Pages authored by Sara Clifford:

1. Staff spotlights / Agnieszka Drobniak
   August 2022 In 1999, Polish student Agnieszka Drobniak was working on a doctoral dissertation in Krakow and coming up short on resources. “I was struggling with finances. I was struggling with accessing publications – because you have to remember, back then, having a computer was not a given thing,” she remembered.
2. Staff spotlights / Henry Gray
   March 2022 If he hadn’t become a geologist, Henry Gray would have been an archaeologist. He enjoys unearthing layers of history, always has, since he was a kid poring over encyclopedias and building a museum in his grandma’s attic.
3. Staff spotlights / Matt Johnson
   January 2022 Cartographer Matt Johnson has spent his career showing people the way to go, but as a college student 20-some years ago, he, too, wandered a bit. He started as a computer science major, but dropped that for recreation management because he didn’t want to sit at a computer his whole life.
4. Staff spotlights / Richard L. "Dick" Powell
   May 2023 Richard L. “Dick” Powell, a geologist and avid caver who was associated with the Indiana Geological and Water Survey for 70 years, passed away April 23, 2023, in Bloomington at the age of 87. His celebration of life service was April 29.
5. Research projects / Center for Biomass Energy Research and Education
   March 2022 An international consortium, the Centre for Biomass Energy Research and Education, has been established at the University of Silesia in Poland, and IGWS scientists Agnieszka Drobniak and Maria Mastalerz are the founding members.
6. Research projects / Chemical core analysis
   December 2022 Editor’s note: The E-Geo News has been walking readers through the various steps required to turn physical data such as core samples into a functional geologic map. This is the third installment in this series; core collection was covered in September and core describing in November.
7. Research projects / Discoveries at a drill site
   September 2022 .force-float-right{float:right;} Swatting back sweat bees near the only shade around – an open truck cap – geologist Don Tripp sprays down a box of fresh core samples. Moments ago, these cylinders of bedrock were pulled from the ground and into the sun for the first time in millions of years.
8. Research projects / Field notes: Springs sampling
   April 2023 Rounding a bend in a deep, otherwise dry creek bed, Tracy Branam called back, “It looks like we’ve found something, here, Sam!” We’d been half-bushwhacking through the woods, following an ancient GPS unit and dubious verbal directions from a landowner, for more than 45 minutes, looking for a spring none of us had ever visited before.
9. Research projects / Gathering data from core
   November 2022 .force-float-right{float:right;} Editor’s note: In the September E-Geo News, we described the process of core being pulled out of the ground near Tell City to collect data for the STATEMAP program. Over the next few months, IGWS staff will explain the various steps required to turn that data into a functional geologic map.
10. Research projects / IGWS awarded CO2 sequestration study grant
    Three Indiana University agencies will collaborate under a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study the feasibility of using subsurface Indiana rock formations for carbon capture and storage (CCS).
11. Research projects / Indiana Dunes rescue prompted hazard discovery
    An incident 10 years ago this month prompted geological researchers to expose a hazard that nearly claimed the life of a 6-year-old boy. On July 12, 2013, the boy, from Illinois, was racing his father and two other people up Mount Baldy at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (now a national park).
12. Research projects / Indiana Springs Portal launches
    April 2023 More than 100 years ago, locals and tourists were flocking to resorts, hotels, and sanitariums across Indiana to “take the waters” from springs or artesian wells which were rumored or advertised to be medicinal. But what was actually in those waters? In 1901, geologist William S. Blatchley sought to find out.
13. Research projects / Indiana Water Balance Network climate stations
    February 2022 When staff at the Daviess County Highway Department or leaders at Cedar Crest Intermediate School want to know how weather is likely to affect their plans, they don’t have to rely on forecasts from counties-away weather predictors. They can check the data coming straight from their yards.
14. Research projects / Mining old data for new purposes
    May 2023 Editor’s note: The E-Geo News has been walking readers through the various steps required to turn physical data such as core samples into a functional geological map.
15. Research projects / New equipment added to labs
    August 2022 What could studying fossilized shark teeth from Florida tell us about water quality in rural Indiana?
16. Research projects / OSL lab
    December 2021 In a dark, quiet pod sealed off from the rest of the third-floor lab, IGWS research scientist Jose Luis Antinao grasps a steel disc, smaller than a dime, with tweezers. Suspended inside each disc—40 of them per tray—are a half-dozen grains of sand which may not have seen the light of day in thousands of years.
