LSU Geology & Geophysics 2013-14 Alumni Magazine

Department of Geology & Geophysics 1

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY GEOLOGY & GEOPHYSICS

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Contents:

Year in review

Meet our students

student organizations

Field CaMp

FaCultY digest

ON THE COVER:Students trek through the water during a field trip to the Amite River in Introduction to Sedimentology and Depositional Environments. During the trip, these students mapped point bars at the Cash and Gravel operation.

ABOUT THIS ISSUE:CONTRIBUTORS:Chris HenryCarol WicksTaylor JudiceKathryn DenommeeGeology & Geophysics Faculty

DESIgNER:Chris Henry

Information is correct at press time.Check geology.lsu.edu for updates.

Send Alumni News and Updates to:Alumni MagazineLSU Geology & GeophysicsE235 Howe Russell Kniffen BldgBaton Rouge, LA 70803

PHONE: 225-578-3353FAX: 225-578-2302EMAIL: [email protected]

The LSU Geology & Geophysics Alumni Magazine is published in the fall of each year and reflects news and events occurring between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014.

All rights reserved.

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the departMent at a glanCe 2013-14

FroM the Chair’s desKGreetings! As I write the fall 2014 semester is just around the corner! I am looking forward

to catching up with G&G faculty who have been researching in field areas all summer, welcoming the new and current students to campus, hearing about our graduate students’ summer internships, and welcoming back the undergraduate students who were at field camp!

We are expecting a graduate student population of 70 students this fall! We have reinvigorated the PhD program and that reinvigoration effort took a few years. Now, that the program has reached a good size relative to the number of faculty (31 PhD students); we have been able to bring in more students seeking master’s degrees (39 MS students this fall). Additionally, I have worked with two alumni who have industry experience (Alan Brown and Erik Scott) and we have reconfigured the course work for the Applied Depositional Geosystems (ADG) program. The ADG program will now have an ADG-Geophysics track and an ADG-Geology track. With this change, we have aligned the tracks with industry hiring practices allowing our MS students to more clearly define their expertise.

Our undergraduate population is growing, growing, growing. G&G is one of two departments in the College of Science that require advising each and every semester. Honestly, I do not know how Dr. Brooks Ellwood (Undergraduate Advisor) manages to advise 130 students each and every semester on top of teaching courses AND maintaining a very active research program.

Over the summer, our research efforts have taken G&G faculty to South Africa, China, Vietnam, Russia, Canada, Norway, India, and New Zealand. Stateside, we have been to Colorado, New Hampshire, and Idaho. WOW! G&G faculty are moving their research efforts forward! Research funding is coming from the National Science Foundation, NASA, Department of Energy, and the Water Institute of the Gulf.

If you are visiting Baton Rouge in your travels, please feel free to stop by the department. I realized the other day that roughly 50 percent of the faculty have been members of LSU G&G for less than 10 years!!! Lots of new faculty to meet, yet we continue to “teach them to teach themselves” (Henry Howe, 1939).

Sincerely,

Total Faculty 19Tenure or Tenure Track Faculty 18Research & Support Staff 7Postdoctoral Researchers 4

Total Undergraduate Students 125Senior 35Junior 31Sophomore 27University College Majors 32

Graduate Students 50Master’s 24Doctoral 26

Carol M. WicksDepartment Chair

Louisiana State University4

sCienCe CaFéThe LSU Office of Research & Economic Development has developed a new outreach

initiative aimed to bring LSU researchers and the local community together to promote scientific discussion in an informal setting. Science Café takes place on the last Tuesday of each month at Chelsea’s Café and features a wide variety of faculty members from different disciplines around campus. The lure of great food and camaraderie create the perfect atmosphere to spark participants’ curiosity.

G&G faculty members Suniti Karunatillake and Jeff Nunn were both featured speakers in 2013. In July, Dr. Karunatillake’s talk focused on the search for water on the Martian surface along with the promise it holds for habitability and the insight it may offer on the nature of soil on the “Red Planet.” Despite being a summer month, his talk brought in an audience of more than 100 individuals. The Bayou Corne Sinkhole was the topic of Dr. Nunn’s talk. He spoke of the geological properties of sinkholes and specifically shared the sheer size of the Bayou Corne Sinkhole noting that it encompasses a 25 acre area and has grown to approximately 750 feet deep.

Science Café continues to grow in popularity and has developed into an event anticipated by many science enthusiasts along with many G&G students and faculty.

reMeMbering the “earthquaKe” gaMe

This year marked the 25th anniversary of the famed “Earthquake Game” that took place in Tiger Stadium in October of 1988. During the LSU-Auburn matchup, a late fourth quarter pass resulted in the Tigers scoring the winning touchdown and caused the crowd to erupt in celebration. Their cheering was so loud and intense that the seismograph in the Howe Russell Building registered the ground shaking for nearly 20 minutes.

In anticipation of the anniversary of the game, resident seismologist Dr. Juan Lorenzo was a highly sought after expert to put the phenomenon in perspective. Dr. Lorenzo fielded questions from local news outlets about the game and about seismology in general. He was also a featured speaker at the LSU Libraries event: “Shake It Up and Read All About It.” Dr. Lorenzo brought along the Seismeauxbile and gave participants an insider’s look at the mobile seismology lab.

College oF sCienCe seleCts deanCynthia Peterson has been selected as the new dean of the LSU College of Science. Dr.

Peterson comes to campus from the University of Tennessee where she served as professor and former head of the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology. Dr. Peterson is a native of Louisiana and received her BS in biochemistry from LSU and her PhD in biochemistry from the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport.

She began her tenure as dean on August 1, 2014.

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Year in review20

Dr. Lorenzo poses with the “Shake It Up and Read All About It” participants in

front of the Seismeauxbile.

Dr. Suniti Karunatillake

(Top) and Dr. Jeff Nunn

(Right) wowed packed crowds at Science Café.

Department of Geology & Geophysics

stripping the CitYDr. Sam Bentley was featured on the Science Channel program Strip the City, a show that

uses computer-generated animation to deconstruct major cities around the globe. In the episode “Hurricane City – New Orleans.” the show takes an in-depth look at the buildings and infrastructure that have emerged to help New Orleans survive the surge of hurricane threats and the might of the Mississippi River.

Dr. Bentley and his research team spent time with the film crew on a portion of the show that looked at the geological and engineering properties and history of delta sediments in the vicinity of New Orleans. His group collected a 20-foot-long vibracore, which they split and studied while answering questions about the history and geology of the area.

JourneY on the Joides resolutionOn January 30, Peter Clift joined Expedition 349 and parted ways with land for a two-month

voyage on the JOIDES Resolution in the South China Sea. The JOIDES Resolution is a seagoing research vessel that drills core samples and collects measurements from under the ocean floor.

The mission of Expedition 349 was to core and log three sites into the oceanic basement of the South China Sea. To reach the oceanic basement at each of the sites, the team had to core through sedimentary rock that has been deposited on top of the basalt. These sedimentary rocks are mostly formed from the remains of organisms that lived in the ocean, died and fell to the sea floor where they became fossilized; as well as sand, silt, and clay that enter the oceans through rivers. Studying these sediments can help scientists to better understand how climate has evolved in the southeast Asia region since the South China Sea began to form 32 million years ago.

Supporters back home were able to follow Dr. Clift’s adventures through updates he posted on the research team’s blog. Readers were able to tag along on his experiences from preparing for the trip and his first days on the ship to conducting research in the core lab and weathering out rough storms.

“It’s been quite an experience and I’m sure I’m not the only person who is already thinking about returning since despite all the effort this type of science is really quite addictive.” -Peter Clift

uniquelY giving baCK We are fortunate enough in the Department of Geology & Geophysics to have many

dedicated alumni who not only support the department monetarily, but also with their knowledge, expertise, and most importantly, their time.

