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Fall 2008

Weisenfluh named associate directorSeventeen-year KGS

veteran Jerry Weisenfluh was named associate direc-tor, effective September 1. Weisenfluh, who has headed the Geospatial Analysis Sec-tion of KGS since 2000, has been heavily involved in the development of KGS Web services, providing a wealth of geologic, mineral, water, map-ping, and energy information to the public at no cost.

“Under Jerry’s direction, KGS built one of the finest data delivery systems using the Internet of any Survey in the United States,” says KGS Di-rector and State Geologist Jim Cobb. “Jerry has been a leader in the digital geologic mapping area together with other state and USGS geologists.”

Weisenfluh’s new duties will include oversight and

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monitoring of KGS research programs and strategic plan-ning for the Survey.

“Researchers at KGS do so much important scientific work, which benefits Ken-tucky in fields such as energy, water resources, and geologic hazards,” says Weisenfluh. “One of the things I want to focus on is ensuring that we share the results of our work with the general public and carefully archive our research reports so that they are easily available when people need to see them.”

Weisenfluh, who earned a Ph.D. in geology from the University of South Carolina, has done research and pub-lished or co-published findings on coal resources and coal availability in Kentucky. Ear-lier in his career, he conducted

field geology work for private companies to evaluate mineral deposits in Montana, Wyoming, and the southeastern United States. In 1980, when he first came to UK as a research asso-ciate in the Department of Geo-logical Sciences (now Earth and Environmental Sciences), he prepared research proposals, taught applied geology courses to private industry employees, and managed databases for the department.

He joined the KGS Coal and Minerals Section in 1991 as a principal investigator and served an instrumental role in the development of the Survey’s geographic informa-tion system. Through contacts developed with State agencies, particularly the Transportation Cabinet, he has promoted the Survey’s capabilities to help the

State on a variety of tasks, in-cluding data retrieval and man-agement. His new duties will also include continuing as a liaison with State agencies and other state geological surveys, as well as advising the KGS director on issues important to the Survey’s mission.

Second public meeting held on carbon-storage test projectTwo dozen people came

to the Hancock County Fiscal Court’s meeting room in Hawesville on October 27 for an update on the planned deep test for carbon storage in the southeastern part of the county. For a little over an hour, they listened to presenta-tions from KGS and a contrac-tor involved in the project and asked questions about issues including safety, liability, and the future use of the site.

KGS and participat-ing private companies have chosen the site for the test as a result of 2007 legislation and funding from the Kentucky

General Assembly. The project is one of several mandated by House Bill 1 to test the feasibility of carbon storage, enhanced gas and oil recovery, and coalbed methane in the state.

KGS Director Jim Cobb updated local officials and residents on the progress of the project, and Henderson Office Manager Dave Williams spoke on activities that residents would see in the vicinity be-fore the drilling of the borehole actually starts. KGS and its partners plan to drill the hole more than 8,300 feet deep dur-ing the winter to test the ability

of deep formations to perma-nently store carbon dioxide. Up to 1,000 tons of CO2 will be injected into the forma-tions for the test, after which the well will be plugged and abandoned. KGS will monitor the site for several years after the well is closed.

Doug Allan, of West-ernGeco geophysical services company, explained the plans for a reflection seismic survey along a 26-mile path in the vicinity of the project site. He showed those attending the meeting examples of the equip-ment used for the survey and

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

John Kiefer, Assistant State Geologist

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

Meg Smath, Copy Editor

Cross SectionKentucky

Earth Resources—Our Common Wealth

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ful results can be reported. Whether or not this becomes a viable technology for Kentucky will be determined by both leg-islation and geology. There are still many unknowns ahead, but work is being done now to be prepared for the future.

As always, I enjoy hearing from readers and will answer any questions you may have about KGS and the re-search we are doing.

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Several KGS staff members were recog-nized at the joint annual meeting of the Geological Society of America and the Association of American State Geolo-gists, October 5–9, in Houston.

Dan Carey, of the Geospatial Analysis Sec-tion, received the 2008 John C. Frye Me-morial Award in Environ-mental Geol-ogy for the

KGS staff members recognized for their accomplishmentsseries, Generalized Geologic Land-Use Planning Maps, published during the past few years. Dan led the effort, authored or co-authored many of the maps, and coordinated with others from both inside KGS and other agencies to produce a map for each of Kentucky’s 120 counties. This award is given jointly by GSA and AASG. The award goes to “the best envi-ronmental geology paper published either by the Geological Society of America or by one of the state geological surveys … during the preceding three calendar years,” according to the AASG Web site. The map series also received one of the 12 environmental awards given in Octo-

ber 2008 by the Lexing-ton-Fayette County En-vironmental Commission.

