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Geology and Planetary Science
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Welcome to one of the best geology departments for undergrads, at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown! The world business economy is slowly recovering, but the present and future are BRIGHT for Earth scientists. UPJ is in the heart of the Marcellus and Utica Shale region. You can be an integral part of our energy future, and help to better understand and protect our infrastructure, environment and water resources. Our energy future is up to YOU!
Check out these photos from a trip to the Maryland Science Center.
This has been another remarkable year for the Department of Geology and Planetary Science. Check out the kinds of research we've been doing on these pages, including new work on the Johnstown Flood of 1889, climate science, and the hydrology of Mars. Special congratulations to Dr. Katrin Monecke for her continuing research on tsunamis. This is a hot topic in Earth science after the catastrophic damage in Japan in March of 2011. See Dr. Monecke's previous article in the journal Nature Monecke et al., 2008, A 1,000-year sediment record of tsunami recurrence in northern Sumatra, Nature, 455, 1232-1234].
Last summer Dr. Monecke left the department to teach at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. We recognize Katrin's wonderful contributions to the Department, and wish her continued success in her research and teaching.
Meet Professor Washington! Dr. Paul Washington joined the department in September, and this past term he taughtmineralogy/optical mineralogy and environmental geology. He has 17 years of teaching experience at various universities, most of which was at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
He has also worked in the environmental industry and briefly in mineral and oil and gas exploration. Professor Washington earned his degrees at Allegheny College (BS), SUNY Albany (MS), and the University of Connecticut (PhD). He is married and has a daughter and son.
Professor Washington is originally from Vermont. Much of his research centers on the Champlain Valley, and is redefining the structure and stratigraphy of the deformed carbonate shelf strata. Paul is fundamentally a soft-rock structural geologist who has also developed an interest in the structure of the Nittany Valley and the transition between the Valleyand Ridge and Allegheny Plateau provinces.
He has also worked on the structure and neotectonics of the inner northern Gulf coastal plain in Louisiana and Arkansas, on the post-Mesozoic structure of the Triassic basins in North Carolina, and on fundamental and applied groundwater problems. Paul is interested in all things geologic ... and beyond! Finally, he is working to build a journal "Northeastern Geoscience"to replace the recently defunct journal "Northeastern Geology & Environmental Science. See www.northeasterngeoscience.org.
Faculty in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science
Paul Washington
Carrie Davis-Todd (see note below)
Teresa McConnell
Steve Lindberg
Neil Coleman
Emeritus Professors Uldis Kaktins and William Brice
Dr.Carrie Davis-Todd has announced she is departing to teach at a college in Ohio nearer her family. She has been working on three research projects. If her schedule permits, she will continue to collaborate in our work on the Johnstown Flood. She's doing research on two other projects: one deals withstreamflow and precipitation trends in small Midwestern watersheds, and the other focuses on acid mine drainage in the Stonycreek watershed. For the Mid-western study she's looking at 50+ years of continuous streamflow and precipitation data to determine if there have been any recognizable trends. Her preliminary results indicate there are more high streamflow events in the fall, caused by increased heavy precipitation in the fall. These trends exist throughout the study area and occur regardless of land use. In the Stonycreek, she's interested in longitudinal studies that investigate water quality changes as well as physical and biological changes.
For information about the Department and the curriculum, visit the university weblinks below. For additional information about the Department, courses, and major requirements, please contact Professor Paul Washington (Email: washingt@pitt.edu; phone: 814-269-2942).
http://www.upj.pitt.edu/23493/
The list of Fall 2012 classes at UPJ may be found at:
http://www.upj.pitt.edu/31173.pdf
A beautiful, puzzle-piece, fractured dolerite inclusion in a quartz-bearing syenite. This sample was collected from a cobble beach, washed from glacial till on the coast of Campobello Island, New Brunswick.
What are the UPJ Geology students talking about today? Check out their blog at: http://mountaincatgeology.wordpress.com/
Special congratulations (!) to recent graduate Aaron Bierly, who was hired as a geologist with the Pennsylvania Geological Survey.
For those of you taking Geophysics in the Fall of 2012, here's info about the book we'll use:
Here's the link to our GSA abstract on the Johnstown Flood of 1889, presented by Dr. Davis-Todd at the Pittsburgh meeting: http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2011NE/finalprogram/abstract_185198.htm
UPJ alum Glenn Johnson at the Solheimajokull Glacier, Iceland.
Geophysics instructor Neil Coleman published a paper as part of the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference: Phaenna Dorsum, an esker on mars: Insights from THEMIS and HIRISE images and MOLA data. The paper is online at: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1906.pdf
Geophysics Instructor Neil Coleman also attended the 2010 Annual GSA meeting in Denver to give a talk and co-chair a session on phosphate mining. Three UPJ alums who are in graduate school also gave talks at the conference. See pictures below, which include (clockwise from lower left) Reed Myers (Idaho State Univ.), Neil with Andy Hutsky (Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln), and Jake McDermott (Univ. of New Mexico).