For the last few years, Erik Scott has traveled to campus in the beginning of each fall semester to conduct a resume building workshop for graduate students. He spends 20 minutes with each student analyzing their resume and helping them fine tune their strengths and experiences into a competitive, well-rounded document. The popularity of his presence on campus is evident by the lack of breaks he gets during the day. In August of 2013, Erik visited with 21 students kicking off his workshop at 9:00 in the morning and not stopping until 6:00 in the evening. On top of this he also gives a lunch-and-learn talk to undergraduates who want to know more about careers in the oil and gas industry and preparing for graduate school.

Dana Thomas graduated with her BS in 2010. She left ventured forth into the world and is currently pursuing her PhD in Geology at Stanford University. Recently, Dana visited the department to speak with a packed classroom filled with G&G undergraduate students about her experience hunting for a graduate program and what advice she wished she would have known in the beginning of her search.

These are just two examples of the many ways our department is truly fortunate to have such a dedicated group of alumni who are willing to share their passion.

Above: The JOIDES ResolutionBelow: Dr. Clift and his companions

aboard Expedition 349

Dr. Bentley explains the process of collecting vibracores to the camera

during the filming of Strip the City.

Above: Erik Scott reviews MS student Chase Billeaudeau’s resume.

Below: Dana Thomas speaks to a crowd of undergraduates about her experiences

after graduating from LSU.


JeFF nunn retiresThe beginning of 2014 brought with it the retirement of Jeff Nunn, Ernest and Alice Neal

Professor in Geology. After 33 years educating and advising an enormous number of students, Dr. Nunn will now be testing the waters of the private sector as a Senior Earth Scientist with Chevron Energy Technology Company in Houston. Dr. Nunn has been granted Emeritus status by the university and will remain active within the department as an adjunct professor. His contributions to LSU and the Department of Geology & Geophysics along with his legacy of student guidance will continue to be felt for many more years to come.

the disCoverY oF darrellhenrYite

Geologists in the Czech Republic have discovered a new species of Tourmaline that has been named “Darrellhenryite” in recognition of Dr. Darrell Henry, LSU Campanile Charities Professor of Geology, for his contributions to mineralogy and petrology along with his study of the Tourmaline supergroup minerals. This occasion marks the first time that an LSU faculty member has had a mineral species named in their honor.

To name a species, the new mineral has to be fully chemically and structurally characterized, and a new mineral proposal must be submitted to and accepted by a committee of the International Mineralogical Association. Over the last 150 years there have been nearly 4,000 species of minerals named. The first sample of darrellhenryite was discovered in a quarry at Nová Ves near Český Krumlov, Czech Republic. The mineral was further characterized by crystallographers from the University of Vienna and California Institute of Technology.

latte Keeps students savvYStudents looking to hone their presentation skills are taking advantage of the Louisiana

Technical Talk Extravaganza or LATTE, a weekly gathering of students presenting research and interesting topics to their peers. LATTE is special because it is organized and promoted by a student led team made up of one master’s and one doctoral student. Topics over the year have ranged from the general such as personal internship experiences and research findings to special topics like “The Geology of the Video Game Minecraft”.

Students gain valuable practice speaking in front of an audience and polishing their presentation details with the aid of honest feedback given by their fellow students. This vital experience helps students feel more prepared for conventions as well as professional meetings and serves as beneficial preparation for their defenses.

2014 aapg aluMni reCeptionThank you to everyone who joined us for our alumni reception held in conjunction with the

2014 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition in Houston. Approximately 50 alumni, friends, and supporters came to the Hilton Americas Hotel for a fun evening catching up with old classmates and learning about current events in the department. Be on the lookout for information about next year’s reception that will take place coinciding with the convention held in Denver, CO on May 31 through June 3.

Guests at the AAPG Alumni Reception listen intently to Dr. Carol Wicks discuss happenings in the department.

PhD student Bryan Killingsworth helps local middle school students learn what stable isotopes can help us reveal about the origins and processes of matter during a week of science workshops held on campus.

Jeff Nunn in the 1983 Alumni Magazine three yeras after beginning his career at LSU next to a 2011 department photo.


Thank you to all the companies who held

on-campus interviews for our students.

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The 2014 LSU IBA Team. From left to right: Daniel Mullally, Derek Goff, Alesha Morabito, Bryce Mathis, and

John Michael Callen

eXtra Credit?!Students in a physical geology lab course were given the opportunity to earn extra credit

by bringing a geologically themed dessert. From volcanoes to fault lines, some of the finished products were quirky, some silly, but all were found to be delicious.

2014 iMperial barrel The spring semester once again brought a taste of competition and invaluable industry

experience for a team of G&G students. In the fifth year of LSU’s participation in the AAPG Imperial Barrel Award Competition, five first-year MS students, Daniel Mullaly, Derek Goff, Alesha Morabito, Bryce Mathis, and John Callen, spent eight weeks conducting a prospective basin evaluation to ultimately present their recommendation at the regional competition held in Houston in late March. The team was advised by Dr. Phil Bart, as well as two industry mentors: Jennifer Connolly of Shell and Chris Travis of BP. The competition provides students with an opportunity to work with tools and data that introduce them to many aspects of the petroleum industry. In addition, it prepares them for future employment in a situation where teamwork, deadline setting, and commitment are paramount to success.

“After first hearing about the IBA competition, I knew that I wanted to compete when I entered graduate school. Although the competition was more demanding than I anticipated, I believe that I learned so much during the experience, and I would do it again if I could. I want to thank the Department of Geology & Geophysics for supporting the team, as well as Dr. Bart, Chris Travis, and Jennifer Connolly for their guidance throughout the competition.” -John Michael Callen

enhanCing eduCationAfter their first year teaching at LSU, newly minted faculty members Karen Luttrell and

Jianwei Wang participated in the Early Career Geoscience Faculty Workshop held at the University of Maryland in June. This comprehensive workshop is designed to assist new faculty in tenure-track positions learn fundamental classroom and teaching skills such as setting course goals, strategies for active learning, assessment methods, and advising the research projects of undergraduate and graduate students. In addition, participants collaborate and share ideas and explore ways to balance the responsibilities of teaching, research, and service.

Funding that enabled Drs. Luttrell and Wang to attend this workshop was provided through the geology general development fund along with a grant from the LSU Department of Academic Affairs. Donations from our alumni base to the general development fund help the department continue to send faculty and students to professional workshops, purchase new equipment, and enhance the department in a variety of ways outside the scope and limitations of our state operating budget.

“This was a great workshop, and I think we all will be better researchers and educators for having attended. The opportunity to interact with new faculty from around the country, including several from the Gulf Coast, was invaluable.” -Karen Luttrell

Participants of the Early Geoscience Faculty Workshop


Meet our students.grant & award winners:An Li, PhD AAPG Foundation Grants-in-Aid Program, Edward B. Picou, Jr. Named Grant, $2000“Case Studies of Non-Unique Provenance Interpretations”Advisor: Alex Webb

Jillian Banks, PhDSEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology Student Research Grant, $1800“Sedimentary record of paleo- and recent climate for Okak Bay, Labrador, Canada: testing hypothesis for anthropogenic alteration of environment and Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns”Advisor: Sam Bentley & Sophie Warny

Tessa Hermes, MSGeological Society of America Student Research Grant, $1500“Geothermal potential of NE Louisiana”Southeastern Geophysical Society Scholarship, $1500“Geothermal potential of NE Louisiana”Advisor: Barb Dutrow & Jeff Nun

Tasha Hoffman, MSGeological Society of America Student Research Grant, $1500“Textural modeling of high grade gneisses, Sawtooth Mtns, ID”Advisor: Barb Dutrow

Nick Daigle, MSPhyllis B. Powell Scholarship of the Red River Desk and Derrick Club, $4000“Chlorine-rich ‘hyrdrous’ minerals in Archean granulite-facies ironstones: Implications for granulite-facies fluid compositions”Advisor: Darrell Henry

Elly Smith, BSGSA Rocky Mountain Section Research Grant for Undergraduates, $500“P-T conditions of the Pioneer Core Complex, ID”Advisor: Barb Dutrow

James Smith, BSState of the Coast 2nd Place Undergraduate Research Poster, $300“Patterns of sediment accumulation over decadal time scales in the Breton Sound basin”Advisor: Sam Bentley

Students Matthew Smith BS, Tara Jonell PhD, and Kathryn Denommee PhD pose after being recognized at the New

Orleans Geological Society Scholarship Luncheon.

