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.

In early January, the IGWS started receiving data from its newest weather monitoring station, Jasper South at Cedar Crest Intermediate near Huntingburg. The next-newest station, Washington East at the Daviess County Highway Department near Washington, went live in November. The IGWS has installed and maintains 15 of these monitoring stations throughout the state, and hourly data from all of them can be viewed online at https://igws.indiana.edu/iwbn-dashboard.

The other 13 stations are in Allen, Delaware, Fayette, Hendricks, Henry, Lake, Marion, Monroe, Morgan, and Rush counties.

The stations were installed as part of the Indiana Water Balance Network (IWBN), which the IGWS initiated in 2012. Each includes equipment to measure and keep track of air temperature, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, soil temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and groundwater level. In addition, the webpage for each station includes potential evapotranspiration (water leaving land by evaporation and plant transpiration) calculated using the climate data from various sensors.

IGWS research scientists Babak Shabani and Ginger Davis see a lot of potential use for this data—from teaching students about mathematics and environmental data patterns, to predicting flash flooding in vulnerable areas, to alerting farmers about good weather windows for work in fields.

IWBN data can have several agricultural uses, including planting, spraying and harvesting recommendations, frost protection, irrigation scheduling, and prescribed burn advisories.

Highway staff can use soil temperature and soil moisture data to decide which pretreatment they should spread on roads and when they should put it down for it to be effective—potentially saving money on road treatment material and overtime. Localized weather data also can help predict if areas are going to get snow, ice, or just rain.

Utility companies have asked Shabani about soil sensors at multiple depths so they can assess risk to pipes that could be damaged by extreme cold.

Friends of Lake Monroe have been using Monroe County’s potential evapotranspiration data to help determine how accurate their estimates are of nutrients and sediment in the lake. They’re working to improve water quality for the more than 130,000 people who depend on the lake for drinking water.

Weather data also can inform policymakers about where to place renewable energy sources like wind turbines or solar farms. For some of the older stations, more than 10 years of data has been collected on wind patterns and solar radiation.

Public safety and emergency management agencies could benefit from checking this data as well. “Storm watchers all the time are looking for circular patterns in the wind, and we have wind sensors at the stations, so they can monitor that along with significant precipitation which could initiate floods,” Davis said.

One of the most valuable parts of this network is the diversity of sites where stations are collecting data, Davis said. They’ve been placed in all types of soil, in wetlands and in uplands, as far north as Gary and as far south as Jasper.

In addition, all weather monitoring stations are co-located or very close to wells that monitor groundwater so that IGWS personnel can collect data on patterns and the availability of that resource—from how much precipitation falls, to how much soaks into the soil and how much runs off, to how much migrates down to aquifers and how much evaporates, and how those figures vary according to topography, soil type, and other variables. That data also is fed to the National Ground-Water Monitoring Network.

As water access becomes an increasing concern across the nation and the world, keeping tabs on localized water cycles in cooperation with state and national monitoring agencies “makes good research, important research that can benefit all people,” Shabani said.

Next week, the staff of the Indiana Geological and Water Survey is going to party like it’s 1837—which isn’t saying much, since that year was mired in a nationwide financial panic and now we’re dealing with a pandemic.

However, at least one thing worth celebrating did happen 185 years ago this month. On Feb. 6, 1837, the Indiana General Assembly created the job of Indiana state geologist. The first person to hold it was David Dale Owen.

David and his brother, Richard Owen, had spent their early 20s in the company of William Maclure, considered to be the “father of American geology.” Maclure co-owned the community of New Harmony, Indiana, with the brothers’ father, Robert Owen, and New Harmony was a treasure trove of natural history specimens and scientists. By the time he was appointed as the first state geologist, David, age 29, had earned a medical degree—in addition to his knowledge of geology and chemistry—to aid in his study of fossils key to “deciphering the geologic record in the Midwest.” His initial, one-year geologic survey of Indiana in 1837 was conducted by horseback over more than 1,000 miles. His report and accompanying map, prepared in 1838, correctly identified the stratigraphic succession of Indiana bedrock, revealing a scientific method to find stone suitable for buildings, clay for earthenware, and other resources underground.

