News from Geology

Geology Students travel to the Caribbean island of Bonaire for January-Term 2020 to survey coral ecology along the modern marinescapes to compare to the fossil corals of the ancient marine terraces on land.

Sitting on the 1.6 billion-year-old bluffs of Devil’s Lake, in the Baraboo Range, Wisconsin during the Fall 2019 field trip.

Exploring the stratigraphy of an old quarry in Lake Macbride State Park, Iowa. Fall 2019.

Udden Geology Club, learning about economic geology at Allied Quarry, Rock Island. Fall 2019

2018 Geology Graduates

Left to right: Prof. Jenny Arkle, Dr. Kelsey Arkle, Sarah Oswald ’18, Allison Pease ‘18, Caitlin Lebel ’18, Mark Lundine ’18, Dr. Jeff Strasser, Jack Malone ’18, Dr. Mike Wolf

Second row: Joe Cross ’18, Joey Teresi ’18 

Not pictured: Evan Grassmann ’18, Ryan Maher ’18, Philip Tunnicliff ’18

Backpacking the Grand Canyon February 2018

Left to right: Caitlin Lebel ’18, Bets Hobart '19 , Allison Pease ‘18, Lauren Judge '19, Joey Teresi ’18 , Sierra Kindley '19, Mark Lundine ’18, Jack Malone ’18, Dr. Kelsey Arkle,  Jill Reale '19, David Hundrieser '19, Dr. Mike Wolf
 

Geology Majors Present Research at National Meeting March, 2017

Fourteen geology majors headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the Geological Society of America North Eastern/North Central Joint Meeting where students gave poster presentations of their senior and summer research.

2017 Spring Break Field Trip to Hawaii

Over spring break, Dr. Wolf led a field trip for 20 geology majors to the Big Island of Hawaii as the culmination of a 1-credit course taught during winter term. No need for PowerPoint presentations when the students can present their final course research papers on the formation of lava tubes...inside a lava tube! Crystallization of basaltic flows becomes crystal clear when you can smell, hear, see, and feel the process occurring in an active surface flow a foot away.

Junior Geology Major, Allison Pease Presents Research at the American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco, California.-

Allison was selected for a National Science Foundation Student Research program last summer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York. Working with professors at Columbia and the Cambridge Climate Institute, Allison calculated the sea level rate and acceleration budgets for the East Coast of North America. She headed to San Francisco this week to present her research at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The AGU Fall Meeting is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting more than 24,000 Earth and space scientists, educators, students, and other leaders.

2016 Augie Geology Seniors Conducting Original Scientific Research

All geology majors conduct original scientific research on topics of their own choosing for their Senior Inquiry Projects. Here, senior geology majors, Laura Behymer, Laura Ames and Kati Ponder work with geology lab technician Sallie Heine in the Lucken Geochemistry Laboratory. Laura, Kati and Laura use the Rigaku SuperMini x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, the Katanax fusion fluxer and the hydraulic pellet press to conduct compositional analyses of their water, soil and mineral samples on their projects involving ravine water quality, soil contamination from an abandoned steel facility and heat-treatment of tourmaline gemstones.

2016 Spring break in Death Valley, California

During spring break, Dr. Jeff Strasser and Dr. Michael Wolf and 19 geology students​ traveled to Death Valley, California as the culmination to a 1-credit course on the geology of the area. The students hiked for 6 days into the canyons, volcanic craters, sand dunes, and salt flats, and gave geologic research presentations of the features while on the outcrops.

Geology majors sweep poster presentation prizes

Four senior geology majors were awarded Best Undergraduate Student Poster Presentation at the North-Central Geological Society of America Annual Meeting held in Lincoln, Nebraska April 24-25, 2014.

Augie geology students competed with students from many Midwest colleges and universities.

• Diana Boudreau won first place for her research on "Osteohistology of Cryolophosaurus Ellioti: Tempo and Mode of Growth in a  Large-Bodied Polar Dinosaur."

• Matt Osman won first place from the Society for Sedimentary Geology for his research on Employing Passive Acoustics as a Temporally Precise Monologue for Constraining Ebullitive Methane Fluxes in Warming Subarctic Lakes 

• Brian Konecke won second place for his research on Solubility and Stability of Beryllium-Silicates in Haplogranitic Melts."

• Lauren Kirik won fourth place for her research on Characterizing Hydrothermal Fluid Flow of Post-Variscan Ore Deposits in Nebida, SW Sardinia."See photos of all of the senior majors in front of their posters at the meeting.

Fall in East Asia, August out west

In the fall of 2016, Dr. Michael Wolf and 12 geology majors (among 80 Augustana students total) headed to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China to study the geology of Japanese earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, Japanese art and literature, and ancient Chinese medicine on Augustana's Fall Term in East Asia.

In August 2016, incoming first-year students spent more than two weeks studying geology in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. They also earned three credits in the lab science course GEOL105: Introductory Physical Geology in the Rocky Mountains specifically offered every summer to all incoming Augustana first-year students only.

This rigorous course begins and ends on campus, but in between students get to hike the mountains and camp with friends.They were taught by Dr. Jeffrey Strasser and Dr. Michael Wolf, and learned about earth materials, structures, composition, and a variety of dynamic processes