Students in the Department of Geology & Geophysics were once again honored at the College of Science Choppin Awards

Ceremony. Outstanding Senior: Hussain Ali Al Qattan

Outstanding Junior: James Emerson Smith IVOutstanding Sophomore: Daniel Paul Babin

edward lo naMed Fulbright sCholar In the beginning of his career at LSU, Ed Lo was a Ronald McNair

Research Scholar, which allowed him to take full advantage of undergraduate research opportunities. Ed began working with Dr. Carol Wicks during his freshman year investigating how scour and siltation affect the habitat and distribution of cavesnails in Tumbling Creek Cave, Missouri. Toward the end of his studies, his interests shifted to sedimentology and he began researching consolidation and erodibility of muddy sediment from a Mississippi River diversion with Dr. Sam Bentley. This topic would eventually became the focus of his honors thesis work.

After graduating in December 2013, Ed accepted an internship offer with Dr. Nigel Quinn at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He worked on evaluating whether hydrology monitoring data could be used to develop reliable flow and salt load balance, which would have important implications for salt management west of the San Joaquin River. Shortly after beginning this work, Ed began thinking about applying to the Fulbright Student Program. Little did he know that his efforts would soon pay off immensely:

“I initially could not believe my eyes as I read in the email preview pane, ‘Dear Mr. Lo, Congratul…’ I had worked on the application for over two months and had extensive support from my mentors and peers, so it was a relief to have our efforts validated.”

Ed served the department once more during the summer as a teaching assistant at geology camp. In the fall, he will head to the University of Kentucky to start on his master’s degree in geology. His Fulbright award will take him to western Brazil and one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands: the Pantanal. From March to November 2015, he will be investigating the patterns and rates of sedimentation during the past five million years and research how native flora and fauna life cycles reflect the fluctuating hydrology of the region. Ed’s long-term goal is the pursuit of a PhD in geology or hydrology to eventually work as a researcher focusing on geological wetland conservation.

“I am excited for a lifetime of promoting broader awareness, protection, and research of wetlands, and I hope my success will encourage more LSU students to apply for the Fulbright fellowship.”

roCK stars:Undergraduate James Smith and PhD

student Suraj Bajgain took home the top prizes in the 2014 Rock

Star Poster Competition. Student research posters filled the Clarence

Cazalot Atrium on topics ranging from Delta Evolution to Palynology

to Sediment Flux. The Rockstar competition provides student’s with a formal venue to present

their research in a familiar setting. Students gain valuable experience

discussing their research and learning more about effective communication

both during the creation of the visual aspects of the poster and the

discussion of the research.

Suraj Bajgain with his winning poster: "Water speciation and properties of hydrous model basalt melt at high

pressure"

James Smith with his winning poster: "Patterns of sediment accumulation over decadal time scales in the Breton Sound

basin"

Ed working in Dr. Bentley’s Sedimentology lab.

Ed and fellow student James Smith collect sediment cores from Lake Lery in St. Bernard Parish. Ed studied the physical

properties, erodibility, and consolidation characteristics of

sediments delivered by Mississippi River diversions, to help better understand how diversions can

be optimized to build land in the Mississippi Delta

Madison Kymes was selected as one of only two undergraduate students to present his research at the 2013 AASP Annual Meeting held in October 2013 in San Fransisco. His research “Palynological evaluation of Oligocene and Miocene sections from King George Island, Antarctica” involves analyzing pollen and other species of palynomorphs found in Antarctic outcrop samples to evaluate their potential for paleoenvironmental reconstruction.

Madison graduated in December and is now pursuing his MS degree at LSU under the supervision of Dr. Sophie Warny.

9Department of Geology & Geophysics

It was a very exciting year for the LSU Geology Club. To start off the fall semester, officers went into geology classrooms on campus to spread the word about Geology Club and to invite interested students to join. In order to get everyone excited for the new

semester, we organized field trips to Tunica Falls as well as our first Geology Club tailgate! Thanks to the help of Vice President Elly Smith and the other club members, the LSU vs Texas A&M tailgate was a huge success.

Following these events, the club continued to participate in outreach activities such as Ocean Commotion and Super Science Saturday held in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, as well as Rockin’ at the Swamp hosted at BREC’s Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center. We utilize these opportunities to educate elementary, middle, and high school students about various geological topics, such as ground water flow and how we use various minerals in our everyday lives.

During the winter break, Field Marshall Taylor Judice, organized a six day field trip to Big Bend National Park. Members on the trip took hikes along the Rio Grande in Santa Elena Canyon, summited Emory Peak (7,825 ft), and on return to Baton Rouge explored the decorated Caverns of Sonora.

In the spring, club members volunteered to judge a science fair at the school and regional levels. Judging these fairs gave us a chance to mentor young scientists and encourage the scientific process.

In addition to the science fairs, the club was also asked to speak to an 8th grade class about events that occurred on the planet over the past 4.6 billion years. We helped students visualize geologic time and used toilet paper to show how events of the geologic past are spaced.

To wrap up the spring semester, we took our last field trip of the year to the French Quarter Gem & Lapidary Store in New Orleans. Here, club members bought minerals to add to their personal collections, and browse the store’s unique specimens. We followed this visit with a trip to the Audubon Aquarium.

As the Geology Club transitions into a new school year with a few returning officers, we have the momentum to not only maintain the progress we made this past year, but to explore new territory with our activities and outreach events.

geologY ClubBy Taylor Judice 2014-15 President

Top: Ashley Thrower, Elly Smith, and MaryKate Core judging the Woodlawn Middle

School Science Fair

Below: Ammar Banafea and Megan Borel explore the Caverns of Sonora in Texas.

Geology Club members enjoy the scenery on the summit of Emory Peak during their field trip to Big

Bend National Park.

10 Louisiana State University


This year was an eventful one for the LSU AAPG Student Chapter. We are excited that membership in the chapter has grown to include over 50 members! As a chapter, we are fortunate enough to have been able to host and/or support member participation in a number of events on campus and beyond. Some of the highlights of which were: the AAPG-SEG student recruitment expo in Houston, a fall camping trip to Arkansas, and a number of industry-led short courses. Additionally, a generous student travel grant from Chevron allowed us to support student conference participation. Some of the meetings our members were able to attend because of our financial support included: the SEG annual meeting in Houston, the GCAGS annual meeting in New Orleans, the GSA annual meeting in Denver, the AGU fall meeting in San Francisco, the AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, and the AASP annual meeting in San Francisco. I also don’t want to forget the chapter’s continued sponsorship of the “TGIF” receptions that take place after department lectures, a homecoming tailgate at the LSU vs Furman football game, and our spring crawfish boil!

Overall, we had quite a successful year and we are extremely grateful to have such wonderful supporters and industry mentors who have allowed us to encourage both career and academic development among the membership, as well as having been able to support our department and promote camaraderie!

aapg student Chapter

Sharply dressed students prepare to venture into the Expo Hall at the 2013 AAPG/SEG

Student Expo in Houston.

Taking a break from hiking during the fall camping trip in Arkansas

By Kathryn Denommee2013-14 President

Join us For hoMeCoMing 2014!The AAPG Student Chapter would like to invite you to join their tailgate at the LSU Homecoming game against Ole Miss on October 25. The group will be located on campus behind the Howe Russell Kniffen building close to the corner of South Stadium Drive and Tower Drive. Enjoy food, refreshments, and football before cheering on the Tigers to victory!

