2019 GSA Northeastern Section

54th Annual Meeting

Holiday Inn Portland-By the Bay
17–19 March 2019 • Portland, Maine

TECHNICAL PROGRAM

INFORMATION FOR PRESENTERS

Oral Presentations

Most oral sessions have 20 minutes per presentation (17 minutes, presentation; 3 minutes, question and discussion). Presentations must be prepared using PowerPoint or PDF formats, using a 16:9 screen ratio. One laptop with Windows 7 (no Macs available) with PowerPoint 2010, one LCD projector, and one screen is provided for all oral sessions. In addition, each room is equipped with a lectern, microphone, wireless computer mouse and PowerPoint advancer, and a speaker timer.

The Speaker Ready Room (Somerset Room, upper level)

All oral session presenters must visit the Speaker Ready Room before their scheduled presentation to ensure their PowerPoint or PDF file is properly configured and operating and load it on one of the laptops. Failure to do so may result in presentations being omitted from sessions. Speaker Ready Room hours are as follows:

Sat. 16 March: 4–8:30 p.m.
Sun. 17 March: 7 a.m.–6 p.m.
Mon. 18 March: 7 a.m.–6 p.m.
Tue. 19 March: 7–10 a.m.

Each speaker must bring his or her PowerPoint or PDF presentation on a USB compatible flash drive (a.k.a. thumb drive or memory stick) or a CD-ROM disk to the Speaker Ready Room for checking and uploading to their session’s folder no later than the deadlines below:

For presentation on:
Sun. 17 March, AM: 8:30 p.m., Sat. 16 March
Sun. 17 March, PM: 10 a.m., Sun. 17 March
Mon. 18 March, AM: 5 p.m., Sun. 17 March
Mon. 18 March, PM: 10 a.m., Mon. 18 March
Tue. 19 March, AM: 5 p.m., Mon. 18 March

Session Chair Orientations

Each Session Chair is requested to attend a 15-minute “Session Chairs Orientation” held in the York Room the morning of the day on which your session is to take place. This meeting will include a review of session time management, AV procedures, and other information affecting the conduct of the day’s sessions.
Session chairs are asked to strictly adhere to the technical program schedule and to limit speakers to their allotted time. If a speaker does not appear for an assigned time slot, session chairs should call for a break or discussion period and begin the following presentation at its scheduled time.

A student volunteer is assigned to each oral session. Session chairs are asked to meet with the assigned student volunteer before the start of the session. The volunteers are there to help the sessions run smoothly and to contact the AV Coordinator in the event of technical problems.

Poster Presentations

All Poster Sessions are in the Casco Bay Exhibit Hall on the hotel’s lower level. Poster presenters have one 4’ x 8’ horizontal (landscape) poster display surface. Please check the program for specific times and topics. Numbers on these display surfaces correspond to the poster booth numbers listed in the Program. The poster boards accept push pins, and some pins are furnished for each poster.

Symposia

S1. Geology, Structure, Geochronology, and Tectonics in Southern New England: An Eclectic Session in Honor of Robert P. Wintsch.
Cosponsored by NETectonics.
Greg Walsh, U.S. Geological Survey; John Aleinikoff, U.S. Geological Survey; Ryan McAleer, U.S. Geological Survey.

This session honors Bob Wintsch for his numerous and varied contributions to our understanding of the complex geology of metamorphic and igneous rocks in terranes of southern New England. Presentations should reflect Bob’s work linking petrography, petrology, geochronology, and structural geology at sub-grain to orogen scales.

S2. Late Wisconsinan Deglaciation of Northern New England and Adjacent Canada: A Session to Honor the Career and Contributions of Woodrow (Woody) B. Thompson.
Brian K. Fowler, New Hampshire Geologic Resources Advisory Committee; P. Thompson Davis, Bentley University; Harold W. Borns, University of Maine.

This session will review the present status of deglaciation, paleoclimate, and related studies in Northern New England and adjacent Canada as it has evolved from, and as a result of, the contributions of Woody Thompson and his many associates during the past 45 years.

Theme Sessions

T1. The Formation and Evolution of Iceland: Magmatic, Tectonic, and Geomorphological Processes.
Brennan Jordan, University of South Dakota; Tamara Carley, Lafayette College; Tenley Banik, Illinois State University.