IGWS scientists have been refining state geologic maps and data ever since, as well as growing the collection of Indiana geologic specimens and information which Maclure and the Owenses started nearly two centuries ago. As of 2017, IGWS collections contained more than 2 million items and were valued at $2 billion—among the top three highest valued collections in the Indiana University system.

Much more about the IGWS’s history was gathered and narrated in this article by now-retired IGWS Editor Deborah DeChurch, published in Vol. 2 of the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences.

Pop quiz: 1) How many state geologists has Indiana had? 2) How many of them have the surnames Owen or Thompson? 3) Which Owen is the namesake of Owen Hall on the IU Bloomington campus? 4) How many years was Indiana without a geological survey, and why? Send us your answers by the end of February and we’ll pick one person to receive a free 2022 IGWS calendar.

Henry Gray, who’s worked as a geologist and/or research affiliate for the IGWS since 1954, turns 100 in March. Plans are in the works to mark this occasion.

If you have memories of working with Gray or thoughts about the impact of his work that you’d like to share publicly, please send an email to scliffo@iu.edu by Monday, Feb. 21.

Cards also can be mailed to the address at the bottom of this newsletter c/o Henry Gray.

Look for more on this topic in next month’s E-Geo News.

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. Those pubs—spanning from 1838 to the present day—might have existed only in paper form, been produced in a program or format that is no longer used, or been buried in a subfolder in the internal IGWS file system.

To fulfill requests, staff have had to track down the bulletin, circular, report, map, poster, database, or CD among the more than 1,950 items the IGWS has published in its history and scan it if it wasn’t already digital. At the time they were requested, more than half of the items were not already available on the IGWS’s online bookstore—either not listed at all or listed as “out of print.”

The IGWS began an organized effort in the summer of 2016 to scan all non-digital IGWS publications and convert older digital files to PDFs so that they can be more discoverable both internally and externally through the bookstore. That project was led by former staff members Barb Hill and John Day, as well as Karen Like.

While Like continues to digitize petroleum well records, a team of five other staff from the information services division is working through decades’ worth of other items that were not “born digital” as well as newer items that aren’t yet publicly accessible. Will Knauth, Jenna Lanman, Polly Sturgeon, Sara Clifford, and Matt Johnson are collaborating to track the digitization stage of all IGWS pubs; scan documents and make them searchable; ingest items to IUScholarWorks that weren’t there already; obtain DOIs (a permanent web link for each document); write suggested citations; and move digital documents into ResourceSpace, a publicly accessible portal under construction which will link to the IGWS’s website.

In December, a collection of IGWS circulars produced between 1952 and 2021 was added to IUScholarWorks, where each can be viewed and downloaded for free. The team is currently working to add 70-plus IGWS special reports to IUScholarWorks and ResourceSpace and will continue moving through other groups of documents after this group is completed.

The open-access project ties into the IGWS’s strategic plan, which includes goals to increase accessibility to geoscience information, samples, and data. Eventually, all science-related publications and historical publications will be offered as free downloads through IUScholarWorks, said Johnson, assistant director for information services.

The IGWS bookstore will continue to operate, selling a few publications like trail maps and the annual calendar, and otherwise directing users to where they can find and download open-access publications. Paper copies of historical publications will still be available for viewing in the IGWS’s resource library.

A tandem project to ResourceSpace, called CollectiveAccess, also is being developed. CollectiveAccess will create a digital method to keep track of physical assets, like fossils and core samples, and link them with an online catalog—the way a library catalog works—so that users can search and see what exists in various IGWS collections without having to come to campus first. Objects in CollectiveAccess also would be linked to photos and documents in ResourceSpace to give a more complete picture of the data staff have gleaned from each object. Together, the project is called CARST (CollectiveAccess ResourceSpace Tandem); more information about the tandem portion will be published in the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences later this spring.

“As the open-access project continues into 2022, this will provide easy, free access to a variety of valuable publications from the IGWS,” said Knauth, the project leader. “Publicly-funded material once locked into our internal systems will be available to our audiences, and this will raise the visibility of the fascinating and critical work being undertaken by the survey and its value to the State of Indiana.”

