Year: 2010

October 11-15 is national Earth Science Week and the geologists are celebrating with two events. On Wednesday, October 13, from noon-5:00 p.m., we’ll celebrate National Fossil Day. Students, faculty, staff, families, and community members are invited to visit Nobel Hall (first floor and south lawn) for activities, museum tours, and free fossils. Participants are invited…

Last weekend, 26 students accompanied Prof. Triplett on a 2-day Geomorphology fieldtrip.  They learned about experimental geomorphology at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota on Friday, then camped at William O’Brien State Park on the St. Croix River.  On Saturday, they saw fluvial and glacially-constructed landscapes as they traveled south along…

Prof. Triplett’s first-term seminar class “River” was fortunate to have sunny weather and mild winds during their Sunday 9/19 canoe trip from Mankato to 7-Mile Creek Park.  The river was unusually high for this time of year making good picnicking spots scarce (and it got even higher later in the week!), but they still saw…

Prof. Laura Triplett, Carson Smith (’11), Todd Kremmin (’12) and Dr. Karin Kettenring (Utah State University) visited the Platte River in July to investigate how one non-native species of reed, Phragmites australis, is changing the biogeochemical cycling of silica there.  The dense stands of phragmites, seen in the photo, are causing silica-rich soils to accumulate…

The Evolution of the Earth class (clockwise from upper left: Patrick Clark, Todd Kremmin, Joe Curran-Jung, Bee Vang, Taylor Eide, alanna Velo, Erin Anderson, and Sam Hines) cheerfully ignored drizzle, wind, and wet outcrop to travel from west to east across the southern part of the state. This transect revealed igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks…

On April 16, Andy Leaf (Geology ’05) delivered two lectures in our department based on his research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he is pursuing M.S. degrees in both Geology and Water Resources and Management. His talk titles illustrate the range of his research interests: “Distributed Temperature Sensing for Characterizing Vertical Aquifer Heterogeneity” and…

Six geology students and Professor Jim Welsh have returned from their spring break fieldtrip to Big Bend National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  Here are just a few photos; more highlights will be forthcoming.

The Minnesota River has begun a slow return to its regular channel.  This photo of the Highway 99 bridge in St. Peter was taken just after it was closed to traffic on March 19.  Note the crests of water at the base of the bridge, and a large tree stump lodged upright against the bridge…

Six geology students and Professor Jim Welsh left St. Peter on Friday for a week-long trip to Big Bend and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks in southern Texas.  They will see the easternmost parts of the Basin and Range Province, some nice volcanic rocks, and will surely have some tales to tell.  Above is a photo…

Twelve students in the J-Term class “Paleolimnology” spent Wednesday on Lake Hallett in St. Peter collecting sediment cores.  Taking full advantage of a heat wave (high of 10 deg F), and assisted by experts from the University of Minnesota’s Limnological Research Center, they got mud from three locations in the lake.  Over the next few…