One new map and two new data sets have been published to Vol. 5 of the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences:

Quaternary Geology of the Washington-Jasper Area

The Quaternary geologic map of the Washington-Jasper area, in southwestern Indiana, shows the distribution of glacial and postglacial deposits at the surface, mostly appearing in the western two-thirds of the area, along with basic bedrock geology. In addition to the map document, a composite spatial data set that conforms to the standardized database schema known as GeMS (Geologic Map Schema) is also available for download. This project was funded by a USGS STATEMAP award.

Access the map and data here.

Bedrock Geologic Database of the Vincennes 30- x 60-minute Quadrangle, Indiana, Geologic Map Schema (GeMS) Level 3

This project, funded by a USGS STATEMAP award, assembled a GeMS-compliant database for the Vincennes 1:100,000-scale quadrangle from several data sources, including new stratigraphic picks in Indiana’s NCRDS (National Coal Record Database System), the IGWS PDMS (Petroleum Database Management System), and data from past STATEMAP work in the surrounding areas. This data, along with information from a series of Esri-based Indiana Coal Atlas StoryMaps published between 2016 and 2018, were used to create the new geologic contacts and polygons for the area.

Access the data here.

COMING SOON to IJES:

• "Geologic Map of the Bedford 30- x 60-minute Quadrangle, Indiana" (map, database, and map pamphlet) by Tripp and others

• "Gallium and Germanium in Pennsylvanian Coals, Shales, and Paleosols in Indiana" by Mastalerz and Roden

• "Silurian Diploporitans as Substrata: Paleoecological Observations and Patterns of Encrustation by Eucalyptocrinites (Crinoidea) in Southeastern Indiana" by Thomka and others

Buff, gray, variegated—it can be challenging enough to try to control for color variations of natural stone in a building project without adding green, too.

When a local quarry began noticing a pale, green-yellow stain appearing on the surface of cut Salem Limestone, the operators reached out to the Indiana Geological and Water Survey to try to understand why. It’s an investigation that started in June and was still going on last week, as Research Scientist Tracy Branam and Volunteer Affiliate Sam Frushour sawed through slabs to see just how deep the color changes went.

“Just when you think you might have it figured out, other questions pop up,” Branam said.

Mill employees noticed a pale-green tint developing on dimension stone that had been cut from a new “bench,” or lower layer of limestone. It didn’t appear, though, until it had been cut and moved to the yard to cure in the sun and rain, anywhere from a few weeks to several months.

Over time, the mill staff noticed that green stains would turn white and could be washed off. Not all cut stone, though, has the luxury of curing time. For a few buyers, the stain appeared after the stone had already been placed on a building because the piece was needed as soon as it was quarried.

"It starts to get fluorescent, and customers don’t really like that,” the mill foreman told researchers.

In June, Branam received six, 7-inch-square, 2-inch-thick limestone slabs from the mill and tried to reproduce the green-staining phenomenon. Three slabs were sealed with a liquid latex coating on their sides to prevent evaporation; the other three were not. Two control slabs—one with sealed sides, one without—were placed on a deck where they could be exposed to natural weather conditions. The other four slabs were placed under a fume hood in the IGWS Water Lab over reservoirs of purified water set on hotplates. Two contained sponges to force evaporation through the top face of the slab; two did not.

None of those scenarios produced the green stain, but the slabs in the lab that were subjected to water moving through their pores over heat did change to a darker color. Testing on those slabs showed that sulfur in the rock moves to a surface and stays there after the water in the pores evaporates. Samples of green-stained limestone taken from the quarry also showed highly elevated levels of sulfur under pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence) analysis.

If it is a surface issue, Branam is wondering if, in theory, the stain can be sanded off. But they won’t know how deep any color changes go until they do more tests on the newly cut slabs, likely in January. Those tests will be limited to the equipment the IGWS has on hand rather than what researchers would like to try.

“We’ll have to do as much as we can with what little resources we have,” Branam said. “And we were able to find enough stuff out that we know what it is, and we have a pretty good idea of how it forms. It's just a matter of how to take care of it.”

