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During his sabbatical this year, Jim spent several weeks living in Vermont and is currently living in Evanston, Wyoming. He reports that he did a lot of fall-time hiking out east, and is now enjoying cross-country skiing in Wyoming, within sight of the Uinta Mountains. He’s pictured on Camel’s Hump in the Green Mountains, VT.…

This January, several students are working with Laura and Julie in the Geology labs. Andi Eglinton (’12) is pictured preparing sediment samples for elemental analysis on the ICP-MS. Patrick Clark (’12) and Julie are shown calibrating the new total organic carbon analyzer, which combusts rock and sediment samples at nearly 1000 deg C to accurately…

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.