Scientific Field Trips

This trip has been canceled.

This trip has been canceled.

Trip Description
To support geoscience students and faculty with temporary or permanent disabilities, this fully inclusive field trip provides an accessible exploration of the karst region surrounding Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Trip leaders will place a strong emphasis on active learning and collaboration as participants consider their surroundings and use their observations to make inferences about the geologic processes which shaped, and continue to shape each location. This trip is offered to students with disabilities to build on their interest in the environment, and to promote the geosciences as a viable degree and career option. Additionally, this trip is open to geoscience faculty with disabilities, enabling them to remain actively engaged in their discipline and sharing their knowledge and experience with the next generation of geoscience practitioners. If space permits, geoscience faculty without disabilities will be invited to participate to learn accommodation strategies first-hand from the students. This field trip has three primary objectives: (1) to provide a fully-inclusive field-based learning experience for students and faculty with a variety of disabilities (orthopedic/mobility, deaf/hard-of-hearing, blind/low-vision, cognitive, and social-emotional); (2) to provide a unique training opportunity for geoscience faculty learning how to accommodate students with disabilities in geoscience field courses, and (3) to extend the network of people and resources developed from recent accessible field trips, courses and research projects. These objectives will drive the collaborative nature of this inclusive and accessible two-day field trip where participants will work with and learn from the diverse perspectives and experiences of everyone involved.

Primary Leader Email:

Dr. Chris Atchison received a Ph.D. in Geoscience Education from the Ohio State University and is currently is an Associate Professor of Geoscience Education at the University of Cincinnati. His research focuses on enhancing access and inclusion in the Earth sciences through experiential learning opportunities for students with sensory and orthopedic disabilities. He has led multiple accessible field-based learning experiences for students and faculty with physical, sensory, cognitive, and social-emotional disabilities, including a trip to the site at Mammoth Cave National Park in 2010. He is a Past-Chair of the GSA Geoscience Education Division and Executive Director of the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (IAGD). 2017 Co-Leader: 414: Accessible Field Geology of Western Washington, Seattle, WA; 2016 Co-Leader: 417: An Accessible Journey through Geologic Time in Central Colorado, Denver, CO; 2014 Co-Leader: 416: Full Access to the Geology of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, Vancouver, BC; 2010 Dissertation Study: http://www.theiagd.org/access-able-wright-state-university-students-experience-mammoth-cave-national-park/

Trip Description
The northern Indiana Till Plain serves as the backdrop for a diversity of Prehistoric and historic human-environment interactions. This trip travels east of Indianapolis through Anderson, Centerville, Fountain City, and Richmond, Indiana, as well as Dayton, Ohio, exploring several Prehistoric Mound Sites, the historic sites of Fort Harrison and the Levi Coffin House, and the natural history collections of the Joseph Moore Museum. Discussions will focus on the geohistory of the region, the central place of rivers and groundwater in human settlement, the history of Quaternary geological and archaeological investigation in this region, and the information that soils and artifacts provide concerning past environments, site formation and preservation, and past cultures.

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Cynthia is a local geology professor of nine years and often works closely with local affiliates to organize field trips for her courses. She has ongoing projects in the area and works with local museum collections. Education: AB Geoarchaeologyand German, Hamilton College; MA, Anthropology, Washington State University; AM and Ph.D., Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis. Professional experience: Earlham College, Dept. of Geology, Asst Prof (09-15); Assoc Prof (15-present); Geoarchaeologist & Archaeology Field Tech., Markman & Assoc., Inc. (2001 and 2004); Archaeology Field Tech. & Pedologist, Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program (2002). GSA member since 2001. GSA Service: JTPC member (13-17), AGD Chair (15-17), AGD Vice Chair (13-15), AGD PR chair & newsletter co-editor (11-13), AGD-sponsored topical session organizer and co-chair (09, 10,15). Publications: Catena, Quat. Res. Rsrch Int: Geoarchaeology, soils, geochemistry, hydrogeology, stable isotope chemistry, GIS, landscape evolution

Trip Description
This field trip will summarize the main known and unknown aspects of the impact geology at the Kentland impact structure, will emphasize the seminal work of Ray Gutschick, and will include coverage of results from recent research, including that on structural geology, stratigraphy, paleomagnetism, thermochronology, evidence of impact, age of impact, and shock metamorphism. The trip is intended to lead visitors through the spectacular, three-dimensional outcrops in the central uplift of the structure, exposed in the Newton County Stone (Kentland) Quarry, western Indiana.

