Geology Discipline News Archive

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.

Fall 2006

Professor Jamey Jones published a paper titled "Proterozoic tectonic evolution of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, southern Colorado, U.S.A." in the Fall 2006 issue of Rocky Mountain Geology (v. 42, p. 79-116). Click here to read the abstract.

Professor Jim Cotter was awarded continuing support from the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) program for his project titled "Comparative analysis of glacial sediments, Minnesota and Brazil." Cotter will be conducting glacial research in Brazil and Minnesota with undergraduate women from UMM and other institutions during Summer 2007.

Professors Jamey Jones and Keith Brugger attended the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, on October 22-25. Jones presented a research paper titled "Depositional age and provenance of supermature Proterozoic quartzites, Colorado and New Mexico: New insights from detrital zircon geochronology." Click here to read the abstract.

Professor Jamey Jones co-authored a paper titled "Three Proterozoic orogenic episodes and an intervening exhumation event in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison region, Colorado" that was recently published in The Journal of Geology (Volume 114, p. 555-576).

Professor Keith Brugger is on leave this semester. Brugger recently presented a paper, titled "The Non-Synchronous Response of Rabots Glacier and Storglaciren, Swedish Arctic, to Recent Climate Change: a Comparative Study," at the International Glaciological Society's Symposium on Cryospheric Indicators of Global Climate Change held in Cambridge, UK, August 21-25. He also had a paper, "Variation in Glacier Length and Ice Volume of Rabots Glacier, Sweden, in response to climate change, 1910-2003," published in the Annals of Glaciology (Volume 42, 2006, p. 180-188). The paper is co-authored by UMM alumni Kurt Resnider '04 and Matthew Whitehill '99.

Spring 2006

Professors Keith Brugger and Jamey Jones attended the Geological Society of America Rocky Mountain Section meeting held May 17-19 in Gunnison, Colorado. Jones presented new results from tectonic and geochronologic studies of Precambrian exposures in the Sawatch Range of central Colorado. Brugger presented a synthesis of his research on the glacial history of the southern Sawatch Range and Elk Mountains and led a post-meeting fieldtrip to the Taylor River Basin north of Gunnison.

Professor Keith Brugger had a paper published in the May 2006 issue of Geomorphology (v. 75, p. 318-329). The paper is titled "Late Pleistocene climate inferred from the reconstruction of the Taylor River glacier complex, southern Sawatch Range, Colorado."

The Geology Discipline had four majors graduate in 2006. They are pictured below with Professors Cotter, Brugger, and Jones (front left to right).

Professor Jim Cotter attended the Geological Society of America North-Central Section meeting held April 20-21 in Akron, Ohio. Cotter was a co-presenter with a number of his NSF-REU undergraduate students who conducted research on the glacial history of Minnesota and Brazil during Summer 2005.

Moon rocks at UMM - Jamey Jones brought in a suite of lunar rock and soil samples collected during the Apollo missions for use in his Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology class (on loan from NASA). These unique samples were made available to the public during two open house viewings in March (one in conjunction with a public lunar viewing using the UMM 16" telescope). They were also shared with elementary students at the Cyrus Math, Science, and Technology School and Morris Area Elementary School 5th graders. For more information, including images of some of the lunar samples, click here.

Fall 2005

The Geology Discipline welcomes Jamey Jones, a new tenure-track faculty member, to UMM. Jamey recently finished his Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin studying the Precambrian tectonic evolution of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. He specializes in tectonics, structural geology, "hard rock" petrology, and U-Pb geochronology. This fall he will be teaching Physical Geology and Mineralogy and Crystallography.

Professor James Van Alstine will be on sabbatical for the 2005-2006 academic year. However, he will still be around the U from time to time.

Summer 2005