• February is Earthquake Awareness Month. Are you prepared? IGWS Education and Outreach Coordinator Polly Sturgeon joined Brian Blake from the Central United States Earthquake Consortium and Jasmine Johnson-Divinity from Mississippi Emergency Management for a webinar on earthquake hazards and safety on Feb. 3. Part 1 was broadcast live on Facebook that day and Part 2 will start at 10 a.m. Monday, Feb. 10. Both parts can be watched at Facebook.com/EQConsortium at your leisure.

• The next Dig Deeper webinar will take place on Zoom starting at 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 17. IGWS research scientist Maria Mastalerz will walk viewers through the basics of rare earth elements. Here’s the link: https://iu.zoom.us/j/83508333640. We recently published an easy-to-understand paper on this topic in the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 4.

• Sturgeon will be at the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers (HASTI) conference Sunday-Tuesday, Feb. 13-15 in Indianapolis to offer free rock and fossil specimens to teachers along with new lesson plans, curriculum support materials, and information about the IGWS’s upcoming summer teacher workshop. She’ll also be spreading the word about the Learning Lab, the IGWS’s new specimen-based teaching facility set to open this spring.

• The IGWS also will have a booth at GeoFest at Indiana State Museum the weekend of Feb. 18-20. Visitors can engage in a hands-on demonstration of geologic time, and a selection of geology-themed goods will be offered for sale. “Other educational booths and dozens of vendors make this one of the largest public geology events in the state,” Sturgeon said.

• IGWS research scientist Sarah Burgess spoke to the Indiana Geologists at their January meeting on Zoom about “New Insights on Cave Development in Indiana,” sharing her research from the Mitchell Plateau about why Bluespring Caverns doesn't fit the mold of a classic epigenetic karst landscape.

• IGWS research scientist Ginger Davis delivered a "distinguished guest lecture" to about 30 undergraduates in the GEOG 368 Water in the Midwest class at IU Bloomington on Jan. 26, talking about water resources in Indiana, Survey offerings, and sharing career advice. "Hopefully, I inspired some future water resource professionals," she said.

Have you always wanted to know if a plant was invasive, or what kind of rock that is, or what to plant in your yard to create a functional and flourishing ecosystem?

If so, you might want to become an Indiana Master Naturalist. For 10 weeks this spring, you can take those classes at the Indiana Geological and Water Survey.

Indiana Master Naturalist was developed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Purdue Extension Service to provide citizens with hands-on opportunities to learn about the state’s natural features and resources, then volunteer to use those skills for the good of their communities. For more than 10 years, IGWS staff members (Brian Keith, Todd Thompson, and Polly Sturgeon) have led presentations on Indiana’s geology for Master Naturalist courses around the state, but this will be the Survey’s first time sponsoring a program.

“The completion of the IGWS Learning Lab affords us the opportunity to bring participants into our building to learn about geology, water, ecology, and botany topics, as well as form partnerships with other natural resource organizations around the state,” said Sturgeon, the IGWS’s education and outreach coordinator.

This is one of two Master Naturalist programs happening in Monroe County in 2022, with the other taking place at Karst Farm Park through the county parks department.

The program is open to any adult (age 18+) and costs $75 for 10 sessions. Scan the QR code on the flyer below for more information or click here to start the signup process.

• IGWS lab technician Valerie Beckham-Feller was hired as a research geologist at the end of January. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in geology from IU and the University of Arkansas, respectively, and brings experience from a core lab in Texas and the oil and gas fields of eastern Ohio. Since starting at the IGWS in July 2021, she's been describing soil cores for STATEMAP and analyzing grain samples in the OSL lab. She'll transition to her new role over the next few months.

• Research scientist Agnieszka Drobniak is celebrating her 20th anniversary with the IGWS this month.

• The IGWS will soon be hiring for four open jobs in the information services division: a GIS and cartographic analyst, a GIS analyst, a system analyst/programmer (web developer), and a database developer. Keep checking https://igws.indiana.edu/jobs for postings and application deadlines or search at https://jobs.iu.edu.

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.

• To join the E-Geo News mailing list, please click here.

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