GSW: 2003 MEETING MINUTES

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1360th Meeting, Wednesday, January 8th, 2003

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

President Applegate called the meeting to order at 8:01pm. The minutes of the 1359th Meeting, prepared by former Meeting Secretary Paul Tomascak, were read with a minor amendment and approved without comment.

Five visitors were introduced: Mark Frank, Julia Suh-Frank, and Courtney Crummett all from the University of Maryland; Craig Finnigan from the University of Toronto, and another person whose name was lost in my scribbled notes.  If the announcer could provide that name later, I will add it to the record.

Four new members were announced: Gunther Kletetschka (Howard Univ./ Goddard Space Flight Center), Robert Root (CH2M Hill Inc.), Mark Schmitz (Carnegie Institution of Washington), and Thomas Specht  (SAIC).

The society observed a moment of silence in honor of the passing of former members Russ Wayland and Don Tatlock.

President Applegate announced the date of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Society for Organic Petrology in Washington DC and its abstract deadline.

President Applegate presented a plaque to Dick Fiske as a recipient of the AGI Annual Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Public Understanding of Geosciences.  Dick Fiske gave a very brief acceptance speech. 

There were no formal Informal Communications, but Dallas Peck pointed out that the announced future meeting for April 24th was a Thursday.  President Applegate vigorously denied any tampering with the traditional meeting day.

Three papers were presented:

The first talk was by William Minarik of the University of Maryland and Carnegie Institution of Washington, "The mantle under the northern Appalachians: Older than the hills."  Bill presented his research on the nature of the Proterozoic mantle by analysis of Re/Os isotopes in upper-mantle xenoliths that were incorporated into younger dikes. Perhaps through the repeated influence of the Geophysical Lab on GSW, I already knew the Re/Os arguments, paleontologists in the audience knew about Re/Os, even the guy who delivers beer knows about Re/Os. Bill's data indicate that the xenoliths from areas underlain by Grenville crust are Grenville age and that xenoliths from areas underlain by Avalon Terrane crust are more than 0.5 billion years older. He concluded that the upper mantle below each terrane remained undifferentiated for more than a billion years, and that no new lithospheric mantle was formed during the Appalachian Orogeny.

Questions from E-an Zen, Moto Sato, Paul Tomascak, and a final question by Meg Rogansack concerning Bill's choice of undergraduate schools was initially announced by Pete Stifle. Bills response was followed by a quip from an unidentified person concerning the relative beauty of girls from the different colleges (I think it was Bill Clinton) and a description of a ribald T-shirt by Dave Applegate.

The second talk was by Henry Scott of the Carnegie Geophysical Lab, "The chemical stratification and habitability of Jupiter's Ganymede".  Henry related how he constrains the compositional structure of Ganymede beneath a thick layer of ice, using experimental apparatus that mimic pressure and temperature within Ganymede.  The hot core and icy exterior produced a model with a molten core of pyrrhotite, surrounded by hydrous silicates, then ice. I had trouble following the arguments concerning the potential of hydrothermal vents on Ganymede for life, if only he used Re/Os, but the punch line was that his latest experiments suggest life, hydrocarbon, or methane is possible. 

Questions by Moto Sato (2), George Helz, and finally Bill McDonough who pointed out that pyrrhotite is a crystal and cannot comprise a molten core.

The third talk was by Margaret Caruthers who is a freelance science writer and editer, "Innovative uses for the lasso and chainsaw: Snaring black smokers from the Juan de Fuca Ridge."  Margaret guided us through the efforts of the Museum of Natural History to obtain a sample for its Planet Earth exhibit.  Unable to think of a way to use a Tyrannosaurus for the centerpiece of the exhibit, they decided to bring back a whole black smoker.  Following documentation of the smokers with highly sophisticated mapping and photographic tools, they gave them cute names (my favorite "I am not a crook") and wrenched out big chunks using lassos and chain saws.

Questions from George Helz, Mark McBride, E-an Zen, and George Sellers.

President Applegate finished the evening by exhorting the members to provide Informal Communications, and declaring that the future meeting of April 24 will actually be on April 23.  He adjourned the meeting at 9:36 PM.

Attendance was a trend-breaking 72.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1361st Meeting, Wednesday, January 22nd, 2003

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

President Applegate called the meeting to order at 8:03pm. The minutes of the 1360th Meeting were read and accepted as written following a comment, reportedly from the beer man, to the effect "Read my lips, RHENIUM".

Two visitors were introduced: Russ Harmon from the Army Research Office, and Warren Allmon, one of the speakers.

Two new members were announced: Alexander Korbeinikov a GeoRef editor with AGI and Joseph Sentfle the Senior Vice President of Advanced Power Technologies Inc.

President Applegate announced an upcoming special evening exhibit in the Janet Annenburg Hooker Gem and Mineral Hall of the Museum of Natural History.

There was an informal communication by Tom Dutro who announced that in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Cosmos Club and the 125th anniversary of the publication of John Wesley Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions there will be a symposium on Water in the West.  Tom promised that this would be more than historical and would include points of view from those who did not find Powell "the end all and be all".  There were two questions by E-an Zen.