17. Research projects / Rare earth elements
    January 2022 If you’ve ever driven U.S. 41 between Rockville and Evansville, you’ve passed more than a dozen active or historic coal mine sites. Coal has been mined in 19 Indiana counties in the Illinois Basin since the early 1800s, and as of 2019, Indiana was still the eighth-largest producer of coal among all states.
18. Research projects / Southern Indiana fault discoveries
    April 2022 In the course of doing their normal work—drilling cores, studying outcrops, and looking for patterns in rock layers—two IGWS geologists believe they’ve found a fault and a fault extension in southern Indiana that haven’t been mapped before. Don Tripp and Sarah Burgess were drilling south of the Mt.
19. Research projects / Springs mapping and testing
    November 2021 To those unfamiliar with hydrology and geology, “spring water” is often assumed to be infinite and pure—maybe even healthier than water you can get from the tap. But is that image supported by data?
20. Research projects / Why do we map?
    That may seem like a silly question, but it’s a fundamental one when IGWS staff members describe their jobs to non-geologists, be they friends or potential funders.
21. Information Services projects / Core to map: Accessible data
    Editor’s note: The E-Geo News has been walking readers through the various steps required to turn physical data such as core samples into a functional geological map.
22. Information Services projects / Explore IGWS Digital Collections
    October 2022 As a statewide research institution that’s existed for 185 years, the Indiana Geological and Water Survey has amassed literal tons of data.
23. Information Services projects / Learning Lab creation
    May 2022 Looking at photos of the first floor of the IGWS building from two years ago and now, you’d never know they were taken at the same place. Gone are the ’60s industrial green walls and fluorescent lighting over rows of dusty filing cabinets.
24. Information Services projects / New website launching
    November 2023 A new Indiana Geological and Water Survey website, designed with public outreach and education in mind, will go live Tuesday, Nov. 7. The URL will be the same as the previous site: igws.indiana.edu. An IGWS staff committee has been meeting for more than a year to talk through content and navigation for the new site.
25. Information Services projects / Open access publications
    February 2022 In just the past two years, the IGWS has received more than 200 requests for publications which were not freely accessible to everyone who wanted to view them.
26. Announcements / 2023 Potter Interns chosen
    Funneling water-monitoring well data into a geodatabase. Researching formations suitable for CO2 sequestration. Creating a digital storytelling exhibit about fossils. Analyzing coal ash samples for rare earth elements.
27. Announcements / Celebrating The Nation's Building Stone
    June 2022 From the steps of settlers’ cabins to the steeple of the National Cathedral, Indiana-quarried limestone is known nationwide as both a “workhorse of building stones” and a symbol of permanency.
28. Announcements / Core library in storage
    October 2022 Public access to the IGWS core and chipset library closed Sept. 30 so that staff and contractors can prepare to move the collections to a temporary storage facility north of Bloomington.
29. Announcements / Explore with the Association for Women Geoscientists
    September 2022 .force-float-right{float:right;} When IU geology professor Andrea Stevens Goddard went on an extended fieldtrip to Mongolia last month, she had to plan for a need that the rest of the all-male team did not: How she was going to feed her infant.
30. Announcements / First Potter Interns chosen
    August 2022 Two are 2022 college graduates exploring career options. One is wrapping up a master’s degree in geology. Another is a medical-track undergraduate whose family and friends asked, “What are you doing?” when she applied for and received an internship at a geological survey.
31. Announcements / IGWS Advisory Committee seated
    December 2022 A new IGWS Advisory Committee is meeting quarterly in Bloomington and virtually. The makeup and duties of this committee were defined in SB 278/Public Law 108, which went into effect in July.
32. Announcements / New Harmony fieldtrip
    November 2022 “Welcome home,” Bill Elliott told us as we stood outside the Rapp-Owen Granary building on the campus of Historic New Harmony. More than 160 years ago, this three-story, stone-and-wood barn was the center of the universe for geologic study—not only for Indiana, but also for the nation.
33. Announcements / The (nearly) forgotten fossils in our backyard
    December 2022 If you’ve ever walked past the back of the Geology Building, diagonal to Luddy Hall, you might have noticed a rock garden at the corner of Cottage Grove and Forrest Avenues. Perhaps “garden” is too generous a word.