UAF geoscientists to present at national meeting

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
10/12/05

UAF geoscientists to present at national meeting Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are among those who will present their research at the 117th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Oct. 16-19 in Salt Lake City.

More than 6,000 geoscientists are expected to attend the event. Following are the names of the UAF presenters and synopses of their presentations:

• Catherine Hanks, an associate research professor with the Geophysical Institute, will speak on evaluating the effectiveness of a geoscience outreach program. Her study uses as an example the Rural Alaska Honors Institute’s geoscience course, which was introduced into the RAHI curriculum in 2003.
• Alec Duncan, a graduate student in structural geology at UAF, will present a poster detailing information on the evolution of the foothills of the Brooks Range. His study uses fracture and thermal data collected in the area during field research in 2004 and 2005.
• Andrea Strauch, a graduate student in geology at UAF, will present a poster outlining her research on fractured rocks in the northeastern Brooks Range. This research, which aims to determine whether fractures formed before, during or after mountain building deformation, could have applications for oil and gas exploration.
• Diana Odorczuk, a graduate student in geology at UAF, will speak on sedimentary records of volcanic eruptions during the Holocene period. Her presentation will detail findings in sediment core samples taken from five kettle ponds on Sanak Island in the Aleutians.
• Matthew Bowes, a graduate student in geology at UAF, will speak on preliminary results of a tephra correlation project in the Lake Clark National Park region in southwest Alaska. Tephra is the solid material ejected from volcanoes during an eruption. The study involves the analysis of multiple lake cores taken within the region.
• Paul McCarthy, an associate professor at the Geophysical Institute and the UAF Department of Geology and Geophysics, will present a poster on a new model that will assist scientists studying ancient sedimentary successions. It will allow scientists to see where soils fit into the geological record, based on their architecture. This will prove helpful for regions where changing sea levels have affected the type and spatial relationships of soils through time. McCarthy developed the model after years of mapping the formation of fossilized soils in the Cenomanian Dunvegan Formation in Canada.