The first formal presentation was by Jay Kaufman from the University of Maryland entitled "The biogeochemical aftermath of Neoproterozoic ice ages."  Jay described a Proterozoic earth encased in ice. Bouldery deposits of this snowball earth are everywhere directly overlain by pure carbonate rocks.  Previous workers believe that volcanic gasses building up beneath the ice were released upon melting like an enormous whoopee cushion, causing carbonate supersaturation.  Jay argued that the sedimentary features, major elements, and isotopes of carbon and sulfur in the carbonate rocks all indicate that the gas needed to precipitate the carbonate was produced by anaerobic bacteria, like billions of tiny whoopee cushions. Jay concluded that snowball earth was a slushball and that the unique event occurred as much as seven times.

Questions from Barbara Am Ende, Chris Fedo, Doug Rankin, Bevan French, Moto Sato, and three from George Helz.

The second speaker was the previously mentioned Warren Allmon from the Paleontological Research Institute who told us about "Building a new Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York".  Warren first provided a brief history of the maverick founder of the PRI who was notably unconstrained by the social and political climate of his time.  Warren detailed the difficult decisions and compromises necessary to start a brand new museum, stressing that a pre-existing sample collection was essential.  He repeatedly asked the rhetorical question of how would you proceed with this task.  For the organizationally challenged person like myself, who can't even organize my desktop to find the phone, the feat is incomprehensible.

Questions by Bill Burton, E-an Zen, Craig Schiffries, Gene Robertson, Bevan French, and two by Barbara AmEnda, and a comment by Pete Stifel.

The final talk of the evening was by Paul Hoskin of the Albert-Ludwigs-Univeritat Freiburg entitled "Mapping the lithology of the mid and lower continental crust using zircon composition: The Ripley Principal".  In this novel presentation, Paul presented evidence that a hypothetical map that was never produced by an unnamed researcher was probably incorrect.  As numerous plots of major elements, minor elements, and rare earth elements in zircons failed to distinguish the original rocks, I expected the beer man to leap to his feet and shout "RHENIUM".  Paul concluded in his talk that anyone who wished to apply the data or results from the never produced hypothetical map should do so with caution.

Questions from Bevan French, Bill Burton, and Chris Fedo.

President Applegate adjourned the meeting at 10:05 PM to a group notably smaller than the starting attendance of 65.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1362nd Meeting, Wednesday, February 12th, 2003

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:01 P.M. by a clearly ashen and feverish President Applegate. The minutes of the 1361st Meeting were read and accepted as written.

Two visitors were introduced: Lisa Collins and Jason Cassara from GW University

No new members were announced.

President Applegate requested a moment of silence in honor of the astronauts of the shuttle Columbia.

There was an announcement from Tom Dutro that was remarkably similar to his informal communication of the previous meeting concerning a symposium on Water in the West in concert with the 125th anniversary of the Cosmos Club and the publication of John Wesley Powell's Report on the Lands of Arid Regions.

The "end all to be all" will be held right here

But if they want big crowds, they should promise beer

There was an informal communication by Ellis Yochelson about fieldwork conducted by Charles Walcott 124 years ago in Kanab UT working for the USGS at $50/month or nearly half what a USGS researcher makes in the field now. Ellis showed some remarkably difficult to see measured sections and graphs and the punch line dealt with 13091 feet and 13563 feet, but I can't recall the context.

The first formal presentation was by Sean Brennan of the US Geological Survey entitled "Did changes in sea water chemistry play a role in the Cambrian explosion ?".  The unfortunate choice of title was scanned by Homeland Security leading to an Orange Alert for the greater Washington area.  Sean explained how ancient seawater composition can be determined from fluid inclusions in salt and he linked the sudden occurrence of shelly organisms at the beginning of the Cambrian to a shift in seawater chemistry.  He suggested that excess Ca in seawater at that time induced biomineralization to detoxify seawater for some organisms. 

Two questions from Jay Kaufman  and questions from George Helz, Julio Friedman, Ellis Yochelson, and Joe Smoot.

The second speaker Bob Dymek of Washington University in St. Louis, MO spoke about "Proterozoic massif anothosites of the Grenville Province, Quebec: Regional variations and petrogenetic implications."  Bob provided a short course on anorthisitology emphasizing the unusual fact that many of these are nearly pure sodium plagioclase.  Despite this limited composition he demonstrated that within the Grenville Province there are distinct anorthosite bodies with different ages and compositions that are related to different terranes.  The reasons for this are still to be determined, but may be related to crustal delamination.

Two questions from Dallas Peck and two from E-an Zen and questions by Paul Owen, Doug Rankin, Craig Schiffries.

The last speaker was John Merck from the University of Maryland about "Stratigraphic congruence, facies bias, and euryapsid reptile phylogeny".  John explained how cladistics are used to unravel the family trees of organisms in the fossil record.  He expressed surprise that a large portion of the audience was aware of cladistics.  Since we routinely deal with rhenium and osmium isotopes, something like cladistics is not particularly challenging.  John's analyses of a wide range of marine and terrrestrial vertebrates showed choristiders are related to rhynchosaurs and that the goofy looking buck-toothed placodonts are more closely related to nothosaurs than to ichthyosaurs, probably to the relief of the ichthyosaurs.

