In Geoscience Newsletters throughout the year, we will profile of one of our geo-science graduate students, so that we can learn more about them!

Megan McCusker is familiar with UConn—having re-ceived her BA (Geography) and Masters here respec-tively, she comes to the Cen-ter for Integrative Geo-sciences as a PhD student studying under Melinda Daniels. Her Masters thesis was titled ‘The Geomorphic Downstream Effect of Low-Head Dams upon the Sedi-ment Regime of Connecti-cut Fluvial Systems’. She also has her certificate in GIS.

Much of Megan’s time study-ing here at UConn has been accompanied by various re-

search and teaching assistant-ships, including working with Mackworth Environmental Consulting in Maine. For this position she was responsible for conducting research, site and facility visits, and implementation of contacts for Mackworth’s marine culture division to complete the data and information gathering process in order to complete an assessment for a Maine Technology Institute grant. This semes-ter, Meg is serving as head TA for GEOL105.

Meg has also presented her research at meetings for the Association of American Ge-ographers, as well as the American Geophysical Un-ion.

In her spare time, Megan en-joys doing anything out-

doors—camping, hiking, skiing— and is a devoted runner. She very much en-joys triatholons, road races, and playing soccer. On top of that, Megan is an avid traveler and recently spent time in Thailand. Meg hopes to do research for her Geoscience PhD in Brazil this coming year, so she will be working on learning Por-tugese in the upcoming months.

A Graduate Student Profile

In the News for Geosciences:

• The record-breaking number of named storms during the 2005 hurricane season may have dominated weather news, but at the same time, another record was in the making: The year now stands as the warmest on record, according to some climatologists. Global sur-face temperatures have increased about 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) since the mid-1970s. That increase culminated in 2005 with the highest surface temperatures ever recorded, according to a report released this month by James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and colleagues.

Faculty News etc. 2

Upcoming Events 3

Websites of Interest 3

Beach Hall Memories 4

Supply of Geoscientists is Declining 8

Inside this issue:

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Volume 2, Issue 1

February 17th, 2006

Columbia University at La-mont-Doherty Earth Obser-vatory is offering a Summer Internship Program for Under-graduates (May 30th-August 3rd, 2006). The theme is Ana-lyzing Global Databases.

The Lamont-Doherty Summer Intern Program offers the chance to experience scientific research as an undergraduate. The program is open to US citizens or permanent resi-dents who have completed

their junior or sophomore year in college with majors in earth science, environmental science, chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, or engineering. (Graduating seniors are not eligible). Applicants should have an interest in conducting research in the Earth or ocean sciences.

Students will receive a stipend of $2640 for this 10-week pro-gram. In addition, the student will receive free, air-

conditioned housing at Co-lumbia University in the City of New York. Students who are traveling to Lamont from more than 200 miles away will be reimbursed for a round-trip supersaver fare. Application form must be submitted by March 1, 2006.

Application is here: http://eesc.columbia.edu/resources/internships/lamont/Application

Lamont-Doherty Summer Internships

Meg doing some field work on the Willimantic River.

Faculty Contributions on Publications:

In addition to informing us of all your publications and providing us with hard copies, we encourage all students and faculty that submit publications for peer review to include in CiG contribution number. This can typically be done in the acknowledgments: “This is contribution #XX of UConn’s Center for Integrative Geosciences”, or alternatively, do this in a footnote, depending on the journal guidelines. Once the publication is ac-cepted, Abi can provide you with an ac-tual number. Two of the reasons for do-ing this are: it gives us visibility and is “free” advertisement, and it helps us build a case for our (transdisciplinary) existence as the breadth and depth of these publications can help us demon-strate our viability.

As a reminder, copies of these pubs are located in the 207 office, in a blue binder on the front counter, for anyone who would like to take a look or make copies!

Conference / Symposia Activities: Faculty and students, if you’ve been in-vited to attend meetings or are present-ing something at a meeting, please let Abi know and we’ll include it in upcoming newsletters!

NASA ABSCICON Conference 2006 Astrobiology Conference! March 26-30th in Washington DC. February 26th is reg-istration deadline. Find out more: http://abscicon2006.arc.nasa.gov/

Association of American Geographers annual meeting 2006: Held in Chicago. Registration is still available, find out more at:

http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/index.cfm

July 16-21, Zeolite ‘06, 7th International Conference on the Occurrence, Proper-ties, and Utilization of Natural Zeolites. Held at New Mexico Tech. http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Zeolite06

G e o S c i e n c e W o r l d : UConn's site license for Geoscience-World is now activated. Go to http://www.geoscienceworld.org/ . This is also the portal to GeoRef. This is a great resource, and easy to use!

