Earth and Atmospheric Sciences - Central Michigan University · The CMU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences continues to thrive, offering our students a full range of degree

Earth andAtmospheric Sciences

AT CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITYNews for Alumni and Friends of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Central Michigan University, Fall 2017

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Greetings from Mount Pleasant! The CMU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences continues to thrive, offering our students a full range of degree opportunities in Geology, Meteorology, and Environmental Science. We are excited to share news of our faculty and student activities with you in this newsletter.

EAS had many exciting accomplishments over the past year. We successfully recruited a new faculty member in applied geophysics (Welcome Natalia Zakharova!). Two of our current faculty received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor (Congratulations Anthony Chappaz and Daria Kluver!).

The first cohort of majors in our new environmental science B.S. program completed their ini-tial year of coursework. We awarded more than $20,000 in scholarships and awards to our undergraduate students. The number of doctoral students advised by EAS faculty grew from three to five. And a Geology Alumni Advisory Board was convened for the first time.

The past year has brought poignant changes to EAS as well. Dr. Neil Mower announced that he is retiring at the end of December after 32 years at CMU (Congratulations Neil!). Sven Morgan left CMU to take a leadership position at Iowa State University (Good luck Sven!). As a result, we are now searching for new faculty members in the areas of boundary layer meteorology and structural geology.

As our faculty strive to develop strong and relevant research programs, we continue to emphasize exceptionally high classroom, laboratory, and field experiences for all of our students. Together with our students, we are advancing CMU’s strategic plan imperatives of Nurturing Student Success, Fostering Scholarly Activity, and Strengthening Partnerships in Michigan and Beyond.

On behalf of all the EAS students, faculty, and staff, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude for the essential support that alumni provide. Your contributions help support student field trips, internships, practicums, career counseling, undergraduate research, opportunities to create weather forecasts, and travel to attend professional meetings. We invite all Geology and Meteorology alumni to let us know what you’ve been up to and to stop by Brooks Hall for a visit if you return to the CMU campus. We look forward to staying connected with all of you.

Cheers!

Larry LemkeProfessor and Chair Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Letter from the Chair

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Bon Voyage!

Dr. Neil Mower joined Central Michigan University’s Department of Geography in 1985. He was responsible for establishing the meteorology program, and served as Chairperson of the department from 2003 to 2006. In 2011, he helped lead the creation of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Throughout his time at CMU, Neil cared deeply about the meteorology program, and worked tirelessly to acquire resources and new faculty to strengthen the program to its current nationally-recognized status. Neil has taught nearly every course in the MET program, and is best known for his exceptional instruction in Dynamic Meteorology and his dry sense of humor. At CMU, he investigated the influence of Lake Michigan on our local weather. Neil was also involved in projects as wide-ranging as testing aircraft anti-icing fluids and evaluating the influence of snowmobiles on air quality in Yellowstone National Park. Undergraduate students gained a great deal of experience from Neil’s mentorship in these research efforts.

In retirement, Neil is planning to spend time traveling with his wife Robin, who recently retired from Mt. Pleasant High School. They look forward to many trips to Neil’s native England and to California to visit their sons Doug and Tommy. Congratulations and thank you for your many years of dedication Neil!

Faculty Update: Anthony Chappaz

Examining pollutants at the molecular level: In collaboration with researchers from the University of Michigan and the Dow Chemical Company, Dr. Anthony Chappaz recently published an article characterizing for the first time in situ vanadium (V) speciation (i.e. molecular geochemistry) within contaminated sediments collected from a river reservoir.

Vanadium has three oxidation states (+III, +IV and +V) with the redox state +V being toxic for the aquatic biota. Using X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy techniques at Argonne National Laboratory, Dr. Chappaz demonstrated vanadium was mostly incorporated as V(+III) in these sediments, confirming the absence of risks for the environment and human health. This article was published in Science of the Total Environment.

Cody Converse • Senior • (right) • Dynamically downscaling weather models to evaluate hydroclimate differences at wetlands on and near Beaver Island.

3 Earth & Atmospheric SciencesFaculty Update: Dr. Daria Kluver

Over the last year Dr. Daria Kluver has continued her research focusing on variability of North American snowfall; seasonal-scale climatic influences of snowfall and precipitation; observational data collection, validation and analysis; and regional climate modeling to evaluate the distribution of precipitation event sizes.

