W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

Heels on eartHalumni newsletter

tHe university of nortH Carolina-CHapel Hill Department of GeoloGiCal sCienCes

Front Cover: El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California. Photo by Allen Glazner. This page: Geology 221 field trip to Big Bend Na-tional Park, Texas. Photos by Kevin Stewart

Heels on Earth

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The D

epartment of G

eological SciencesFrom The Chair

Greetings, alumni and friends! You will be pleased to know that the Department of Geological Sciences at UNC is thriving

in spite of the Great Recession and state budget woes. Although our budget took a significant hit last year and will take another this spring, many good things are happening. Among these are the following:

Doubling the number of our undergraduate majors, to nearly 70.•A beautiful, new, user-friendly website—www.geosci.unc.edu.•The arrival of Tamlin Pavelsky in July 2009, a new faculty member •

in global hydrology.The arrival of Jason Barnes in January 2010, a new faculty member •

in surface processes who will begin his term as the first McMillan Fel-low in Geological Sciences.

Appointment of Melissa Hudley as a Lecturer. Melissa will begin •her service by teaching a course aimed at students who plan to teach earth science in high school.

Drew Coleman’s appointment as the first Jaroslav Folda Distin-•guished Term Professor of Undergraduate Research and Teaching.

My appointment as Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham Distin-•guished Professor of Geological Sciences on July 1; fortunately I can abbreviate this as Kenan Distinguished Professor! This is the first per-manent endowed chair in the department since John Rogers retired.

A new X-ray fluorescence spectrometer has been installed and is •cranking out data. Those of you who used the old Philips XRF would cry if you knew how easy the new system is to use.

Class field trips to Hawaii (joint with Duke), Texas, and California.•A Facebook site for alumni (search UNC Geological Sciences •

alumni); one of the main benefits has been the many photos of faculty and students, new and old, that alumni have posted.

Stunning rock slabs in the foyers of Mitchell Hall. Mitchell has •been spiffed up in many other ways—please come take a look.

The environmental programs on campus are being reformulat-ed, and Geological Sciences is a key player in the new plans. We are strengthening ties with colleagues in Geography, Marine Sciences, and other departments, and increasing interdepartmental use of analytical equipment—all good things at a time when some geology departments are fighting for survival.

Another positive trend in the department is the number of un-dergraduates doing original research. Senior Kate Metcalf presented a poster about her honors thesis on seismic structure of the Appalachians at the AGU meeting in San Francisco, and Jackie Ratner, who gradu-ated in May, gave a talk on her honors thesis, a study of crystal growth, to rave reviews. Last spring a sophomore, Sarah Mazza, presented a poster at the GSA Cordilleran meeting, and we expect to have several first-year students presenting work at the GSA Cordilleran meeting in May. Stewart Edie will be presenting his research at Southeastern GSA meeting in March

Employment remains strong, with graduate students being snapped up by the energy industry and many undergraduates finding satisfying jobs in the environmental sector. We hope to begin helping alleviate the serious nationwide shortage of high school earth science teachers before too long.

Let me finish by reiterating how much we appreciate the support that our alumni and friends provide. Please keep us up to date on your activities—you can use the new, user-friendly form on the department website, as many times as you like!

Best regards,

JASON BARNESAssistant Professor and McMillan Fellow GeomorphologyLOUIS R. BARTEKAssociate ProfessorSedimentology/Stratigraphy/Marine ScienceLARRY K. BENNINGERProfessorGeochemistryJOSEPH G. CARTERProfessorPaleobiology, Marine PaleoecologyDREW S. COLEMANJaroslav Folda Distinguished Professor of Undergraduate Research and TeachingIsotope Geochemistry, GeochronologyALLEN F. GLAZNERKenan Distinguished Professor and ChairIgneous Petrology, Tectonics, Geoinfor-maticsMELISSA HUDLEYLecturerGeoscience EducationJONATHAN M. LEESProfessorGeophysicsTAMLIN PAvELSKYAssistant ProfessorGlobal HydrologyJOSE A. RIALProfessorGeophysics, Seismology KEvIN G. STEWARTAssociate Professor and Associate ChairStructural GeologyDONNA M. SURGEAssociate ProfessorPaleoclimatology, Paleoecology, Low-temperature GeochemistryLARA S. WAGNERAssistant ProfessorGeophysics

FACULTY EMERITIJohn M. DennisonStratigraphy, GeomorphologyPaul D. FullagarIsotope GeochemistryA. Conrad NeumannMarine & Geological SciencesGeological OceanographyJohn J. W. RogersTectonics, Environmental GeologyJoseph St. JeanMicropaleontologyDaniel A. TextorisSedimentary Petrology

Heels on Earth

4New FacultyTAMLIN M. PAvELSKYGlobal Hydrology PhD 2008 UCLA

I’m very excited to be joining the UNC Department of Geological Sciences as a new assistant professor in the area of global hydrology. I arrived in Chapel Hill in early July, 2009 after an epic cross-country drive from my previous home in Los Angeles. By way of introduction, in 2001 I received my BA in geography from Middlebury College in Vermont. I fol-lowed that up with a Master’s degree and PhD (also in geography) from UCLA. Immediately prior to arriving at UNC, I completed a one-year postdoctoral re-search position in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. My research interests, though, go even further back than my post-secondary ed-ucation. I grew up in small cabins outside of Fairbanks, Alaska built by my mother and father on the south-facing slopes of Ester Dome, a schist formation of largely Precambrian origin covered with thick layers of aeolian loess. We had no elec-tricity, running water, or telephone, but we did have moose in the meadow out front. I spent the summers of my child-hood tramping and paddling along the

rivers of central Alaska, which spawned an interest in polar environments and the nature of flowing water. As a result, much of my research to date has delved into the hydrology and climate of Arctic environments.

The first portion of my PhD work focused on understanding how and why river flow from Eurasia to the Arc-tic Ocean has changed since the 1930s. A high-profile 2002 paper (not by me!) in Science showed increasing river dis-charge over this time period, but there remained little understanding of its ori-gin. My work established that increased precipitation, rather than melting perma-frost, likely accounted for the bulk of the increase. The second portion of my PhD work focused on understanding how satellite remote sensing could be used to track spatial and temporal patterns in hydrologic and sedimentary recharge of wetlands in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada. As part of this work, I complet-ed two summers of fieldwork in the Delta and developed the first publicly available dataset of concurrent water quality and water level for the region.

