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Spring 2009

Henry Francis retires from KGS lab; Backus named managerAfter more than 20 years

of managing the KGS laboratory, Henry Francis of-ficially retired on January 2. But just about anyone work-ing at KGS can tell he’s still regularly in the building. “I’ve been playing catch-up since I retired,” Francis says. “I’m completing some commitments I made before the retirement officially took effect.” He’s still working one day a week in the laboratory and another day each week in the coal lab operated by the University of Kentucky’s Department of Mining Engineering.

He started with KGS as the lab manager in April 1988, after working in a similar posi-tion at the university’s Chemi-cal Engineering Department. He had also taught chemistry at Eastern Kentucky University and worked as a research sci-

entist at the Institute for Min-ing and Minerals Research, which eventually became the Center for Applied Energy Research.

At the time he joined KGS, he says there was plenty of field collection activity going on in the coal arena as well as in water-related research. And with more coal geology and water projects under way, particularly for the State Division of Water and the Agriculture Department, the lab had as many as 10 people, compared to the total of four when he retired. Al-though much of that work has evaporated, the lab has turned to serving the needs of other departments of the university and off-campus entities.

Although funding for the State’s Water Watch program has been curtailed, the lab

still ana-lyzes samples gathered in streams in May and September, mainly in the Ken-tucky River, the Upper Cumberland, Big Sandy, and Licking River Basins (see story, p. 4).

“The lab was opened at a time when coal geology and water projects were the big emphasis,” Francis says. “I think mineralogy is becom-ing more and more important today, especially clay mineral-ogy. I hope the lab will be able to move in that direction.”

His service to the KGS laboratory and to his profes-sion has earned him national recognition. Last year, he received an Award of Merit from the Committee on Coal and Coke of ASTM Interna-tional (originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials). The Award of

Carbon storage project drilling expected to begin soonJust over a year after the

first meeting between KGS and potential private part-ners in a western Kentucky deep carbon-storage test, the project has been designed, funding sources provided, and drilling is expected to start in the spring. Work to prepare the site itself on a private farm in southeastern Hancock County took place during the fall and winter months. A deep seismic reflection survey was conducted by WesternGeco, a geophysi-cal services company, along two dozen miles of roads

in the vicinity of the drilling site. The data gathered in the program are being processed and interpreted for sending to the partners in the project. In early March, the Atlanta Office of the Environmental Protec-tion Agency issued a permit for injection at the site, and the partnership will contract with a company to start drilling operations in the spring. Drill-ing for the project, managed by Rick Bowersox and Dave Williams of KGS, should take about 6 weeks. Samples will be taken from various zones of the subsurface, and brine or

carbon dioxide will be injected into selected formations.

The process began in 2007 when KGS received a mandate and funding from the State to conduct a variety of research projects. They will investigate the feasibility of geologic carbon dioxide storage and enhanced oil and gas recovery using carbon dioxide, which is considered a greenhouse gas responsible in part for global climate change. After recruiting several private and public partners, who have committed funding and techni-

Jason Backus and Henry Francis.

—Continued on p. 6

—Continued on p. 5

Cross SectionKentucky

Earth Resources—Our Common Wealth

Kentucky Geological Survey

228 Mining & Mineral Resources Bldg.

University of KentuckyLexington, KY

40506-0107859.257.5500fax 859.257.1147www.uky.edu/KGS

Jim Cobb, State Geolo-gist and Director

Jerry Weisenfluh, Asso-ciate State Geologist

Mike Lynch, Editor, Kentucky Cross Sec-tion, mike.lynch@uky.edu

Meg Smath, Copy Editor

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Junfeng Zhu joins Water Resources Section

The KGS Water Resources Section has a new hydrogeologist. Junfeng Zhu,

a native of southeastern China who most recently worked for the University of Arizona’s Department of Hydrology and Water Resources as an assistant research professor, joined the section early this year. He earned both bachelor’s and mas-ter’s degrees in hydrogeology and engi-neering geology at Nanjing University in China, and he holds a Ph.D. in hydrology from the University of Arizona. Zhu, who came to the United States in 2001, has also worked as a staff scientist with an engineering and environmental services company, ARCADIS U.S., in Tucson, Ariz.

