The Indiana Springs data portal displays a variety of data points collected over several years about more than 100 known springs in Indiana. | IGWS photo

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. In the 26th Annual Report of the Indiana Department of Geology and Natural Resources (a predecessor to the IGWS), Blatchley published a 165-page report on the chemical composition of 53 Indiana springs.

A new feature posted on the IGWS website makes the most comprehensive data on Indiana springs available to the public since that 1901 report. The Indiana Springs portal contains chemical analyses, photos, and other information about 110 springs around the state—and invites participation from Hoosiers who might have data to add.

If you know of—or suspect—a spring near you, the IGWS is interested in learning about it. Visit the Indiana Springs landing page at https://igws.indiana.edu/springs, click the link to the dashboard and scan the QR code with your phone, and follow the “report a spring” prompts.

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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. Finally, we’d found flowing water and traced it back to its source: a deep, bluish pool at the base of a limestone wall.

IGWS retiree-turned-volunteer Sam Frushour splashed across the creek, picked his way along the edge of the rock face, and knelt to collect a sample as close as possible to where the water emanated from the ground. Had he hauled in his gear, he would have gone deeper. Frushour, 79, is still an avid cave diver. But he wasn’t doing that over this terrain.

While Frushour dunked the dipper, Branam deployed a wired sonde near the center of the blue pool. A handheld device recorded readings on pH, temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and oxidation reduction potential.

“What we’re trying to do is get (data on) as many perennial (springs as we can) that are actually being used for something,” Branam explained.

“A lot of times, people just use the water and don’t care what’s going on with it,” Frushour said.

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Have you ever dreamed about molding mountains with a few swipes of your hand, creating rainstorms with a wiggle of your fingers, or making lava erupt seemingly out of nowhere?

You can do all of that at the IGWS Learning Lab’s new augmented reality (AR) sandbox. It uses a Microsoft Kinect 3D camera, a data projector, and Linux-based software to project an elevation color map and topographic contours onto the sand surface that adjust in real time as the sand is moved and reshaped. The Augmented Reality Sandbox program was developed by the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences with support from the National Science Foundation to teach the basics of topography, watersheds, and natural hazards through 3D visualization apps.

Young visitors mold volcanoes and shorelines in the AR sandbox at the IGWS Learning Lab. | Kristen Wilkins, IGWS

The IGWS was one of the first adopters of the AR sandbox in Indiana, but it was used for mobile programs before the Learning Lab was built and “didn’t travel very well,” said Polly Sturgeon, IGWS education and outreach coordinator. This sandbox setup came to the Learning Lab through a partnership with the IU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (DEAS), which had bought it a few years ago but didn’t have a good home for it.

"The Learning Lab is an excellent location for the AR sandbox and allows public visitors, as well as DEAS students, to explore topography concepts in an interactive, dynamic way,” Sturgeon said.

As advertised in a several-months-long notice on maps.indiana.edu, 111 layers from the IGWS’s IndianaMap site have been migrated to the new IndianaMap site, operated by the Indiana Geographic Information Office.

Those layers are no longer available at maps.indiana.edu, but can be seen at https://www.indianamap.org. Affected layers, including their old URLs and new URLs, are listed here.

This is part of a multi-phase transition which was first announced in May 2022.

A new digital assistant is helping to capture unusually sized or fragile IGWS records before they go into safe storage.

Before the Bookeye arrived and was moved into the fifth-floor photography studio in February, the IGWS’s scanning capability was constrained to the size of an 11-by-16-inch flatbed document scanner or the feed scanner. Larger documents needed to be photographed instead and then digitally pasted together.

Digitization Imaging Specialist Kristen Wilkins has since been using the Bookeye to scan unwieldy, fragile, three-dimensional and/or dirty objects—like lithologic strips, vintage field maps, and geologists’ field notebooks—that are in the IGWS physical collections but are not yet in the digital collections. The machine can cradle a book’s spine while it scans, then correct for page skew. It also can auto-erase the image of fingers holding a document on the edges. With rough, dusty lithologic strips—which contain grains from several types of rock layers pasted onto cardstock—the surface being scanned never needs to touch and potentially scratch the glass of the scanner.

