Creating a sustainable water system in Nicaragua
The Stan Dyl Geology Fellowship has been awarded to Elisa Piispa, a PhD student in geology, for her work on improving the proterozoic continental reconstructions based on combining characterizations of the paleomagnetism, geology, mineralogy and geochronology of mafic dike swarms in India. This fellowship will be used to support her travel to India to present her work. She is advised by Assistant Professor Aleksey Smirnov.
Joshua Richardson, MS student in geophysics, has been awarded the P. M. Thorton Endowed Fellowship for his work on emerging seismic structural imaging techniques involving active and passive source imaging of the upper crust. Josh has conducted seismic surveys at the Bering Glacier in Alaska and on Fuego Volcano in Guatemala. He is advised by Assistant Professor Gregory Waite.
Elisabet Head, PhD candidate in geology, has received the Seaman Museum Fellowship for her work on fluid inclusions in olivines erupted by Nyamuragira volcano. She is advised by Assistant Professor Simon Carn and the fluid-inclusion aspects were conducted in collaboration with Professor Paul Wallace at the University of Oregon.
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• Remote Sensing for Hazard Mitigation and Resource Protection in Pacific Latin America
Jill Bruning, and John Gierke go to Nicaragua for field testing
by Tom Schneider, student writer
For Alex Guth, being a graduate student is hardly a passive ordeal.
Recently, the Association for Women Geoscientists awarded the Brunton Award to Guth. This award, named for a top manufacturer of high-end compasses, is a prestigious commendation for work in field mapping and data acquisition. The award will include a personally engraved compass from Brunton.
“We are very proud of Alex’s work and are glad to see it recognized by a well respected organization like the Association for Women Geoscientists,” said Professor Wayne Pennington, chair of the geological and mining engineering and sciences department. Guth is pursuing a PhD in Geology.
by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor, Michigan Tech
Ancient “giant” spearheads and spindles have been discovered deep within New Jersey rock formations by a team of scientists.
These biominerals are actually about four microns long–hundreds would fit on the period at the end of this sentence. But they are much larger than those previously discovered and have huge potential regarding global warming yesterday, today and tomorrow.
These magnetofossils are new to the biomineral world, according to Michigan Tech paleomagnetist Aleksey Smirnov, a member of the research team. They discovered that 55 million years ago, the earth warmed by 6 to 8 degree Celsius after huge amounts of organic carbon entered the atmosphere. Although this ancient global-warming episode–the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)–remains a mystery, it might offer analogies for future environmental impacts of possible global warming.
Using Balloons to Study Volcanoes in Hawaii
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• Balloons take to sky for volcanic gas study
• Science Daily Studying Volcanoes With Balloons
• Yahoo News Geologists study volcanoes with balloons
Adam Durant and Matt Watson, both of whom are alumni and adjunct faculty at Michigan Technological University, are doing postdoctoral work at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. They have been conducting some interesting research into volcanic plumes using meteorologic balloons. See the video from the BBC. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
The faculty and students conducted research projects in several locations including the Bering Glacier, Vitus Lake, Midtimber Lake, and Seal River.
Acccording to Michigan Tech Associate Professor of Geological and Environmental Engineering John Gierke, “Due to glaciers being remote locations and the fact that they are hundreds of feet thick, we do not understand how they move very well and their interactions with the underlying rocks upon which they travel. Since we can not see what is happening, we are attempting to ‘hear’ the interactions and then deduce where and what is going on.”
“Our listening devices are seismometers, identical in principle to the ones that are used for monitoring earthquakes, and we deployed 3 on the Bering Glacier and 7 others on islands, peninsulas, and shores near the glacier edge, and they collected data that we hope will tell us when and where bedrock was being broken by the glacier moving and glacier ‘calving’ (breaking) events, but we have to remove a lot of uninteresting data too, like helicopter an
Jacqueline Huntoon has received a $133,504 grant for her project, “Intergovernmental Personnel Act Assignment for Dr. Jacqueline E. Huntoon.”