He has previously worked with projects involving groundwater flow, con-

taminants, and geophysics. Among other projects he will work on at KGS, he will participate in the groundwater monitor-ing program associated with the carbon storage test project in Hancock County and other CO2-related projects funded by House Bill 1.

“I’m really excited about those projects,” says Zhu. “CO2 sequestration is huge right now. I went to the Ameri-can Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in December last year, where they had five sessions about CO2 seques-tration.” He expects to get busy quickly working with the installation of monitor-ing wells, sampling of groundwater, and analysis of data on the carbon storage projects.

Junfeng Zhu

KGS is preparing to drill an 8,300-foot-deep well in Hancock County

in the next couple of weeks, the deepest ever undertaken by KGS. Drilling is in cooperation with industry partners Cono-coPhillips, E.ON U.S., and Peabody En-ergy. The well will penetrate rocks from the Pennsylvanian to the Precambrian, seven geologic periods covering roughly 200 million years of earth history. Its purpose is to investigate the potential to inject and store CO2 in deep formations. To geologists, the possibility of having new cores and geophysical logs of such magnitude to study is exciting. Much new information will be learned from this test.

Earthquakes worldwide claimed 88,000 lives in 13 countries on four continents in 2008. Although they occur on many continents, not all places are equally susceptible to them. In other words, the seismic hazard is different from place to place. The key to seismic hazard assessments is data about earth-quakes, such as location, magnitude, frequency, tectonic regime, and level of shaking. KGS maintains a 26-station seis-mic network to collect such data. In 2008, 41 small tremors from the New Madrid Seismic Zone of less than 2.8 magnitude were recorded by our network. Reliable sources for data, such as seismographs, have only been available for a short time in human history, so data for large

events for some parts of the earth, including western Kentucky, are sparse. This scarcity can lead to very large uncertainty in the

prediction of future damaging earthquakes. Surrogate data used to help fill in the gaps have inherent and unmeasured uncertainty them-selves. Great care and understand-ing should accompany the use of seismic hazard assessments. Some agencies have attempted assess-ments for Kentucky using various methods and seismic parameters, some of which lack scientific sup-port and documentation, making it difficult or impossible to determine uncertainty. Some confuse rather than enlighten the public’s under-standing of Kentucky’s seismicity.

New directions for Kentucky’s energy future might include con-sideration of nuclear power plants. The siting of these plants would of course be subject to seismic safety regulations, but under current regu-lations, locating a nuclear facility in west-ern Kentucky would be difficult, because the region has more stringent seismic regulations than California. These regula-tions for Kentucky in the vicinity of the New Madrid Seismic Zone have be-come an issue for a number of State and Federal agencies, and will be critical for siting nuclear power plants. The fact that Paducah and McCracken County have more stringent seismic regulations than

San Francisco or Los Angeles does not seem appropriate to me. More research must be done to achieve a level of seis-mic hazard and regulations for this area justified by the scientific data. Because of the confusion and discrepancies from different agencies, the Kentucky Geologi-cal Survey takes the approach that it will use the best science, be consistent, and incorporate change only to the extent that scientific data justify it.

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Mammoth Cave was the topic of the 2009 Haney LectureCave explorer and author Roger

Brucker was the speaker for the 2009 Donald C. Haney Distinguished Lecture on March 3. Brucker, who has co-authored four books on cave topics, discussed the history of the mapping of Mammoth Cave, which began early in the 19th century.

Speaking to a crowd of 85 people at the KGS offices on the University of Kentucky campus, he traced the stories of the people who mapped the world’s longest cave system and the progress of the mapping until modern times. He also displayed replicas of some of the early maps.

Roger Brucker

Brucker, who lives in Beavercreek, Ohio, was a co-founder of the Cave Re-search Foundation, which remains active in the exploration of Mammoth and other cave systems. Among his books is the popular Trapped! The Story of Floyd Col-lins, published in 1979. He and co-author Robert Murray researched the life of the ill-fated cave explorer, who became trapped and died in Sand Cave despite efforts to save him in 1925.