A more recent project has focused on the changing climate of Arctic and Ant-arctic oceans and atmospheres. Declines in the thickness and extent of Arctic sea

ice have been well-documented, but the resulting effects on climate are still not fully understood. Work currently in review for publication establishes that changing sea ice conditions will likely impact the vertical structure of the Arc-tic atmosphere in important ways that will have implications for how much the poles are likely to warm in the future.

With the help of two excellent UNC undergraduate students, I am currently working on two projects. One extends my work in the Peace-Athabasca Delta to encompass decadal-scale variations in river flow on the major rivers contribut-ing to the delta. The other aims to use software I have developed to map the widths of all the world’s rivers, or at least those wider than about 100m, and im-prove understanding of how river forms vary around the world.

Finally, in the area of undergraduate education I have developed an introduc-tory course on the science of global cli-mate change and a more advanced class, to be taught in Spring 2010, on water and climate. I look forward to building an ex-citing program in research and teaching at UNC in the coming years, and I plan to continue my own education by learning everything I can from my excellent new colleagues.

Tamlin Pavelsky doing field work in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada.

Heels on Earth

5Faculty Research At-A-GlanceJASON BARNES

Jason just joined us in January 2010 directly following field work in India/Nepal at the Himalayan mountain front. This research aims to address: a) the geomorphic response to active deformation at the Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFT) with im-plications for the 1st-order evolution of topography; and b) the role of sediment flux filtering via proximal basin storage in con-trolling the dynamics of large foreland rivers such as the Ganges and Kosi with implications for flood hazards. His past research has been focused in the central Andes on the role of erosion in thrust belt evolution and constraining the deformation and up-lift history of the Andean Plateau. He also has a project compar-ing hinterland exhumation histories to adjacent foreland depo-sition rates in the central-eastern Spanish Pyrenees. In general, his research interests span Earth surface processes and erosion rates, evolution of mountain belts and high elevation plateaus, geo-thermochronology, cosmogenic radionuclides, tectonic geomorphology, active tectonics, sediment routing systems, and linked thrust belt-foreland basin systems.

LOU BARTEKLou and his group continue to explore the evolution of the

Antarctic cryosphere and its links to changes in climatic and oce-anic circulation, and the links between environmental boundary conditions and the evolution of continental margin architecture. Current projects addressing these issues are in the Ross Sea of Antarctica and the northern margin of the South China Sea. Lou and students are also initiating projects in Carboniferous rocks of the Appalachian Basin and Mesozoic rocks in the Western Interior Seaway. The focus of this research is on applying the les-sons learned about links between variation in sediment supply and accommodation from the western Pacific continental mar-gin toward deciphering the impact of climate and accommoda-tion on the stratigraphic architecture of sedimentary basins.

LARRY BENNINGERLarry’s lab is back in operation! By good fortune most of

the equipment came back acceptably after his 5+-year stint as chair of the Department. Initially the lab work has been di-rected toward finishing existing projects in modern sediments of the North Carolina coastal zone. For example, in the Neuse River estuary weapons-fallout plutonium is providing remark-able evidence of sediment erosion and deposition during the record floods that followed Hurricanes Floyd (1999) and/or Fran (1996). (And you thought plutonium was only bad!) New projects will include further work in North Carolina estuaries. In particular, some sites contain a sedimentary record covering most of the Holocene; paleoclimate/paleoenvironment records might be recoverable, though not at high temporal resolution. With Brian Coffey’s guidance Larry collected a suite of Tertiary phosphate samples from the Coastal Plain, as targets for isotopic and trace-element work. Finally, Larry is still working to initiate chemical and radiochemical studies of North Carolina surface waters and groundwaters.

JOE CARTERJoe’s research deals with the evolution of bivalves world-

wide, fossil and Recent. Areas of recent field study include Aus-tralia’s Great Barrier Reef, Mauritius, France, and Thailand. He is currently coordinating the international project to revise the Treatise on Paleontology for the Bivalvia. This involves over 60

researchers from every continent except Antarctica. They will produce the first totally on-line, revisable Treatise in the series published by the Geological Society of America and the Univer-sity of Kansas Press, followed by a hard copy version. His paper with Karin Peyer and others naming and describing the Triassic rauisuchian reptile from the Triangle Brick Co. Quarry recently appeared in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and they hope to make this the NC state fossil. His next First-Year Semi-nar will finish a second reconstruction of the animal next year. This relative of dinosaurs had four animals in his (or her) stom-ach (including one of our near-ancestors), and had just killed a greyhound-like relative of crocodiles when it became stuck in Triassic lake sediment and expired.

ALLEN GLAZNERWhen not responding to serial budget cuts sent down from

above, Allen spent his time this year finishing Geology Under-foot in Yosemite National Park and Vicinity, due out in the spring from Mountain Press. This will be the first full-color book in the Geology Underfoot line. He also had an on-camera role in the Yosemite episode of How the Earth Was Made on the His-tory Channel, which first aired in December. Research with sev-eral students in the Sierra Nevada continues, as does lab work on crystal cannibalism and growth. Bill Ussler (MS 1980, PhD 1988) paid a visit in April to give a talk and help resurrect the old Deltech furnace in Room 307, and Allen is hoping to work with Chris Tacker (BS 1983) at the NC Museum on high-pressure ex-periments in the granite system. This fall his First-Year Seminar class did original research projects in California over fall break, with great success!

JONATHAN LEESJonathan continues working on a variety of volcanological

problems ranging from magma chambers to the dynamics of vent explosions. Field areas include recent studies in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Japan. Jonathan has been working internation-ally with colleagues in Taiwan, Korea, Iceland, Ecuador and Ja-pan. He has co-edited a book on the tectonics of Kamchatka after years of investigating the relationship of subduction, vol-canism and the edge of the Pacific Plate. Jonathan recently has been working on seismo-acoustic wave propagation at the ongo-ing explosions of Santiaguito Volcano in Guatemala where the integration of seismo-acoustic data and high resolution video recordings has revealed a new physical model for dome explo-sions. One of Jonathan’s important contributions is in the area of open software development in a platform called R. He has contributed 7 packages to the R web site, for a brief description see, http://www.unc.edu/~leesj/software_developed.html. Cur-rently, he has been collaborating with Prof. Donna Surge and her students on developing an R package for climate proxy analysis called, ClamR.