In this session, the Northeastern Section, for the first time, is looking toward the eastern margin of the North American Plate, and at Iceland in particular. This theme session is stand alone and separate from the July 2019 field trip to Iceland. However this session will provide invaluable learning opportunities for students and professionals interested in Iceland geology and especially for those who will attend the Iceland field trip. Contributions are encouraged on all aspects of the petrology, volcanology, tectonics, and geomorphology of Iceland and surrounding areas.

T2. Beyond Sustainability: The Anthropocene as a Paradigm for Thinking about Earth across Disciplines.
Co-sponsored by GSA Geology and Society Division, GSA Soils and Soil Processes Division.
Gary Gomby, Central Connecticut State University; W. John Kress, Smithsonian Institution.

The Anthropocene serves as an effective way to incorporate basic geoscience and Earth Systems concepts with relevant socioeconomic and ethical issues. In a globalized, interconnected world, the sound of a tree falling in the Amazon or Indonesian rainforest can indeed be heard--everywhere. This should be the message of geoscience education in the 21st century.
We seek a broad range of contributions to include presentations that will utilize the Anthropocene as a conceptual basis for scientific conversations, as a means of reframing education through a broader and integrated perspective, and as a focus for geoscientists in shaping public perception and understanding of human modification of the Earth System.

T3. Intertwining Earth Science Issues with the Nature of Science.
Patricia Millette, Mt. Blue High School; Daniel Frost, Thornton Academy.

This is an innovative even with hands-on opportunities for K–12 teachers of earth science. Presenters will provide participants with the opportunity to experience a variety of engaging and “wow-provoking” earth/space science activities that will help students gain an appreciation of how science actually works. These 30–40-minute mini-workshops will use hands-on participation and discussion. A laptop/tablet might prove useful.

T4. Best Practices in Geoscience Education.
Cosponsored by GSA Energy Geology Division, GSA Soils and Soil Processes Division.
Tarin Weiss, Westfield State University; Lori Weeden, University of Massachusetts–Lowell.

Geoscience education employs multiple pedagogies that support meaningful learning. As educators, our role goes beyond preparing future geoscientists, it includes promoting scientific literacy for all. The Next Generation Science Standards supports our efforts. In this session, colleagues share best NGSS-aligned practices in geoscience education that include, engage, and challenge diverse learners.

T5. New Perspectives on Mineral Resources of the Northeast.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division, GSA Energy Geology Division.
John F. Slack, U.S. Geological Survey (emeritus) and Memorial University of Newfoundland; Martin G. Yates, University of Maine.

This session seeks contributions on metallic and non-metallic mineral deposits of the Northeast and eastern Canada, with a focus on new geological, geochemical, and geochronological data that inform models for their origin. We also solicit contributions on the potential for undiscovered metallic resources, including deposit types previously unmined in the region.

T6. Groundwater and Surface Water Hydrology in the Northeastern United States.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division, GSA Geology and Society Division, GSA Hydrogeology Division.
Ryan P. Gordon, Maine Geological Survey.

Understanding hydrologic systems is critical for the continued health of natural and human communities, yet accurately characterizing groundwater and surface water systems is notoriously difficult. This broad session will explore challenges and successes in characterizing hydrologic systems to protect ecosystems, inform human activities, and improve comprehension of our water resources.

T7. Private Wells—Current Challenges and Opportunities.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division, GSA Geology and Society Division, GSA Hydrogeology Division.
Sille Larsen, Vermont Dept. of Health; Liz Royer, Vermont Rural Water Association; Paul Susca, New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services; Patti Casey, Vermont Agency of Agriculture; Joe Ayotte, U.S. Geological Survey.

This session will integrate new and evolving research, public engagement, policy, and regulatory efforts regarding the use of private wells for water supply and the associated public health concerns. The goal is to enable audience members to understand and address issues regarding the use and protection of private wells, including private well testing, data management, anthropogenic and geogenic contaminants, and other aspects of public health protection.

T8. Soils: Processes at the Bio-Geo Interface.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division , GSA Soils and Soil Processes Division.
Zsuzsanna Balogh-Brunstad, Hartwick College; Dawn Cardace, University of Rhode Island; Amanda Olsen, University of Maine.

In soils, both solids and solutions are incrementally transformed through biological and weathering activities, providing direct and indirect means of assessing reactions. These reactions control soil development, nutrient and water availability, and carbon storage and cycling. We seek submissions from all scales of laboratory, field, and modeling studies investigating soil processes.

