each student has to pay $700, plus tuition, to attend our field camp. While this is a bargain compared to other camps, this is still a big committment, particularly for students who have to take time off work to fulfill this requirement.

Online Donations Link: https://advancing.nmsu.edu/givenow?fid=psHlYS9d9dg%3d&fdesc=im- 31buQW4kscTXem3OwoVWkVmnW4XFY35uavYXzRuLfV3JSCj5Izyg%3d%3d

Geological Sciences Department Fund Gifts to the Geological Sciences Department Fund help us meet our most pressing needs.

Online Donations Link: https://advancing.nmsu.edu/givenow?fid=jUO8v1G7qhs%3d&fdesc=Nixm- HWqVKqnMtPZ30%2fhu9Tb1psNOlYJaAcJIl0BGXCA%3d

23 Dept. Geological Sciences/ MSC 3AB New Mexico State University P.O. Box 30001 Las Cruces, NM 88003

“The Science That Shapes Our World”