Questions from Dianne McDaniel, Chris Swezey, Julio Friedman, E-an Zen, Craig Schiffries, and Mark McBride.

President Applegate adjourned the meeting at 9:51 PM and made a rapid escape back to his sick bed.  Attendance was 60.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1363rd Meeting, Wednesday, March 12th, 2003

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:03 P.M. by President Applegate. After the minutes of the 1362nd Meeting were read, there were two ammendments. Jay Kaufman pointed out that the two guests identified as George Washington University students were, in fact, University of Maryland students, and E-an Zen explained that the mysterious measurements comprising the punchline of Ellis Yochelson's informal communication were stratigraphic thickness as measured by Walcott and as known now.  In a game attempt to ease my embarassment, President Applegate noted that the poem in honor of Tom Dutro's announcement was met with wild enthusiasm.  I detected, however, a sense of dread, that I might get it in my head, to rhyme the minutes as they are read.  I can assure you this will not be the case (he said).

Two visitors introduced themselves: Sarah Penniston from Johns Hopkins University and Dan Michaels from Ecoprint.

Three new members were announced: Jonathon Tuthill with no current affiliation, Margaret Carruthers, a free-lance science writer and editor, and Richard Ash, who manages the ICP-MS lab at the University of Maryland.

There were two announcements from president Applegate: one concerning science fair judges and the other about a mysterious e-mail requesting information about Charles Greely Abbot.  Tom Dutro recommended that Ellis Yochelson be contacted for the latter, but presumably not the former.

There were no informals.

The first speaker was Illa Amerson, the AGU Congressional Science Fellow to Senator Kent Conrad, whose talk was entitled "Natural attenuation of MTBE in groundwater", at least before her first slide.  Illa described a project where she attempted to measure rates of migration, dispersion, and biodegradation of MTBE under anaerobic conditions associated with a fuel tank leak in the Ventura basin south of Santa Barbara, California. By carefully tracking MTBE and bromide marked with dye  a year after its introduction, Illa found that migration rates were more rapid and irregular than predicted, and that MTBE appeared to be created rather than biodegraded. 

George Helz, speaking anonymously, asked the first question, followed by three questions from E-an Zen and one from Joe Smoot.  The last two questions are typical of this society.  Mike Ryan made a polite, carefully worded inquiry about the characterization of the site geology. This was followed by an incredulous amplification by Dallas Peck who was clearly horrified that the host sediment was constrained as medium sand that was probably marine, but may have been a river in olden times.

The second speaker, Mulugeta Fesaha, from the University of Texas at Austin, promised to have more sedimentary detail with the title "Sequence stratigraphy, petrography, and geochronology of the Chilga rift basin sediments, northwest Ethiopia".  Mulugeta worked on overexposed Tertiary outcrops, that is well-exposed outcrops, the photos were over exposed.  The remarkably consistent sediments resisted characterization by a variety of chemical measurements, everything short of Rheenium and Osmium, but the presence of root casts below lignitic layers provided a means of separating subaerial deposits from sideritic lake deposits.  Using ash layers to correlate, Mulugeta noted the lateral loss of the oldest part of the section, which he attributed to fault movement, and the presence of three mega-cycles of lake drying, which he linked to climate change. 

Two questions from Chris Swezey,  and one each by Julio Friedman, Joe Smoot, E-an Zen, and Mike Ryan.

The final speaker of the night was Rafe Sagarin, the GSA/USGS Congressional Science Fellow to Representative Hilda Solis, entitled "Betting on climate change: The case of the Nenana Ice Classic" and subtitled "Pope Gregor XIII puts a curse on Phenology".  I was a bit disappointed that phenology did not involve reading the bumps on ones head, but we did get to see how meaningful climatological data can be derived from an attempt to relieve cabin-fever in a small "Northern Exposure-like" town in Alaska.  For 85 years, the residents placed bets on the exact moment the ice melted in the local river, using elaborate means to ensure continuity of technique and precision of measurement.  The vagaries of the Julian calander and the Gregorian calendar forced Rafe to deal with Physics envy, and data correction to the Vernal equinox.  He recognized cooling episodes embedded within the general warming trend which he correlated to the somewhat fishy "anchovy" oceanic regimes.

There were two questions each from Dallas Peck and Julio Friedman, and questions from Sean Brennan, Joe Smoot, E-an Zen, John Wycoff, and an anonymous George Helz.

The meeting was adjourned by President Applegate at 9:36 PM.  Attendance was a paltry 43..

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1364th Meeting, Wednesday, March 26th, 2003

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1363rd meeting were presented by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as read.  Although subsequently, Sean Brennan pointed out that a correction to the previous meeting minutes attributed to Jay Kaufman was, in fact, made by Julio Friedmann.

A flurry of visitors were introduced.  Nadine Piatak, an intern at USGS, Travis Hudson, AGI, Walt Snyder and CJ Northrup, Boise State, Karen Viskupic, MIT, Amy Kremen, fiancée of speaker Boz Wing, and her mother Adele Siegel, an 80 year member of the Cosmos Club, the fiancée of speaker Chris Swezey, Torre Hinnant, and two guests introduced by Doug Rumble.