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I have established a long-term working relationship with the quarry management and have active research on-going there. I have lead multiple trips to the Kentland impact structure, including one for a 2013 GSA North-Central Section Meeting. I have supervised multiple internally- & NASA-funded undergraduate research projects at Kentland. I have studied several additional meteorite impact structures. I have several publications on the Kentland structure: (1) Weber, J., 2013, Impact Geology, Central Uplift, Kentland Impact Structure, Newton County (Kentland) Quarry, Indiana (USA), Gillespie, R., Ed., GSA Fieldtrip guidebook for 2013 North-Central Sectional Meeting, Kalamazoo, MI. (2) Weber, J., *Poulos, C., Donelick, R., Pope, M., and Heller, N., 2005, The Kentland Impact Crater, Indiana (USA): An Apatite Fission-Track Age Determination Attempt, in, Koeberl, C., and Henkel, H. (Eds.), Impact Tectonics, Impact Series, Springer, 447-466. *GVSU undergraduate researcher. I know the Kentland geology (structure, stratigraphy) very well. I also know the specific and general literature well. I am a well-seasoned and highly effective teacher, field geologist, and structural geologist.

Trip Description
As the Saginaw, Erie, and Lake Michigan lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated from the Wabash Valley, they left behind a large variety of glacial, proglacial, and periglacial geomorphic features. Till plains, outwash plains, loess plains, tunnel valleys, kames, eskers, dunes, terraces, plunge pools, scour surfaces, mega-ripples and other features all occur in close proximity. This trip will explore some of these features in the vicinity of West Lafayette, Indiana, propose a chronology for their formation, and highlight how Late Pleistocene geology impacts soils and land use today. Particular emphasis will be on the Maumee Torrent, a glacial lake outburst flood that created a >1-km-wide channel with depositional and scour features in the Wabash Valley, and on patterned ground that occurs on both till plains and outwash plains in the area. The trip will be fully geoenabled, with each participant having a GPS-enabled iPad displaying detailed digital topographic and soil maps using the Soil Explorer iPad app. Many of these maps consist of a LIDAR-derived hillshade basemap with overlays of soil properties derived from detailed SSURGO soil survey data. These maps "light up" the often subtle surficial geology and geomorphology of the area in great detail and can be viewed at SoilExplorer.Net. The field trip stops will be easily accessible, but will likely involve some walking across fields of corn and soybean stubble that may be muddy. Mobility assistance with an ATV can be provided if need.

Primary Leader Email:

Darrell Schulze is a Professor of Soil Science in the Agronomy Department at Purdue University. He teaches two courses, a field-oriented, dual-level undergraduate-graduate Soils and Landscapes course, and a graduate Clay Mineralogy course. The Soils and Landscapes course features an innovative teaching-with-maps approach that has students using detailed soil maps on iPads in both the classroom and in the field to learn how and why soils vary at different scales and why it matters. Dr. Schulze leads the multi-state Integrating Spatial Educational Experiences (ISEE) Project that is expanding the teaching-with-maps approach to additional U.S. states, and he leads the development of the SoilExplorer.net website and Soil Explorer app available in the Apple App Store. His current research interests center around: (1) utilizing existing U.S. soils data to visualize soil landscapes in new ways to deliver soils information to new users, and (2) understanding how differences in soils and landscapes impact the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in West Africa, specifically Kenya and Uganda. He is a member of the Soil Science Society of America, the Clay Minerals Society (past president), the Geological Society of America, and the Indiana Association of Professional Soil Classifiers. Dr. Schulze has taught the Soils and Landscapes class each fall semester for much of his 35 years at Purdue University. The class features weekly, 3-hour field labs at various locations in Tippecanoe County, and two, all-day field trips, one north through the Wisconsin Age landscapes between West Lafayette and the southern tip of Lake Michigan, the other south as far as Bloomington, Indiana to observe soils and geomorphology in the Illinoian Till Plain and unglaciated regions. Participants in the all-day field trips often include visiting scholars and faculty colleagues, in addition to students taking the class for credit. He has also led or co-led field trips for the Clay Minerals Society, Central States Forest Soils Workshop, Indiana Master Naturalist Program, and other groups.