Field CaMpThe Charles Barney Geology

By Dr. Amy LutherAssistant Professor and Field Camp Director

This summer’s field camp was a great success! We had 25 seniors and 16 freshmen participating in camp. It was a pleasantly rainy summer, so it was very green, full of wildflowers, and wasn’t plagued by many large wildfires.

It was an eventful year leading up to summer, beginning with a large flood event in September that washed away much of the road, bridge, and water system that the camp relies on. We were lucky to have a large team of people that managed to get everything fixed and running for our 2014 field season. There was some silver lining in that we were able to improve the water system effectively doubling our storage capacity.

This summer freshmen stepped out of the classroom nearly every day to explore the geology of the LSU property and far beyond. In Colorado, they went fossil hunting in Florissant and were featured in a local creative writing column (Unearthing the “Frail Children” of Florissant, by Kathryn Winograd), general mapping nearby in the Garden of the Gods, and sand-dune sledding at Great Sand Dunes. They also traveled to Yellowstone and Craters of the Moon for a week of the class and got to see the amazing sites of Wyoming!

Field CaMpest. 1928

The senior class had six week-long projects in Colorado and New Mexico where they mapped sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks and made several stratigraphic columns. We spent the first two weeks on the property learning the stratigraphy and making the property geology map. After this, we ventured off to northern New Mexico, just south of the Taos Plateau. Here, the students mapped world-class metamorphic rocks with spectacular garnets, staurolites, aluminosilicates, and a variety of tectonic fabrics. During week five, we were lucky enough to have Brooks Ellwood join us as a guest instructor. Dr. Ellwood had the students correlate across the Cenomanian-Turonian GSSP marker in South Central Colorado in four different locations. We wrapped up camp with an amazing camping/mapping trip in the volcanic field near Buena Vista, Colorado. It had incredible views and daily monsoon storms building all across the Collegiate Peaks region.

All in all, it was a fantastic summer and I can’t wait to get out there next year!


Faculty Digest

This passing academic year has been quite eventful for the Bao group. First, two proposals were written to the National Science Foundation which were both successful getting funded. One in particular is taking more time and will help upgrade the stable isotope laboratory. This will include adding one more isotope-ratio mass spectrometer, one quantum-cavity ring-down based isotope analyzer for water, and several other cool toys. On a second front, Huiming’s team has had a couple of high-profile papers published on the “snowball” Earth hypothesis, and thinks they have nailed down some of the remaining major issues associated with one of the biggest events in Earth history. This has also been a travel intensive year. Dr. Bao traveled domestically on trips to D.C. and San Francisco, along with international visits to China, Italy, Brazil, and Japan.

Sam Bentley has had an exciting year helping students complete their degrees, teaching Deltaic Geology and undergraduate and graduate sedimentology classes, and working as Director of the Coastal Studies Institute (CSI). Bentley supervised the MS thesis of Ashley Howell, who graduated in August 2013 after completing a study of deep-sea sedimentation in the Gulf of Papua, and whose thesis will be published soon in the journal Marine Geology. Bentley also supervised the honors theses of Edward Lo (BS, December 2013) and Matthew Smith (BS, May 2014). Research papers from Lo’s and Smith’s theses are also in-press for journal publication. Lo and Smith both studied sediments in the floodplain and delta of the Mississippi River, to provide better understanding of sedimentary processes for restoration of the Mississippi Delta.

Bentley led graduate and undergraduate field trips to the Wax Lake Delta of the Atchafalaya River and has been directing field work for two exciting new projects. One, grant funded by the Water Institute of the Gulf, is an extensive geological and geotechnical study of wetlands and bays on the Mississippi River below New Orleans in locations that will be receiving basins for new river-sediment diversions. The team includes Oceanography and Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Kevin Xu, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Jim Chen, and

Bentley’s PhD student Crawford White. The second ongoing study is focused on submarine landslide activity offshore of the Mississippi River’s Birdsfoot Delta. This region has historically experienced catastrophic sediment flows following major hurricanes, including one that toppled an oil production platform in 2004 after Hurricane Ivan. Bentley’s study will synthesize a large recently collected data set for the area, and apply new seabed techniques to study the motion of sediment flows. This is funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and is supporting the research of Dr. Jillian Maloney, a new postdoctoral fellow recently arrived from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Other team members include Dr. Kevin Xu and Dr. Ioannis Georgiou,of the University of New Orleans.

Sam BentleyBilly & Ann Harrison Chair of Sedimentology

Dr. Bao met Jay Kaufman, LSU alumnus and currently a professor at University of Maryland in a field conference in Corumba, Brazil.

Huiming BaoCharles L. Jones Professor of Geology

Dr. Bentley and his research team take a break during core collecting at the Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge to visit the National Champion baldcypress, the largest tree east of the Sierra

Nevada mountain range.


In the past year, Dr. Clift has been involved with students in fieldwork looking at sediment transport processes in river systems in Vietnam and in the Indian Himalaya. They are looking at the effect that changes in climate have on the flux of sediment to the deep ocean basin. By sampling modern rivers and ancient river terraces they hope to see how long sediment can be stored high in the mountains before its release to deltas and the deep sea. More river research has been going on closer to home at False River, Louisiana where Peter and a student have been drilling approximately 120 feet into an abandoned point

bar system to determine its internal structure, work out how these bodies are built, and how useful they are as possible hydrocarbon reservoirs. This latter work is supported by new funding from Exxon-Mobil together with Juan Lorenzo. In February and March, Peter was at sea on the scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution in the South China Sea investigating deep sea sediment records of erosion and weathering from China and Vietnam and trying to understand how that has been influenced by the tectonics of the region, as well as the changing strength of the monsoon since 50 million years

ago. He is particularly interested in feedbacks between the two and whether the monsoon might actually be much older than previously recognized. This year has also been one for lecturing and travel as Peter was an OceanLeadership “Distingushed Lecturer” for 2013-2014 that involved talking about monsoons and scientific drilling at eight universities across the country. Additionally, in May 2014 he was awarded a higher degree, a “Doctor of Science” from the University of Oxford in recognition of his contributions to research into erosion and the processes that control the recycling of the continental crust.

Karen LuttrellAssistant Professor

Karen Luttrell joined the Department of Geology & Geophysics in the fall of 2013 and has enjoyed a successful first year at LSU. As a solid-earth geophysicist, Dr. Luttrell’s research focuses on measuring and modeling stress and deformation in the lithosphere. Her research has implications for understanding earthquake and volcanic hazards around the globe as well as some of the fundamental geodynamic processes that drive plate tectonics. Her theoretical modeling studies encompass both active and passive margins and plate interiors. In

the summer, she conducts field operations in and around Yellowstone Lake to investigate the active volcanic system there. Her research group is assembling, including an undergraduate doing a senior thesis project and plans for graduate students in the coming year. She has enjoyed getting to know the current graduate students while serving on several of their thesis committees.

In her first year, Dr. Luttrell taught a graduate seminar on Introduction to Geodesy and a senior-level course on Introduction to Geophysics. Her students integrated computer programming and field-based data collection into their study of geophysical processes and techniques. In the coming year, Dr. Luttrell is looking forward to teaching the Honors section of Introduction to Physical Geology and spreading her enthusiasm for science and research to a new generation of geologists.

Peter CliftCharles T. McCord Chair of Petroleum Geology

Students in Dr Luttrell’s Geophysics class measure gravity across a ravine through

LSU campus.