Steve Greb, of the Energy and Miner-als Section, was elected a GSA Fel-low at the Houston meeting. Fellowship is an honor bestowed on the best of the

Dan Carey

Steve Greb

With the national election over and President-elect Obama and the

Democrats poised to take control in Washington, D.C., many geoscientists are interested in the directions energy and environmental policy will take. During the campaign there was much debate about oil prices, drilling offshore, and ANWR, but less about plans for main-taining the baseload of electricity so vital to all of us. To fill the ever-increasing demand for electricity, coal production and generation are predicted to increase as much as 70 percent over the next 25 years; but public policy, depending upon what legislation is passed, could steer us into more nuclear or alternative sources. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind still face a steep climb before they are economic, so they will take long-er to be a significant contributor to the total. Now with the new administration it will be interesting to see what directions the nation will take.

I recently attended a fundraiser for schools in my hometown hosted by the Decatur Public Schools Foundation. I had the opportunity to speak to people about my work in geology and how my education in Decatur helped me in life. It was fun reminiscing about my teachers and the serendipity of life over 42 years. What really came to me was the fact that

I am now serving on the advisory committee for the Midwest Re-gional Sequestration Consortium, a DOE partnership that oversees the construction and testing of a permanent CO2 sequestration well in Decatur. I never imaged that I would be connected to my home-town through my professional work. I told the audience I left Decatur in 1966 to make my way in the world and chose geology. At that time Decatur was known as the soybean capital of the world. Now in returning to Decatur, I see the model city for the future with a diversified energy portfolio includ-ing the nation’s first CO2 seques-tration well, a planned coal-to-gas plant, large-scale biofuels produc-tion, and a nuclear power plant close by. It’s becoming the model energy city. Many places in the nation and world will be attempting over the next 25 years to build the sustainable en-ergy infrastructure that is now being built in Decatur. I think many people were shocked to hear their city is a pioneer for sustainable energy for America.

KGS is making progress researching CO2 sequestration in Kentucky. It will be a couple of years before all the data are collected and assessed and meaning-

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The KGS Advisory Board met on September 26 at the Well Sample and

Core Library. Board members re-elected their current officers to a second term. Karen Thompson was re-elected chair, with Rusty Ashcraft remaining vice chair of the board. Two new members were also welcomed to the board.

Chester Thomas, of Green River Collieries LLC, joined the board. A native of Greenville, Ky., he has been in the coal industry for 25 years and formed Sunshine Oil and Gas LLC in 2007; the company is active in leasing oil and gas rights as it prepares to begin an explora-tion program. Thomas is also active in the emerging carbon-capture arena and is developing a coal-to-liquids and coal-to-gas site.

Kris Kimel is the founder and president of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp., a 20-year-old nonprof-it company that designs and implements innovative technology and programs. KSTC created the Kentucky Enterprise Fund, an early-stage venture fund. Kimel has authored numerous articles and reports and is recognized as a leader in science and technology policy, entrepre-neurship, and innovation. He is founder of the international IdeaFestival, which brings a variety of world-class thinkers and events to Louisville each year.

Thomas and Kimel replaced Greg Cornett and Joel Davis, whose terms on the board had expired.

Two new members appointed to KGS Advisory BoardWhen officials at Kentucky’s new

Cabinet for Energy and the En-vironment determined that they needed help on technical and scientific issues relating to proposals their office reviews, they knew where to look. Cabinet Sec-retary Len Peters was formerly the vice president for research at the University of Kentucky. “That meant Len Peters is personally familiar with what both KGS and UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research are capable of doing,” KGS Director Jim Cobb says. “He initiated the effort to use our expertise at a time when energy issues have such a high profile.”

As a result, the State and the Univer-sity now have a contract that will send Cobb and Brandon Nuttall, of the Energy and Minerals Section, to the Cabinet’s Frankfort office on a regular basis for 2 years. Starting in September, Cobb has been in the State office one day a week, and Nuttall has spent three days a week there.

They will provide technical advice on proposals from energy industries ap-proaching the State seeking incentives to locate in Kentucky. For instance, Cobb says, proposed new methods of energy production using Kentucky’s coal, oil, and natural gas resources may need some technical review for their feasibility to help the Cabinet determine whether they should receive incentives.

Cobb, Nuttall advising State Energy and Environment Cabinet

“Because we will be reporting directly to Secretary Peters and Deputy Secretary Henry ‘Hank’ List, we hope we can have a positive effect on State energy and related policies,” Cobb says. “This is an unprecedented demonstration of the high level of expertise that UK and its re-search entities can offer the State, though it’s not the first time in recent years that State agencies have come to us for help on energy issues.”

The State showed its confidence in KGS expertise when it allocated $5 million in 2007 to the Survey to conduct projects to determine the feasibility of geologic carbon storage deep in saline aquifers beneath the ground surface. The State has previously turned to KGS to evaluate locations in the state for their suitability as sites for future energy-related industrial development and provided seed funds to start a public/private consortium studying the oil and gas development potential of the Rough Creek Graben in western Kentucky.