Trip Description
This trip will focus on the stratigraphy and chronology of glacial deposits near the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) in central Indiana. The stratigraphic record in this region includes evidence of multiple glaciations, displaying a diversity of ice-marginal processes and deposits, all within an hour of Indianapolis, Indiana. Our current research concentrates on improving the chronology of glacial events in this region by incorporating new age control from cores and previously described sections, using both radiocarbon and luminescence dating. The fieldtrip will examine two classic exposures, one containing multiple late Wisconsin (OIS2) tills, and one displaying the Sangamon Geosol with an overlying Wisconsin till. We will also stop at a newly studied section of pre-Wisconsin till and outwash, and at a glacial lake basin with multiple phases documented within a coring transect. Our new and updated chronology for ice margin events allows us to constrain ice sheet advances during the past two glaciations. We will present evidence and discuss results from several glacial geologic archives, including age and provenance of outwash aggradation beyond the limit of glaciation, age of tills from exposures inboard of the glacial limit, and archives of lacustrine sediment both inside and outside the glacial limit. Discussion will focus on what these data tell us about ice-marginal processes, ice sheet dynamics, paleoclimate, and landscape evolution over the last two glacial cycles.

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Henry Loope is a research geologist with the Indiana Geological and Water Survey and has conducted geologic mapping in central Indiana through the USGS STATEMAP and Great Lakes Geologic Mapping Coalition programs. His interests lie in glacial, eolian, fluvial and coastal geomorphology and paleoclimate of the midcontinent. Henry co-led the 2016 Midwest Friends of the Pleistocene field trip, which focused on the glacial geology of central Indiana.

This trip has been canceled.

Trip Description
This one-day trip will focus on karst landforms and hydrology of the subterranean network of the Spring Mill Lake and Lost River drainage systems in south-central Indiana. The Spring Mill Lake drainage basin is entirely within the Mitchell plateau physiographic region, and the Lost River drainage basin is within the western Mitchell plateau and eastern Crawford upland physiographic regions. The Mitchell plateau is a rolling plain dissected by a few entrenched major river systems and underlain by middle- Mississippian carbonates of the blue River and Sanders groups. The Crawford upland is characterized by hilly ridge and valley topography capped by late Mississippian resistant carbonate and siliciclastic rocks with some shale units. Some ridge tops are capped with early Pennsylvanian sandstones of the Mansfield Formation. Water quality of the Spring Mill Lake drainage system will be discussed at stops in Spring Mill State Park. The field trip will proceed southward into the surficial headwaters of Lost River and then downstream to view the upper end of the meandering dry-bed. Next we will visit two registered national natural landmarks, Wesley Chapel Gulf and Orangeville Rise. Wesley Chapel Gulf is a large, collapsed sinkhole approximately 1,000 feet long and 350 feet wide that includes a karst spring and numerous swallow holes within an 8-acre flood plain. The Orangeville Rise is the second or third largest spring in Indiana; the rise discharges from a subsurface drainage area adjacent to but north of the subterranean lost river drainage area.

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Lee J. Florea received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of South Florida in 2006. Lee is a licensed professional geologist in Indiana and Kentucky with two decades of professional experience in academic, government, and industry positions. His scholarly activities span the natural sciences as they pertain to the understanding of carbonate aquifers—groundwater that influences the drinking water of one out of every four people on Earth. Lee Florea is the Assistant Director of Research at the Indiana Geological and Water Survey. His current research focuses on carbon transport in the critical zone, and includes funded research programs in Indiana, Kentucky, Miami, Mount Rainier, and Romania. Lee Florea is the author of a number of publications related to karst morphology and hydrology. He has led field trips to the karst area developed on Mississippian carbonates in south-central Indiana.