15


Barb Dutrow’s research group enjoyed another year of discoveries and exploration. Summer brought fieldwork in the Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho. This NSF-funded research focuses on understanding the tectonics and continental crust that developed during the Precambrian on the western edge of the North American craton. Masters’ students Austin Bennett and Claire Jones braved snow-covered slopes to collect garnet-bearing rocks needed to constrain the pressure-temperature (P-T) history of the area. Undergraduate Elly Smith utilized these samples to compare with those of the nearby Pioneer Core Complex near Sun Valley, ID and also spent some time in the field this summer after completing her time at the LSU field camp. Research results of this project were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting and at the Geological Society of America Rocky Mountain section meeting - with four presentations, three of which were given by students. MS student Tasha Hoffman arrived in January and will focus on diffusion modeling to extract P-T-time paths followed by the rocks during uplift and exhumation. This year’s field season will explore new areas, some above 10,000 feet, and concentrate on collecting additional samples for geochronology.

MS student Tessa Hermes is evaluating the potential for geothermal energy in northeastern Louisiana. Her work largely involves resource assessment via core logs and nicely meshes with continued computational research involving 3D heat and mass transport in our group.

Classroom research involving spatial and penetrative (3D) thinking skills of students is in its final year. This NSF-funded research is a collaboration between geoscientists and cognitive physiologists. Because these skills are necessary for successful geoscientists, we are developing specific modules to help students learn or improve these skills during the Mineralogy course (2014 had a record 63 students). These disparate modules range from 2D-3D assignments to gesturing to physical models to using 3D visualization software. Improvements are assessed with pre- and post-tests and course embedded questions. The ultimate outcome of the project will be a workbook with specifically designed and

tested modules for geoscientists. Other highlights of Dr. Dutrow’s

year include giving invited lectures at: the 2013 Goldschmidt Geochemistry meeting in Florence, the 2013 GSA annual meeting in Denver, Portland State University-sponsored by the American Women in Geosciences, and at the 2014 Goldschmidt meeting with a keynote lecture in the session celebrating 10 years of Elements magazine. Elements is a joint venture of 17 international mineralogical, petrological, and geochemical societies that has six theme-based issues per year. Currently Dr. Dutrow serves as the Chair of the Executive Committee with 17 representatives. Professional contributions also include service on both NSF and Department of Energy panels, working with a DOE focus group on mineralogy and geochemistry of geothermal systems, and finishing a four-year term as councilor for the Geological Society of America.

Darrell Henry and Barb Dutrow with LSU student Elly Smith and University of Florida student Chrissy Allen on the Belt Basin field trip during the GSA Rocky Mountain and Cordellian section meeting.

Masters’ students Austin Bennett and Claire Jones conducting field work in the Sawtooth Mountains, ID.

Barb DutrowAdolphe G. Gueymard Professor


Brooks EllwoodRobey Clark Distinguished Professor

Brooks Ellwood, along with his student research team, were involved in several projects throughout the year. These included work at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado, where Lindsay Prothro finished her honors thesis on the fossil beds. She did a wonderful job and her work was awarded the best honors thesis for 2013 by the LSU Honors College. This work is being continued by Jennifer Kenyon who is collecting additional sections. She will also be completing an Honors Thesis to extend Lindsay’s work throughout all the Fossil Bed levels. Dr. Ellwood collected additional samples for the project in October along US 24 from a roadcut just outside Florissant. There, the State placed barriers along the road to detour traffic while Brooks and a paleontologist, Steve Wallace, working for the Colorado State road department collected the section. Temperatures were in the 30’s, so it proved to be a bit brisk.

Jacob Grosskopf is continuing his PhD study of Western Interior Seaway rocks, and this year passed his general exams. His work is centered on oxygen levels in the Seaway during the Cretaceous and how the ichnofacies can provide an indication of oxygen in that environment. His work looks very exciting, and will be particularly interesting for folks in oil and gas. Two other PhD students, Emad Elfar and Tom Schramm, are both preparing for their general exams in the fall. Emad is working on Cambrian sections in the Drum Mountains, Utah, and in Great Basin National Park, Nevada. He may extend this work to China. Tom has been working on Ordovician successions from the Midcontinent to New York. He has collected many localities and probably understands the stratigraphy of the Ordovician in the United States as well as anybody anywhere.

Dr. Ellwood continues to work on Devonian and Permian rocks from Turkey, collected during his sabbatical last year, and on Permian rocks from Vietnam. The Vietnam results are very

exciting and he and his colleagues are writing several papers covering different aspects of that research. He is also still active in research at archeological sites in Vietnamese caves, where some interesting climatic variations can be correlated with global cooling events, including Younger Dryas, and the general trends can be correlated to work he and others have done at European sites.

This summer, Brooks taught at Field Camp for a week, looking at Cretaceous stratigraphy from Pueblo to La Junta. Students built a fence diagram including four sections they measured associated with the Cenomanian–Turonian boundary exposed at many localities in the Western Interior Seaway, from Canada into Texas. In Texas, this interval includes the Eagleford Shale. In the fall, he will be teaching Geoarchaeology and the class project will involve geophysical surveys and coring at the Fort Pike State Historic Site, originally built to protect the North Pass into Lake Pontchartrain. An identical fort, Fort Macomb was also built to protect the South Pass, just a few miles away, and was used in filming the True Detective series that recently aired. Dr. Ellwood was also recently profiled in the March 2014 issue of Earth on his use of magnetism during the search for the grave of the legendary gunman William “Wild Bill” Longley.

Top: Fort Pike, where Brooks will be conducting field trips in the fall with students in his Geoarcheology course.

Above: Brooks collects samples from a rope as he repelled down a section in Florissant, Colorado.


My last semester as a faculty member at LSU was gratifying. As usual, I taught two classes in the Honors College: Physical Geology and Critical Thinking. Critical Thinking is a seminar where topics vary each year. This past year it was global warming, health care, and the distribution of wealth. For the service learning portion of the class, students worked at the homeless center in Baton Rouge helping clients with SNAP applications and computer skills.

As part of a grant from HP, I created a series of educational activities for physical geology laboratories. My teaching activities on “Animated Ray Paths” in Microsoft PowerPoint and “Interpretation of plate boundaries from topography, bathymetry, volcanoes, and earthquake focal depths” using Google Earth and OneNote were selected for the peer-reviewed collection of educational activities on the Cutting Edge web site at Science Education Resource Center. In addition, my activity on Earthquake Epicenter Location Exercise using Google Earth and OneNote was accepted into the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activity collection. Only 10% of the more than 3000 activities submitted received this designation. Review criteria included scientific accuracy; alignment of learning goals, activities and assessments; pedagogic effectiveness; robustness (usability and dependability of all resource components); and completeness of the associated Activity Sheets that provide contextual information to guide the effective use of this activity.

I had four graduate students finish their degrees this year: Frank Morgan (Fractures in the Haynesville Shale), Hunter Berch (Estimates of Maturity and TOC in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale), Michael Thoma (Shallow accumulations of gas in Cook Inlet and Thunder Horse Field) and Candice McCollum (Variations in

salinity and temperature around a nearshore salt structure). I received two awards this year: former student Eric Hart

and I received the Loyd Carlson Memorial Award for best EMD poster at the Pittsburgh AAPG meeting on a model for biogenic gas formation in Cook Inlet. In addition, I also received a faculty excellence award from the LSU Center for Community Engagement, Learning and Leadership.

In addition to my research on Louisiana’s shale gas plays and fluid flow, heat and solute transport around salt structures; I have continued to work on geothermal resources with Barb Dutrow. My last graduate student, Tessa Hermes, is co-advised with Dr. Dutrow and is working with us on northeast Louisiana.

Finally, I have spent a lot of time studying and speaking on the Bayou Corne sinkhole (see figures above) which has continued to grow for two years now. I continue to monitor seismic activity and the stability of nearby caverns and have given invited talks to the SIPES New Orleans Chapter, Woman’s Energy Network in Baton Rouge, Bluebonnet Public Library, LSU Science Café, New Orleans Geological Society, American Geophysical Union, Shreveport Geological Society, and the SIPES annual meeting.