T9. Building from the Top Down? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Connections between Paleopedology and Ichnology.
Cosponsored by GSA Soils and Soil Processes Division.
Jesse Thornburg, Temple University; Christopher Sparacio, University of Connecticut.

This session will examine modern and paleo influences on soil formation from continental and marginal marine organisms. Advances in the interpretation of ichnofossils has shown their importance in the role of modifying landscapes. Therefore, an understanding of these processes and associations is essential for interpretations made when using paleosols and ichnofossils.

T10. Regional Advances in Seafloor Mapping and Benthic Habitat Classification.
Matthew Nixon, Maine Coastal Zone Management Program; Dan Sampson, Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management.

This session will highlight some of the important work taking place in the Northeast to collect important bathymetric and benthic habitat data and to advance the region’s understanding of the North Atlantic seafloor and the important ecosystems it contains.

T11. Current Research in Coastal and Marine Processes.
Mark Borrelli, University of Massachusetts–Boston; Bryan A. Oakley, Eastern Connecticut State University.

Coastal environments are dynamic systems and studying them requires ever-increasing detail and rigor. This session welcomes all aspects of research related to coastal and marine processes from field, laboratory, or modelling studies as well as the acquisition and processing of spatial data.

T12. Floods: Past, Present, and Future.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division, GSA Geology and Society Division.
Brian Yellen, University of Massachusetts–Amherst; Jon Woodruff, University of Massachusetts–Amherst; Michael Toomey, U.S. Geological Survey; Tim Cook, Worcester State University.

This cross-disciplinary session will provide a wide breadth of presentations representative of current work being conducted in the geosciences related to floods. Timescales/processes of interest extend from event to millennial, and environments include both fluvial and coastal. Topics that address geological applications helping to alleviate/mitigate flood hazards are encouraged.

T13. River Corridor Processes and Related Decision Making.
Cosponsored by GSA Energy Geology Division, GSA Geology and Society Division, GSA Hydrogeology Division.
Sean Smith, University of Maine; Anne Lightbody, University of New Hampshire; Melissa E. Landon, University of Maine.

This session focuses on physical conditions and processes in Northeast river corridors that frame natural resource management and civil infrastructure decisions. Related topics include habitat conservation, recreation, dam operations and removal, water quality, water supply, energy production, and changes in climate and land use.

T14. Lake Sediments as Archives of Environmental Change.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division, GSA Geology and Society Division.
Kevin M. Spigel, Unity College.

Lake sediments contain a vast array of proxies for environmental change. This session welcomes lake sediment research covering timescales from historical to millennial, the use of traditional or novel methods, and single- or multi-proxy approaches from freshwater systems to better understand past or current environmental conditions.

T15. Reconstructing Past Climate from the Geologic Record of Ice Sheets and Mountain Glaciers.
Aaron Putnam, University of Maine; Brenda Hall, University of Maine; Thomas Lowell, University of Cincinnati.

This session encourages abstracts related to extracting climate signals from records of past glaciation, and would include (but not be limited to) geomorphological, stratigraphic, chronological, and model-based studies.

T16. Insights on the Ongoing Dynamics of Northeastern North America from Geology and Geophysics.
William Menke, Columbia University; Paul Karabinos, William College; Vadim Levin, Rutgers University; Michael Williams, University of Massachusetts–Amherst.

Eastern North America has experienced many cycles of tectonic and volcanic events, both in the past and ongoing. We encourage a cross-disciplinary synthesis that connects these events to lithospheric and asthenospheric processes, that distinguishes their superimposed signatures, and that provides a perspective of their importance to continental margins worldwide.

T17. Integrative and Innovative Appalachian Tectonics: Linking Novel Field and Laboratory Studies.
Adam Ianno, Juniata College; Allison Severson, Colorado School of Mines.

Resolving complex tectonics problems often needs a wide variety of field and laboratory approaches. We seek presentations that integrate both field and laboratory components in support of tectonics studies across the Appalachians, with particular emphasis on projects that include newly developed, revived, and obscure methods and techniques.

T18. Peri-Gondwanan Terranes and Their Origins: What Do We Really Know?
Cosponsored by NETectonics.
Yvette D. Kuiper, Colorado School of Mines; Margaret D. Thompson, Wellesley College; R. Damian Nance, Ohio University.

We welcome contributions on the origin of the peri-Gondwanan terranes. What is known based on existing stratigraphic, paleomagnetic, and structural data? U-Pb zircon geochronology, especially on detrital zircons? Major and trace element, and isotope geochemistry? What are uncertainties? What are the best identifiers? This session will include a discussion section.