No new members were announced.

Jane Hammarstrom provided a brief eulogy to Mary Mrose, a former USGS mineralogist and GSW member, who served as treasurer from 1956-1958 and vice president in 1976.

There was an announcement from Rick Diecchio asking for volunteers for committee slots for the 2004 NE/SE GSA meeting to be held in Tysons Corner, VA.  A surprise announcement from Tom Dutro concerned a symposium on Water in the West in honor of the 125th anniversary of the publication of Powell's "Report on the Lands of Arid Regions" and  the 125th anniversary of the Cosmos Club.  There are rumors that he will give this announcement as a formal presentation at the next meeting.

There were no informal communications.

The first formal presentation was by Alex Speer of the Mineralogical Society of America entitled "The other GSW - Geoscienceworld, the proposed internet resource for earth science research and communications".  Alex provided a vision and actual progress toward a futuristic integrated cyber-resource where almost every journal, map, and publication can be summoned on line, translated to and from any language, and each reference within them available, at least as an abstract, with a click.  Questions about 400-pound Geophysical gorillas, rapidly obsolete data platforms, penny-pinching librarians, and proliferating journal mediocrity failed to dim the potential brilliance of this exciting development.

The questions include two from Chris Neuzil, and one each from Dallas Peck, Pete Stifel, Tom Dutro, Gene Robertson, E-an Zen, and George Helz.

The second speaker, Boz Wing, from the University of Maryland, shifted gears to "Multiple sulfur isotopes and Earth's earliest global glaciation".  In the spirit of March Madness, Boz introduced the "big D 33", a ratio of sulfur isotopes that is remarkably constant in igneous to sedimentary environments, but strongly affected by ultraviolet radiation.  Since the conditions for production and preservation of the big D require low atmospheric oxygen, Boz used the abundance of this ratio in the pre-Cambrian Ramsay Lake Formation as a proxy for oxygen abundance. He produced a snake's nest of curves that may have included rheenium or osmium.  Anyway, the curves appeared to show an atmosphere depleted in oxygen becoming oxygen rich then becoming oxygen poor, all presumably due to whoopee cushions.

There were questions by Dan Milton and Walt Snyder.

The final speaker was Chris Swezey of the USGS in Reston who provided a deeper look at sulfur isotopes with "Gypsum in caves of Virginia and West Virginia".  Chris wished to find the origin of sulfur that produced gypsum in some caves, but not others.  The sulfur isotopes he measured did not follow conventional wisdom and led to a search through a variety of possible suspects, each finger-printed by a histogram of sulfur-isotope distribution.  The culprit proved to be the butler, and the butler is a marine shale rich in sulfides. 

Questions were asked by Jane Hammarstrom, Barbara Am Ende, E-an Zen, Dallas Peck, and, as helpfully pointed out by Pete Stifel, an anonymous Joe Smoot.

The meeting was adjourned by President Applegate at 9:46 PM.  Attendance was a relatively robust 74.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

The Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1365th meeting, Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club, Wednesday, April 9, 2003.

President Applegate called the meeting to order at 8:00 PM.  Acting Secretary Jeff Grossman read the minutes of the 1364th meeting, and they were approved as read.  Guests included Bret Leslie’s in-laws, the Sterns, Adrian Hughes and speaker Wolfgang Losert, both of University of Maryland, and both of whom should be members!, Jay McCray, GWU, and Larry Widfor [???], state geologist of West Virginia.

The President announced that E-an Zen will lead the spring field trip May 17th to Great Falls.  The new GSW delegates to AAPG will be Hal Gluskoter, Edith Allison, and Carl Alvin Taylor, with Chris Swezy serving as alternate.  The president also announced that the next meeting would be May 14, not April 23rd.  So for all of you here tonight, check your calendars, and if it's still April then come back in three weeks.  The last announcement was by Tom Dutro, who once again invited us to attend his program on “Water in the West,” where we could learn about the “checkered history of water policy.”

There was one informal communication, but it was given at the end of the meeting because, at this point, the speaker still did not know he was giving one.

The first formal talk was by Rick Diecchio of George Mason University, entitled “Did the Chesapeake Bay meteorite impact have any effect on the Virginia Valley and Ridge?”  Diecchio argued that this late Eocene impact was somehow related to a dike swarm of similar age as well as to hot springs in western Virginia.  The springs and volcanics lie on a small arc segment of a circle ~300 km from the crater.  A swarm of small earthquakes defines a line connecting the crater to the rocks.  Major drainage divides in the area also radiate outward from the crater.  But are all of these features related or was the speaker standing in the hot water he was attempting to explain?  Several questioners tried to get at this issue, including Bob Burruss, Chris Swezy, Doug Rankin (anonymously), Doug Rankin again, this time named but unable to remember what he was going to ask, and Julio Friedman.  The talk ran an efficient 12 minutes.

