Welcome

From the Meeting Chair

Set in the middle of the great Midwest, Indianapolis is the site of GSAʼs 130th Annual Meeting & Exposition. Known as the “Crossroads of America” and the home of the Indy 500, Indianapolis is a vibrant city that welcomes you with Hoosier hospitality and will surprise you with its diversity, multi-culturalism, and cosmopolitan ambiance. GSA staff and the local organizing committee are planning an exciting week packed with 26 pre- and post-meeting field trip offerings, 29 short courses, and a wide variety of technical sessions. Also, local universities, museums, and institutions will enhance the meeting with displays and activities for all attendees.

If you want to sample Indy’s cultural offerings, there are many to choose from. Take a stroll downtown through the White River State Park and ride in a gondola down the Central Canal. Along the canal, visit the Indiana State Museum and its geological collections. The adjacent Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art houses one of the finest collections of Native American contemporary art. Elsewhere in town, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum is the largest of its kind in the nation and is home to a world-class dinosaur exhibit and vertebrate paleontology lab. You can explore the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and auto racing in the Hall of Fame Museum at the “Greatest Race Course in the World,” and then refresh yourselves at the diverse dining and brewery options across the city.

Indianapolis, situated near the margin of Pleistocene glaciation, is a prime venue for exploring the geology of the Midwest. Repeated glacial cycles have left fantastic exposures of Quaternary sediments from classic glacial moraines and eskers to relict shorelines and dunes along the Great Lakes. Underlying these sediments, and exposed south of the city, are Paleozoic strata in a sequence of escarpments and plateaus that are home to classic outcrops and fossil locations, scenic waterfalls and deep gorges, and world-class karst landscapes and caves. Further southwest in the Illinois Basin are economically important coal seams and oil fields that have fueled the nation. And along the banks of the Wabash River in southwestern Indiana, a utopian town from the 1800s, named New Harmony, was the birthplace of geological exploration in the United States, giving rise to the Owen brothers, who served as state geologists in Indiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas, and whose geologic mapping and exploration was the underpinning of American geology for almost 200 years.

We look forward to welcoming you to Indianapolis this November!

Todd Thompson
GSA 2018 General Chair
Director and State Geologist, Indiana Geological & Water Survey

From the Technical Program Chairs …

You’re Invited to Savor Some Hoosier Hospitality!

The 2018 GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition is returning to the Midwest in Indianapolis after a superb meeting in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle. Indianapolis provides a great location to host a geoscience meeting with a vibrant downtown and an outstanding convention center. The vast majority of the hotels are within easy walking distance to the Indiana Convention Center, with most connected to the center via skywalks. Additionally, the Indiana State Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum, and Children’s Museum of Indianapolis are nearby, as are many excellent cafés, bistros, and restaurants. An added bonus on Saturday is the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon (also half-marathon and 5K), so if you are a runner this is an additional opportunity to enjoy the city.

The scientific meeting will be highlighted by 184 Technical Sessions and four Pardee Keynote Symposia and a comprehensive list of discipline sessions. The Technical Program Committee, GSA staff, and Division and Associated Society representatives have put together a program that will be of interest to everybody. The Technical Sessions highlight all aspects of earth sciences from geoarchaeology to volcanology with a touch of Midwest and Hoosier flair, with numerous sessions on paleontology, geomorphology, karst, hydrogeology, and sedimentology. The highlight of the meeting will be the Pardee Keynote Symposia on a variety of impressive topics:

1. Earth as a Big Data puzzle, which will have a similar format as the Speed Dating Pardee Symposium in Seattle with lightning talks and then booths demonstrating the various techniques in advancing data information;
2. Women rising: Removing barriers and achieving parity in the geosciences;
3. Plate tectonics 50 years after the seminal work of Morgan, McKenzie, and Le Pichon; and
4. Human evolution and environmental history of Africa: 25 years of transformative research.

In addition, there will be lunchtime speakers on a variety of topics in the Feed Your Brain, Presidential Address, and Halbouty Lecture series.

Of course the GSA Annual Meeting is not all about the scientific sessions. There will be 26 one- to three-day field trips highlighting the geology of Indiana and the surrounding regions, including the investigation of sedimentary sequences, geomorphology, industrial minerals, karst systems, environmental aspects, and geologic history of the region. There will also be one- and two-day short courses on a variety of topics, including geoscience education, geochemistry, structural geology, energy, and geophysics. So, this year make a trip to Indianapolis to enjoy the Hoosier hospitality and discover the latest geoscience news. We look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis.

Kevin Mickus
2018 Technical Program Chair

Amy Brock-Hon
2018 Technical Program Vice-Chair

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