Geology Park: Did you know we have a ‘geology park’ here at UConn? We are working together with the Museum to fix it up and bring this project back to life for the UConn community. Stay tuned for more details!

hand under the direction of faculty mentors.

The diversity of scientists in CEMS enables them to offer exciting projects to all student participants. Faculty mentors are active researchers in environmental geochemistry, environmental chemistry, geology, physics, environmental marine sciences, and materi-als science. Each student has the opportu-nity to work in their state-of-the art labora-tories and facilities, including the National

The Center for Environmental Molecular Science (CEMS) at Stony Brook University (NY) is an Environmental Molecular Sci-ence Institute funded by the National Sci-ence Foundation. CEMS sponsors scholar-ships for selected undergraduates to work at Stony Brook in a 10-week summer pro-gram of research in environmental science. Students from a variety of undergraduate major fields of study at institutions across the United States experience research first

Synchrotron Light Source at nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory. During the ten-week program, students conduct individual result-oriented projects. Their experiences cover most of the essential elements of academic research, including reporting of the results to other scientists.

Find Out More! http://www.cems.stonybrook.edu/

Education&Outreach/REU/index.html

Page 2

Announcements, Awards, Publications, etc.

CEMS Summer Undergrad Research

GEOSCIENCES NEWSLETTER

Global view of what the Earth may have looked like in the middle Triassic (240 million

years ago).

Job Opening: FARMINGTON RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION -- MEMBERSHIP & PROGRAM CO-ORDINATOR (Full-Time) The Farm-ington River Watershed Association (FRWA) is seeking an energetic, articu-late, skilled, and flexible individual with a strong teamwork ethic. More informa-tion is available from Eric Hammerling, E x e c u t i v e D i r e c t o r - ehammerling@frwa.org

Frontiers in Undergraduate Re-search 2006: The UConn Office of Undergraduate Research and the Hon-ors Program are proud to announce the annual poster exhibition, Frontiers in Undergraduate Research. All students are invited to submit an application to present their research, scholarly, and creative work at this annual event. Applications are due March 3, 2006, and may be found on-line at http://www.ugradresearch.uconn.edu/frontiers.php Frontiers will take place on Friday, April 7, 2006, from 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 8, 2006, from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. in the Wilbur Cross South Reading Room. For more information, please visit www.ugradresearch.uconn.edu or email ugradresearch@uconn.edu

Continued on page 6!

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1

• Thursday March 2nd, Enviro-movie series presents ‘Blue Planet: Coral Seas’. 6:30pm in the library (Beach Hall 233).

• Friday March 3rd, Marine Science Seminar Series presents David Ral-ston, WHOI, ‘Mudflat Channel Trans-port’ 3:00pm, Room 103 Marine Sciences Building, Avery Point.

• Thursday, March 9th, IMS Distin-guished Lecture. Craig J. Hawker, UCal Santa Barbara. ’Facile Chemistry for the Generation and Industrial Ap-plication of Polymeric Nanostructures’ 4:00pm IMS room 20.

• Tuesday March 14th, Geoscience Seminar Series Presents: Dr. Magda Abou El-Safa, Post Doc scholar from Egypt. 3:30pm, Beach Hall 233 (Reading Room). Refreshments Served!

• Thursday March 16th, Enviro-movie series presents ‘Gorillas in the Mist’. 6:30pm in the library (Beach Hall 233).

• Friday March 17th, Geography Semi-nar. Heidi Dierssen, UConn Marine Sciences. 11am CLAS 247.

• Friday March 17th, Marine Science Seminar Series presents Michael Lesser, UNH, ‘Cyanobacteria and Nitrogen Limitation’ 3:00pm, Room 103 Marine Sciences Building, Avery Point.

• Tuesday March 21st, Geoscience Seminar Series Presents: Roger Sum-mons, MIT. 3:30pm Beach Hall 233.

• Wednesday March 22nd, CTIWR Seminar. Ross Bagtzoglou, CEE, ‘Groundwater Modeling of the Fenton River Well Field’. 4:30pm, Young 207-208.