The next presentation was by Wolfgang Losert, University of Maryland, “The physics of flowing sand”.   Rocks, sand, coffee, grain, and lots of other things behave in a complicated way when they form avalanches (as anybody with a small child can testify).  Stresses are transmitted non-uniformly and anisotropically through these materials.  Losert showed a series of PowerPoint videos demonstrating what happens in laboratory experiments that simulate such particle flows.  He sheared, tumbled, and cascaded grains in a variety of ways to show just how complicated and fascinating this behavior can be.  Scaling his laboratory experiments up to represent real avalanches of rocks or corn is challenging, but has many practical applications.  There were questions by Dallas Peck, Bob Burruss, Peck again, Jurate Landwehr, and Mark McBride.  24 minutes.

The last formal talk was by Bret Leslie of the NRC, “Independently assessing geochemical issues at the proposed Yucca Mountain repository.”  Just as Leslie started his talk with a legal disclaimer, so must the Secretary:  I do not make any warranties (express or implied) that what I think I heard the speaker say bears any resemblance to what he actually said.  Whatever.  Congress gave DOE the job of doing all the hard work to establish the Yucca Mountain repository, and NRC the job of looking over their shoulders to set safety standards.  The NRC has to make sure that nobody is going to get a dose of greater than 10 mrem/year for the next 10,000 years.  At the 99% probability level, the repository would be expected to last nearly 100,000 years without leaking. To look at the other 1%,  Leslie assumed various worst-case scenarios including infiltration of fluoride and chloride, heat, volcanic events, etc.  It turns out that it takes a lot of very bad stuff to happen to cause unacceptable failures.  There were lots of questions, including about three by Zen, Dan Milton, who wanted to know if the degree of engineering complexity was increasing infinitely,  Mark McBride, who worried about tomb robbers, Mac Ross, mumble, Julio Friedman, and somebody the acting secretary should have recognized but spaced out.

Finally, acting secretary Grossman gave an informal communication about the fall of a meteorite in the Chicago area on March 26.  The Park Forest meteorite sent stones crashing through houses and the local fire station, and send meteorite dealers into a feeding frenzy.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:44 pm.  53 people attended.

Respectfully submitted,

Jeff Grossman, acting Secretary.

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1366th Meeting, Wednesday, May 14th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:03 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1365th meeting as prepared by Acting Secretary Jeff Grossman were presented with minimal editorial comment by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as read. 

Guests introduced include Derek Learman of AGI, Barbara Saffin a freelance writer and reporter for the Washington Post, Kalyulch Yurly from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and Science Fair winner Rachel Harris and her mom.

Walt Snyder was introduced as a new member.  He is a section head in the Earth Science Division of NSF.

Gene Robertson informed the members of Doug Rankin's hospitalization for heart surgery and his current recovery.

President Applegate reminded members of the GSW Field Trip on Saturday May 17 and invited them to pick up flyers after the meeting.  An unidentified person asked if non-GSW members were welcome and was assured that they are.

President Applegate announced the winners of the latest Science Fairs including Christopher Silberholz for the Junior Class (Grade 6-8) in Montgomery County, Wei Gan for the Senior Class (Grade 9-12) in Montgomery County, Huan Song a 6th grader in DC, and the Fairfax County Senior Class winner Rachel Harris.

Rachel Harris provided a brief informal communication on her winning Science Fair project on Karst Hydrology in West Virginia, followed by a ten minute break to allow members to view her poster and discuss it with her.  Rachel traced the flow path of water entering a sink hole near Greenbriar and measured pollutants over a period of a month.  Although here pollution data was ambiguous, she did document that flow was parallel to the structural grain rather than controlled by the surface topography. 

The first formal presentation was by Barbara am Ende of the Aerospace Corporation in Chantilly entitled "Karst terrain: from the inside looking out".  Barbara provided a world-hopping tour of caves from Guatemala, India, and Cuba among other places that ranged from unimaginably deep sinkholes in picturesque karst pinnacles to claustrophobic crawlways in fractured sandstone.  Relating tales of days in complete darkness , crawling or swimming through flooded passages and painstaking mapping were less foreboding than the picture of the giant scary spider.  Her presentation concluded with a plug for her book "Beyond the Deep: The Deadly Descent into the World's Most Teacherous Cave" by William Stone and Barbara Am Ende, published by Warner Books, and available for the incredibly modest price of $26.96 at any bookstore worthy of your patronage.

There were questions from E-an Zen, Joe Smoot, and Gene Robertson.

The second speaker, Larry Kennedy, AGI Congressional Fellow to Senator Harry Reid of NV, was entitled "District-scale alteration and sub-sea metamorphism in an Archean volcanogenic sulfide district, Noranda, Quebec".  Larry illustrated the various intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks and their metamorphic mineral assemblages and discussed how the chemistry indicates hydrologic metamorphism.  The speaker displayed dazzling footwork as he dashed from slide projector to the computer at the speaker podium.  I started to lose the drift of Larry's argument in the chemical plots of iron, silica, magnesium and combinations of two or more of these for each rock type.  There were oxygen isotopes, but I didn't see rheenium or osmium, or other things which would help me tie the data together.  The summary slide showed intrusives cross-cutting their metamorphic haloes, but perhaps due to anticipation of the upcoming break or possibly the extra time to drink beer, I missed how that fits with what we were shown. 