The Haney lecture series is named in honor of former KGS Director and State Geologist Donald C. Haney, who served in the position for 21 years until his retirement in 1999.

Scarp in Union County might be evidence of a deeper fault

Several years ago, while doing geo-logic mapping work in Union County,

Ron Counts of the KGS Henderson office noticed a scarp near the Ohio River, and the geologic mapping indicated that at some time in the past the river abruptly changed its course near the scarp. “That’s not unusual in itself,” he says. “Rivers do that all the time. But that scarp is straight as a ruler’s edge for almost 5 kilometers. River terraces normally have some curvi-linear nature to them.”

Intrigued by the find, he invited Roy Van Arsdale of the University of Mem-phis and Ed Woolery of the KGS Geo-logic Hazards Section, who were working on the Hovey Lake Fault System on the Indiana side of the river, to investigate the feature, which runs into far western Henderson County. Woolery gathered seismic data across the scarp, and Counts and Van Arsdale opened a 30-meter-long trench across the feature in October 2008. Counts says they found a zone of steeply dipping sediments that appear to be folded Quaternary beds. That find, along with geomorphic evidence, six shallow cores drilled next to the trench, and the seismic data all suggest there has been geologically recent movement on a bed-rock fault approximately 130 feet below the ground surface. He has sent charcoal samples to a laboratory for radiocarbon dating to determine a minimum age for

the folding of the beds and will submit a grant application to the National Earth-quake Hazards Reduction Program to do additional research.

“This is significant because, if there truly is a fault at depth, the scarp above it is the first surface expression of fault-ing found in this area,” Counts explains. “That means the earthquake that created the scarp might have been a very big one, because the scarp is still visible today in the river’s floodplain. Or it could mean the quake was more recent, and the river hasn’t had time to erode it away or bury it with sediment.” But the earthquake would not have been a modern-day event. Counts can only speculate that it occurred in the late Quaternary or possibly the early Holocene Period.

The seismic zone the fault would be associated with is not the New Madrid Seismic Zone, but the Wabash Valley Zone, which is situated in southeastern Illinois and southwestern Indiana. The zone drew national attention last spring with a series of earthquakes starting with a 5.4-magnitude tremor on April 18 near Mount Carmel, Ill. That quake caused minor damage in several Midwest loca-tions, including Louisville, and was felt in 16 states.

Counts is hoping to do additional trenching and drill deep cores to look for evidence of earlier movement on the

fault. “Say we get down to a marker bed from the next-oldest earthquake. That marker bed will have been deformed by both the earthquake that originally created it and any younger one,” Counts says. “As you go deeper, you get beds that have been offset by multiple earth-

—Continued on p. 6

This 30-meter trench was dug across the Union County scarp to gather informa-tion on the possible fault that lies beneath it. (Photo by Ron Counts)

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Watershed Watch data now available through KGS Web site

Volunteers involved with the Ken-tucky Watershed Watch program

have been gathering surface-water samples from streams in the eight major river basins across the state since 1997. Their monitoring and public education ef-forts focus on helping protect Kentucky’s streams, lakes, and wetlands. Volunteers collect samples from sites in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee, since some watersheds cross state lines.

In the history of the program, more than 3,000 volunteers have collected data at over 2,600 stations. Now, with the help of KGS staff, results of their sampling efforts can be searched and viewed online at a Web site and map service associated with the KGS home page, kgsmap.uky.edu/website/krww/viewer.asp.

“Initially, members of the Kentucky River Basin group in the Watershed Watch program discussed with KGS the possibility of creating a Web-based, map-oriented searchable database of their data,” says Rick Sergeant of the KGS Geospatial Analysis Section. “To this end, they provided KGS spreadsheets of water analysis data they have been compiling since 1997. These spreadsheets were used to create a relational database of sampling locations and water analysis results.” Subsequently, it was suggested that data from other watersheds be added. Through the efforts of Henry Francis, recently retired KGS Laboratory man-ager, information from the Big Sandy, Four Rivers, Green River, Licking River, Salt River, Tradewater-Green, and Upper Cumberland watersheds was added.