Critical minerals—earth materials critical to national security and economic prosperity—are the focus of the 2024 IGWS calendar.

If you have not received a delivery of the annual poster-sized calendar in the past and would like a print copy, a limited supply will be available for in-person purchase at the IGWS office starting in mid-December. The calendar also will be offered as a free digital download from the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 6, starting Jan. 2, 2024.

Editor's note: To evaluate the state’s water resources, researchers need to understand how water is gained and lost through all its forms. The IGWS’s Indiana Water Balance (IWBN)—a network of monitoring equipment throughout the state—continually assesses multiple parameters of the water cycle. Here, IGWS Research Scientist Ginger Davis explains the equipment present at many or all of the stations and what it’s designed to do.

The movement of water in its liquid form to its vapor form into the atmosphere is hard to directly measure. You cannot capture it in a glass or measure the flow with a radar gun.

When water in a liquid form is lost from open bodies of water—such as lakes and reservoirs, wetlands, bare soil, or snow cover—into a vapor in the air, we call that evaporation.

The movement of water from the soil through living plants’ surfaces, such as leaves, into the air is called transpiration.

Evapotranspiration is the sum of all processes by which water moves from the land surface to the atmosphere in either the form of evaporation or transpiration.

Potential evapotranspiration (PET) is often said to be the most difficult water balance component to directly measure. Yet, it is the most significant component of the hydrologic budget beyond precipitation. Because these two components are difficult to measure directly, we combine them and calculate their values over time and in different landscapes.

Indiana Water Balance Network stations are placed in areas with differing landscapes and vegetation types in an attempt to calculate this elusive component of the water balance. Follow the link below to read about the components we measure and why they are important to determining how water is moving in the Hoosier state.

Read more...

In an interview interrupted multiple times by fits of giggles, the IGWS’s Polly Sturgeon answered questions from four local kids last week about geology, mineralogy, fossils, and why kids should care about any of it.

The four third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders visited the Learning Lab to record an episode of their podcast, Hoosier Kids. Ben Swanson, the recording engineer/dad of two of them, estimated that this new episode would be released “wherever you get your podcasts” sometime in January.

The show’s tagline is, “a podcast for kids who want to learn about Indiana.” Other visits and interviews have included the Indianapolis Zoo, the Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center, the Lilly Library, and other IU labs. This is the podcast’s third season, with episodes coming out more or less once a month.

Hoosier Kids started as a “pandemic project,” said Scott Shackelford, the other dad in the room, who’s an IU professor. The idea came about after a meeting with Jeff Zaleski, former vice provost for research, about broader impacts, and it was mentioned that “we don’t have anything to translate research happening at IU for kids, and that was the original idea: let’s start by interviewing IU researchers and then let’s do other things around Indiana as well.”

Visiting the Learning Lab was a perfect fit, because translating research for kids is what the Learning Lab does, too. Interviewers Ellen Swanson, Samantha Shackelford, Virgil Swanson, and Avery Shackelford had plenty of questions for Sturgeon about a geologist’s work, how crystals and geodes form, how to find and identify fossils, and whether it’s true that Indiana used to be under water. (It is.)

As for “Why should kids care about what you do?” Sturgeon answered: “I think it is a good thing to question the word around you, and for me, geology helps answer a lot of those questions. I think, even if you don’t end up becoming a geologist when you’re older, it’s really important to be curious.”

• Dr. Bei Liu has rejoined the Survey as a full-time research scientist. Liu was a post-doctoral fellow during the 2020-’21 academic year, working with IGWS Research Scientist Dr. Maria Mastalerz and IU Professor Dr. Juergen Schieber. He was as a professor at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan before moving his young family back to Bloomington in October. Liu’s areas of expertise include organic petrology, shale oil and gas, and coal geology. He's currently working on IGWS projects to explore the oil and gas potential of the New Albany Shale; examine Pennsylvanian and Devonian black shales for critical minerals; and study the pore structure and porosity of potential reservoirs and caprocks in Indiana to contain captured carbon. Liu holds a bachelor’s degree in materials chemistry and a master’s degree in mineral resources prospecting and exploration, both from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, and a Ph.D. in geological sciences from IU Bloomington. He and his wife, also a geoscientist, are happy to be back in Bloomington, a place they love for its people and work environment.