I have greatly enjoyed my 33 years at LSU. My best wishes and many thanks to all the wonderful students and alumni that I have met over the years. Special thanks to Mary and Ron Neal for endowing the Earnest and Alice Neal Professorship which allowed me to explore new things in both my research and teaching. I am pleased to be embarking on a new venture with Chevron in Houston and will do my best to be a creditable Texas Tiger.

Jeff Nunn, Ernest and Alice Neal ProfessorMY last seMester at lsu

November 2011: Aerial photo of Texas Brine facility prior to formation of sinkhole. A portion of the community of Bayou Corne is in the upper left corner. Highway

70 runs from left to right near the top of the photograph.

March 2014: Photo of Texas Brine facility. Note berm(s) that have been built around the sinkhole to contain hydrocarbons and salty water. Symbols are earthquakes located using a borehole array that occurred in March, 2014. They are color coded by depth: green – shallow; blue – intermediate; and

red – deep. They are also sized by magnitude. All of these earthquakes are very small. Much too small to be felt at the surface but can be recorded by

instruments. Earthquake data are from Magnitude.


During the last two years Darrell Henry has been the LSU Director of SACSCOC Reaffirmation of Accreditation. SACSCOC, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, is LSU’s regional accrediting body that evaluates LSU for accreditation every ten years. The Principles of Accreditation cover virtually all aspects of effectively operating an institution of higher education – from governance to student learning to athletics. To make our case, LSU needed to address 98 Principles of Accreditation with a Compliance Report (over 1000 pages with 3000 attachments; due September 2013), with a Focused Report (February 2014) and at the SACSCOC on-site visit (March 2014). After these efforts, LSU was left with only two issues needing to be addressed over the summer of 2014 – this is an extremely positive result for an institution the size of LSU.

In spite of the efforts involved in working on LSU’s accreditation, Dr.

Henry was able to continue his research. During the summers of 2010 and 2011, Dr. Henry, together with Professor David Mogk (Montana State University), worked with 24 undergraduate students from across the US as part of an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates site. The focus of the project was on the Archean rocks of the northern Wyoming Province found in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park. As such, this involved field work and sampling in the park and subsequent sample processing and geochemistry in various labs across the country. This project continues to yield results with 33 presentations related to the project and 3 publications, including the most recent one in 2014 entitled: “The Plume to Plate Transition: Hadean and Archean Crustal Evolution in the Northern Wyoming Province, U.S.A..” Of particular significance is the discovery that the Archean rocks from northwestern Yellowstone to the eastern Beartooth Mountain represent a nearly

continuous portion of 2.8 billion-year-old continental crust that is exposed in the mountains and valleys.

Dr. Henry’s work on tourmaline also continues with 6 presentations given at national and international meetings in the last year. The most recent publication on tourmaline was published in Lithos – “Tourmaline at diagenetic to low-grade metamorphic conditions: Its petrologic applicability”. Perhaps most significant, a new species of tourmaline was discovered by geologists in the Czech Republic and named “darrellhenryite”. The mineral is closely related to the gem variety of tourmaline, elbaite. Darrellhenryite was named and characterized by an international group of crystallographers from the Czech Republic, Austria and the California Institute of Technology, USA.

This past year, Juan Lorenzo and students have been busy on three main research fronts, two in Howe Russell laboratories and one in the field with the mobile seismic laboratory known as the “Seismeauxbile”.

Development of the new LSU hydraulic fracture lab is now fully underway. This lab is a collaborative facility between the Department of Geology and Geophysics and the Department of Petroleum Engineering dedicated to fundamental research and education and is funded by a grant from RPSEA/USDOE.

Two of Juan’s students, James Crane (PhD 2013) and Jie Shen (PhD) are investigating the behavior of seismic attenuation in a physical seismic sand tank in order to invert for the state of saturation in sediments. Ruhollah Keshvardoost-Jobaneh who is completing his MS at Auburn University will be joining the group in the fall of 2014 to begin his PhD. This project is funded by a grant from SEPCO.

Together with Dr. Peter Clift, Juan conducted new field research with the Seismeauxbile, for a newly-funded 3-year project that involves seismic and sedimentological analysis of Holocene Point-Bar Complex, in False River, LA. Amir Javaheri a MS-graduate from Memorial University of Newfoundland will work on this topic towards his PhD beginning in fall of 2014.

Juan LorenzoAssociate Professor

Top: Students lay out geophones preparing to conduct seismic tests.

Below: Over a weekend in April, 2014, Dr. Lorenzo’s Graduate-level Petroleum

Seismology class visit Ventress, LA, to conduct seismic noise tests

Darrell HenryCampanile Charities Professor in Geology


Suniti KarunatillakeAssistant Professor

The G&G Planetary Science Laboratory (PSL) led by Suniti Karunatillake, continued its planetary adventures this year. For example, does most of the planet’s H2O in soil reside in particular minerals or in other forms? Current results indicate H2O chemically bound to some sulfate minerals, perhaps to an extent that may shed insight on seasonal debris flows on Mars (Figure 1). Intriguingly, the flows may signify rare instances of brine-driven activity on modern Mars. Two projects published this year also advanced the in-house expertise on brine-related themes: first on photoanalyses of martian soil (Figure 2), second on the potential for a halogen cycle on Mars paralleling events such as the bromine explosion in Earth’s polar environments (Figure 3).

New work begun at PSL includes testing roving and exploration strategies for future lunar and asteroid missions with NASA Ames scientists. Equally important, Dr. J. R. Skok, postdoctoral scientist at PSL, led an inter-institutional proposal to examine the crust of Mars dating to the moments soon after its formation. NASA’s ROSES program funded this for three years. The PSL team also contributed an instrument proposal for the Mars 2020 rover.

Meanwhile, several junior PSL members won research awards this year, including PhD student Nicole Button and undergraduate Taylor Judice. Nicole leads a novel method to distinguish glaciolacustrine environments from volcaniclastic

counterparts. This will serve to identify paleo-environmental conditions should drop stone or bomb sag clasts be discovered by the Curiosity Rover. In addition to contributing a new analytical technique for the planetary community, her work also entails re-assessing the clast discovered at Home Plate in Gusev Crater, Mars. Dr. Gary Byerly provided key calibration samples for this work.

Taylor Judice leads geochemical analyses of the Thaumasia plateau of Mars, a feature proposed by some as a giant landslide dwarfing the Gulf of Mexico’s Whiting Dome in scale. Several thousand kilometers away, another undergraduate, David Susko, is geochemically analyzing young lava flows of the Elysium volcano (Figure 3). PSL’s NASA Mars Data Analysis grant supports both Taylor and David on summer research assistantships. In advancing both projects, Rory Bentley is assessing geomorphology, literally with hundreds, of images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at 25 cm/pixel high resolution.

Jianwei Wang joined the faculty of the Department of Geology and Geophysics last August. Since then he has been developing a new research program in computational earth materials, with a focus on energy and environmental applications. One of his projects is to develop nuclear waste forms for fission product incorporations using mineral analog – apatite, a tooth and bone material. However, in order to incorporate fission products from nuclear wastes, the chemical compositions of apatite have to be well designed. Dr. Wang uses computer simulations to predict the chemical compositions and their properties of known and unknown apatites that are able

to incorporate nuclear wastes. Because of a strong overlap of his

interest with the materials research at the Center for Computation & Technology (CCT) on campus, Dr. Wang joined the center as an adjunct faculty and a member of its Materials World Focus Area. This allows Dr. Wang to access the center’s interdisciplinary research environment and computational support from its high-performance computing facilities. The interaction with the faculty and scientist at the center has been fruitful.

Last year, Dr. Wang taught “Advanced Topics in Earth materials”. With graduate students, the course explored a number of topics with active research interests,

such as natural gas hydrate, nuclear waste disposal and waste forms, and environmental mineralogy. He also taught “Principles of Environmental Geochemistry”.