JOSé RIALAs part of the NOAA/CIRES fellowship, José designed and

developed SMOGIS, a collaborative field project with the Uni-versity of Colorado and NASA glaciologists that consists of the deployment of an array of ten portable, 3-component seismic stations on the ice sheet, in the vicinity of Swiss Camp, west-ern Greenland. The objective of this experiment is to detect lo-cal micro- and macro-seismic activity within the ice sheet and between the ice sheet and the bedrock. The activity is driven by what they suspect is the increasing mechanical instability of the ice sheet due to global warming. Stations were deployed in a ~100km2 area surrounding Swiss Camp from May-August 2006. The experiment is in progress, partially funded by a NSF grant and by NOAA-NASA (K. Steffen, PI; University of Colorado).

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Heels on Earth

reconstructing climate during the Roman Warm Period and Vandal Minimum from archaeological middens in southwest Florida (funded by NSF) and during the Mid Pliocene Warm In-terval from fossil shells along the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain. Her collaborations within the Department are flourishing. She is collaborating with Joe Carter on her project with Rafa and on her Pliocene project. Donna and Rafa are also collaborating with Jonathan Lees on developing new open-source R pack-ages (“ClamR” and “GapeR”) to evaluate shell proxy data and ecological and physiological data. Collaborating with a volcano seismologist – now that’s synergy!

LARA WAGNERThis past year, Lara has been busily getting her seismology

program up and running. In addition to developing a new in-troductory seismology course, she has been very fortunate with obtaining funding from the National Science Foundation to pursue field based research in Oregon, Bolivia, Peru, and Geor-gia (the state, not the country). Her ongoing research in Or-egon is focused on understanding the origin of the High Lava Plains (HLP), which started at the same time and place as the Snake River Plains/Yellowstone volcanism, but progressed to the northwest, instead of the northeast. Her current surface wave tomography results from this area suggest that the end of the HLP track at Newberry Volcano may not be as directly linked to the beginning of the track as once thought. These results ap-pear to be consistent with the newest results from petrology and seismic anisotropy studies.

Also this past year, Lara and a number of graduate and un-dergraduate students deployed 6 broadband seismic stations across the Blue Ridge mountains in North Carolina and Ten-nessee. This mini deployment was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of Emeritus Professor John Rogers. Lara’s undergraduate student, Kate Metcalf, presented prelimi-nary results from these data at AGU this past December. The results suggest that the crustal root beneath the Blue Ridge is thicker than once thought given the age of the mountains, and is amply thick to isostatically support the high elevations still seen in the southern Appalachians.

Looking forward to the next year, Lara and her students will be traveling to South America for several months to install at least 50 broadband seismic stations in Peru and Bolivia. The currently funded Continental Dynamics project will investigate the timing and tectonics behind the uplift of the northern Alti-plano. Also in 2010, Lara and her students will help to install the first 6 of what will eventually be 90 broadband seismic stations deployed in two N-S trending transects across the Brunswick magnetic anomaly in southern Georgia. The goal of this de-ployment is to investigate the nature of the ancient accretionary margin that attached the Suwannee terrane (now Florida) to the Laurentian continent. Lara is still waiting to hear on another Geophysics proposal from NSF that would allow her to deploy an additional 40 broadband station (10 of which are owned by UNC) to central Peru to study the genesis and consequences of flat slab subduction in the area. The proposal has received strong reviews and is awaiting final NSF budget numbers. If funded, these stations would also be deployed in the summer of 2010. As a result, Lara is also working hard on her Spanish!

In May-June 2010 José’s research season on Greenland’s ice cap will include the seismic and GPS monitoring of the forma-tion and development of a moulin. Moulins are cylindrical, deep vertical shafts in the ice that allow seasonal melt water to cas-cade down to the base of the ice sheet, lubricating its contact with the rock and potentially allowing for large volumes of ice to move fast towards the ocean, thus contributing rapidly to sea level rise. He wants to understand how and when moulins form and estimate the total amount of ice they can set in motion or quickly displace each season.

JOHN ROGERSJohn has been continuing his contributions to the Fund

for Geochemical Excellence, which has facilitated the purchase of a new XRF. He has completed, with Drew Coleman, a paper entitled, “Evolution of the slate belt in North Carolina” that he expects will be accepted and in press in early 2010.

There was an article about John in the UNC Development Office Annual Report featuring a photograph of Lara Wagner and two students in the Appalachians.

He is also working on the Carolina Cartoon Book with a student who is drawing the cartoons to correspond with John’s captions. The book contains eighty-seven cartoons that describe the university and its history and will be published Spring 2010. Price $10; all proceeds to UNC.

He is also continuing to market Earth Science and Human History 101, written with Trileigh Tucker, published in 2008 by Greenwood Press.

KEvIN STEWARTKevin is continuing his work in the Blue Ridge mountains

of western North Carolina along with student Simone Normand (MS) looking at the structural geology of high-grade rocks and the possible southwest extension of the Acadian Burnsville fault.Kevin is also working in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, studying the effects of Laramide faulting on adjacent sedimenta-ry basins. Student Laura Neser (PhD) is working on this project. He also is co-advising Rachel Rapprecht (MS), a 2nd-year grad student from Suriname, with adjunct Professor Dennis LaPoint and alum Holly Stein.

Kevin continues to teach structural geology, introductory geology, and two field-based courses: a first-year seminar and a more advanced field course. Geology 221, taught Spring ‘09, included a trip to Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas.

