Changes at the helm
Effective 1 October, Rob Raeside will be moving to the Dean of
Science
office, as acting dean until next summer. Dr. Stanley will move
into
his office, and promises to keep everything on an even keel over the
winter.
Through September the department has been
involved in long-range planning exercises, out of which has arisen a
plan to
merge the Geology Department and the Environmental Science program.
The merge will not be complete before July 2007, and should not
affect any
programs. It does provide an opportunity for closer cooperation
between the two units.
22 September 2006
New projects in Nova
Scotia vineyards and groundwater.
Ian Spooner and Cliff Stanley have recently received funding for
two new
student research projects under way in the Geology Department. A
contribution has been received from the Grape Growers Association of
Nova
Scotia (GGANS) to support the research of Rafael Cavalcanti de
Albuquerque
on the terroir of vineyards in southwestern Nova Scotia. Rafael, an
honours student in Environmental Geoscience, is bringing a
geological
perspective to the study of the growing condition of grapes in the
Annapolis
Valley and South Shore, where he is investigating the relationship
between
the parent materials of the soil and the soil conditions, in
particular its
cation exchange capacity. In another study, funding has been
received from
Department of the Environment and Labour to support the study by
Mary
Samolczyk, an honours student in Environmental Science, into the
distribution of uranium and arsenic in groundwaters in the Grand Pre
region.
Mary has also received grant funding jointly from ioGlobal and Acme
Analytical Laboratories, offered to 'budding' students of applied
geochemistry, in support of her honours thesis. Mary is being supervised
by Ian Spooner, Cliff Stanley and Scott Lister, a
graduate of the Acadia Environmental Science program, and now
working at the
Dept. of the Environment and Labour in Kentville as a
hydrogeologist.
18 August 2006
You've heard of SIFT? Announcing SIMEW.
For 30 years, Acadia students have been attending SIFT
(the
Student-Industry Field Trip), where every year one student from the
3rd or
4th year class is provided with an expenses-paid two week trip to
Calgary,
to learn as much as possible about the energy industry and the
geology of
western Canada, courtesy of the Canadian Society of Petroleum
Geologists
(CSPG). Participants always thrill to trip to the Drumheller
Badlands, where
dinosaur bones are seen right in the outcrop, or to the 4-day field
trip
through the Rockies and the subsequent fly-over to visualize the
structures
seen from the road. Add to that the Exploration Game and the visits
to the
head offices and labs of the oil and gas companies, and you have all
the
makings for an intense overview of a geologist's career.
In 2007, the Prospectors and Developers
Association of Canada (PDAC) are launching SIMEW - the
Student-Industry Mineral Exploration Workshop. This new and exciting
initiative will be held in Sudbury in May 2007, and will provide
participating students with an introduction to the mineral
exploration
industry. The workshop will introduce students to the mining cycle,
involving lectures, presentations and practicum on mineral deposits,
exploration techniques, geophysics, careers in geoscience, and
legal,
regulatory and environmental issues.
Stay in touch for more details on both SIFT and
SIMEW in the upcoming year. In the meantime, check out the PDAC's
web page
compilation of all geoscience scholarships across Canada at
www.pdac.ca (under section
"Students").
18 July 2006
Appointments made for courses in 2006-07 academic
year
We are pleased to announce two appointments that have been made
to teach
courses in the upcoming year. Dr. David
McMullin has been appointed to teach GEOL 3503 (Metamorphic
Geology),
parts of GEOL 1023 (Historical Geology), GEOL 1073 (Natural
Disasters) and
GEOL 2080 (Field Methods). While he has taught most of these
courses
in the past, the venture in metamorphic geology is new to him, and
will
allow him to teach in the area of his specialization. He has been
preparing
by working on a paper on the low grade metamorphism of the mafic
rocks of
southeastern Cape Breton Island - how may ways can you spell grotty
and
green?
Dr. Elisabeth Kosters has also been appointed to teach GEOL 2303
(Sedimentation and Stratigraphy) in the winter term. Dr. Kosters
taught this course two years ago, and we look forward to having her
return.