• Connor Miller moved from part-time to full-time with the IGWS effective Nov. 7. A December 2022 graduate of the IU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Miller has worked in facility maintenance and in the Learning Lab, and since summer 2023 as a research assistant with the IGWS Center for Water. He will continue to work with Indiana Water Balance Network stations around the state and plans to become more involved in hydrogeology research projects.

• GIS Analyst Dana Bissey resigned effective Nov. 17 to work for an international nonprofit.

• WORK WITH US: The IGWS is accepting resumes from GIS analysts. To apply or to learn more, visit https://igws.indiana.edu/employment.

• Research Scientist Ashley Douds was invited to record an on-camera interview as a carbon sequestration expert last month. (See photo below.) Video of her answers to three basic questions about the technology will be posted to the Associated Press website for use by AP-member journalists.

• Bloomington High School North senior Peter Donovan is working with IGWS research scientists Don Tripp and Valerie Beckham-Feller this school year to explore a possible career in the natural sciences. Six to nine hours each week, the team has been collecting seismic data to determine depth to bedrock and visiting outcrops to identify rock formations—information that will help build a bedrock map of the Bloomington Quadrangle in the near future. Peter plans to study geological, hydrological, or atmospheric sciences in college “and then figure out what I want to do from there.”

• Douds and IGWS Director Dr. Todd Thompson gave presentations at the 36th Annual Surface Mined Land Reclamation Technology Transfer Seminar in Jasper on Dec. 5. Their talks were titled “Carbon Sequestration in Indiana” and “Proposed Continuing Education Rules for Licensed Professional Geologists,” respectively.

• Research Scientist Victoria Leffel gave a talk at GIS Day on Nov. 15 about the Indiana Landslide Inventory. A research paper about that project will be published in the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 6, early next year.

• Former IGWS intern Amanda Wollenweber was featured in the IU Curatorship Program’s Catalogue Raisonne newsletter. When asked to share advice for other students considering the IU Master of Arts in Curatorship program, she answered: “… keep an open mind while searching for a collection to work with. I did not know the IGS (Indiana Geological and Water Survey) existed or that they had collections. I had no background in geology, and I was not sure what opportunities the IGS would have for me. I am so glad I reached out because I had the best time doing my practicum and capstone with the IGS. I learned so much about geology while getting to do some of my favorite things: teaching visitors about science and working with collections. The IGS was the perfect fit for me.”

• Research Scientist Ginger Davis, as chair of the Indiana Water Monitoring Council’s Groundwater Focus Committee, compiled the 2023 Indiana Water Report and presented it at the All Things Water in Indiana Science Symposium on Nov. 30. The report, a rundown of projects that dozens of water-related organizations are undertaking across the state, is posted at this link: https://www.inwmc.net/resources/indiana-water-report/.

• Davis spoke about groundwater studies at the IGWS to about 20 people at the American Water Works Association Indiana Section meeting on Dec. 6.

The staff of the Indiana Geological and Water Survey wishes you a very happy holidays. But before we recess, a few announcements:

• If you’re planning to purchase items from our bookstore which require shipping—such as dinosaur hair pins for the dinophiles in your life, or topographic trail maps for hikers and bikers—those orders must be received by Tuesday evening, Dec. 19, to arrive in time for Christmas.

• Our office, and most offices on the IU campus, will be closed from Saturday, Dec. 23, to Monday, Jan. 1. We will reopen Tuesday, Jan. 2.

• The IGWS Learning Lab will be closed from Thursday, Dec. 21, to Tuesday, Jan. 2. It will reopen on Wednesday, Jan. 3.

• Expect to receive the E-Geo News every two months instead of monthly in 2024, with the January/February issue to arrive in early February.