Several staff scientists at UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research have also been assigned to work with the Energy and Environment Cabinet in an advisory role to provide technical expertise and information to State energy policy-makers.

Richard Smath and Bart Davidson look over 4-H rock, mineral, and fossil exhibits created by elementary through high-school students at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville in Au-gust. Each year Smath and Davidson, along with Steve Greb, help judge the exhibits, while other judges evaluate a variety of other categories including hay bales, bees, art, and baked goods. (Photo by Steve Greb)

geologic profession once a year at the GSA Spring Council meeting. GSA members are elected to fellow-ship in recognition of distinguished contributions to the geosciences.

KGS Director Jim Cobb received the first AASG Presidential Recognition Award. Assistant State Geologist John Kiefer nominated Cobb for the recogni-tion, citing a number of Cobb’s projects and achievements for AASG, particularly his service as editor of Association of American State Geologists Centennial History: 1900–2008. “I doubt that more than a few individuals have spent as much time or made such a valuable con-tribution to the organization,” Kiefer said in his nomination letter.

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“Staff Accomplishments—continued from page 2

Jim Cobb

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State Geologist Emeritus Donald C. Haney received the AASG Dis-tinguished Service Award, given to those who “have worked to advance the science and practical application of geology and the related earth sciences in the United States and its territories, possessions, and commonwealths.”

During the annual meeting of the Eastern Section of the American As-sociation of Petroleum Geologists in Pittsburgh, three KGS staff members were recognized for their work and accomplishments. Jim Drahovzal, who retired in 2006 as head of the Energy and Minerals Section, received the Honorary Membership Award to recognize “more than 40 years of distinguished achievement in the energy industry and public service and his dedicated leadership in AAPG and its Eastern Section.” Jim now works part-time on a variety of projects for the Energy and Minerals Section. Dave Williams, who manages the KGS office in Henderson, was recognized with the Gordon H. Wood Jr. Memorial Award. The award notes his “dedi-cated service with the Kentucky Geological Survey and providing geologic service to private companies, state and federal agencies, and the public in western Kentucky for 33 years.” Dave is also co-principal investigator on a project to test the carbon dioxide storage potential of deep saline reservoirs in the Western Kentucky Coal Field. Mike Solis, who works in the Energy and Minerals Section, received the Energy Minerals Division Best Poster Award for “Analyzing Deep Coal Resources of Eastern Kentucky for their Carbon Sequestration Potential.” Solis was the main author of the poster; Steve Greb was co-author. The poster was created as part of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, of which KGS is a partner.

Randy Paylor, of the Water Resources Section, has been elected to the board of directors of the National Speleological Society. The society has about 15,000 members in the United States and several other countries. His 3-year term began in August. He is one of four newly elected members of the 12-member board. Paylor, who has been with the Survey for 7 years, says the possible relocation of the society’s headquarters, currently in Huntsville, Ala., is one of the issues the board will be tackling. One proposed new location for the headquarters is Horse Cave, Ky.

A combination of strong-motion ac-celerometers and medium-period

seismometers are now being built for installation at varying depths in the 1,950-foot-deep Central U.S. Seismic Observatory (CUSSO) in Fulton County. The borehole was drilled in 2006, and funding for the instrumentation has now been secured. Geologic Hazards Section Head Zhenming Wang and Ed Woolery of the UK Department of Earth and Envi-ronmental Sciences worked with several federal agencies and departments at the University of Kentucky to arrange fund-ing for the drilling phase of the project.

“This will give us the ability to measure strong motions from the bedrock through the soil column to the sur-face and measure how the soil column

Instruments being built for deep seismic observatorychanges the characteristics of earthquake waves as they propagate to the ground surface,” says Jonathan McIntyre, of the Geologic Hazards Section. “We will be the only research entity with this capabil-ity in the region.” McIntyre is managing the instrumentation phase. The U.S. Geo-logical Survey is contributing most of the cost of the instruments, which are being built by EENTEC of St. Louis. EENTEC builds a variety of seismic instruments and other products for industrial and test-ing applications.

The deep observatory’s location near the most active part of the New Madrid Seismic Zone will allow the instruments to gather the maximum amount of data from the region’s earthquakes. At least three major earthquakes occurred in the winter of 1811-12 in the area.

Three new sensors will be in-stalled at CUSSO. The three-component medium-period seismometers, which record a range of frequencies (0.06–50 Hz), will be placed in the bedrock at the bottom of the borehole and will be used to detect weaker earthquakes in the region. A strong-motion accelerom-eter will be placed at the soil-bedrock interface at 1,920 feet and will record larger earthquake ground motions. An ad-ditional strong-motion accelerometer will be placed at a depth of 1,680 feet. These instruments will be added to the existing instrumentation in a separate borehole at the CUSSO site. The observatory will be-come a part of the array of instruments in the Kentucky Seismic and Strong-Motion Network.