Doug Curl, also in the Geospatial Analysis Section, designed a map service

Dave Gabbard, a water sampler with the Kentucky Watershed Watch program since 1997, and a volunteer trainer for the program, gathers water samples. Water-analysis information gathered by volunteers is now publicly available on the KGS Web site. (Photo by Ken Cooke)

for the Watershed Watch. He created an outline around each basin and icons inside the basin’s boundaries showing the location of all the sampling sites. By clicking on an icon, a user can open a window with all the analyses.

“These data were never available in one place until now. It’s a way of maxi-mizing the effect of what the Watershed Watch volunteers are doing by making it available to anyone on the Web,” says Curl. “And they did not previously have the map service to let them search for particular locations of analyses.”

By going to the Web site, and scroll-ing to the “How to Use This Online Database” instruction, a user can search for results by a volunteer’s name or organization or the designation of a

particular sampling site. Simply clicking on a general location on the map below the instructions will also allow a user to narrow a search for samples to a general location.

Water sampling by volunteers is typically done in the spring, summer, and fall. Samples are tested for herbicides and pesticides, pathogens, chemicals and nutrients, and metals. If high readings are found during the pathogen testing, sites are normally sampled a second time during the summer. Many of the samples from Kentucky’s river basins have been analyzed at the KGS Laboratory.

More information on the Watershed Watch program, including links to the activities of each of the river basins, can be found at kywater.org/watch/.

CO2 enhanced oil recovery project to start soon

A second project funded by Kentucky’s House Bill 1 funding will get under

way in the spring. In conjunction with the Illinois State Geological Survey, KGS will conduct a test of the potential to en-hance oil recovery from the Sugar Creek Field in Hopkins County, Ky. Up to 8,000 tons of carbon dioxide will be injected into one to four existing wells operated by Gallagher Drilling Inc. of Evansville, Ind. Marty Parris of the Energy and Minerals Section and Scott Frailey of the

ISGS will be the principal investigators for the project.

KGS’s primary responsibility will be coordinating and conducting the monitor-ing, verification, and accounting activities in the field. These field activities will be largely implemented by Glynn Beck of the KGS Henderson office, and will in-volve sampling gases and brine from pro-duction wells and sampling fresh water in one to three shallow monitoring wells to track the fate of the CO2. The enhanced

oil recovery technique to be used will be a pattern flood in which CO2 is injected into a central well and oil and associated fluids are produced from surrounding wells. Preliminary modeling of the target reservoir—the Mississippian Jackson Sandstone—by Frailey shows favorable response of oil in the reservoir to CO2 injection and therefore good potential for success.

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KGS mapping program helps Sturgis’s search for water

Last November, the KGS Geologic Mapping Section

contracted the Illinois State Geological Survey to drill five deep cores in Union County. The drilling was a part of the Section’s surficial mapping work for the region. Coincidentally, the city of Sturgis was in the process of searching for an alternate water supply, because of problems with byproducts from chlorinating its current water source, the Ohio River. One of the locations the Geologic Mapping Section selected to core was also a potential water well site, so KGS had a monitoring well installed once the core was collected. KGS also agreed to let the city government hire the rig and crew—at a much lower cost than they would have paid to contract separately for the job—to drill another monitoring well in their effort to see if they can switch their water source from surface water to groundwater. Glynn Beck of the Henderson office sampled the wells for water quality analysis. Data gathered from the borehole were also useful to the Geologic Mapping Section for the mapping program.

KGS annual seminar scheduled for May 15

The 49th KGS annual seminar is scheduled for Friday, May 15, and

Geologic Mapping Section Head William Andrews, who is organizing the agenda, says speakers will explain how the Sur-vey’s activities and projects serve both the strategic plan of the University of Kentucky and the needs of the state. KGS Director and State Geologist Jim Cobb will make opening remarks at the Well Sample and Core Library on Research Park Drive in Lexington. UK’s Vice President for Research Jim Tracy has been invited to talk about the University’s strategic plan and how KGS work helps UK meet its goals.

Other invited speakers include the secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Energy and the Environment, Len Peters, who has been asked to talk about how KGS is helping his agency, particularly in energy and carbon storage. Representa-tives of other agencies that collaborate with KGS on projects will also speak, along with staff from several KGS sec-tions.