Her most recent publication in the International Journal of Climatology documents the connection between Arctic ice cover and North American snowfall.

Two of her meteorology undergraduate students have been involved in research projects over the last year:

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Kayla Lemke • Junior • (below) • Establishing snow depth monitoring for the data-sparse area in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan.

Faculty Update: Megan Rohrssen

Last year was certainly exciting! I taught Dangerous Planet and Introduction to Earth Systems, both for the first time. I’m eternally grateful to Drs. Sven Morgan and Wendy Robertson, who covered part of my classes while I was on maternity leave.

This summer I mostly stayed around Mount Pleasant, catching up on papers and planning adventures for this fall and winter. Over the summer, I also converted my lab from a gorgeous, tidy, empty space into a disaster zone of boxes, glassware and equipment.

This spring the first batch of undergrads will begin toiling away on a range of projects: using iron-rich MI lakes as analogues for early Earth methane and iron cycling, reconstructing past carbon cycling in a MI wetland, and developing an organic geochemical record of eutrophication in a Beaver Island lake.

Cody Converse • Senior • (right) • Dynamically downscaling weather models to evaluate hydroclimate differences at wetlands on and near Beaver Island.

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Faculty Update: Dr. Nicole West

Needless to say the last year has been a whirlwind, but such is the case for new faculty! After getting my feet under me last academic year teaching, I spent the majority of last summer at the Cosmogenic Isotope Facility at University of Vermont, extracting 10Be from soil samples collected in the northern California. The concentrations of 10Be will tell us how quickly mountains are eroding in response to the regional uplift in that area.

This semester we have started running with our inaugural class of Environmental Science majors completing ENS 307: Environmental Sampling and Laboratory Analysis. Spending every week in the field and the laboratory, our students are getting valuable experience to take with them in their future careers!

We are building a similar fume hood to the one pictured to the right in my lab at CMU, where we will be able to extract cosmogenic radionuclides from soils and rocks for erosion rate and exposure age dating!

Faculty Update: Dr. Marty Baxter

Marty Baxter continues to teach the Synoptic Meteorology sequence, and offered a new course in Spring 2017 for first year students entitled “Weather Forecasting Practicum”. In this course, students prepare and present group weather discussions and forecasts. The students really enjoyed learning about weather patterns in real time!

Dr. Baxter is in the second year of work on his grant from the National Weather Service to investigate how new, highly detailed computer model forecasts might best be used to predict snowfall that occurs in narrow bands. He has been able to involve several undergraduate students in the project.

In Summer 2017, Dr. Baxter led an effort to include our surface weather station in Michigan State University’s Enviroweather network. Our data will help farmers in Isabella County to better monitor the local weather conditions that are of crucial importance for their operations. Becoming part of the network required upgrading our station to measure soil moisture, soil temperature, and leaf wetness. (see picture)

On a personal note, Dr. Baxter and his wife Kristin welcomed their first child in April 2017.

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New Faculty: Meet Natalia Zakharova

I am an applied geophysicist interested in energy resources, climate change solutions, and environmental protection.

My current research focuses on applications of borehole geophysics to studying human- induced earthquakes, and geologic carbon storage as a climate change solution.

I have experience with a variety of geophysical methods, from large-scale surface seismics to pore-scale petrophysics, marine and on-shore, applied to diverse problems in energy resources, geomechanics, hydrogeology and biogeochemistry.

At CMU, I’m establishing a petrophysics lab, and a computational lab for geophysical data processing, both of which will provide ample opportunities for student research.

Before joining CMU, I spent several years in New York City, where I received my Ph.D. , and then did postdoctoral research at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. I hold B.S. and M.S. degrees from Moscow State University in Russia (where I grew up).

In addition to academic work, I have participated in a number of internships and joint research projects with the oil and gas industry. I plan to continue doing applied research at CMU, and to be involved in local environmental and energy projects in the Michigan Basin. I am very excited to be a part of the EAS faculty, and to help strengthen and deepen the geophysical education and research in the classroom, lab, and field!

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Faculty Update: Dr. Mona Sirbescu

Being on research sabbatical since January 2017 has been quite a different experience for me. I am grateful for this rare opportunity to be extra creative, to learn new techniques, to investigate new topics with old and new collaborators, and to travel. The highlights were collaborating with researchers from the Smithsonian and the Natural History Museum of Norway to propose a new classification of pegmatites; from McGill University, Montreal, to explain fractal aspects of igneous textures; and from GFZ – Helmholtz Institute in Potsdam, Germany to address the origin of giant crystals in pegmatites. I also looked at solubility of iron minerals in NaCl-bearing fluids at the Argonne National Laboratory as part of a broader investigation on hydrothermal ore deposits.