30 June 2006
Thesis Defence: Brent Lennox
On Tuesday, 20 June, Brent Lennox successfully defended his
thesis on "Post-Glacial
Climate Change and its Effect on the Thermal Structure and Habitat
of a
Shallow Dimictic Lage, Nova Scotia, Canada: A Chemographic and
Lithostratigraphic Investigation". Brent collected mud cores
from the bottom of Carcoran Lake, Lunenburg County, and measured the
carbon
and nitrogen isotopes, hydrogen index, and bulk density, and
correlated
these with the pollen preserved in the mud to determine the nature
of
climatic conditions since the last ice retreat. He discovered the
expected warming trend of the Hypsithermal, interrupted by the cool
events
of the Younger Dryas and the freshwater outburst of 8200 years ago.
Toward the top of the core he also was able to detect the climatic
signal of
the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, although recent
climate
warming appears to be masked by the acidification of the lake.
These
factors are useful for the management of brook trout, which need
cool,
oxygenated waters in which to survive summer.
Brent is a graduate of the University of Toronto. He is completing
his MSc degree under the supervision of Ian Spooner.
20 June 2006
Thesis Defence: Amanda
Blackmore
On Friday afternoon, 16 June, Amanda Blackmore successfully
defended
her thesis on "Groundwater Vulnerability to Potential
Contamination in the
Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia". In it she prepared a GIS-like
model
using DRASTIC, which incorporates Depth to water table, Recharge,
Aquifer media, Soil media, Topography, Impact
of
the vadose zone, and hydraulic Conductivity to assess the
vulnerability of an area should any contaminants be applied to it.
Having separated the surficial units and aquifers from those
associated with
the bedrock, Amanda demonstrated that the valley floor is the most
vulnerable area, in part because of its more permeable rocks and
surficial
deposits, and its lower topography.
Amanda is a graduate of the University of Guelph and the Centre of
Geographic Sciences (CoGS) in Lawrencetown, NS. She is completing a
joint MSc degree with CoGS and Acadia. Her thesis at Acadia was
completed
under the supervision of Ian Spooner (Acadia), Tim Webster (CoGS)
and
Christine Rivard (GSC-Quebec City).
16 June 2006
Webster appointed as new adjunct faculty member at Acadia
Tim
Webster, a research scientist with the Applied Geomatics Research Group, Middleton campus of CoGS (Centre of Geographic Sciences), was appointed as our newest adjunct professor. Tim is a graduate of Acadia where he did his MSc degree on "Remote sensing and geographic information system analysis of the St. Marys Basin and surrounding areas, central Nova Scotia" in 1996.
Subsequently he completed a PhD degree at Dalhousie University,
while
maintaining his position at CoGS. He is responsible for
implementing
applied geomatics research, specifically related to an
infrastructure grant
awarded to the Nova Scotia Community College by the Canadian
Foundation for
Innovation, involving the design of the data collection process,
negotiating contracts with data providers, writing the data
specifications,
and overseeing a field crew of eight people to collect ground
reference data
during the acquisition of airborne LIDAR and CASI imagery. The data
processing includes LIDAR cleaning and building Digital Elevation
Models in
a GIS environment as well as applications such as flood and erosion
modelling, CASI image validation and processing for chlorophyll-a
mapping as
well as applications in precision agriculture and forestry.
Tim has assisted in the supervision of theses at Acadia
in the past, including that of Amanda Blackmore, who will defend on
16 June.
We welcome him formally, although he has been part of Acadia
informally for
quite a while.
2 June 2006
Ian
Spooner part of
team on National Science Foundation Grant
Ian Spooner (Geology, Acadia University) is a co-applicant on a
National Science Foundation (NSF) grant
led by Ben Edwards (Dickinson
College, PA) and Ian Skilling (University of Pittsburg, PA) that
received $155,745 for a collaborative proposal to conduct
volcanology/
paleoclimatology research in Canada.
Spooner, along with Edwards, Skilling and other
researchers will travel to the Dease Lake area of northwestern
British
Columbia to examine deposits of volcanic rocks and sedimentary rocks
that
may have been formed more than 1 million years ago. Spooner has been
conducting research in the area since 1990 and his work will focus
on better
constraining the timing of ancient glaciations, data required to
better
understand past climate dynamics. The research team plans to spend
six
weeks per summer for the next two summers conducting research.