There were questions by Dave Applegate and Dallas Peck, E-an Zen asked two questions, and a question from George Helz.  President Applegate concluded by asking about a campaign pin worn by the speaker touting Denver mayoral candidate Hickenooper, brewer, geologist, patriot?

President Applegate reminded the members that we would not meet again until September and adjourned the meeting at 9:40 PM.  Attendance was  41.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1367th Meeting, Wednesday, September 10th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1366th meeting were presented by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as read. 

Four guests were introduced: Barry Reno a new University of Maryland Graduate student, Acca Merman a professor of paleontology at George Washington University, Lisa Pinsker at Geotimes, and Lee Hirsch a congressional fellow at the American Institute of Physics.

President Applegate requested a moment of silence in honor of the passing of two former members: Roy Baily who worked at the USGS and Hatten Yoder a former director of the Geophysical Lab.

There were no announcements.

An informal communication was presented by Peg Kay of the Washington Academy of Sciences who told about the recent effort to digitize the tables of contents of all past issues of their journal and their ideas for new publications.  She also expressed hope for GSW involvement in Capitol Science 2004 next March.  George Helz corrected the affiliation of Bill Philips mentioned by the speaker.

The first formal presentation was by Gerald Baum of the Maryland Geological Survey entitled "Sequence stratigraphy applied to Maryland's aquifer system".  Gerry condensed a four day seminar on the basics of sequence stratigraphy into 15 minutes, and in the remaining time, he showed how assuming the transgressive and regressive signficance of Gamma log readings in a few wells provides insight on their correlation and even their tectonic history.  The speaker was ably assisted by Paul Tomascak who creatively overlapped slides on the screen and, by often leaving one side unfocussed, produced an eerie 3-D effect.

There were questions from Dan Milton and Al Taylor.

The second speaker was Randy Orndorff of the USGS in Reston, "Geologic controls on the karst system of the Ozarks of Missouri: Implications for federal land management".  Randy presented a summary of the USGS research he and others are conducting in southeast Missouri determining the distribution and connectivity of karstic aquifers.  They established that the caves were independent of regional fractures and were concentrated along bedding planes beneath silicified sandstone units.  Randy's closing shot of a cave interior bore an uncanny resemblance to my 10-year old daughter's photos of the interior of Mount Vernon, that clearly emphasized his theme of the natural wonder of caves.  

There were questions by Dave Applegate, Hal Gluskoter, Sean Brennan, Dan Milton, and Joe Smoot.

The final speaker of the night was Gene Whitney of the Office of Science and Technology Policy speaking on "A geologist's perspective on science at the White House".  Gene provided a clear, reasoned glimpse of what some scientist's would consider life in hell. There, a scientist is commonly asked to provide technical information in areas not even remotely related to his expertise, acceptable logic consists of using conclusions to assess the quality of data, and a major accomplishment is to have a critical area of research recognized as possibly important.  Despite this gruesome scenario, Gene has maintained a positive outlook and aspires to have an impact on our nations scientific priorities.

Questions were asked by Hal Gluskoter and Mark McBride, but Blair Jones, who asked a piercing question about Gene's actual impact, hammered home the true nature of science and politics.

President Applegate adjourned the meeting at 9:34 PM.  Attendance was 49.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1368th Meeting, Wednesday, September 24th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:04 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1367th meeting were presented by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot along with a brief diatribe laced with thinly veiled threats concerning the need to report spelling of visitor names and affiliations.  The minutes were accepted as presented. 

A flurry of guests were introduced: James Rubenstone with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Christian Koeberl from the University of Vienna, Uwe Reimhold from the University of Witwatersrand, Lee Hadden from the USGS in Reston, and Jeff Flescher from the University of Arizona.

There were no announcements or informal communications.

The first presentation was a quickie by Bruce Marsh of the Johns Hopkins University entitled "Magma differentiation by emulsion dynamics: Giant impacts and bimodal sills".  In less than 10 minutes, Bruce explained how magmas separate like viscous emulsions. In this model, blobs of differing density coalesce and separate leaving a thin transitional band in the middle, thus explaining the stratification and mixture of igneous rocks beneath impacts and in large sills.  I expected Bruce to support this model with observations on minerals, chemistry, or elements like Rheenium and Osmium in the transition zone, but he admitted early on that it is a work in progress.  Presumably, when it is more complete it will produce a 20 minute talk.

Questions started from an unnamed individual, then from Patrick Taylor, Joe Smoot, Roz Helz (which may have been two questions), Uwe Reimhold, Bevan French, Julio Friedman, Rich Walker, and Jeff Grossman.

The second speaker was Robert Whisonant from Radford University entitled "Salt, lead, and rails: Geology and the Civil War in southwestern Virginia".  Bob laid out the geography and geology of lead and salt production in Virginia which provided almost all of those essential supplies to the Confederate Army. Zooming in and out of maps of key areas, Bob described a daring raid by the Union Army to blast a key railroad bridge linking these materials to the troops, but creating only a brief delay of their delivery.  The talk was peppered with fun facts such as lead production in the Shady Dolomite in southern Virginia was sustained for over 225 years and that Saltville, Virginia salt helped to provide fuel for the Saturn V rocket that propelled man to the moon.