Trip Description
Northern Kentucky hosts a variety of surficial deposits that directly record a series of alternating fluvial and glacial environments throughout the Pleistocene, and, more broadly, Quaternary climactic changes and the geological and biological responses. This one-day field trip will explore a variety of sites that bear on the Early Pleistocene Teays-Mahomet system, Pleistocene glacial margin environments and maximum advances of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and the historical significance of these deposits that served as the birthplace for modern paleontology. We will visit easily accessible locations of the Pliocene-Early Pleistocene Old Kentucky River, Pre-Illinoisan and Illinoisan drift, Wisconisinan outwash along the modern Ohio River, and lacustrine slackwater environments. Discussions at each location will focus on geological interpretations that incorporate results of recent surficial mapping, geomorphological analyses of the statewide LiDAR coverage, and new and published geochronology. We will also visit Big Bone Lick State Park and National Natural Landmark, the birthplace of modern paleontology. Most stops should be accessible with easy to moderate walking of up to 15 minutes, and standing discussions at the outcrop locations. Personal hands-on examination of outcrops may require standing on locally steep, uneven, unstable ground. One stop (20% of total stops) will be wheelchair accessible. Two rest stops will be incorporated into the field trip in the morning and on the return, providing an opportunity for restroom facilities, food, and/or drinks.

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Massey received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky and has been mapping bedrock and surficial deposits for over 15 years, using GIS for 15 years, and applying spatial analyses (including LiDAR) for 15 years. He has lead a number of field trips for the Carolina Geological Society and the New England Intercollegiate Field Conference. Massey is with the Kentucky Geological Survey and a member of the team that has recently mapped the surficial geology of northern Kentucky by using a combination of field techniques, geospatial analyses, compilation of available data, and acquisition of new geochronology. Massey is currently mapping the modern and ancient fluvial and slackwater deposits in northern Kentucky using luminescence and cosmogenic geochronology to constrain the timing of deposition.

Trip Description
The Indiana dunes is a term commonly used for the eastern part of the Calumet lacustrine plain, generally referring to the large dunes along the coast from Gary, Indiana, eastward to the Michigan state line. However, the calumet lacustrine plain also contains complex coastal landscapes associated with late Wisconsinan to Holocene phases of ancestral lake Michigan (e.g., mainland-attached beaches, barrier beaches, spits) including those formed during quasi-periodic decadal and shorter-term water-level variability that characterize modern lake Michigan (e.g., beach ridges, dunes, interdental wetlands). Heavy industrial development and other human activities have impacted the Calumet lacustrine plain, often altering these landscapes beyond recognition. Today, geoscientific and paleo-environmental data are sought to inform regional environmental restoration efforts and to increase the resiliency of the coastal landscape to ongoing disturbances. During this field trip, we will examine the relict shorelines and their associated nearshore and onshore features and deposits across the Indiana portion of the Calumet lacustrine plain. These features and deposits record the dynamic interaction between Lake Michigan's coastal processes, lake-level change, and long-term longshore sediment transport during the past 15,000 years. Participants will examine the modern beach, the extensive beach-ridge record of the toleston strandplain, a relict dune field, and the impressive dunes of the modern shoreline, including Mount Baldy. At Mount Baldy, we will focus on the landscape's response to human modification of the shoreline. We will also explore the science behind dune decomposition chimneys, collapse features that caused a 2013 accident and highlighted a previously unrecognized geologic hazard.

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This working group has been conducting collaborative research on lake-level variability and shoreline behavior in the upper Great Lakes for more than 10-years. Publications directly applicable to this trip include: Argyilan, E.P., Avis, P.G., Krekeler, M.P., Morris, C.C. 2015. The origin of collapse features appearing in a migrating parabolic dune along the southern coast of Lake Michigan. Aeolian Research 19:137-149. doi 10.1016/j.aeolia.2015.09.008 Argyilan, E.P., Lepper, K., Thompson, T.A. 2014. Analysis of intra-dune variability of optical ages yields a refined chronology of late Holocene coastal development along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Geological Society of America Special Papers 508, doi:10.1130/2014.2508(03). Argyilan, E.P., Forman, S.L., Thompson, T.A. 2010. Variability of Lake Michigan water level during the past 1000 years reconstructed through optical dating of a coastal strandplain. The Holocene 20(5): 723-731 This team of researchers has run a similar field trip for the Professional Geologists of Indiana and other professional student groups. I served as a co-leader for a North Central Section GSA field trip in 2016. Huysken, K., Argyilan, E.P., and Votaw, R. 2016, Project-based field trips to the Starved Rock Area for Geoscience Educators, Northern Illinois, North-Central Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America, April 20, Geological Science Field Trip Guidebook 2016, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois State Geological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Trip Description
Pinnacle reef tracts are geomorphic features of carbonate systems that originated in the early Silurian and display an episodic distribution into the Cenozoic. Detailed study of Silurian pinnacle reefs of the U.S. midcontinent and the island of Gotland, Sweden in the Baltic region demonstrate a number of similarities and repeated motifs; the most enigmatic is the coincidence of carbon-isotope excursions and reef pulses. This field trip will explore the stratigraphic context of Wenlock- and Ludlow- age pinnacle reefs and equivalent strata in northern Indiana and their relationship to carbon-isotope excursions, depositional sequences, and extinction events. We will visit a number of large quarry exposures and view new cores drilled in the area.