DONNA SURGEDonna’s research continues to investigate isotopic proxy re-

cords preserved in modern, archaeological and fossil shells and otoliths, which are used to decipher climate and ecological re-cords during intervals of warm and cold climate episodes. Inter-national projects include collaborations with archaeologists from the Universities of Cambridge, Reading, and York. One project uses shells and codfish otoliths from a Viking site in the Orkney Islands north of mainland Scotland to: (1) reconstruct seasonal variability during the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age; and (2) determine the season of cod fishing activity. This project is funded by the National Geographic Society. Another project focuses on shell records from a cave midden on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides west of mainland Scotland. This site represents a broad chronology of human use from the late Bronze to Iron Ages and spans the Neoglacial through Little Ice Age climate episodes. Her post-doc, Dr. Jose Rafa Garcia-March, is a marine biologist from Spain who is investigating ecological and physi-ological influences on shell growth and isotopic ratios from the endemic Mediterranean species, Pinna nobilis. Rafa started his post-doc with Donna in May 2009. Domestic projects include

Heels on Earth

7Recent Graduates

BA/BS Class of December 2008

Alana Wilson (BS)

James Woody (BA)

BA/BS Class of 2009

Erin Costenbader (BS)

Rebekah Fuerst (BA)

John Hawkins Gagnon (BS)

Kenneth Stephen Hughes (BS)

Michael Pardue (BS)

Lauren Peters (BA)

Nicholas Pisula (BS)

Jacqueline Ratner (BS)

Sarah Zehner (BS)

MS Class of December 2008

Lauren Boyd

Breck Johnson

Jacob Selander

Eitan Shelef

Yang Zhao

MS Class of 2009

Sabrina Belknap

Kristen larkins

Audrey Loth

Michael Mobilia

Timothy Nielsen

Tyson Smith

Pres viator

Ting Wang

PhD Class of 2009

Russell Mapes

Chuanhai Tang

Heels on Earth

8Class Notes1950-1954Matthew Mayberry (BS 1950) (Class of 1950 as Richard C. Mayber-ry). Changed my name to Matthew in 1976 and made it legal in 1997. Worked in geology through 1986 including 2.5 years as executive VP of Occidental Minerals Corp and later (1982 - 86) in Central Borneo (Indonesia’s Kali-mantan Tengah) for world class, cop-per / gold porphyries. Retired from geology in 1987 and became a Real Estate Broker (1987). Began develop-ing a concept in January, 2005, result-ing in the “Brushy Mountain Winery” in Elkin, NC that opened its doors for business on October 13, 2006 and just celebrated our 3rd anniversary on Oc-tober 13, 2009. BMW just won a Dou-ble Gold Medal for its Red Bud Ridge, Bordeaux-type blend, at the North Carolina State Fair. Please check our web site, www.brushymountainewine.com. We just celebrated our 60th anni-versary on August 27, 2009. Matthew is 80 and wife, Melanie (formally Ann) is 79. We have 2 sons, Richard and Ted, ages 59 and 56

Austin Myers (BS 1951) Class of 1951! As geology majors in those days, while others had their afternoons off, we had labs to go to and that was a very good way to spend your time. I am 80 years old now and live deep in the woods in a very rural part of Con-necticut called Moodus. We are fa-mous for a frequent “rumbling” from far beneath the earth labeled the Moo-dus Noises. In fact the name Moodus was derived from the Machimoodus Indian tribe whose name Moodus was the name they placed on the noises coming from beneath mother earth. It sounds like thunder even though there are no thunderstorms within hundreds of miles of the village. Very interesting. I may be one of the few class of ‘51 Ge-ology majors left alive today. However my memories of the Carolina era of the late 1940s and early 1950s are very vivid and nostalgic. I am glad I ma-jored in Geology because now in my retirement years current political and environmental issues of these times keep my mind active and incredulous. I am reminded of the children’s story about Turkey Lurkey and the “sky is falling” type of hysterical reactions to scientific debates on the subject of cli-

mate change. 1955-1959 Wes Batten (BS 1957, MS 1959) I have moved from Fuquay-Varina, NC to Williamsburg, VA to be closer to family. I have become very active in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary where I am a staff officer, qualified crew, vessel inspector, and instructor. This involvement follows my and my wife Betty’s longtime activity as cruising boaters up and down the southeastern US coastal waters. Retirement is hard to beat.1970-1974Chris Heard (BS 1970) Same old stuff, however I have added a hover-craft to my list of internal combustion toys. Three homebuilt airplanes (I built two of them) on the farm, I thought I might get a bit more risk conscious in my old age.

Ray Midgett (BS 1971) I am cur-rently the Information Technology Director for the City of Washington, NC (“Little Washington”). Enjoy sail-ing and fishing on the beautiful Pam-lico River.

Russ Smeds (BS 1972) I have retired from my work with the National Geo-spatial-Intelligence Agency. My wife Debbie and I are soaking up the sun in Green Valley, AZ. Drop by if you’re ever in the Tucson area.1975-1979Jeff Kurtz (MS 1979, PhD 1983) I am still a Senior Environmental Scien-tist/Senior Project Manager at Enviro-Group Limited in Centennial, Colora-do. I specialize in Vapor Intrusion and natural background concentrations of all chemicals in all media. Our firm is internationally recognized as experts in the field of Vapor Intrusion. See our website at www.envirogroup.com.

Robert G. (Game) McGimsey (BS 1977) I continue to work at the USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory as a vol-canologist. The recent eruptions of two Cook Inlet volcanoes--Augustine (2006) and Redoubt (2009)--have kept us busy. Also, for the past 10 years, I’ve been monitoring the Klawasi Group mud volcanoes in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The 1997 eruption of Shrub, the largest of these, continues, and poses a local CO2 hazard. My wife, Deb, is a senior geologist/geophysicist with BP Alaska, currently working on

the Liberty Project on Alaska’s North Slope. This development is planned to reach an offshore oil field from land by drilling the longest step-out wells (8 miles) ever attempted. We’re in our 25th year of living in Alaska, and it looks like we’re here to stay. Our two children are now in high school, and showing no interest in geology! I don’t make it back to Chapel Hill very often, but I was just there in early October and enjoyed walking through Mitchell Hall and talking with several friends (Drs. St. Jean and Glazner).