“Staff Accomplishments—continued from page 3

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Jim Drahovzal

Dave Williams

Mike Solis

Donald C. Haney

Randy Paylor

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In conjunction with the annual observance of Earth Science Week, KGS held its open house on the evening of October 15. Students from

Fayette and surrounding counties came by the dozens to the Mining and Mineral Resources Building on the University of Kentucky campus for the event. Exhibits and demonstrations ranged from fossils and meteor-ites to carbon dioxide and exotic animals. Many of the students brought assignments from their teachers to gather information on specific exhibits. Right: Children search through the sand at the popular fossil hunt activity. Below: Visitors listen as Steve Martin of the Geologic Mapping Section explains a map at an outdoor activity on mapping and orienteering.

Annual open house draws students to KGS

answered questions about possible damage to infrastructure and the company’s liability insurance for damage.

Legal issues need studyAlso in relation to carbon storage, the University of Kentucky College of Law is working to bring together interested parties to determine which legal issues need to be addressed. These issues include short- and long-term liability for stored carbon dioxide, the rights of surface landowners and mineral owners at stor-

age sites, and how carbon dioxide will be regulated and priced in a carbon-constrained world. The college has scheduled a forum at the Well Sample and Core Library in December to start this process.

“The topic of this forum is ownership of deep pore spaces where carbon dioxide is to be stored in the future,” says College of Law Dean Louise Graham. “We need to determine who at least thinks they might own the pore spaces.” Graham adds that it could take some time to resolve the fundamental issues either through new State laws or case law in court.

An “externship” has also been attached to an environmental law class in the college. This will allow up to four students to be sent to the State’s Cabinet for Energy and the Environment to do legal research for the State on such topics. Dr. Graham announced these developments during a session on the legal issues relating to carbon storage at the October Governor’s Conference on the Environment in Lexington.

Doug Allan of WesternGeco explains the seismic survey program for the Hancock County deep carbon storage test during the October 27 public meeting in Hawesville. It was the second time KGS had scheduled such a meeting to discuss the project with local officials and the public.

“Carbon storage project”—continued from page 1

Matt Crawford

“Staff Accomplishments”—continued from page 4Matt Crawford, of the Geologic Mapping Section, and Terry

Hounshell, of the Geoscience Information Section, received the best poster award at the 2008 Kentucky GIS Conference, spon-sored by the State’s Office of Technology. Their entry was the new map Geology of Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky. The publication was made possible by a grant from the National Park Service and combines geologic information on Mammoth Cave, including karst, sinkhole, and water-quality data, with information on how plant and animal life interacts with the geology of the area. The poster included graphics created by KGS graphics artist Collie Rulo.

Terry Hounshell

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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

Jason Backus of the KGS laboratory works on setting up a new inductively coupled argon plasma emissions spectrometer, delivered to the laboratory in September. Many of the water samples that come through the laboratory are analyzed on this type of instrument, which detects metals in the samples. The new spectrometer was purchased to replace an older version.

A new book about the history of America’s state geologists and their professional association has been published to commemorate the association’s 100th year of existence. Association of American State Geologists Centennial History: 1908–2008 was com-

piled and edited by State Geologist and KGS Director Jim Cobb. It provides the historical context for the association and the group of state geologists who have been instrumental in advancing both geology and public policies in the United States. During the past century, the state geologists and AASG have actively pursued initiatives to influence programs and public policies related to mapping, water, mineral and energy resources, geologic hazards, and other disciplines. The organization and its members have acted as the voice for the states in countless meetings, forums, and hearings with federal agencies, policy-makers, and Congress.

This 524-page volume is also filled with information about the state geologists themselves and descriptions of a century of federal programs related to resources, mapping, and geology. As the book’s forward says, “People may not fully appreciate the role of the state geological surveys in this era of huge federal government programs. Day in and day out, state geological survey personnel re-spond to the needs of the citizens of their states for geologic, mapping, water, hazards, and mineral information.”

“This book is a history of state and federal programs to facilitate finding economic fuels and minerals, mapping topography, pro-tecting water resources, and identifying geologic hazards, all needed by society,” says Cobb. “We offer this history as just a beginning. It’s the hope of the authors that historians of science and government will find information in these pages intriguing enough for more scholarly work. We know there are many great stories to be told.”

The leatherette-bound, limited-edition book was published by the Association of American State Geologists and is being distribut-ed by KGS. To order a copy, contact Roger Banks at the Kentucky Geological Survey toll free at (877) 778-7827 ext. 126. Each book is $50 plus shipping.

Cobb edits book on the history of state geologists