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Pat McLaughlin is a research scientist with the Indiana Geological and Water Survey (Indiana University) who specializes in sequence stratigraphic study of Paleozoic basins, with an emphasis on integrated chemostratigraphy.,Alyssa Bancroft is a research scientist with the Indiana Geological and Water Survey (Indiana University). She specializes in Paleozoic conodont biostratigraphy and chemostratigraphy, with an emphasis on evolutionary changes in conodont form and function. Pat has been working on the chronostratigraphy of Silurian rocks in northern Indiana for the past decade.,Alyssa has extensive knowledge of Silurian conodont biostratigraphy and chemostratigraphy and is co-leader of ongoing mapping of Silurian rocks in Indiana.

This trip has been canceled.

Trip Description
Take a look at geology from the underside with a trip into Buckner Cave. Buckner is a type example of a complex cave system with development through upper Mississippian limestone. Participants will need to be in good physical condition as the trip will be moderately strenuous and involve considerable crawling. Go to www.bucknercave.org for information on the cave.

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I started caving in 1983 and have spent a lifetime immersed in the subject in all areas of geology, hydrology, biospeleology, and cave exploration. My first cave trip was to Buckner Cave and have I logged over 1600 trips in this cave alone. I am now the property manager for the cave. As such, I am intimately familiar with the geology and history of the cave. I have extensive experience (>30 years and thousands of trips) leading trips and teaching about caves and caving. Additionally, I am the National Coordinator for the National Cave Rescue Commission and a lead instructor. I am the editor and contributing author of the Manual of U.S. Cave Rescue Techniques, 3rd ed. I have been an emergency medical technician since 1988. As such, safety is of utmost importance to me.

This trip has been canceled.

Trip Description
This field trip will be along the White River Trail in downtown Indianapolis and will look at blocks of the Salem Formation. The Salem Formation (also called the Indiana Limestone) is a mississippian limestone that is extensively quarried in monroe and lawrence counties in Indiana. The formation is a thick-bedded medium to coarse-grained crossbedded calcarenite that varies in color (tan, gray tan, and light gray), and is an internationally known dimension stone and facing stone. During the middle to late mississippian, Indiana was located in the tropical zone south of the equator. The region was covered with a shallow sea that was teeming with marine life. Carbonate material from foraminifera, bryozoans, mollusks, brachiopods, and crinoids were deposited on the seafloor and were lithified to into the limestone we see and use today. The fragmental nature of the larger fossils and the presence of well-developed cross-bedding indicates that the environment was shallow enough to be affected by wave action. According to the Indiana Geological and Water Survey (IGS), nearly 2.7 million cubic feet of Indiana limestone is currently quarried each year, which generates $26 million in annual revenue for the state. What makes the Salem Formation particularly desirable for dimension stone is that it exhibits no preferential direction of splitting. The limestone can be planed, sawed, turned on a lathe, or hand-worked into almost shape. Its historic and economic heritage are some of the reasons it is now the official state stone of Indiana.