Lee Otte (MS 1977, PhD 1981) I graduated in ‘77 and ‘81, from the Geology Department, having worked under Dr. St. Jean for my masters and Dr. Textoris for my PhD. Most people in North Carolina probably think I dropped off the face of the Earth, after I left ECU in 1987, where I was an as-sistant professor. My god, that was 22 years ago. We left North Carolina to return home (Northern Kentucky) af-ter we started to have children. I now have four kids (two of each); with the oldest two almost finished with col-lege and the two younger ones still in high school. I have managed to keep busy as a geologist over these years; working for several environmental consulting companies for about 12 years; along with a few years teach-ing geology at several local colleges and universities. While working for the consulting companies, I was able to travel all over the United States and into Canada (Calgary, Edmonton, Thunder Bay, Toronto, etc.); conduct-ing environmental investigations, es-pecially large drilling programs, for such things as landfill siting projects and groundwater contamination proj-ects. I also worked with (and continue to work with) multiple major industry types, including mining companies, steel mills, and the river transporta-tion industry, helping them to address a wide variety of environmental is-sues. I was given an opportunity to go out on my own, business-wise, about eight years ago, when a business con-tract expired. I followed up on the opportunity, and now do business as Otte Enterprises. I work as a sole pro-prietor, which is a nice change of pace after years of working with consult-ing firms where I was such things as office manager, group leader, director of environmental services, etc. I also took on the responsibility of being the primary caregiver for my two younger

Heels on Earth

9kids a number of years ago; which sig-nificantly reduced my ability to travel extensively. I now concentrate my work in the eastern Midwest USA, at least until the kids are out of high school. Most of my work now consists of stream and wetland restoration, re-location, and enhancement projects; again, mostly for private industry. I started out as a paleontologist (with Dr. St. Jean) and a sedimentary pe-trologist (with Dr. Textoris). I don’t get many opportunities to work in these areas anymore, but I still look for fossils every time I’m walking along a creek bed or climbing up an outcrop. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the faculty in the Geology Department at UNC-CH, for provid-ing me with a phenomenal education and especially for teaching me how to logically work my way through com-plex geological situations. It has been amazing, over these years, as to how well prepared I was, when I had such a wide variety of environmental situa-tions and problems thrown at me and when working in numerous geological terrains. While working for the envi-ronmental consulting companies, it is not uncommon for the boss to come into your office and announce that you are now the company’s expert in some aspect of the business of which you know nothing; and to also say that we have a meeting with a new client the next week, at which time I have to be able to talk intelligently with the client about my expertise. You learn quick, under these circumstances, and I defi-nitely give credit to the Geology De-partment faculty (and my fellow grad-uate students) for showing me how to do so. Thank you.

Holly Stein (MS 1978 Ph.D. 1985) I continue to divide my time between the AIRIE Program, which I estab-lished at Colorado State University, and the Geological Survey of Norway in Trondheim. The AIRIE Program is wholly dedicated to state-of-the-art Re-Os geochronology and Os isotope tracer studies. Starting out with a focus on ore geology, the AIRIE Pro-gram has now turned to work with the petroleum industry such as dating black shales and hydrocarbon trac-ing. Other recent work has included placing Re-Os time pins at important geologic boundaries, such as mass ex-tinctions, climate swings, and rapid changes in ocean chemistry. I am also working with a current UNC MS stu-

dent, Rachel Rapprecht, using Re-Os geochronology to date molybdenite mineralization in the Carolina ter-rane.

Kenneth Taylor (B.S. 1979) I have returned for a second tour as the Chief of the N.C. Geological Survey. The Survey is at an all time high in num-ber of personnel with 16 appropriated positions and 3 on receipts. Recently, Dr. Jeff Reid and I presented our re-search on the shale gas potential of the Sanford Sub-Basin in North Carolina. I continue to also serve as the Disaster Response and Recovery Coordinator in the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) in addition to his duties as the Geologi-cal Survey Section Chief. I am also the NCDENR Commissioner on the State Emergency Response Commission (SERC), which oversees emergency

Cindy Yeilding earned her MSc in 1984 from UNC after receiving a BS in Geology from SMU. She has worked as an exploration, production, appraisal and well site operations geoscientist and is currently BP’s Exploration Renewal Manager, Offshore US. Her most recent roles include Chief Geoscientist for the Gulf of Mexico, Global Geoscience Tech-nology and R&D Manager for BP, and Exploration Leadership positions in the US and Venezuela.

She has developed and led short courses and field seminars, and in 2002-2003 she served as an AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) Distinguished Lecturer. She has also chaired numerous AAPG sessions and presented numerous technical talks. She was also honored as a “Legend in Exploration” by AAPG in 2003. Her primary research has been in salt-sediment interactions and exploration of deepwater clastic depo-systems, with development, access, and testing of new plays.

Cindy adds “My current position is Exploration Manager, US Offshore for BP. I currently work with wonderful teams to deliver lease sales, regional frame-work and new play tests, as well as engineering analysis and support, and serve on BP’s Global Exploration Forum Leadership team. In addition, this past year I’ve had the pleasure of working with our Government and Public Affairs team in Washington to help raise awareness of the time, chance of success and costs associated with offshore oil and gas. Most people just don’t know that it can take 3-7+ years to identify a prospect, access it and plan and drill an exploration well, then another 5-10 years to first production. On average, two out of three explora-tion wells in the US Gulf of Mexico fail to discover economic hydrocarbons (yes, it is VERY humbling!)… and with wells now easily costing $100m or more, this is a not a business for the faint of heart. A highlight of this work was visiting BP’s Thunder Horse field with a group of US Senators and Minerals Management Ser-vice staff last year: after having been the leader of the Thunder Horse Exploration team and drilling the exploration well, it was awesome to see it producing 300,000 BOE/day.”

Featured Alum - Cindy Yeilding (MS 1984)

response activities in North Caro-lina, coordinates U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding in North Carolina and supervises the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA). My wife, Holly, and I live in Fuquay Varina with our two daughters – Sarah (16) and Kathryn (11).1980 – 1984Ben Byerly (BS 1983) I am a geolo-gist for Energen Resources in Birming-ham, AL. Working on ERC’s shale ex-ploration team in Alabama and West Virginia primarily.

Greg Icenhour (BS 1981) I am cur-rently Vice President/Principal Geolo-gist with Shield Engineering in Char-lotte, NC. I also practice commercial real estate and focus both practices to-wards redevelopment of contaminated

Heels on Earth

10properties. I am currently working on two major brownfield redevelopment sites in Charlotte and am looking for others. I’ve been in Charlotte since 1990, having relocated from Houston, TX after 10 years in oil and gas explo-ration. I am married, with 2 kids – one NCSU freshman and one high school senior. When time and/or finances al-low, I like to fly fish or fly airplanes, both of which seem to have taken a back seat to work and college tuition! I make it to Chapel Hill frequently, es-pecially during basketball season.

Bill Ussler (MS 1980, PhD 1988) We’re doing fine out here on the west coast. Cecy is working for Fleet Feet Sports, selling high-end running shoes, and other running parapher-nalia, and really enjoying the work and clientele. I’ve had my hands full at work. I am on my way to Costa Rica to do some Alvin diving at what is called Mound 12, with my Caltech and Scripps buddies. I’m getting in-creasingly involved in benthic water column microbial oxidation of meth-ane and ammonium around methane seepage/venting sites.