Here are links to the four GSA presentations:
Reed Myers http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2010AM/finalprogram/abstract_180054.htm
Jake McDermott http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2010AM/finalprogram/abstract_177844.htm
Andy Hutsky http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2010AM/finalprogram/abstract_176301.htm
Neil Coleman http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2010AM/finalprogram/abstract_179386.htm
Here's the link to the session on phosphate mining: http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2010AM/finalprogram/session_25924.htm
Our geophysics class was fortunate to have dry weather for all of our outdoor lab sessions last fall. Below are photos of the students in the field. Clockwise from upper left: (1) Heather using the EM-31, (2) Blake and Cameron surveying at a remote site with the magnetometer, (3) a class exercise running a resistivity profile with the R-50 meter, (4) Justin with the seismograph hammer and plate, and (5) Heather, Brianna, and Blake with the resistivity meter.
Here are the titles of the class projects the students completed in the Fall of 2010:
Here are the UPJ geology courses that were taught in the Spring of 2011 (January to April).
And what has Emeritus Professor Kaktins been up to? Here he is at the helm of a Ford Model A. Along with Neil Coleman he gave a Bromery Lecture at Johns Hopkins University on our latest research on the Johnstown Flood of 1889.
Foot of Ganoga Falls, Rickets Glen State Park, Pennsylvania. This magnificent park, once in the running to become a national park, is not well known in Pennsylvania. Steep trails descend a gorge filled with beautiful waterfalls, and large sections of virgin timber have been preserved. The waterfalls formed when continental glaciers altered the drainage patterns in this area, adding about 7 square miles to the drainage basin. The gradient of the Glens is too steep for the present amount of water flow. The falls are rapidly eroding upstream and will eventually reduce the gradient to the appropriate angle for the size of the drainage basin.
Earth & Planetary Science Courses taught during the 2010 Fall Term (September to December).
Above is an image of the largest waterfall complex known in the solar system. These cataracts (now dry) exist on the floor of the channel system known as Kasei Valles, Mars. For comparison, at upper left is Dry Falls in Washington State, a cataract complex eroded 15,000 years ago by Missoula megaflooding at the end of the last glacial stage. Niagara Falls would be no more than a large "dot" within the perimeter of Dry Falls. For more information about the Martian cataracts, visit this link: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/1174.pdf
Images from our trip to GSA in Portland, Oregon in 2009. At left is Mount Hood, Oregon. At right, a UPJ alum visits the rhythmite section exposed at Burlingame Ravine, near Walla Walla, Washington. This exposure led Richard Waitt (USGS) to propose the occurrence of many Missoula megafloods.
Congratulations(!) to Frank Karmanocky, et al., for their presentation at GSA in Portland, OR, titled "Coastal Progradation in Northern Sumatra after the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake and Tsunami." Here's the link to their abstract: http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_162560.htm
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_162717.htm
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_162323.htm
Former Professor Monecke and Frank Karmanocky did fieldwork related to tsunami research in Sumatra. Here are two photos.
We have also done research on the degree to which the global nuclear industry has reduced carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The analysis, published in the journal Health Physics, shows that global nuclear electrical generation has caused a lag time of approximately 1.2 years in carbon emissions and carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Here's thecitation:
April 2010 - Student Awards and Scholarships Banquet
Congratulations to each recipient!
Hal Fry Memorial Geology Field Scholarship: Frank Karmanocky
College Scholar Award (Geology): Matthew Petrowsky
Jonathan Lee Groft Memorial Geology Scholarship: Blake Towarnicki
April 2009 - Student Awards and Scholarships
Hal Fry Memorial Scholarship (for field camp or field methods course): Aaron Bierly and Matt Petrowsky
Jonathan Lee Groft Memorial Geology Scholarship: Ry Jones
William Brice Scholarship: Matt Petrowsky
College Scholar Award (Geology): Andrew Hutsky
College Scholar Award (Secondary Education): Greg Thomas
James O'Connor Memorial Field Camp Scholarship (awarded by Eastern Section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers): Aaron Bierly
Johnstown Flood of 1889. We are conducting new hydrologic research on this tragic event that caused the greatest loss of life from dam break in U.S. history. There are many publications in the popular literature about this flood, but it has received little scientific scrutiny.
View from the western remnant of the dam toward the eastern side. This view shows the profile of the former dam. The main spillway location was under the bridge seen in upper part of image. Most people are unaware that an emergency spillway existed on the western side of the dam.
Fieldwork at the former South Fork dam, source of the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Left image shows western remnant of dam as seen from center of breach. Right image shows present-day bridge across the old spillway. The damsite is a National Memorial maintained by the National Park Service.
Marcellus Shale (below)
An excellent technical presentation from the USGS about the Marcellus can be found at this weblink: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1268/2005-1268.ppt
The Utica Shale is now also a key gas shale play in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Here's a link to a USGS report on the Utica, an upper-Ordovician unit that occurs much deeper in the stratigraphic column than the middle-Devonian-aged Marcellus shale: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1287/
Meet Steve Lindberg!