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I have had experience developing, planning, and running geological field trips including ones for the Geological Society of America. Below are the professional field trips I have run, helped run, or planned. Dennison, J. M., Filer, J. K. and Rossbach, T. J. 2005. Devonian strata in the Route 250 Corridor in Virginia and West Virginia; p. 19-77 in Dennison, J. M. (ed.), Geologic Field Guide to Devonian Stratigraphy and Hydrocarbon Geology near U.S. Route 250 in West Virginia and Virginia. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Eastern Section Meeting, Morgantown, West Virginia, 179 p. Rossbach, T. J., and Brewton, A. D. 2005. Paleobiology of the Elkins Northwest section; p. 98-109 in Dennison, J. M. (ed.), Geologic Field Guide to Devonian Stratigraphy and Hydrocarbon Geology near U.S. Route 250 in West Virginia and Virginia. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Eastern Section Meeting, Morgantown, West Virginia, 179 p. Rossbach, T. J., and Hall, J. C. 1998. Late Devonian (Frasnian-Famennian) extinction event in the Catskill delta of Virginia and West Virginia. Guidebook, Southeastern Meeting of the Geological Society of America, March 29, Charleston, West Virginia, 35 p. Dennison, J. M., Filer, J. K., and Rossbach, T. J. 1996. Devonian strata of southeastern West Virginia and adjacent Virginia; p. 3-52 in Dennison, J. M. (ed.), Geologic Field Guide to Devonian Hydrocarbon Stratigraphy of Southeastern West Virginia and Adjacent Virginia, October 12-13, 1996. Sponsored by the Appalachian Geological Society for the 1996 Eastern Meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 160 p. Rossbach, T. J., and Dennison, J. M. 1994. Devonian strata of Catawba syncline near Salem, Virginia; p. 95-125 in Schultz, A., and Henika, B. (eds.) Field guides to southern Appalachian structure and engineering geology. Virginia Tech Department of Geological Sciences Guidebook Number 10, 283 p., for the meeting of the Southeastern Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America, Blacksburg, Virginia.. Carter, J. G., and Rossbach, T. J. 1992. Molluscan biostratigraphy of the River Bend Formation, New Bern and Belgrade, North Carolina; p. 139-143 in Carter, J. G., and Ward, L. W. (conveners), Cenozoic Molluscan Biostratigraphy of the North Carolina Coastal Plain, Field Trip 8. Southeastern Section, The Paleontological Society, March 17-18, 1992; in Dennison, J. M., and Stewart, K. G., Geologic Guides to North Carolina and Adjacent Areas. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Department of Geology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Geologic Guidebook No. 1, 233 p. This is an educational field trip (rather than a research-oriented one) designed to provide the opportunity to examine the lithology, sedimentary structures and paleontology of the State Stone of Indiana without the inconvenience of travelling to its natural outcrops and quarries in the south-central region of the state. I have taught historical geology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, and paleontology for over twenty years. Since starting at IUPUI, I have incorporated the geology of Indiana into my courses so I am very familiar with the geologic setting, lithology, and fossils of the Salem Limestone as well its economic importance to the state. As mentioned above, my extensive background in historical geology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, and paleontology has provide the requisite background to conduct this field trip. Even though my main research is in Devonian-age rocks, I ran departmental field trips at Elizabeth City State University for sixteen years that covered the Ordovician through Mississippian of the central Appalachian Basin. Through my geology classes at IUPUI, I have expanded this coverage into the mid-continent.

Trip Description
This walking trip examines local and imported stone used for a wide variety of monuments, museums, skyscrapers, and other structures in downtown Indianapolis. These include the Indiana State Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian Art, the Indiana Capitol, and an assortment of skyscrapers and other buildings. Special attention will be given to the spectacular use of stone used for the Indiana War Memorial, which is patterned after the tomb of Mausolus. Particular attention will be paid to the origin, composition, weathering, and in some cases replacement, of stone used for these varied structures built over a span of a century-and-a-half.

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Joe Hannibal has authored or co-authored a number of field guidebooks and guidebook chapters for cities in the eastern half of the United States, including three cities in Ohio and Evansville in Indiana. Joe has led or co-led a number of field trips examining stone and other geological features in cities as part of Geological Society of America meetings, most recently in Pittsburgh (2017) and Baltimore (2015).

Trip Description
This cross-disciplinary trip follows the path of the Maumee megaflood down the upper Wabash River Valley, from the outlet of Glacial Lake Maumee at Fort Wayne to the bedrock gorge and classic Silurian reef exposures in Huntington and Wabash Counties. Major themes include: the complex, polygenetic erosion surface developed on Silurian bedrock and its interaction with Pleistocene ice sheets and meltwater; the origins and histories of Silurian carbonates and unconsolidated sediments of strongly contrasting resistance to erosion; their differential responses to the Maumee megaflood and other convulsive meltwater outbursts; and how this affects ongoing Holocene landscape adjustment and the modern hydrogeology, ecology, and cultural history of the valley. For more than a century, the diverse geologic features of the upper Wabash Valley have attracted interest from a broad cross section of the geologic community, including geomorphologists and glacial geologists; sedimentologists, stratigraphers and paleontologists; as well as hydrogeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and geoscience educators. This trip aims to bring geoscientists together from all of these disciplines to explore the relationships among these different facets of geology in a premier geotourism destination. Stops include several famous geological and historical localities, and feature excellent examples of Silurian reef complexes and inter-reef lithofacies, including the spectacular pinnacle reefs of the upper Wabash Valley, late Tertiary karst and paleontology, bedrock valleys, glacial deposits, cross cutting terraces, lags of giant boulders, waterfalls, springs, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and other natural, historical, and environmental features that make the upper Wabash Valley one of Indiana's most intriguing landscapes.