Wilkins had used an older Bookeye when she worked at IU’s Lilly Library, a repository for rare manuscripts and special collections, and suggested that the IGWS also adopt this technology. Funding from the IU Office of the Vice Provost for Research made the purchase possible.

Wilkins has boxes and drawers full of items to pass through the Bookeye—including some bound Survey annual reports from the 1800s—before the physical copies are refiled and cataloged in the IGWS’s in-progress Records Center and the scanned images are digitally archived. Some will go into IU’s scholarly data archive, and some will go into the IGWS Digital Collections portal so that they can be discovered by more potential users. “There’s lots of goodies that hide around here,” Wilkins said.

• IGWS Research Scientist Victoria Leffel was elected Earth Science Section Vice Chair for 2023-24 at the Indiana Academy of Science meeting in March.

• Vamsee Naramsetty will be working with Ginger Davis and the IGWS Water Team until May, when he will graduate with his master’s degree in computer science from IU. Naramsetty has been working for several months as an hourly programmer with the Indiana Water Balance Network (IWBN) on a project which will send alerts to Davis if any of the IWBN data collection stations show abnormalities.

• IGWS Research Affiliate Chris Kohler was quoted in a March 9 Indianapolis Star story about hazardous waste from the recent Ohio train derailment being shipped to a landfill in western Indiana.

• IGWS Research Scientists Tracy Branam and Victoria Leffel spoke at the Indiana Academy of Science meeting March 18 in Indianapolis. Education and Outreach Coordinator Polly Sturgeon also hosted an information booth (see photo at right).

• IGWS Research Scientist Ginger Davis is among the speakers scheduled to appear at a Purdue-hosted virtual conference on April 14 tiled “Water Withdrawals, Transfers, Sustainable Use and Policy in Indiana.” Davis’s topic is “Potential impacts of large withdrawals on groundwater: What we need to know.” View the agenda and register at this link.

• Davis will speak about source water protection efforts at the annual conference of the Indiana Section of the American Water Works Association next week.

• Davis is also scheduled to give a virtual presentation on “Karst and Sinkhole Conservation Areas” to a Monroe County stormwater group on April 18.

• Two Monroe County schools took field trips to the IGWS Learning Lab the first week of April: Edgewood Primary first-graders and Bloomington South high-schoolers. The Learning Lab can accommodate groups of up to 60 visitors. Please email igwsinfo@indiana.edu for information and scheduling.

• IGWS Research Affiliate Dr. Peter Jacobs was the featured speaker at the Indiana Geologists meeting in March. Jacobs, a professor in the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater Geography/Geology/Environmental Science Department, spoke about “The Quaternary Stratigraphy and Geomorphic History of the Flatwoods Region of Owen and Monroe Counties, Indiana.” Jacobs was the lead author of a recent paper on this subject, published in Vol. 5 of the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences.

• IGWS Research Scientist Dr. Maria Mastalerz was a coauthor on a paper published in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin: “Petrophysical property variations in over-mature Marcellus Shale: Implications for gas storage and producibility.”

• Mastalerz gave a 45-minute presentation to The Society for Organic Petrology in March about her research career. “It was funny, it was emotional, and it was inspiring. People loved it!” said longtime collaborator and co-worker Dr. Agnieszka Drobniak. The program was recorded and posted on YouTube at this link.

• New exhibits have been installed in the IGWS lobby and vestibule. The lobby topic is “Meet the Megafauna,” focusing on Ice Age mammals that lived in North America. The vestibule display, “Identifying Minerals,” was written and developed by local high school senior Adele Novak (pictured below). The displays, on the first floor of the IU Geology Building, can be toured anytime the building is open, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays.

High school student-curator Adele Novak poses with her exhibit currently on display in the IGWS vestibule. | IGWS photo

The Indiana Geological and Water Survey, a longstanding institute of Indiana University, conducts research; surveys the state; collects and preserves geologic specimens and data; and disseminates information to contribute to the mitigation of geologic hazards and the wise stewardship of the energy, mineral, and water resources of Indiana.

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• To ask a question of IGWS staff or suggest an E-Geo News topic, email scliffo@iu.edu.