He has been aninstructor in the UPJ geology department since 1996. At UPJ Steve teaches Astronomy, Meteorology, and has assisted in the Geologic Field Methods and Geomorphology courses. A graduate of Waynesburg College in Pennsylvania, Steve started his teaching career on Long Island, New York, where he taught earth science at his former high school. In 1984 he moved to Johnstown and began teaching earth science at Westmont Hilltop High School. Steve is retiring from that teaching position this spring - congratulations Steve!
Since moving to Johnstown Steve has been an active contributor to many local school district workshops, in-service programs and teacher education programs. In 1992 the National Association of Geoscience Teachers awarded Steve the Outstanding Earth Science Teacher for the state of Pennsylvania. As an active member of NAGT and past NAGT Eastern Section President, Steve currently chairs the NAGT Eastern Section awards committee for the James O'Connor Field Camp Scholarship and the Digman Award; as well as serving as the NAGT State Councilor for Pennsylvania. In 1999 Steve coordinated the NAGT Eastern Section conference which was held here at UPJ.
Steve has a keen interest in all aspects of the earth sciences; especially general geology and the local geologic and mining history of the Johnstown region. Each fall Steve hosts the annual gathering of Mining Artifact Collectors here at UPJ. Once a year, collectors of mining lamps and mining artifacts from all over the country meet at UPJ to display and discuss the history of mining.
Steves personal teaching philosophy has always been that actual hands-on field experience is one of the best methods by which to instruct students. In his classes at both UPJ and Westmont Hilltop, Steve uses as many practical labs, demonstrations and student-centered activities as possible.
Geophysics at UPJ
Above photos, clockwise from lower left: using the magnetometer to locate faults; using the magnetometer to search for caves; collecting Earth resistivity data; taking GPS measurements; using electromagnetic gear to locate covered faults in Valley and Ridge terrain; caving!; and a field exercise with the magnetometer.
Student Geophysical Projects During the Fall Term, 2008
Establishing Gravity Base Stations near Pitt Johnstown
Evaluation of Resistivity and Seismic Refraction to Identify Public Water Well Sites in Glacial Areas
Geophysics and Archaeology
Use of Geophysical Equipment to Survey Covered Faults near Mercersburg, PA
Spectral Properties of Geologic Structures on Mars - Thermal Inertia Analysis
Earthquake Prediction - Geophysical Anomalies as Precursors to Earthquakes
Bluelick Creek Acid Mine Drainage - Geophysical Survey of Subsurface Mine Drainage
The Search for Caves in St. Clair Hollow Using Geophysics
Congratulations to Frank Karmanocky, whose abstract on gravity base stations has been accepted for publication and presentation at the Northeastern Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America, March 2009. Read his abstract at: http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009NE/finalprogram/abstract_155272.htm.
Our thanks to Professor Rob Sternberg of Franklin & Marshall College for loaning us his gravity meter.
Congratulations also to Matt Petrowsky and Ry Jones, whose paper has been published by the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX. The paper is titled "Structural Deformation and Surface Properties of a Martian Crater - Insights from THEMIS Infrared Images. See their paper at: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1213.pdf.
The Martian crater studied by Matt and Ry has been granted a formal name by the International Astronomical Union - it's called "Saravan Crater."
One of our Geophysics classes was on Halloween night!
Above - Some of our present and former UPJ Geology Club members!
Web Links to UPJ Geology Alumni:
Assistant Professor Richard O. Hughes: http://www.craftonhills.edu/Faculty_and_Staff/Personal_Pages/rhughes.aspx
Above: Nina Kaktins on the beach of the South Island of New Zealand. She is leaning on a Moroki boulder, which is a giant concretion. The fossilized remains of a large Cretaceous marine reptile have been found inside one of these boulders.
Geology alum Glenn Johnson and wife Choi Cheng in Switzerland at the Klein Matterhorn. This is the highest point in the Zermatt-Cervinia ski area in Switzerland.
Professor Kaktins (retired) on a trip to Thailand (left).
UPJ geology alum Johnson on his way to an oil rig in southeast Asia (right).
Meet Teresa McConnell! She graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Geology and attended Geology Field Camp at Northern Arizona University. For six years she worked in Colorado for Martin Oil Service as an Exploration and Wellsite Geologist. This work included subsurface and geological mapping, wellsite geology, economic and well log analysis, prospect generation and lease evaluations and acquisitions.
During many summer months Teresa works with the boy Scouts of America, local school districts, the Learning Lamp and the UPJ Continuing Education department teaching geology and earth sciences to elementary and junior high school children.
Ms. McConnell started working full time at UPJ in the Geology and Chemistry Departments in 1987. She has been a part-time faculty member in the Geology department since 1995. Her courses include Environmental Geology, Exploration in Geology, Physical Geology and Oceanography.
For more information about the Geology Major at UPJ, visit the Department website at: http://www.upj.pitt.edu/384/
Seasonal views of the UPJ campus in the Laurel Highlands. Summer of 2009 (top), March 2009 (left) and December 2008 (right). UPJ has a cross-country ski trail for use by students, faculty, and staff.
Pitt Panther
"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
(Teddy Roosevelt, Message to Congress, 1907)
"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have." (Teddy Roosevelt, Springfield, Illinois, July 4, 1903)
Copyrighted - in trust for UPJ Geology alums and students.