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Tony Fleming is a Quaternary geologist who has worked in northern Indiana for more than a quarter century in both the public and private sectors. His fields of professional expertise include glacial geology, geomorphology, hydrogeology, and ecological geology. He is the author of numerous geologic maps and reports in the region, including the modern geologic and hydrogeologic maps of the greater Fort Wayne area, as well as management plans, natural resource inventories, and informal field guides for some of the nature preserves and other sites in the field trip area. Fleming has lead several previous excursions for geoscientists, ecologists, and others in the Wabash-Erie Channel, the upper Wabash Valley, and the greater Fort Wayne area. He continues to work professionally in all of these areas and is thoroughly familiar with the proposed field trip route and stops.

Trip Description
This two-day trip will provide an overview of superb upper Ordovician to middle Devonian sections in the vicinity of Louisville, Kentucky and Jeffersonville, Indiana. The trip will examine and discuss sequence stratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, sedimentary environments, and paleoecology of the richly fossiliferous, mixed clastic-carbonate successions. Stops will include outstanding new roadcuts south of Louisville, Kentucky (Upper Ordovician- mid Silurian), and quarries in southern Indiana (mid- Silurian- Middle Devonian). These rocks present a diverse suite of marine facies, from peritidal mudstones to offshore shoals, fossil biostromes, and deep subtidal shales. The trip will highlight a revised sequence stratigraphy for the upper Ordovician to mid Silurian, as well as newly recognized aspects of event and chemostratigraphy. Stops examined include "textbook" examples of sequence boundaries (including the famed Louisville paraconformity), flooding surfaces, phosphorites, and transgressive and shallowing-deepening trends. The stop at the falls of the Ohio state park in Clarksville features the world's largest exposed Devonian fossil bed, an extensive biostrome filled with corals and sponges, plus higher horizons with diverse communities of shallow marine organisms. The field trip will also take advantage of a newly renovated interpretive center. Broader themes developed during this trip include: approaches to paleonvironmental interpretation, the stratigraphic context of reefs and biostromes, proximal and distal comparisons of transgressive facies, and the local manifestation of global chemical and biotic events.

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Carl Brett is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Cincinnati, Chair of the North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature, and a research associate at the Ohio Geological Survey. Together with past and present students he has researched the strata and paleontology of the Cincinnati Arch region since 1998.,Pat McLaughlin is a research scientist with the Indiana Geological and Water Survey (Indiana University) and adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University. He specializes in sequence stratigraphic study of Paleozoic basins, with an emphasis on integrated chemostratigraphy. Over the past four decades Prof. Brett has run many hundreds of field trips for groups ranging from amateurs and students to professional stratigraphers and paleontologists in stratigraphic sections across eastern North America. ,Dr. McLaughlin has performed years of field work studying Ordovician and Silurian strata on and around the Cincinnati Arch (in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio).

Trip Description
The Salem limestone (Upper Valmeyeran, Mississippian- Meramecian equivalent) is a pre-eminent dimension limestone quarried for nearly 200 years in a three-county area of south-central Indiana. Advances in quarry technology in the past 30 years have produced smooth sawn quarry walls that show the exquisite depositional details of the Salem shoal. The Salem is part of a large-scale shoaling sequence that produced a carbonate platform during middle Mississippian time, beginning at the end of Borden group (Osagean equivalent) delta deposition and culminating with the deposition of the Ste. Genevieve limestone (upper Meramecian equivalent). The Salem was deposited as a high-energy subtidal shoal above wave base. Participants will see four environments that are recognizable within the shoal: active shoal, open lagoon, intrashoal channel, and intershoal channel. A shoal crest environment may also be present as a fifth environment. We will demonstrate a hierarchy of bounding surfaces that define distinct sedimentary packages using the sawed quarry exposures. First-order surfaces are foreset laminae and appear as inclined or horizontal stratification. Second-order surfaces are the contacts between like bedforms, and third-order surfaces truncate first- and second-order surfaces, representing breaks in sedimentation. Fourth-order surfaces, similar to third-order surfaces, represent change from a shoal to lagoonalsetting. Evidence of hard-ground development occurs along third-order surfaces, associated with encrusting bryozoans and holdfasts, corals, and stromatolites. Tracing surfaces on quarry walls is vital to reconstructing the internal architecture of the shoal and the processes operating within it. We will examine this shoal architecture by visiting several quarries and outcrops.