We did not have much seagoing time last year because the Western Flyer ran aground while entering the La Paz, Mexico harbor at the beginning of a 3-month expedition in the Gulf of Cal-ifornia. The ship was badly damaged, the expedition was cancelled, and the ship is still being repaired. But some-how, Charlie Paull and I found other interesting things to do. The primary focus this year has been AUV-based high-resolution multibeam mapping of small patches of the seafloor along the California continental margin, and simultaneous sub-bottom profiling

using a CHIRP system. The resulting maps and reflection seismic profiles are pretty amazing, and we’re now map-ping the seafloor on an outcrop scale, and beginning to think about how to relate seafloor features and sedimenta-ry structures to outcrops. In addition, I’ve designed and deployed a micro-biological enrichment experiment on a borehole at the Juan de Fuca in early August that is designed to stimulate growth of hydrogen-utilizing bacteria and archaea entrained in ocean crust fluids flowing out of the CORK system installed in the borehole. I’m still writ-ing papers, and traveling a lot because of my service on the IODP EDP (en-gineering development panel) as Vice-Chair. I was in Sapporo last year for an IODP/SPC meeting.1985-1989Allyson Mathis (BS 1988) I’m still working for Grand Canyon National Park. I now work for the Division of Science and Resource Management as their outreach coordinator, a position I’ve been in for a little more than two years.

Sarah Wright (MS 1987)The news since last year is I’ve quit my coaching practice in order to become Execu-tive Director of the Edge Foundation (www.edgefoundation.org). The Edge Foundation helps students with AD-HD be successful academically and in all areas of their lives through the help of a personal coach. After all these years I am doing basic research again, but this time it’s human subjects, not rocks (we’re doing a very important year-long study on the effects of per-sonal coaching on outcomes for col-lege students with ADHD). And, in an odd turn of events, I find myself lead-ing geology walks at the local nature conservancy.1990-1994Jonathan Miller (PhD 1994) It was quite a stunning realization to me that it was ten years(!) this past January 2009 that I left Chapel Hill. Time has gone so fast. But life is good and we are well settled into living in the Bay Area and in San Jose. Suzy (Brooks) and I bought a house in 2004 that is close enough to San Jose State that I can easily ride my bike in ten minutes to work. Our biggest news is that Suzy and I now have a 1.5 year old (Isaac), who is a wonderful, curious, and very big kid (off the growth charts in all

categories). Just before Isaac was born (April 2008), we had a wonderful sab-batical year in 2007 spent mainly in Amsterdam (at the Vrije University) and in Italy, and we returned this past summer with Isaac in tow, where I was doing some follow-up lab work.

Teaching at San Jose State continues to be rewarding, although the current California budget situation certainly makes it challenging. Nevertheless, I continue to enjoy work and have great colleagues and great graduate students who are working with me mainly in southern Nevada. We send our greet-ings and very best wishes to everyone in our UNC family. Looking forward to another NCAA championship soon. Go Heels!

Keith Robertson (MS 1994) I have alas moved from NC (again): I reside in Hawaii now. I relocated about 16 months back and am working as a proj-ect manager/geologist with AECOM (formerly Earth Tech), an environmen-tal consulting firm which does mostly Dept. of Defense subcontract work. Our projects range throughout the Pa-cific Rim, and include Hawaii, Guam, Midway and Johnston Islands, Saipan, Tinian, Wake Island and Alaska. Our group consists of geologists, engineers, planners, biologists and chemists with projects in site assessment and reme-diation, biological (mostly coral reef) surveying, infrastructure planning, highway and rockfall engineering. The projects on which I am presently work-ing center mostly on Pearl Harbor, with much of my time spent on Ford Island. However, I am also involved in

Heels on Earth

11some site remediation at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. The Ford Is-land project is wild for a history buff like myself. I pass the USS Arizona weekly, and several of my project sites are the locations of some of the famous Pearl Harbor battle photographs. Bul-let holes in the buildings and pavement are still there! Taking advantage of my residence, I have signed up as a volun-teer to work on the USS Missouri, the battleship upon which the Japanese signed the surrender documents, of-ficially ending WWII. I reside about a mile east of Diamond Head up at the head of a valley with a magnificent view of the Pacific; just close enough to see the whales when the migrate through in Winter but far enough up the valley to get the morning rains. I must say, I understand why this is paradise: the weather, the food, the hiking/snorkel-ing/diving. Of course I’ve been to the Big Island and visited the volcanoes up close. A few of us rock-types are going to spend a few days there in January and hike right up to the craters1995-1999Nancy Rodriguez (PhD 1999) I have been living in Houston for over 10 years now and actually liking it! I am currently working for Shell Oil Company - Upstream Americas Ex-ploration, in their Onshore New Ven-tures Group.

Ryan (BS 1998, MS 2004) and Sta-cy (Gilbreth) Taylor (BS 2000) We are currently loving life in western Colorado in a little town called Hotch-kiss. Stacy is a full-time mom and farmer, growing delicious food and two beautiful daughters. Her farm-ing business is primarily organic eggs from pastured poultry, but she’s also dabbled in turkeys, pigs, and lambs. We primarily sell locally to the North Fork, Aspen and Crested Butte mar-kets. Our oldest daughter Ava is now in the 1st grade, and Sasha will be turn-ing 4 in February. Ryan has been a ge-ologist with the Forest Service for the past 6 years. Previously he worked for the Park Service in Death Valley. He is currently going through the process of becoming a Certified Mineral Exam-iner. This will enable him to do more actual geology and also make more money (imagine that!). He also pro-vides cheap labor for Stacy’s farming business (he gets paid in free meals). We love visitors, so if you’re in the

After graduating in December 1995, I left for UC-Santa Cruz to start my PhD (working with Eli Silver). My PhD work was broadly centered around active tec-tonics in Papua New Guinea, and I used a variety of approaches, including GPS to measure rates of active crustal deformation, and I was also involved in marine geophysical work to investigate a series of drowned coral reef terraces on the lower plate of a convergent margin in PNG (these reefs were pretty cool, we imaged and sampled 14 separate terraces from 300 m down to ~2500 m water depth, and the 2000 m one was ~350 ka). I spent a large amount of my PhD doing fieldwork in PNG, probably about a year total on five different trips. PNG is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. The landscape is phenomenal (largely due to the extremely ac-tive tectonics--this is one of the most tectonically active places on the planet), and the people were extremely hospitable and friendly.