There were questions Dallas Peck, E-an Zen, and an anecdote by James Rubenstone.

The final speaker was Kevin Krajick, a freelance science journalist and author of several books including "Barren Lands".  His talk was "The secret hunt for North American diamonds".  Kevin described the long history of diamond hunting in North America, filled with defeat, blind luck, charlatanism, and rare success.  As the geologic setting of diamond formation became better understood and technology provided better means to search, a major diamond mine was found in the Barren Lands of northern Canada in 1991.  The details of this discovery, of course, require reading his book.  Kevin concluded that the origin of the occasional diamonds found in various parts of the U.S. are largely unexplained and, therefore, anyone could get lucky.

Questions were asked Bruce Marsh, James Rubenstone, Julio Friedman, Lee Hadden, Kevin Marvel, and Margo Kingston.

President Applegate reminded the audience that Kevin Krajick would present a longer version of his talk on Friday, September 26 at the Smithsonian.  He adjourned the meeting at 9:29 PM.  Attendance was 65.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1369th Meeting, Wednesday, October 15th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1368th meeting were presented by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as presented. 

One guest was announced, Lily Greenwald an undergraduate student at George Mason, and Naomi Lubick from AGI quietly slipped her name in the guest book.

Three new members were announced: Lee Hirsch an American Institute of Physics Congressional Science Fellow, Mark Peters from Los Alamos National Lab on detail at DOE Headquarters, and Alexander Wardle a regulatory analyst with Regnet.

President Applegate requested a moment of silence for recently deceased former member Gerry Carrol, a long-time George Washington University professor.

President Applegate announced that he was giving an informal communication announcement which consisted of a dramatic reading of an upbeat letter from the other president, George Bush, celebrating Earth Science Week. President Bush emphasized the need for earth awareness, citing Eyes on Planet Earth and the Earth Observation Conference, and applauded all earth science researchers, teachers, students, enthusiasts, and anyone else of voting age.

President Applegate finally announced that dues statements are in the mail and he urged members to pay early and often.

The first presentation had an extraterrestrial flavor as Susan Sakimoto from NASA Goddard, presented "Mars volcanism and floods: recent? related?".  Susan demonstrated that the old ideas of martian volcanic activity and water movement having ceased billions of years ago, are probably incorrect.  Using new photo images and laser altimetry she argued that there is abundant evidence for volcanism and channel cutting in relatively recent times.  She suggested that volcanic melting of the abundant ice frozen just below the surface was one cause of the recent flooding.  Another constraint on the relative newness of flooding is that in 600,000 data points and innumerable photos, not one channel is still spanned by the cool futuristic bridges from the ancient Martian Empire.

Questions from Al Tanner, two from Pete Toulmin, and one each from Cal Bently, Raymond Rye, Margaret Carruthers, E-an Zen, and Joe Smoot.

The second speaker was Karen Prestegaard from the University of Maryland, with the explosive sounding title "Nitrate delivery and in-stream denitrification process, Raccoon River, Iowa".  Karen's research group noted that nitrate in the Raccoon River actually increased during major floods rather than being diluted by the extra water. Their investigation of this phenomenon, lead them to conclude that the nitrate was removed from the upper soil of agriculturally active areas during times of rising groundwater tables in response to rainfall.  An unexpected drop in nitrate concentration down the drainage was interpreted as evidence of denitrification by bacterial action.  This hypothesis was supported by nitrogen isotopes and carbon chemistry. 

There were questions from Dallas Peck, E-an Zen, and a third person whose name I didn't catch.

The final speaker was Earl Brooks of the USGS entitled "Coal and cremation at Chan Chan, Peru".  Earl led us into the jungles of Peru to the site of an ancient Incan village with three mysterious circles of ash.  Armed with a profound faith in the power of geochemical analyses, he easily discarded the generally accepted explanation that these were smelting pits.  Instead, Earl concluded that the pits were coal fires used to cremate humans, perhaps for dark and sinister reasons.  But, there are no body parts.  I was surprised the Von Danaken explanation was never raised.  The unexplained circles obviously mark the exhaust of a large intrastellar spacecraft, perhaps influenced by their bridges having been washed out.  I am certain the geochemical analysis of more exotic elements, such as Rheenium or Osmium, would help prove this scenario.

There were two questions each from Dan Milton and Diane McDaniel, and one from Susan Sakamoto, Margaret Carruthers, Mark McBride, George Summers, E-an Zen, George Helz, Richard Ash, and Barbara Am-Enda.

President Applegate adjourned the meeting at 9:39 PM.  Attendance was 51.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1370th Meeting, Wednesday, November 12th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1369th meeting were presented by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as presented. 

A number of guests were announced - Lillian Greenwald, George Mason University; Jurate Landwehr, Jason Williams, and Rebecca Flaherty, all students at the University of Maryland; someone who wrote Dankesher and nothing else in the guest book; Mark Carpenter from AGI; and Pierre Caron, president of the Potomac Geophysical Society who provided an impromptu announcement about meetings of his society each month.

A new member was announced: Kristina Brody who was formerly a managing editor at Geotimes and is now a graduate student at the University of Maryland.