Primary Leader Email:

I have conducted dozens of field trips to the dimension stone quarries in south-central Indiana. I am a carbonate sedimentologist with 35 years of experience in the dimension stone district. I supervised three master's theses on the Salem Limestone, and worked with Todd Thompson to make new geologic maps of the area.

This trip has been canceled.

Trip Description
Typical Pennsylvanian coal-bearing facies of the Caseyville, Tradewater, and Mansfield Formations are exposed along the eastern margin of the Illinois Basin in western Kentucky and southwestern Indiana. This trip will examine (1) a lowstand to transgressive Caseyville sandstone paleovalley with a vertical transition to estuarine facies; (2) slumped coastal-estuarine facies with tidal rhythmites; (3) a variety of different coal beds in the Tradewater and Mansfield Formations, highlighting different coal facies; (4) coarsening- upward highstand regressive deposits; (5) and a variety of channel facies. Petrographic and palynological analyses of coals and shales will be shown from outcrops to illustrate how these can be used for depositional interpretation. Sedimentological and sequence stratigraphic interpretations of typical coal-bearing clastic facies will also be discussed.

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Cortland Eble and Stephen Greb each have more than 30 years experience in coal geology. Cortland Eble is last year’s recipient of GSA’s Cady award in coal geology. Both are past division chairs in the old Coal (now Energy) Division, and have led many field trips for sectional and regional GSA, AAPG, and other organizations. A selected list of recent references including the TSOP field trip guidebook to the area proposed follows. If more information is needed, Cortland has a short biography on the KGS website at www.uky.edu/KGS/staff/Cortland.pdf Pertinent recent publications: (1) previous field guide to this area: Greb, S.F., and Eble, C.F., 2005, Carboniferous geology on the eastern margin of the Illinois Basin–Paleovalleys, faulting, and the humble beginnings of the Coal Age: Field trip for the annual meeting of The Society of Organic Petrology (TSOP), Louisville, Kentucky, Sept. 14, 2005: 40 p. (2) Eble, C.F. and Greb, S.F., 2017. Geochemical, petrographic and palynologic characteristics of two late middle Pennsylvanian (Asturian) coal-to-shale sequences in the eastern Interior Basin, USA. International Journal of Coal Geology, in press. (3) Mastalerz, M., Eble, C., Ames, P. and Drobniak, A., 2017. Application of palynology and petrography in the correlation of the Pennsylvanian Brazil and Staunton Formation coals in the eastern part of the Illinois Basin. International Journal of Coal Geology, in press. (4) Eble, C.F., and Greb. S.F., 2016, Palynologic, petrographic, and geochemical composition of the Vancleve coal bed in its type area, Eastern Kentucky Coal Field, Central Appalachian Basin: International Journal of Coal Geology, v. 158, p. 1-12.

Trip Description
Go behind-the-scenes to discover collections, exhibits, and programming at three premier Indianapolis museums. In partnership with the Indiana State Museum, Indiana Historical Society, and Indianapolis Children's Museum, participants will explore Indiana's original natural history collections, tour an exhibit fabrication studio, visit a fossil preparatory lab, and discover the world's largest children's museum. Designed for museum professionals and educators, this field trip will provide a broad overview of public programming and exhibition development with a focus on active learning. Seasoned curators and educators will direct conversations on the elements needed to create engaging and successful collections-based programs.

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Polly Sturgeon is the Outreach Coordinator for the Indiana Geological and Water Survey. Polly is an experienced educator and interpreter. She regularly works with parks, museums, and non-traditional settings to educate the public about Indiana geology.

This trip has been canceled.

This trip has been canceled.

This trip has been canceled.