T19. Detrital Mineral Constraints on Appalachian-Caledonide Tectonics.
Doug Reusch, University of Maine at Farmington; Dave West, Middlebury College; Justin Strauss, Dartmouth College; Dwight Bradley, U.S. Geological Survey.

Detrital mineral geochronological, thermochronological, and related studies are providing new constraints on maximum depositional ages, provenance, correlation of rock units, relationships among terranes, and exhumation throughout the greater Appalachian-Caledonian belt. These new data are consequently prompting exciting developments in understanding multiple aspects of the tectonic evolution of this classic orogenic system.

T20. Geology of the Grenville Orogeny and Adirondack Mountains.
Michelle Markley, Mount Holyoke College; Michael Williams, University of Massachusetts.

This session welcomes contributions on the geology of the Grenville Orogeny and Adirondack Mountains. We seek interdisciplinary and disciplinary research from the orogen- to mineral-scale in structural geology/tectonics, igneous and metamorphic petrology, sedimentology, economic geology, geochronology/thermochronology, geophysics, and modeling.

T21. Deciphering Tectonic Processes Using Metamorphic Petrology.
Wentao Cao, SUNY Fredonia; Jesse Walters, University of Maine.

Metamorphic rocks provide essential context in which petrological, geochemical, and microstructural phenomena may be related to the tectonic drivers of convergent margins. This session encourages contributions that examine the relationship between mechanisms, conditions, timing, and rates of metamorphic processes to their broader tectonic framework through field, laboratory, and computational approaches.

T22. Relating Rheology and Deformation in Earth’s Lithosphere and Cryosphere.
Scott Johnson, University of Maine; Chris Gerbi, University of Maine; Walter A. Sullivan, Colby College.

Rheological properties are key to the understanding of the dynamics and evolution of Earth’s lithosphere and cryosphere. Advances in understanding the rheology of Earth materials come from a wide range of approaches: deformation experiments, field observations, analytical studies, and modeling experiments, among others. This session seeks contributions that explain naturally occurring structures and microstructures in a rheological context. Contributions can relate to any level of the lithosphere or cryosphere and focus on, for example, structures and microstructures from active or exhumed seismogenic faults, causes of strain localization including the role of brittle failure in the viscous regime, empirical observations of competency contrasts, methods for quantifying material properties, or chemical and mechanical factors that influence rheological change.

T23. Simulation, Visualization, and Statistical Tools for Environmental Data Analysis.
Andrew Reeve, University of Maine.

Characterizing environmental data has become increasingly challenging as our ability to obtain large data sets has expanded. Internet resources, powerful data-logging sensors, and increasing computer power have all added complexity and provided new opportunities. The application of tools to collect, manipulate, manage and interpret environmental data will be discussed.

T24. Geoarchaeaology: Investigations and Techniques.
Cosponsored by GSA Continental Scientific Drilling Division, GSA Soils and Soil Processes Division.
Alice R. Kelley, University of Maine.

Geoarchaeology encompasses a wide range of geological settings and uses a variety of techniques. This session encourages oral and poster abstract submissions on applications of geoarchaeology, techniques used in the practice of geoarchaeology, or descriptions of archaeological sites where geology has contributed to an understanding of human/environment interactions.

T25. The Roles of Geochronology and Geochemistry of Granitoid Plutons in Deciphering Orogenic Events.
David Gibson, University of Maine–Farmington; and Sandra Barr, Acadia University.

Orogenic events produce extensive magmatic activity, and granitoid plutons emplaced during such events are significant contributors to the assembly of continental crust. This session aims to highlight recent developments using geochronology and geochemistry in elucidating the tectonic-magmatic history of orogenic belts in the Appalachian-Caledonide orogen. We welcome contributions from both sides of the Atlantic, especially those that include trans-orogen comparisons and correlations in time and space.

T26. Innovations in LA-ICP-MS in the Earth Sciences.
Alicia Cruz-Uribe, University of Maine.

Laser ablation (LA) ICP-MS has become a widespread tool for elemental and isotopic investigations in the Earth Sciences. Here we invite submissions related to all aspects of LA-ICP-MS, including, but not limited to, data collection and reduction, standardization, instrumentation, and applications. We particularly encourage students who have collected LA-ICP-MS data to showcase their work in what we hope will be a broad geochemical and geochronological session spanning a vast array of Earth processes.