Dr. Wang also co-convened a symposium on ”Frontiers in Computational Geochemistry: Mineral Response to Extreme Conditions: Implications for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” at the Geochemical Society’s annual conference – Goldschmidt 2013 - in Florence, Italy. He gave a number of invited and contributed talks on national and international conferences on his research on computational earth materials.

Figure 1. Seasonal debris flow originating from outcrop-soil interfaces at Palikir Crater, Mars.

Figure 2. Microscopic image from Meridiani Planum, Mars, before (top) and after photoanalysis, identifying individual soil grains. Larger spherules about 2 -3 cm across.

Figure 3. Schematic showing halogen volatility in martian soil, as modeled with soil chemistry

at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum.

Jianwei WangAssistant Professor

Sophie Warny is now an associate professor of palynology as well as a curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science. She was awarded tenure in summer 2014. She was honored to receive the LSU Alumni Association Rising Faculty Research Award, and was selected as a board member of the University of California Berkeley UCMP’s Teacher Advisory Board.

During the past academic year, Dr. Warny’s research group was composed of four PhD students, Kate Griener, Marie Thomas, Shannon Ferguson, and Jill Bambricks; two MS students, Madison Kymes and Isil Yildiz; and one M.N.S. student, Steve Babcock. Kate graduated in the Spring 2014 and is now working with BHP Billiton. Shannon was offered an internship with the Department of Homeland Security to work on trace evidence, and Marie was offered a second-year internship in Houston with HESS. All students presented their research at various meetings last year. Shannon is supported by a LSU curatorial assistantship. This assistantship provides the funds to start digitizing the pollen collection donated to CENEX by the industry in 1995. The digital curation is being done using the SPECIFY software. Digitizing the pollen collection is key in helping us with our stratigraphic and paleo-environmental research, but it can also be very important for forensic palynological application. Kate and Marie were supported by the Marathon GeoDE program. Marathon’s generous gift allowed LSU to recruit these outstanding students, and in Marie’s case, beat other top universities in attracting her! This is a very strong example on how industry support truly impacts the quality of a research program. Marie studies

sedimentary systems offshore Papua New Guinea, a project in collaboration with Dr. Sam Bentley and Dr. Andre Droxler at Rice University. Madison and Steve are supported by Dr. Warny’s NSF CAREER grant to work on Eocene Antarctic sequences; Isil is supported by a grant from her home country of Turkey.

Kate’s research dissertation was published in the journal Palaeo3, and she submitted two additional papers to the journals Global and Planetary Change and to Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology before she graduated. These papers are currently in review. Steve Babcock has also published his research. His paper is currently in press in the journal Science Activities.

Dr. Warny is in the process of developing new research targets; one of which is developing expertise in forensic palynology. This new venture has been rewarding in many ways already. First, it allowed her to receive additional funding; second, it allowed one of her students to be selected for an internship with the Department of Homeland Security; and finally, Dr. Warny’s letter on the importance of preserving museum collection to conduct forensic palynology was published in the journal Science.

The year was capped by the use of Dr. Warny’s lab in the filming of a major movie production. The movie should be out in all theatres in Spring 2015, so stay tuned for more news on its release!

In addition to her research program, Dr. Warny is leading a project to remodel the hallways of the “old geology” side of the Howe Russell Kniffen building. The new space will be enhanced with an exhibit on the geology of

Louisiana and careers in Geosciences, along with new furniture, new displays for student research, and a TV monitor to provide geological news.

Sophie WarnyAASP Professor of Palynology

21Department of Geology & Geophysics


Tiffany RobertsInstructor

Tiffany Roberts teaches Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Earth Materials, and Coastal and Shallow Marine Depositional Systems as well as coordinates the Historical Geology Labs. She is also a LSU Coastal Studies Institute Fellow. Dr. Roberts published two peer-reviewed articles in 2013 in Marine Geology and the Journal of Coastal Research. Dr. Roberts served on the Undergraduate Honors

Thesis Committees for geology majors Edward Lo and Matthew Smith who both focused different aspects of riverine sediment transport and deposition. She continues to serve as a reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals.

After attending the Gulf Coast Summer Institute aimed to improve active learning techniques and scientific pedagogy, Dr. Roberts was named a 2013-2014 National Academies Education Fellow. During the fall semester, the Coastal and Shallow Marine Depositional Systems class went on a field trip to Gulf Shores,

Alabama to investigate the morphology, sedimentology, geology and coastal processes of barrier island sub-environments. In addition to presenting as an invited lecturer at the LSU Graduate Engineering Seminar Series, she also presented at the 2013 Geological Society of America conference in partnership with a leader in the “Scope on a Rope” program discussing the success of microscope implementation for teaching and student learning in General Education Geology labs. At the 2013 National Coastal Conference for American Shore and Beach Preservation (ASBPA), Dr. Roberts became a member of the ASBPA Board of Directors as well as hosted a student short course on “Improving Communication Skills: Technical Writing and Beyond”. She was also named Co-Chair of the 2015 ASBPA National Coastal Conference to be held in New Orleans. LA.

Just before the spring semester began, Dr. Roberts attended the “Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education Summit” at the University of Texas at Austin in January 2014. For two weeks around spring break, she participated in an international, multi-institutional nearshore field research project investigating the geomorphology, sediment transport and hydrodynamics at Sisal Beach in Yucatan, Mexico in collaboration with the University of Delaware and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In April 2014, Dr. Roberts received the Tiger Athletic Foundation College Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Students in the field during a trip to Bon Secor National Wildlife Refuge in Gulf Shores, Alabama for Dr. Robert’s class: Coastal and Shallow Marine Depositional Systems.

Amy LutherAssistant Professor

Amy Luther joined the department in August 2013 as a new Assistant Professor and the Field Camp Director. Prior to this, she was a visiting Professor at New Mexico State University where she spent most of fall and Spring focusing on teaching Physical and Structural Geology along with coordinating the Physical Geology labs. During her first year, she focused a lot of attention on increasing the amount of active learning in the Geology classrooms, especially in the large lecture settings. To help with this plan, she also participated in the Summit on Geoscience Education at UT-Austin.

The highlight of this spring was a Structural Geology field trip to the Hot Springs, Arkansas region. The group was able to explore a variety of deformed rocks from the Ouachita uplift. They were also lucky to get to work with another geologist, Doug Hanson, from the Arkansas State Geological Survey. This gave the students an opportunity to make a basic map of Hollywood Quarry where folded and faulted rocks were well-exposed. They also saw the famous outcrops in the De Gray Lake region and camped at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, which allowed the students to spend some time searching for diamonds as well.

The rest of Dr. Luther’s year was spent doing field work, taking field trips, and preparing for field camp. She finished mapping part of a large Paleoproterozoic Mazatzal province shear zone to contribute to a 7.5’ quadrangle map for the NM STATEMAP program. She also participated in a GSA Front Range field trip to help prepare for her first time running field camp. Finally June arrived and the rest of her summer was spent in Colorado Springs enjoying the excitement of students experiencing camp!


Alex WebbAssistant Professor

Greetings from Australia! 1st-year PhD student An Li and Alex Webb spent their summer down under to see some of Earth’s oldest rocks of the eastern Pilbara craton, continuing LSU’s proud record of early Earth exploration.

2013-14 was another year of growth for our research group. We welcomed An and new MS student Kexin Zhang. In addition to our Australian field trip,

Kexin and Alex took another group trip to the salt glaciers of NW China in collaboration with Jianghai Li of Peking University.

Hongjiao Yu recently defended her dissertation and will soon be available to the Houston petroleum exploration community. Dr. Webb received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, and PhD student Dennis Donaldson and a veritable army of undergraduate student researchers are using these funds to reconstruct the deformation history of the NW Indian passive margin, now

crunched within the northern Himalaya. PhD student Cindy Colón was supported by NSF to spend most of the year in Grenoble France, where she worked with Cecile Lasserre and Marie-Pierre Doin to analyze

the tectonics of the Tian Shan (Celestial Mountains), central Asia, using interferometry of synthetic aperture radar. MS student Chase Billeaudeau forges on with the challenge of producing the first integrated tectonics study of the eastern Tibet segment of the Bangong-Nujiang suture.