1 June 2006
Geology
Department hosts visiting
scientists from UK and Ireland
For the past 6 years, visiting scientists from Britain and Ireland
under the
supervision of Brian Williams
(University of Aberdeen) have been
investigating the geology of the Triassic rocks of the Fundy Group.
This summer post-doc Sophie Leleu (University of Aberdeen) and a
team of
four others from Manchester and University College Dublin are
examining the
Wolfville Formation with a view to understanding reservoir
characterisation,
correlations to Morocco and Ireland, and using Pb isotopes to trace
the
source of the sandstone.
31 May 2006
Heather Wolczanski wins Jérôme Remick
III Award
The Jérôme Remick Award is given for the three best posters at the
GAC-MAC
meeting each year. This year Heather Wolczanski (BSc Hons, 2006) won
the
third place award ($800) for her poster on 'Petrology and regional
tectonic
implications of The Wolves Islands, offshore southwestern New
Brunswick', the
subject of her honours thesis research. Heather was supervised by
Sandra
Barr, and this is the second year running one of her students won a
Jerome
Remick Award - Cameron Bartsch also won it in 2005 in Halifax.
21 May 2006
Geology alumni event in Calgary
Twenty graduates turned out to the first Geology alumni event in
Calgary,
held during the CSPG convention on 16 May. Capably organized by Gwen
Nowosad, Acadia's woman in Calgary, a most enjoyable evening was held
where
alumni could renew their connections with Acadia and with each other.
Rob
Raeside, Peir Pufahl and Dean of Science, George Iwama, ventured west
into the
fray and gave a short presentation on Acadia today - lots of
reminiscences about
student days, field trips and field schools, and details of how the
program is
changing to reflect current needs in industry and skills of faculty.
Peir showed
us his plans for a Bermuda field course, to which industry delegates
could be
admitted.
In preparing for the trip, we discovered that 12% of
our graduates since 1970 now reside in Alberta:
Thanks to all those who showed up - we hope to be back in the
future!
17 May 2006
Fourteen students graduate at Spring
Convocation
Acadia sent 14 graduates out into the world at the spring
convocation on 15
May. Recipient of a M.Sc. degree was Lori Cook, while BSc (Honours)
graduates
were Ryan Toole and Heather Wolczanski. David Lowe, who graduated with a
B.Sc. degree last year converted his degree to Honours. B.Sc. graduates
were Tim Crowell, Adrian Davis, Janice DeMont, Jennifer Gignac, Josh
Goss,
Robert MacLean, Rory MacLean, Lauren MacLeod, Jill Payton, Rosalie
Schop, and
Ben Stormont.
15 May 2006
Geology
students receive awards for
research work and conference travel
Three Geology students were recipients of awards for thesis work and
conference
travel. Aaron Satkoski and Gabe Nelson, both MSc students, were awarded
prestigious research grants valued at $2,000 (US) from the Geological
Society of
America to support their research projects. Aaron's thesis project,
supervised
by Dr. Sandra Barr, is an investigation of the chemical and samarium and
neodymium isotopic compositions of Precambrian and Cambrian sedimentary
rocks in
the Caledonia Highlands of southern New Brunswick. The reviewers of his
grant
application judged his project to be "novel and innovative" and
concluded that
the research to be conducted is "convincingly significant". Gabe's
thesis
project, supervised by Dr. Peir Pufahl, is a study of the environmental
constraints on the deposition of phosphorite rocks in the Precambrian of
northern Michigan. The primary role of the GSA research grants program
is to
provide partial support of master's and doctoral thesis research in the
geological sciences for graduate students at universities in the United
States,
Canada, Mexico and Central America. In 2005, 45% of the applicants
received
funding with the average award being $1533.
Heather Wolczanski, honours graduate in Geology this
year, also received an award from the Mineralogical Association of
Canada to
assist her to travel to Montreal where she will present the findings of
her
thesis on "The Wolves - a missing link in New Brunswick Geology" at the
annual
meeting of the Geological and Mineralogical Associations. This award is
made to
only 6 students attending the national conference.
11 May 2006