The highlight of my summer was a conference with associated field trips to visit famous pegmatite localities in Norway, some of them above the Arctic Circle! Watching the mid-June sun trying to set at 1 AM (and not succeeding!) was one of the coolest experiences for me.

Writing scientific results right here at my desk, and publishing them in the best possible journals is far less exotic, but exciting, nevertheless. In Spring 2018, I’ll be back to teaching Petrology and a new Economic Geology course.

Many things have changed around here. It was sad to say goodbye to Sven Morgan who moved on to be a department Chair at Iowa State University. However, one lesson that Sven taught me, is that change is OK!

As our department is expanding (new colleagues, new programs, larger cohorts of students, etc.) and biologists have migrated in mass from Brooks to their new Bioscience Building, I was upgraded to a larger lab and office, in the former “microprobe lab” of Dave Matty, if any of you readers remember those times. Also, I am extremely pleased to work with Filipa Dias, a new Ph.D. student, who joined our EES program, with a Masters from University of Porto, Portugal.

I would like to thank all of you who kept in touch or stopped by! You are an ever-expanding group of graduates and it would be awesome to hear from all of you. Your career stories and accomplishments after CMU make us proud. Fire-Up Chips!

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Faculty Update: Dr. Larry Lemke

The past year kept me tremendously busy as I learned the ins and outs of being a department chair and worked to set up my research lab at CMU.

Four undergraduate students and a new doctoral student joined my research group this year. We are modeling groundwater contaminant transport and investigating heavy metal contamination in soils using pXRF.

My family and I also escaped to Isle Royale for a week of electronics-free backpacking on the Minong Ridge last summer – it was spectacular!

Faculty Update: Dr. John Allen

The past year has reflected advances on a number of fronts for my research and group, with articles published in Geophysical Research Letters on the contributions of the Gulf of Mexico to severe thunderstorm variability and on the return values for US extreme hail size in Monthly Weather Review along with a news and views piece in Nature Climate Change on the impacts of climate change on hail.

Conferences and presentations have been an important feature of the year, with presentations at the AMS Severe Local Storms Conference (Portland, Oregon), AMS Annual Meeting (Seattle, Washington), the 2nd European Hail Workshop (Bern, Switzerland), and the 9th European Conference on Severe Storms (Pula, Croatia).

These conferences were accompanied by invitations to participate in the National Severe Storms Laboratory Hazardous Weather Testbed (Norman, Oklahoma) during May, and participate and present at the European Severe Storms Laboratory Testbed as an expert forecaster (Wiener Neustadt, Austria).

During May, I spent two weeks in the field for the completion of the ‘Reap the Whirlwind’ project, supported by the National Geographic Expeditions Council, and while tornadoes proved elusive for much of the trip, we recorded several successful project intercepts, including the case of an EF0 tornado with measured 77 mph winds near Wolcott, Indiana on the final day of operations for the year (Picture). The data collected during this event will likely contribute to upcoming undergraduate research projects using techniques to estimate wind speeds without ground measurements.

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Faculty Update: Dr. Wendy Robertson

Thanks to Dr. Wendy Robertson’s organizational efforts, the Hydrogeology and Environmental Field Methods classes in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences had the opportuni-ty to go on a combined field trip to watershed protection area managed by the Ice Mountain bottling operation (Nestle Waters North America) near Evart, MI.

While there, the group learned about Nestle’s operations, performed a pump and recovery test at their main borehole, collected static water level measurements at a nearby perched wetland, and ran an ER (electrical resistivity) line across the perched wetland to image the confining layer beneath.

GEL 240/321 Field Trip Mapping Exercise

Sed/Strat and Petrology students put their mapping skills to work in a new exercise last spring. Using a basemap, a Brunton compass, and a generalized stratigraphic column, our students worked in teams to describe and map the Mississippian Tar Springs Sandstone, Vienna Limestone, and Waltersburg Formation in Pope County, Illinois.

Their goal was to create a geologic map showing the distribution of each formation in an area that was more covered than exposed! It turned out to be a challenging and rewarding exercise.