Andrews says an afternoon work-shop is likely to focus on how data downloaded from the KGS Web services are actually being used by individuals, agencies, and private companies. A com-plimentary lunch will also be served.

cal expertise, the Kentucky Consortium for Carbon Storage was formed. It Web site, www.KYCCS.org, provides updates on the status of the projects.

Partners in the deep storage project selected a site in Hancock County and

designed a project to drill 8,300 feet into the deep subsurface for a test of the per-manent storage of carbon dioxide, which turns into a “supercritical” substance when injected deeper than about 2,500 feet underground. Two public meetings have been held in Hancock County to inform the public and local officials about the purpose of the project and how it will be conducted.

Legal issues explored. While the project has moved from the planning phase toward actual drilling, an informal workgroup was created in 2008 to look into the legal issues related to carbon capture, transportation, and permanent storage. Sara Smith, of Smith Management Group, has brought together representa-tives of the University of Kentucky College of Law, the law firm of Wyatt, Tar-rant & Combs, the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, and others to examine these issues, many of which are not specifically addressed by Kentucky law. Issues include ownership of carbon dioxide captured for permanent geo-logic storage as well as the pore space where the gas is stored; liability for any dam-ages resulting from the CO2 management process once it begins on a large scale;

WesternGeco field workers and KGS staff watch as seismic data is recorded by instruments inside a trailer in Hancock County. Three large seismic trucks were gathering the data a short distance away and sending it to the instruments.

A WesternGeco employee keeps an eye out for oncoming traffic in December as three large seismic trucks slowly work their way up a rural road in Hancock County gathering deep reflection data in the area of the planned carbon storage test well. —Continued on p. 6

“Carbon Storage”—Continued from p. 1

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University of KentuckyKentucky Geological Survey228 Mining & Mineral Resources Bldg.Lexington, KY 40506-0107

Address service requested

Nonprofit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDLexington, KYPermit No. 51

Merit is the highest organizational honor for individual contribu-tions to standards activities. During his KGS career, he was also recognized by ASTM International with the 1994 R.A. Glenn Award for outstanding contribution to ASTM standards for coal and coke and a Service Award in 1998.

Jason Backus has been appointed to replace Francis as labo-ratory manager. He joined the laboratory in 1999, after working for 2 years in a commercial laboratory and 2 years at Alltech Biotechnology of Lexington. “We are certainly going to miss Henry’s experience and his knowledge base,” Backus says. “I hope we can build on all his efforts while he was here and refo-cus our services as the needs for analytical services change.”

and the rights of the owners of the ground surface, mineral- and water-bearing zones, and the deeper subsurface at injection sites.

KGS staff has updated the group on the progress of its carbon management projects at each of its meetings. At its last meeting in February, the group divided into three subgroups to monitor activities at the federal and state levels as well as tech-nological and research developments.

Oil and gas study. KGS will study the potential oil and gas operations on State land in Kentucky as a result of a resolution approved by General Assembly earlier this year. Senate Joint Resolution 67 directs the State and KGS to “study the value of potential oil and gas operations on state-owned and university-owned lands and to identify factors that may limit development of such a program.” State agencies were also directed to provide information on ownership of such land to KGS for the study.

The resolution noted that “some general estimates” have placed the annual value of such resources as high as $40 million. It did not authorize drilling operations to recover oil and gas. But the legislation directed the State to “develop a set of comprehen-sive conditions for a regulatory program to protect public safety and the environment for permitting oil and gas operations on state-owned and university-owned lands in the Commonwealth,” to minimize off-site disturbance, and develop lease and oversight guidelines.

A report on the study must be provided to the Legislative Research Commission by December 1.

quakes.” If these beds can be identified and dated, a recurrence interval for movement along the fault could be determined.

If the find does turn out to be a Wabash Valley fault, Counts hopes it will help spur further research into the zone, which has not received as much attention as the New Madrid Zone, because of its well-known 1811-12 tremors. He believes the scarp is among the first—if not the first—surface evidence of a Wabash Zone fault to be trenched for research.

“Francis Retires”—Continued from p. 1

“Scarp”—Continued from p. 3

“Carbon Storage”—Continued from p. 5