The publishing highlight of the year came with the group’s first Nature paper [W.B. Moore and A.A.G. Webb, 2013, Heat-pipe Earth: vol. 501, p.501-505]. In this work collaborator William Moore of Hampton University and Dr. Webb explore the hypothesis that early Earth’s tectonics may have been overwhelmingly controlled by rapid volcanic resurfacing, demonstrating that the geologic record is consistent with this hypothesis for Earth’s first billion years. In this respect, early Earth may resemble the current tectonics of Jupiter’s moon Io. This finding has stimulated on-going research efforts and new teaching directions as well with Dr. Webb offering a new course “Development of the Terrestrial Planets” in Spring 2014.

Achim HerrmannAssistant Professor

Achim Herrmann’s research group has grown in the last year. Currently, one PhD student, seven MS students, and three undergraduate students are working with him.

The group continues to study the environmental change during the so-called GICE interval (the Guttenberg Isotope

Carbon excursion) of the Early Late Ordovician. Fieldwork in the last year took them to the Upper Mississippi Valley (Minnesota and Wisconsin), Alabama, Central Sweden, and Estonia. The Baltic states and the US were on different continental plates during this time, so in order to test whether the GICE event is a global event, it is necessary to also examine rocks in Sweden and Estonia. In the Siljan district there is a superb succession of Ordovician rocks

preserved in a Paleozoic meteorite crater (The Siljan ring). His work also continues on trying to understand the

paleoceanographic conditions during the deposition of Pennsylvanian black shales. Fieldwork this year focused on the Illinois basin. Here, the “deep water” black shales immediately overlie coal bed, they truly are an interesting sight!

Dr. Herrmann at the Arbavere field station in Estonia examining a drill core (full Lower Ordovician to basal Silurian succession)

Dr. Herrmann next to a statue of Carl Linnaeus in Uppsala, Sweden shortly before fieldwork in central Sweden.

PhD student An Li in Warrawoona syncline, east Pilbara Craton, Western Australia.

PhD candidates, Ben Maas and Randy Paylor, are wrapping up their writing and will be defending soon. Ben has accepted a faculty position at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake Iowa. Rick Young and many others around the department would agree that Ben’s all-around helpfulness will be missed. Ben’s dissertation work will be submitted for publication later this fall. Randy is also in the midst of writing papers for peer review along with writing his dissertation. Both students also traveled to Field

Camp after the major flood event in the late summer of 2013 and studied the sediment movement along Little Fountain Creek. Caroline Broderick and Beau Brooks have joined the group as MS students. Caroline is investigating movement of suspended sediment through karstic basins in collaboration with Randy Paylor (see picture below). Beau will be re-assessing one of the inactive oil and gas fields in southern Louisiana.

Gary Byerly continues to serve LSU as Dean of the Graduate School while also maintaining an active presence within the department. One of his student’s, Corey Shircliff, graduated with her MS in the spring and another, Alesha Morabito, began her studies in the fall. In addition, Dr. Byerly chaired the search committee that was responsible for the successful selection of Dr. Cynthia Peterson, the incoming Dean of the College of Science. His research interests have produced three papers so far in 2014. Two of these focus on the Geology of Archean giant

impacts and one on platinum group elements in early earth’s mantle in Geochimica.

The major highlights of the year were the achievements of Dr. Byerly’s two sons who both earned their PhD’s this year. Zach completed his degree in Astrophysics at LSU and will continue researching hydrodynamic models of storm surges with the help of a new NSF grant while Ben finished his Geology degree at UT-Austin and will work on actinide geochemistry at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Gary ByerlyRichard and Betty Fenton Alumni Professor

Carol WicksFrank W. and Patricia Harrison Family Professor

MS student Caroline Broderick collecting samples in Hidden River Cave, Kentucky as part of her thesis research project.



Jeff HanorProfessor Emeritus

The 2013-14 academic year has been a good one for Jeff Hanor. Marielle Ausburn defended her MS thesis on “Controls on the composition of saline formation waters from coastal and offshore Louisiana”, and is now working at BP in Houston. Marielle and several other of my former graduate students, Callie Anderson, Elizabeth Chamberlain, and Colleen Wendeborn, all published papers based on their thesis and dissertation research in late 2013. Liz Chamberlain, who is now in the Ph.D. program

at Tulane, and Dr. Hanor organized a groundwater session at the GCAGS Meeting in New Orleans in October 2013. LSU was well represented at this session. He also gave the lead-off talk at the session on Sediment-Hosted Base Metal Deposits at the 2013 GSA Meeting in Denver. Some of the projects Dr. Hanor is currently working on include: salinity-driven free convection at the Bay Marchand field, offshore Louisiana, with Stephanie Bruno; the paleohydrology of the North Slope sedimentary sequence, Alaska with Anna Marie Bélanger; and the onset of salinization of the Murray Basin, Australia with Mark Person.

Following retirement at the end of May in 2010, Ray Ferrell embarked on an 18-month, privately funded “sabbatical” to continue clay mineral adventures with colleagues in Seville and Granada, Spain, Oslo, Norway, and Bari, Italy. He was fortunate to be able to work in some well-furnished, temperature-controlled XRD laboratories as the work was during the summer in Spain, and during the winter in Norway. Ray and one of his students, Andy Harrison, presented papers at the trilateral meeting of the North American, Spanish and Japanese Clay Mineral Societies that was held in Seville. At the conclusion of European travels, Ray and his wife, Sue, took a short trip to Alaska in order to say that they had managed to visit all 50 U.S. states before their 50th wedding anniversary in December of 2012. The following year was one of reflections and rededication following the death of Suzanne in March. The year closed on an upbeat as Ray travelled with former student, Vincent Adams, to Port of Spain, Trinidad to help celebrate the marriage of Rhonika Robinson, another LSU grad, to Sam Kaplan. The “wedding march” played on a steel drum is still ringing in his ears. An excursion to an asphalt lake and mud volcanoes provided unique geologic insights, but the non-wedding highlights of the trip were the post-ceremony days on the beaches of Tobago. Dr. Ferrell spent the freezing days of January-past in sunny Seville helping to celebrate the more than 40-year applied mineralogy career of his friend, Professor Emilio Galan. He and Dr. Ferrell recently published a review of the geologic origins of clay minerals. Back for a change of clothes and new PowerPoints, Ray embarked on a 6-week trip back to Oslo where he presented a shortcourse on the origins of clay minerals and modern approaches

to their XRD identification. New collaborations were also spawned with Oslo colleagues (Henning Dypvik, Per Aagaard and Jens Jahren)researching clay origins in hydrocarbon basins and impactites. Oslo also afforded the opportunity to get up-to-date with Vicki Iliff Singer. She is on assignment in Oslo for her long-time employer, Exxon-Mobil. Her husband, Paul, is a VP in geophysics with Statoil. A third research report on the clays of Egypt is in progress with Fayoum University Ph.D. candidate, Mohamed Agha and Emeritus Professor George Hart. It looks as though clay research will be an important part of Dr. Ferrell’s future retirement activities.

Ray FerrellProfessor Emeritus

The snow cover above Gardenos, Norway, makes it difficult to recognize the suevite

breccia occurring in the middle of the extraterrestrial impact crater

Professor Emilio Galan, Mariolena Fiore, Saverio Fiore, Patricia Aparicio, Ray Ferrell, and Javier Huertas at the celebration in honor

of Emilio’s accomplishment in areas of applied clay science. Professora Aparicio has been a guest professor in the clay laboratory.

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LSU Geology & Geophysics 2013-14 Alumni Magazine

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