We thank F. Brett Denny from the Illinois Geological Survey for his help designing and running this exercise!

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Student Chapter of the American Meteorology Society

The CMU Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (SCAMS) has started off the 2017-2018 school year with a bang!

This group of meteorology majors and weather enthusiasts is already in the process of planning workshops, weather discussion presentations, National Weather Service office visits, guest speaker presentations, and more!

Additionally, SCAMS is already almost 20% of the way to meeting their fundraising goal for the entire year.

New Student Organization Prepares Students for Careers in Environmental Science

This fall, EAS students have started a new registered student organization aimed at preparing CMU Environmental Science majors for careers in the field.

The Community of Future Environmental Scientists, or CFES, assist our students with networking, internship opportunities, and professional development.

For more information on CFES or to post an internship opportunity, please contact:

Dr. Larry Lemke Dr. Wendy RobertsonInternship Coordinator CFES Faculty [email protected] [email protected]

American Institute of Professional Geologists Student Chapter

Since the establishment of the AIPG Student Chapter at Central Michigan University, this organization has allowed students to build bridges between the academic and professional world.

Our engaged members have been happy to participate in fundraising, outreach events, professional development, conferences, and advocating for geology.

This organization meets once a week and provides information to the members so they feel informed and at home in Brooks Hall.

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Meet the Fixed-Term Faculty in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences

Maria Mercedes Gonzalez (left)

I graduated with my Ph.D. from the Universidad nacional del Sur, Bahai Blanca, Argentina in 1997.

My research focuses on the genesis of hydrothermal ore deposits and the geothermobarometry of fluid inclusions.

Here at CMU I teach: Introduction to Earth Systems, Physical Geology, Physical Geology Lab, Earth Processes, Introduction to Mineralogy, Earth Materials, and Petrology of Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks.

Jack Hoehn (right)

I graduated with my Bachelors degree in geology from Oberlin College (2014) and am currently working towards my Ph.D. at University of Wisconsin - Madison, where my research focuses on the the rock record of “fossil” earthquakes.

Here at CMU, I’ve been teaching Introduction to Geologic Investigation and Structural Geology, as well as Earth Systems Science for Elementary Teachers. In all three classes, it’s exciting to teach how processes at massive scales in time and space shape the world around us.

Rachael Agardy (left) I earned by B.S. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Geological and Marine Science. I earned my Master’s in Oceanography from Texas A & M.

Here at CMU, I teach Introduction to Earth Systems, Oceanography, Stratigraphy and Sedimentology, and Intro to Petroleum Geology.

Clint Schmidt (right)

I graduated from the University of Utah with a M.S. in Atmospheric Sciencesin 2011. I have focused my career on education in the Earth sciences, teaching at a variety of institutions from community colleges to large state universities.

At CMU, I teach Our Changing Climate, Severe and Unusual Weather, Climatology and Climate Change, Physical Meteorology, and Dynamic Meteorology.

My research experience involves thermodynamic evolution of cirrus clouds through the use of finely resolved computer modeling. This research led to the proposal of a new mechanism for the formation of mammatus clouds.

College of Science and EngineeringDepartment of Earth and Atmospheric ScienceBrooks 314Central Michigan UniversityMount Pleasant, MI 48859

Nonprofit OrganizationU.S. PostagePAIDMount Pleasant, MI 48859Permit No. 93

Thank you to everybody who helped support the Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences this past year.

• Mr. Jamie D. Acord • Ms. Jane Alderson • Eric Branum ‘87 • Mr. Loren J. Curtis • ExxonMobil • Mrs. Susan E. Franklin • Ms. Kimberly Ann Hartmus • Ryan ‘03 and Vicki Krueger ‘99

CMU Geology and Meteorology Alumni – Where are you now? What are you doing?

We genuinely would like to know!

Please send a letter to the department or an email to our chair ([email protected]) and fill us in on your whereabouts, your career, and your achievements. Let us know if you would like to share your experiences during Alumni Career Day or if you are interested in serving on one of our Alumni Advisory Boards.

Thank you for helping us to keep in touch!

• Dr. Lawrence and Mrs. Wendy Lemke • Mr. Timothy Jason Locker • Ms. Erin Dorothy McDonough • Mr. Cory Christian Paliewicz • Ms. Melissa Nicole Purdy • Ms. Ashley Kathleen Saelens • Dr. Mona Sirbescu • MAJ Shawn E. Teagan ‘88

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