• Thursday March 24th, Geography Seminar. Dr. B.L. Turner, Clark Uni-versity. Title TBA. 11am CLAS 247.

• Friday March 31st, Physics Collo-quium presents Robert Lieberman (SUNY Stony Brook), ‘Sound Veloci-ties in Minerals Under Mantle Condi-tions’. P38, 4:00pm.

• Tuesday, February 21st, Geoscience Seminar Series Presents: Lanbo Liu, UConn Civil and Environmental Engi-neering. ‘Backyard Geophysics: From Beach Hall to the Willimantic River’. 3:30pm Beach Hall 233 (Reading Room). Refreshments Served!

• Wednesday February 22nd, Career Services is hosting the Environmental Career Speakers Panel for students interested in potential environmental opportunities. The panel and discus-sion session will take place at 4:00pm in CUE Room 134.

• Tuesday February 28th, Geoscience Seminar Series Presents: Anji Seth, UConn Geography. ‘Greenhouse Warming, El Niño and Climate Mod-els: An Abridged History of Climate Science in the 20th Century’ 3:30pm Beach Hall 233 (Reading Room). Refreshments Served!

• Wednesday March 1st, CTIWR Seminar. Glenn Warner, NRME, ‘Fenton River Measurements: Surface Hydrology, Flow and Statistical Analy-sis’. 4:30pm, Young 207-208.

For each newsletter that comes out, we will try to feature a few great sites related to geosciences that may be of interest to stu-dents and faculty associated with the Cen-ter. Please feel free to send any sites you find along to Abi, to be included in this sec-tion in future editions!

• This site is all about snow crystals and snowflakes -- what they are, where they come from, and just how these remarkably complex and beautiful structures are created, quite literally, out of thin air. http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

• Ozone animations from NASA`s Earth Observatory, build monthly global ozone level (in Dobson units) an-imations for 1981-2000. Data from Total Ozone Map-ping Spectrometer [TOMS] project.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Observatory/Datasets/ozone.toms.html

• Earth 911: Making Every Day Earth Day is to em-power the public with resources to improve quality of life. The site offers very practical information on a wide range of environmental topics including recy-cling, household hazardous waste, water quality, com-posting, air pollution prevention, fire prevention, green shopping tips, and mercury pollution. http://www.earth911.org/master.asp

• Data for your GIS: Portal to sources for GIS Data http://www.esri.com/data/data_portals.html

More to come in the next edition!

Page 3

Upcoming Events

Geoscience Websites of Interest

Page 4

Beach Hall Memories

GEOSCIENCES NEWSLETTER

The old location of Geology (when it was Geology and Geography) at UConn, across 195 from Beach Hall.

Geology faculty in the 1970’s, outside Beach Hall.

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 Page 5

Biodiversity in the Anthropocene Symposium: Harvard and Radcliffe Uni-versity. Friday March 10th, 9am –3pm, Maxwell Dworkin Hall, Cam-bridge, MA. No registration required, free to attend. More information at http://www.radcliffe.edu

GRADS MOVING ON...

Congratulations to Jon Gourley who successfully defended his PhD on Feb-ruary 3rd! His thesis was titled ‘Syn-Tectonic Extension and Lateral Extrusion in Taiwan: the Tectonic Response to a Basement High Promontory’ Advisor: Tim Byrne. Jon is now a full time lecturer of Environmental Sciences at Trinity College in Hartford!

Congratulations to Martha Growdon who successfully completed her Mas-ters degree last semester! Her thesis was titled ‘Mylonites in Suspect Terranes: Evidence for post-faulting deformation on the Lake Char-Honey Hill fault, South-eastern Connecticut’ Advisor: Tim Byrne. Martha is now at University of Indiana pursuing her PhD!

Congratulations to Allison Weinsteiger who completed her Masters degree in the Fall! Her thesis was titled ‘Upward and Downward Flow in a Camptonite Dike, Determined by Flow Indicators, and Compared to the Anisotropic Mag-netic Susceptibility, Higby Mountain, Connecticut’ Advisor: Tony Philpotts. Allison is now pursuing her PhD at Ore-gon State!

Integrated Ocean Drilling Pro-gram: The next deadline for ocean drilling proposals is April 1. Information about the Inte-grated Ocean Drilling Program and proposal submission guide-lines can be found at:

http://www.iodp.org/drilling-proposals/

If anyone is interested in going with other students, see Abi to coordinate! Registration is available on-line, as well as on-site at the meeting.

