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It is an IN-PERSON meeting only. We will begin with a talk by Sarah Hall (AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow) on ‘(Un)Well stories: Private well water quality in coastal Maine’. Next up will be Bonnie McDevitt (USGS) on ‘Radium mineral associations within abandoned mine drainage relevant to the future of critical mineral extraction’. The final talk of the evening will be presented by Rebecca Stokes (USGS) on ‘The role of graphite in a changing energy landscape: a geological perspective’. Abstracts of the talks, and biographies of the speakers, are here. Come at 7:30 PM to socialize and imbibe, the meeting begins at 8 PM, and ends by 10 PM.

Our council secretary, Beth Doyle, has kindly provided a draft of the December 6 annual business meeting which is available here. The Awards committee presented the Bradley Prize for the best formal scientific talk to Anna K Behrensmeyer (Smithsonian) for her talk on Nov 8 entitled What is Taphonomy, and why does it matter? The prize for the second-best formal talk went to Shoshana Weider (NASA Hq) for her talk on Oct 4 entitled Mercury Exploration: Past, Present and Future. The Great Dane Award for the best informal communication to the GSW of timely or newsworthy events went to Tammy Bravo (Earthscope) for her update on the destructive magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Turkey. The Sleeping Bear Award for genuine good humor at meetings went to Hmong-Han Huang and Ved Lekic, both at the Univ of Maryland. Honorable mentions went to James (Jim) Head (Brown Univ) and Graham Lederer (USGS). The Meeting Secretary’s report by Graham Lederer announced that Michael Purucker took the honors as Grand Inquisitor, narrowly beating out Larry Meinert.

Presidential Address: KORI NEWMAN (STR) — Geoscience Applications Supporting Improvements to Landmine Detection Systems

Followed by the Business Meeting. Both meetings are at the AGU Conference Center (2000 Florida Av NW) on 6 December (Wed) evening. Join us at 730 PM for snacks and drinks. The Presidential Address will begin at 8 PM.

Our Meeting Secretary, Graham Lederer, has kindly provided the following draft minutes of this meeting. Let him know of any additions or corrections at glederer[at]usgs.gov.

Our chronicler, Graham Lederer, has kindly provided the following draft minutes of our last meeting. Let him know of any additions or corrections at glederer[at]usgs.gov.

It is an IN-PERSON meeting only. It will feature formal talks on the asteroid Bennu, the Juno magnetic field investigation, and What is Taphonomy, and why does it matter? We will begin with a talk by Jason Dworkin (GSFC-NASA) on ‘OSIRIS-REx delivered a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth’. Next up will be Jack Connerney (ADNET at NASA) talking on ‘The Juno Magnetic Field Investigation: Dust from Mars, the Zodiacal Light, and a Comet Discovered in Flight’. The final talk of the evening will be presented by Anna K. Behrensmeyer (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) on ‘What is Taphonomy, and why does it matter?’ Abstracts of the talks, and biographies of the speakers, are here. Come at 7:30 PM to socialize and imbibe, the meeting begins at 8 PM, and ends by 10 PM.

The Itinerary and Logistics information are here. The Waiver is here. Please read and sign/date the waiver, and bring it with you. It will be collected BEFORE you can go on the field trip. You will receive a short guidebook to the field trip when you provide the signed waiver. Please note that a final go/NOgo for the trip will be based on the weather forecast by 31 Oct. So check back HERE in the first few days of Nov to see if the trip is still planned. And also note that there is a post field trip Oyster fest planned on the evening of the field trip at Mark Carter’s home in Louisa. If you are interested in attending please RSVP to Mark (mcarter[at]usgs.gov) by this weekend (Oct 29). You can camp overnight in Louisa if you don’t want to return home after the Oyster fest. Further details on all of these topics are in the Logistics. Finally, some of the trip stops require that you have waterproof boots to get close to the outcrop. So plan accordingly.

Our meeting secretary, Graham Lederer, has kindly provided the following draft minutes of our last meeting. Let him know of any additions or corrections at glederer[at]usgs.gov.

The presentations will include talks by Geoffrey S. Ellis (USGS, Denver) on “Geologic hydrogen: An overlooked potential primary clean-energy resource“, Jack Conrad (NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center) on “Sampling Geologic Properties of Mars’ Crust with Secondary Crater Clusters“, and Kathryn Watts (USGS, Spokane) on “Mining the Science of the Nation’s Premier Rare Earth Element Deposit at Mountain Pass, CA“. A meeting flyer is available here. The GSW will also be having a daylong field trip on Saturday, Nov. 4, which will include a stop along the falls of the James River in downtown Richmond, VA. It will probably start around 9 AM and finish around 4 PM. Further details will follow shortly.

It is an IN-PERSON meeting only. It will feature talks on space weather, experimental petrology, and exploration of the planet Mercury, and of course, an informal presentation on the spectacular return of the asteroid samples from OSIRIS-REx. We will begin with a talk by Yarieska Collado-Vega (GSFC) on the ‘Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office: Support for NASA missions and the Artemis program’. Next up will be Megan Mouser (Carnegie) talking on ‘Exploring early planetary formation processes using high-pressure, high-temperature experimental techniques’. The final talk of the evening will be presented by Shoshana Weider (NASA Hq) on ‘Mercury Exploration: Past, Present, and Future’. Abstracts of the talks, and biographies of the speakers, are here. This meeting has proven more difficult than most to assemble because of a possible government shutdown. So details of the talks, and even who the speakers will be, was still in a state of flux until two days before the meeting. Many of you will remember our last US government shutdown in 2019, which extended for more than a month. We had several in-person GSW meetings during that time, and I vividly remember the circumstances because I was your GSW president. It was a time of improvisation, and my favorite event was showing selected cartoons from Richard (Rick) Blakely (USGS-Emeritus) as a stress reliever. One final issue: we are having some problems accessing our archives, and so Tim Mock was unable to provide the history slide during our last meeting. That slide has been a part of the background of our meetings for as long as I have been at GSW. It seems to be a problem associated with our web server, and I am working this issue, as are several others. Everything else for the meeting should be the same: Come at 7:30 PM to socialize and imbibe, the meeting begins at 8 PM, and ends by 10 PM. Michael Purucker (purucker@alumni.caltech.edu & michael.e.purucker@nasa.gov)