2022 Newsletter

Briefs

• Jackson School Again Ranks No. 1 in Geology
• Tracking Pressure in the Permian
• CO2 Has Little Influence on Tropical Forest Growth
• Researchers Link Coastal Glacier Retreat to Human-Caused Climate Change
• Delaware Basin Quakes Linked to Production
• Flash Droughts Getting Faster
• Martian Mirage
• Brutal Texas Drought Even Worse
• Exploring Shale Plays Online
• Mammoth Bones Rewrite Human History
• Predicting Earthquake Damage
• How the Gulf Dodged Mass Extinction
• Ice Sheet Holds Hidden Lake
• Cities Boost Storms
• Groundwater Could be Sustainable Resource in Africa
• Fossilized by Climate Change
• Undersea Glacier Robot
• Tectonic Mystery Solved
• Leaping Pterosaur
• Overlooked Channels Influence Flow and Flooding Along Gulf Coast
• Climate Change Coming After Your Marinara
• Channel Belts Hold Clues to Past
• Floods Shaped Mars’ Surface
• How an Alien Ocean Gets Oxygen
• Massive Pluton Directing Quakes
• Underwater Cables Get Retrofit for Geosciences Research
• HotRock to Take Geothermal Anywhere
• Hydrogen Research Advances
• Explaining the Andes

Profiles

• Sharon Mosher: Dean Emeritus
• Gail Christeson: Former UTIG Associate Director
• Mark Cloos: Professor Emeritus
• Craig Fulthorpe: Retired Senior Research Scientist
• Mark Helper: Distinguished Senior Lecturer Emeritus
• Richard Kyle: Professor Emeritus
• Clark Wilson: Professor Emeritus
• New Faces

Research Experiences

• Listening to Glaciers in Disenchantment Bay
• Ecological Response to the Early Jurassic Climate Crises
• GEO 383: Dynamic Stratigraphy Field Seminar
• Creating Virtual Field Sites of Moroccan Reefs
• Searching for Our Ocean’s Climate Past

Outreach

• Fossilization Board Game Hits Shelves
• NASA Turns Jackson School Scientist into Comic Book Character
• Tinker Gives TEDx Talk on Energy Transition
• Hollywood Dinos Bring Paleo to Life
• Gulick Brings Dino Doomsday to Comic Convention
• STEM Outreach Group Visits Jackson School
• GeoFORCE Retakes the Field
• Energy Switch Debuts on PBS
• Fossils Go Live
• Jackson School TikTok Team Shares Student Life

Academic Update

• Shanahan Leading EVS Degree Overhaul
• New Climate Science Degree

Summer Field Camps

• Field Camps

In the News

• Newsmakers

Awards & Honors

• Saffer and Scanlon Give 2022 AGU Named Lectures
• Duffy Awarded Robert Mitchum Award
• Tinker Honored with Parker Medal
• Snedden Wins Doris Malkin Curtis Medal
• Goudge Secures NASA Early Career Award
• Fomel Receives Honorary SEG Membership
• Bhattacharya Wins Karcher Award
• Lowery Earns Top Early-Career Scientist Award
• Gibbs Enters Hall of Distinction
• Kerans wins the Berg Award
• Awards List
• Student Research Symposium Awards

Alumni Notes

• Alumni Notes

Donors

Geology Foundation Advisory Council

Memorials

Dean's Welcome

Dear Alumni and Friends,

The Newsletter cover probably caught your attention — a photo of the famously red rocks of the Garden of the Gods National Natural Landmark in Colorado, taken with a digital camera modified to capture infrared light. The cover is a wonderful metaphor for the ever- expanding toolkit that geoscientists use to observe Earth materials and processes, from the planet’s core to its atmosphere, and to other worlds in our solar system and beyond.

Technological innovation supports new discoveries that, in turn, drive innovation in the virtuous cycle of scientific research. That research provides the knowledge we use to identify and develop the energy, mineral and water resources that enable a healthy economy and environment and which we can use to mitigate and build resilience to natural disasters and climate change impacts.

At the Jackson School of Geosciences, we strive to innovate and utilize new technologies to better comprehend the forces that shape our world and their spatial and temporal variability. New technologies, new methodologies and new process-based models are greatly enhancing our ability to understand and predict the behavior of Earth systems even as they are undergoing rapid change.

This year’s Newsletter is full of tremendous examples of technology enabling new ways of seeing, teaching and understanding Earth. Take a look at the efforts of Chris Zahm, Charlie Kerans and others to digitize inaccessible outcrops (page 44), or doctoral student Travis Stone’s efforts to create virtual field sites from his work in Morocco (page 72).

Our researchers and students are using computational tools and skills to gain insight on things previously hypothesized but never proved. For instance, geoscientists at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics used 20 years of seismic data and one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world at UT’s Texas Advanced Computing Center to define the shape of a mountain-size pluton buried miles under the coast of Japan and how it affects seismicity and other tectonic processes (page 22).

Follow the efforts of Bridget Scanlon to use years of satellite data to track water storage in Africa’s major aquifers and provide insights on sustainably managing the vital resource (page 14). And read how Ginny Catania is leading an upcoming mission to send a robotic submarine to get a first-time view and samples of the underwater face of Greenland’s glaciers and basal sediments (page 16).

I could go on and on!

At the Jackson School, we are dedicated to educating the geosciences leaders of the future, to prepare them to lead geosciences efforts that we can’t even conceive of at the moment. To accomplish that, we are doing critical scientific research and teaching that is unmatched in depth and breadth by any other geosciences institution. I am extremely proud of the work of our students, faculty, researchers and staff, and as you look through these pages, I know you will be too. The world needs geoscientists! Enjoy the Newsletter,

 

 

 

Claudia Mora, Dean