Find out more online at http://www.geosociety.org/sectdiv/

northe/06nemtg.htm

The Northeast sectional of the Geologi-cal Society of America meeting is tak-ing place this year in Harrisburg, PA, from March 20-22nd.

From mining to seismology, coastal change to mineralogy—there’s some-thing for everyone at the sectional. Field trips will also be taking place during the meeting, as well as special events, and student programs.

Page 6

Announcements, continued...

NEGSA is coming!

GEOSCIENCES NEWSLETTER

Joides Resolution Ship, part of ODP.

EPOD for 1/31/2006—The photo above shows a nice example of rather unusual Z-shaped folds outcropping on the "Sierra Custodia," in the Spanish Pyrenees (province of Aragon). This original pattern results from the combination of two main recumbent chevron folds; one an anticline and one a syncline -- a dusting of snow enhances the pattern. The rocks outcrop-ping here are Eocene turbidites, which were deformed at rather high temperature and pressure conditions in the Mont-Perdu thrust sheet during the Pyrenean orogenesis.

Photo by Loic Baralgette, Laboratorie Dynamique de la lithosphere, Universite Montpellier II

Earth Science Picture of the Day!

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 Page 7

http://www.geosciences.uconn.edu

The Center for Integrative Geosciences mission is to offer transdisciplinary programs of instruction and research that advance understanding of the inter-action of biological, chemical, geological, and physical processes, including feedback mechanisms, at all spatial and temporal scales that have shaped Earth through geologic time, continue to shape the environment today, and which provide the basis for understanding the present and future impact of human activity on this planet.

We will be issuing these newsletters monthly throughout the academic year to keep associated students, staff, alumni, and faculty up-to-date on the

Center’s activities! Center for Integrative Geosciences

354 Mansfield Road, U-2045 Storrs, CT 06269-2045

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

from now,” he says.

The CGC’s findings are worryingly substan-tiated in a report released to the mining in-dustry this summer. It warned of an impend-ing human resources crisis in the industry that will be created by the retirement of 40% of current employees by 2015.

The mining Industry Training and Adjust-ment Council (MITAC) report said that with the combination of retirements and industry growth, as many as 81,000 people will be needed to fill positions during the next 10 years. As it stands now, only about 14% of them will come from post-secondary institu-tions. The remainder will have to be re-cruited from immigration, aboriginal com-munities and other industries.

Morgan says this problem is not only Cana-dian; it exists in Europe and in the United States as well. A number of factors are exac-erbating this situation, he adds. For example, within academia, geology and earth science departments have been closed down or com-

Excerpt from In Brief, a publication of the Pros-pectors and Developers Association of Canada.

The red flags have been up for years: There are simply not enough students entering the earth sciences to sustain the mining and petroleum sector.

In 2001, the Canadian Geoscience Council (CGC) sent a comprehensive survey to 12,000 geologists across the country. From the 3,000 responses, says CGC chair Alan Morgan, the size of the problem became obvious.

“Within 15 years of 2001—that is, by 2016—60 percent of all earth scientists in the country would be over the age of 65.”

He points out it takes at least five years, and usually eight to nine years, for geoscientists to complete their education and time is run-ning out. “Unless we do something in the next two to three years and things turn around, we’re really going to be seeing a shortfall cropping up seven or eight years

bined with other areas. “Generally speaking, Europe and the whole of the North American continent have been reducing fairly substan-tially the numbers of potential geologists who could be going through the system,” he says.

In addition, junior and high school boards have been relegating the earth sciences to the back burner as biology, chemistry and phys-ics have been given prominence. The situa-tion has been worsened by earth science being taught by people who have little or no knowledge of the areas, and guidance coun-selors who know nothing about careers in the field and do not promote them.

The CGC is trying to find out more about the state of earth science teaching across the country, and is sending questionnaires out to teachers, junior and high schools and uni-versities seeking information. Eventually, it hopes to combine efforts with other associa-tions, such as the PDAC, to produce an over-view of the status of earth science education in Canada.

Our Supply of Geoscientists is Drying Up

Phone: 860-486-4435 Fax: 860-486-1383

E-mail: geology@uconn.edu http://www.geosciences.uconn.edu