Tom Dutro announced the next meeting of the Paleontological Society of Washington with speaker Bruce Wardlaw to provide an "esoteric" presentation on paleostratigraphy using "CHRONOS".

President Applegate repeated his plea for members to pay their membership dues early and often and to provide contributions to the society funds.

An attempt to provide an informal communication by Doug Rankin was thwarted by his stubborn adherence to outdated technology rather than embracing the new digital age.  His presentation will be rescheduled to the next regular meeting after someone excavates a slide projector for his use.

The first speaker was Rob Weems, U.S.G.S., Reston, entitled "Diverse dinosaur and other footprints from the Lower Cretaceous Patuxent Formation of Virginia".  Rob noted the dearth of vertebrate fossils from the Cretaceous in Virginia, consisting of a single partial fish skeleton, has prompted some researchers to speculate that Virginia was a faunal desert.  The vertebrate fossil record was increased by an order of magnitude by Rob's discovery of twelve different taxa of footprints at two sites. Various vertebrates ranging from a tiny toad to a 70-foot behemoth literally left their mark in an outcrop too small for a ping-pong match. The dearth of squashed amphibians is attributed to the stratigraphic juxtaposition of tracks through time. A daunting parade of shallow pits and scratches were each identified as footprints of various genera of dinosaurs or other reptiles by their size, toe number, and toe length.  Rob attributed the difficulty in finding vertebrate fossils in Virginia to the coarse-grained facies that is dominant there.

Questions from E-an Zen, Dallas Peck, George Helz, and Pete Toulmin.

The second speaker, William Hooke, American Meteorological Society: "A ten-step program for disaster reduction".  Identifying himself as a "token non-geologist", Bill entoned in a Zen-like manner "The largest hurricane or earthquake is not a disaster, if no person is injured and no property damaged, Grasshopper".   Working from the paradigm that society causes natural disasters, not nature, he listed ten ways for society to reduce the damage produced by its collision with natural phenomena.  His list included some things that people might do, such as expecting natural extremes or building resilience to natural events, and some things that will probably never happen, such as shouldering individual and corporate liability for hazards or simply working together.  Bill is striving toward the last step by building international working groups to assess societal vulnerability to natural events.

Questions from Alan Tanner, Julio Friedman, E-an Zen, and Fred Simon.

The final speaker was Daniel Lathrop, University of Maryland, who spoke about "Laboratory experiments modeling planetary cores and astrophysical processes".  Desiring to model the development and instability of magnetic fields generated by the spinning of planetary bodies, Dan constructed a foot-scale model sphere loaded with liquid sodium and outfitted with numerous sensors.  This experiment provided some intriguing results that suggest 5 separate magnetic states developed in the magnetosphere.  Such data may explain numerous phenomena observed in other planets and moons and even spiral galaxies.  Following the dictum that bigger is better, Dan is currently building a 3-meter-scale sphere for further experiments.

There were questions from Alan Tanner, George Helz, and Joe Smoot.

President Applegate adjourned the meeting at 9:45 PM.  Attendance was 53.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Geological Society of Washington

Minutes of the 1371st Meeting, Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club

The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M. by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1370th meeting were presented by Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot.  After an unnamed person pointed out that the secretary had pronounced "meteorological" as "mineralogical" when describing the affiliation of the second speaker, William Hooke, the minutes were accepted as presented. 

Tom Dutro announced Ellis Yochelson as a guest, alluding to the fact that Ellis has failed to pay dues for some time.  Ellis defended his fiscal irresponsibility by claiming that his town, Bowie, should be eligible for reduced membership.

There were no announcements or new members

President-elect Jeff Grossman provided the results of an internet search on outgoing president David Applegate which indicates a broad and checkered past spanning over 100 years.  The remarkably youthful-looking president denied everything.

In accordance with GSW protocol, a presidental address by the outgoing president, this being the 100th,  was presented.

The presidential address by David Applegate was entitled "Monkey business: Confronting political opposition to the teaching of evolution in a new century".  The talk centered on the controversy as to whether dim-witted, thick-skulled, brutes can be related to humans.  Dave conceded that he was "preaching to the choir" since even though there is no absolute evidence for intelligence, most in the audience would agree that there is some link to us, despite the fact that they have insistently introduced legislation to block the teaching of evolution in schools.  Dave documented the long history of attempts to ban the teaching of evolution beginning with the Scopes Trial in 1925 and continuing today.  He cited two kinds of anti-evolution movements: Bible-based opposition, citing Genesis, and the more insidious design-based opposition which is obscured in a cloak of scientific inquiry.  Dave showed that the courts have repeatedly voted in favor of keeping science teaching separate from religeous belief.  A surprising success rate considering that polls show that a clear majority of the U.S. population believes that the Genesis story can be taken literally.  Dave concluded that the success reflects the consitutional separation of church and state, the economic impact of having a state labeled as "backwater" if it makes science teaching illegal, and the possiblity that the polls are inaccurate. 

President Applegate adjourned the meeting at 8:55 PM and announced a ten minute break preceeding the start of the 111th Annual Meeting.  Attendance was 60.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary

 

Annual Meeting 111

[not yet received]