I finished my PhD in March 2002, and was offered a job at the Institute of Geo-logical and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. GNS is NZ’s national geoscience research organization (sort of like the USGS), but we also do some consultancy work. I have continued my research on active tectonics here in NZ, and like PNG, NZ is very active tectonically. In New Zealand, GPS has al-lowed us to locate portions of the subduction thrust beneath the North Island that are building up for large thrust earthquakes, as well as monitor slow-slip events, which are a newly discovered phenomenon that have begun to be recognized at subduction margins. I have also been interested in rapid microplate rotations that we have been documenting at numerous subduction margins with GPS in the western Pacific.

I’ve been able to get back to PNG to do some more work - we recently got funding to do a study of ultra-high pressure rock exhumation in the Woodlark Rift (SE PNG). UHP rocks are currently being exhumed there (coesite-bearing eclogites of Pliocene age at the surface!), and this is the only place on earth where you can measure crustal strain (with GPS) related to active UHP/HP rock exhumation. We’ve got three stints of fieldwork over the next three years to do GPS measure-ments in the Woodlark Rift region, so that has been fun.

New Zealand has been a fantastic place to live, life moves at a slower pace here than in the US, and the landscape is beautiful. Since being here I have been enjoy-ing a lot of traveling, going on walks in the beautiful NZ bush with my dog, and getting to know this nice country.

Featured Alum - Laura Wallace (BS 1995)

Laura Wallace with local helpers in Papua New Guinea.

Heels on Earth

12neighborhood or need a farm fix, send us an email: rztaylor@gmail.com

Brent Miller (Research Asst. Prof. 1999-2004) No news to re-port here... unless of course, you mean something like the birth of our son! Charles (Van) Vanlier Miller, October 12, 2009. Mother (Debbie Thomas, PhD 1998) and baby are recovering well from their respective traumas.

2000-2004Jennifer (Bryson) Bauer (BS 2001) I am still working with the North Carolina Geological Survey’s Landslide Hazard Mapping Program in Asheville, NC. This year we com-pleted the maps of Buncombe County, and they are available on our website (http://www.geology.enr.state.nc.us/Landslide_Info/Landslides_main.htm). At the 2009 Association of En-vironmental & Engineering Geologist Annual Meeting in South Lake Tahoe, I became Treasurer of the organiza-tion. I encourage all to check out the AEG website at www.aegweb.org to see the benefits the organization offers to professionals, professors, and espe-cially students. I’ve attached a photo of Brian and me from our latest moun-tain biking trip in the Sierras this past September. This one was taken at the top of what is called the “Downieville Downhill.”

Brian Carl (Ph.D. 2000) Just had a look at the new departmental website and felt a stab of homesickness like I haven’t in a long time. I still remember climbing the roof pendant to the top of Cardinal Mountain, oh, 15+ years ago with Allen Glazner and John Bartley - may have been my first field season out there. I also remember that Allen found an arrowhead by the campsite near Taboose Pass. All’s well in Brunei, still working for Shell, going on 3 1/2 years. Alena’s now a teenager and ready to hike some mountains. Would love to take her into the Sierra though per-haps it may be the Canadian Rockies first. I’m trying to get a transfer to Cal-gary for our next posting. Work keeps me busy, especially at the moment. I’ll be here through Christmas and New Years working well operations for my $50+ million gas development well. My break comes in February when I’m off trekking in Bhutan with a Houston buddy, then Egypt with the whole fam-ily for a few weeks after that. Should be fun.

Kurt Frankel (BS 2000) Stephanie Briggs (BS 2001) and I finally tied the knot this past June! John Templeton (BS 2000) performed the ceremony and a number of UNC geologists were in attendance, including: Jenn Bryson Bauer (BS 2001), Brian Bauer (BS 1999), Caroline Lo Re Brewer (BS 2000), and Allen Glazner. Stephanie and I are still living in Atlanta with our two crazy dogs and enjoying our jobs at William Lettis & Associates, Inc. and Georgia Tech.

Corey Moss (PhD 2002) I am currently working as a geologist for Statoil and am looking for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. I live in Houston, and am still married with two children. Life is pretty good! In 2007, I took a year away from industry to live in South Florida (near family) and teach a few geology and geophysics courses at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

Austin Roelofs (MS 2004) I’m a ge-ologist for EXCO Resources, working the Marcellus and Huron shale plays in the Appalachian Basin. I model the company’s natural gas resources across the entire basin, and do the well plan-ning for our West Virginia operations. Lily is Assistant Professor of Music History at Cleveland State University and has a book coming out in January.

John Templeton (BS 2000) After two years of assistant teaching in 3rd grade and doing campus ministry at UNC-Asheville, I started a PhD pro-gram at Columbia University this fall, moving to the Bronx from Asheville, NC, with my wife Molly. The begin-ning of my research will be fieldwork in the Basin and Range next summer, and I am also excited about the pos-sibility of a grad-field trip to Iceland in the summer as well. 2005-2009Scott Bennett (MS 2009) I’m working on a PhD at UC Davis, map-ping on Isla Tiburón in the northern Gulf of California.

Rich Gaschnig (MS 2005) I’m in the final year of a Ph.D. program at Washington State University in Pull-man, WA, working on the geochronol-ogy and geochemistry of the Idaho batholith. I have a paper on part of this work in press in Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology.

Ginger Kelly (BS 2005) After I graduated, I took a job with the UNC

Heels on Earth

13Kim Le (MS student 2006-08) We are announcing the arrival of Grace Chi Anh Blisniuk. Grace arrived into this world at 4 am on Nov. 30th, 2009. She is 7 lbs and 19.5 inches long. Pe-ter, Grace and I are all adjusting to our new life together at home; so far Grace is getting the most sleep! Cheers from Kim, Peter and Grace.

