Geology Discipline Welcome to the Geology Discipline at UMM! This website is intended to provide useful information about geology at UMM for students, colleagues, and visitors. Scroll down for recent web updates and news from the discipline, and use the navigation bar at the left to explore the discipline and the science of geology. As always, let one of us know if you have any questions or comments. |
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Jacob Leader doing summer field research high in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, Colorado (July 2007). Click here for more photos. |
Discipline News
Fall 2007
Professors Jamey Jones and Keith Brugger attended the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Denver, CO, on October 28-31. Jones presented a research paper titled "U-Pb zircon age constraints on Proterozoic granitic magmatism and shear zone development in the Glenwood Springs area, Colorado." Click here to read the abstract. Brugger presented a research paper titled "Late Pleistocene equilibrium-line altitudes and climate on the Blanca massif, Sangre de Cristo Range, Colorado" and was a coauthor on two additional papers. Click here to read the abstract. Six undergraduate geology majors also attended the meeting.
Briggs Library has just added GeoScience World to its database offerings. Geoscience World is a subscription database that contains 34 high-impact journals across a broad spectrum of the Earth sciences.
A majority of the journal content is from 2000 to present, but a number of archive titles go back as far as 1911. To begin searching, click here or find it in the alphabetical listing of the Article and Reference Database list here.
Professor Jim Cotter was recently awarded a grant ($395,082) by the National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education (NSF-DUE) as part of the STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP). The project is titled "An Initiative to Encourage the Participation of Native Americans in the Sciences" and also involves other UMM Science and Math faculty.
Professor Keith Brugger has a paper appearing in the recent issue of the Annals of Glaciology (v. 46, p. 275-282). The paper is titled "The non-synchronous response of of Rabots Glaciar and Storglaciaren, northern Sweden, to recent climate change: a comparative study."
Summer 2007
Professor Keith Brugger spent part of the summer doing field research in the Swedish Arctic.
Professor Jim Cotter ran another successful session of his NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in Minnesota and Brazil. The program involves field and laboratory research to determine the origin of glacial deposits of Quaternary age in west-central Minnesota and late Paleozoic age in western Sao Paulo state, Brazil. This year it included eight undergraduate women from a variety of schools.
Professor Jamey Jones spent a large part of the summer doing field research in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. He had two undergraduate students work with him mapping the geology and collecting samples for geochronology in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area of central Colorado. He was traveled to Austin, TX, to do analytical work (zircon geochronology) at The University of Texas at Austin and ran a short, informal field trip out to the Black Hills in May.
Spring 2007
The Geology Discipline had one major (Bobby Goodfellow, below left) and two minors (Dana Damm, below right, and Amanda Holter, not pictured) graduate in 2007. They are pictured below with Professors Cotter, Van Alstine, and Jones (front left to right).
The Geology Club organized a Spring Break trip to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah, and 22 students from across campus went. The trip was co-led by geology professor Jamey Jones. To see some photos from the trip, click here.
Professor Keith Brugger published a paper titled "Cosmogenic 10Be and 36Cl ages from late Pleistocene terminal moraine complexes in the Taylor River drainage basin, central Colorado, USA," in Quaternary Science Reviews (v . 26, pp. 494-499). Click here to read the abstract.
Professor Keith Brugger published a paper with UMM alum and first author Kurt Refsnider ('04) in the latest issue of Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research (v. 39, No. 1, pp. 127-136). The paper, "Rock glaciers in central Colorado, U.S.A., as indicators of Holocene climate change," is the product of an undergraduate research collaboration carried out under the auspices of an NSF REU program at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory where Brugger is adjunct faculty.
Julie Retrum ('02) was on campus Thursday, January 25, to visit with geology majors and present a research talk titled "A paleoclimatic reconstruction of Fossil Lake, Oregon (Pleistocene): Preliminary data from micropaleontology, stratigraphy, and magnetic susceptibility" at 4:00 p.m. in Sci 1650. Retrum is currently at the University of Kansas pursuing her Ph.D.
Dr. Jim Miller, Senior Scientist with the Minnesota Geological Survey and Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota Duluth, visited UMM on Friday, February 2, to talk about the recently established Precambrian Research Center at UMD and about growing job opportunities in the minerals exploration industry. Miller also presented a lecture on the geology of the Duluth Complex in northeastern Minnesota in Jamey Jones' Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology class.
For past news and graduation photos from the UMM Geology Discipline, check out the News Archive.
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