Shaena Montanari (BS 2008) I en-tered a PhD program Fall 2008 in the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. I am one of five in the first class in the newly created program in comparative biology. AMNH is the only museum in the Western Hemisphere that is ac-credited to grant degrees, so I am very honored to be a part of this experience. Since beginning my PhD, I have been awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and traveled to Mongolia

Institute of Marine Sciences in More-head City and worked for Dr. Rachel Noble for about 8 months. Then I took a job with the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, within the Division of Environmental Health - I worked for the Shellfish San-itation and Recreational Water Qual-ity Section for about 3 years. Now, I’m back in school! I am a graduate student in the Department of Geogra-phy and Planning at Appalachian State University. I am pursuing a concen-tration in GIS, but I’m also conduct-ing research with Dr. Baker Perry on precipitation processes and patterns and climate-aerosol interactions in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The subject matter is very new to me, but I am enjoying the challenge. We will be launching weather balloons during northwest flow snow events this winter!

to do field work on the 20th anniver-sary AMNH Gobi Desert expedition. My dissertation is on the paleoecology and paleobiology of Mesozoic terres-trial vertebrates with a special focus on dinosaurs. I am using the geochemis-try skills I learned at UNC to do some cutting-edge research on dinosaur pa-leodiets from the Cretaceous. Here is a photo of me in Mongolia at the famous fossil locality “The Flaming Cliffs”.

Anadarko Student Research Symposium

Each spring, graduate and undergraduate students in the Department present their thesis and dissertation research in an all-day conference sponsored by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. Students give both oral and poster presentations and awards are given to the top presentations in both graduate and undergraduate categories. The 2009 symposium was held at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill and included many alumni and friends of the Department. This year’s symposium will be held at the same location on April 16th. Please join us!

Photos by Casey Niemiec

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14

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation**Exxon Mobil Corporation**Eldon P. AllenJ. Melia AllenMark AlspaughJacob AndersonKatharine Lee AvaryJoan BarminskiCharles Bartlett Jr.Jean BartlettBrian C. BauerJennifer Bryson BauerGerald BaumKathi BeratanHenry Berryhill Jr.Louise BerryhillDavid Best Edward BillingtonEdward BoehmPaulette BondCharles BrownJoanne ButlerWilliam ByrdSusan CampbellH. Allen Curran Jane CurranJohn M. Dennison

James MadisonGene MaynardR. Gamewell McGimseyFrank McKinneyMarjorie McKinneyScott MeyerJonathan MillerHugh MillsJohn Monrad*Corey Moss* James MurdockEmily Roth PattilloMichael Pattillo Jr.Caleb Pollock**Laura RaineyWilliam RansonKaren ReynoldsShannon RitterNancy Rodriguez**Frederick Saville*Judy SchaeferJean SeamanRussell L.SeamanFrederick Sechler Sr.Richard SpruillJoseph St. Jean Jr.*Holly SteinChristopher Tacker

Sarah TackerIone TaylorCarl Taylor Jr.John TempletonPaul Tietz Bruce TillerCharles ToddRusty TolerRobert Torrey Jr.Robert VanGundyKenneth Walker David WalzRuth WalzJohnnie WangerJane Ward Larry WardRonald WeathersTracy Weathers Betsey Wingfield Edward Witort Jr.E. Max Woodbury IIJoseph Wooden

Gifts from our alumni and friends allow the De-partment to grow and prosper. Please consid-

er making a gift to the Department today. You may use the prepaid envelope, or use your credit card online, at:

https://college.unc.edu/foundation/makeagift

You can also get to this link via the Department of Geological Sciences homepage at:

http://www.geosci.unc.edu

Once you have arrived at the college web page, select “Other” on the “Gift Designation” box (im-portant!), and type in “Geological Sciences” under department name. Many employers will make a matching donation, and all matches go to the De-partment of Geological Sciences. You may desig-nate a special Departmental Fund for your gift, or donate to the Department’s General Fund.

Donors to the Department of Geological Sciences 2009

**Denotes a gift of $1,000 or more*Denotes a gift of $500 or more

Mark A .Fairman Sarah H. FairmanJohn FergusonWilliam FergusonSally FerreeLisa Hu Filer Kurt FrankelDiane FrazierJoan FryxellKatherine FuerstSamuel FuerstJulia GeniacAllen GlaznerPierre GoiranWilliam HarrisSteven HauckO. Don HermesFrancis HillsJ. Wright Horton Jr.William HufStephen HurstGregory IcenhourJOEB EnterprisesAnn JohnsonJames Justice IIIStephen KeslerLewis LandWilliam Lyke

General Fund of the Department of Geological Sciences

For support of general departmental needs such as field camp scholarships, field trips, special teaching supplies, etc.

J. Robert Butler Memorial Scholarship FundTo help students engaged in geological studies in

North and South Carolina

MacCarthy Memorial FundTo provide general support to the Department of

Geological Sciences with preference given to the sup-port of the MacCarthy Seismological Laboratory or other geophysical activities

Roy L. Ingram Research AwardTo recognize a student for significant research

contributions and publications

Walter H. Wheeler Teaching AwardTo recognize a sTudenT for ouTsTanding Teaching of in-

TroducTory geology laboraTories

Grover E. Murray FundTo help students attend field camp

Barden Fund for Paleobiology

Be the �rst on your block to get the lavishly illustrated

OFFICIAL 2010 UNC GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES CALENDAR!

Accept no substitutes, this is the real thing! Packed with useful information such as UNC men’s and women’s basketball schedules and dates of important earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, this calendar will be your companion all year long and you will be the envy of your friends. �e calendar can be yours for a gi� to the department of $100 or more, or purchased for $20.

Are you a diamond?

�e value of the harder gems is well known, and we would like to recognize donors to the department’s Gi� Trust Fund with a designation commensurate with their gi�, to symbol-ize their value to the department’s well-being.

Diamond: $1000 or aboveSapphire: $500-$1000Topaz: $10-$500

�e Gi� Trust Fund is essential to our mission, especially in di�cult economic times. Please be a gem and give today! Go to the giving links under “About Us” or “Alumni” at www.geosci.unc.edu.

Department of Geological Sciences The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Campus Box 3315 Mitchell Hall Chapel Hill, NC 27599

Non Profit Org US Postage

PAID Permit 177

Chapel Hill, NC

Columnar jointing in Owens River Gorge

Sampling soil on Campito Mountain

Recumbent fold and students

1872 fault scarp

Allen Glazner’s Geol. 072H Class, Fall 2009, Owens valley and Sierra Nevada