1. Legislative changes affect the IGWS's structure, geologist licensing, and more.

2. Two IGWS scientists establish an international consortium for biomass energy in Poland.

3. New Discovery Trunks are available to help teach earth science.

4. Know a student interested in oil and gas? There's a scholarship for that.

5. Opinions are mixed on Indiana's choice for state fossil.

6. Staff changes and honors

7. Outreach efforts

A bill is expected to be signed any day now which will reorganize the structure of the Indiana Geological and Water Survey, alter the makeup of the IGWS advisory council, and require continuing education for Indiana-licensed geologists, among other changes.

IGWS staff have been centrally involved in the creation and rewording of the bill, SB 278. IGWS Director Todd Thompson and geologist Maria Mastalerz spoke in favor of it on Jan. 20 at the Statehouse. Assistant Director for Information Services Matt Johnson, geologist Ginger Davis, and Education and Outreach Coordinator Polly Sturgeon went as well. Professional Geologists of Indiana also supported it.

Key points are:

• CENTERS: Part of the IGWS research team will be reorganized into a center for water resources and a center for energy resources. The centers’ missions will be to carry out the IGWS’s statutory duties concerning Indiana’s water and natural energy resources; support long-term studies of such resources as requested by the Indiana Finance Authority or the state; and provide resources upon request to state and municipal agencies, energy stakeholders, and soil and water conservation groups. Each center will be staffed with IGWS employees who have expertise in water and/or energy resources. Thompson said last week that a center for spatial analysis also likely will be created, but that is not statutory.

• ADVISORY COUNCIL: The bill establishes an IGWS advisory council (rather than allows the president of Indiana University to appoint such a council, which has been the case). The council makes recommendations about the functions and performance of the Survey, appropriations and funding, effectiveness and efficiency, and other matters. The bill also specifies the makeup of the council: a faculty member of the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs, appointed by the IU president, with a background in energy, geology, water, or environmental science; a faculty member of the IU Earth Sciences department appointed by the IU president; the IU vice provost for research or a designee; the chairpersons of the House and Senate utilities/energy committees or their designees; the directors of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, and Indiana Economic Development Corporation or their designees; the public finance director or a designee; and two representatives of private energy, appointed by the governor, with backgrounds in energy, geology, water, or environmental science. This council is advisory, not governing; its secretary is the state geologist.

• CONTINUING EDUCATION: By July 1, 2024, the Indiana board of licensure for professional geologists must adopt rules requiring continuing education as a condition of license renewal. Such education can be completed inside or outside Indiana. This change does not apply to a licensed professional geologist until after their first full license renewal cycle one year after the final adoption of the new rules. Advocates for the bill argue that continuing education will benefit employers and clients by ensuring that they are being served by a skilled and informed scientist. Professional Geologists of Indiana had been wanting for more than a decade to make continuing education mandatory, Thompson said.

The bill in its most current form can be read here (will not open on Firefox). It was authored by Sen. Andy Zay (R-Huntington) and Sen. Blake Doriot (R-Goshen); coauthored by Sen. Shelli Yoder (D-Bloomington), Sen. Eric Koch (R-Bedford), and Sen. Susan Glick (R-LaGrange); and sponsored by Rep. Ethan Manning (R-Logansport), Rep. Robert Morris (R-Fort Wayne), and Rep. Matt Pierce (D-Bloomington),

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.

Drobniak and Mastalerz have been involved in a cooperative biomass energy project with researchers from the University of Silesia since 2019. “As biomass fuels have experienced rapid growth, a better understanding of fuel quality, human health, and environmental implications arising from their combustion is an urgent and very timely research direction,” Drobniak said.

The center’s goal is to conduct and promote dynamic and interdisciplinary biomass energy research by enhancing collaboration between scientists and industry. Through education, the center also aims to expand public awareness about biomass energy to promote its use in a safe and environmentally responsible way.

The center has already started collaboration with the United States Geological Survey, Aarthus University in Denmark, the University of Wroc?aw in Poland, the University of Leeds in the UK, the University of Kentucky, Indiana University, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, the North American Pellet Fuels Institute, and pellet industry representatives in Poland.

In mid-March, Drobniak and Mastalerz will travel to Jacksonville, Florida, to attend the 15th Annual Biomass Conference and Expo. This is the largest biomass event in North America which brings together scientists and industry professionals from all sectors of the world’s interconnected biomass utilization industries.

Science teachers, homeschooling families, naturalists, Scout leaders, and others now have access to new, hands-on resources to teach about earth science.

Three new Discovery Trunks were released in February: Topographic Maps; Ice Age Indiana; and Shake, Rumble, Roll. These join the original two—Rocks of Indiana and Fossils of Indiana—released in 2017. All are available for up to a two-week checkout from the Indiana Geological and Water Survey office in Bloomington, and all are designed to align with Indiana Academic Standards.

Borrowing a page from the National Park Service playbook, IGWS Education and Outreach Coordinator Polly Sturgeon introduced Discovery Trunks to help teach topics that are difficult to explain with two-dimensional materials.

“I started this program because I saw a gap between state curriculum standards and the materials that teachers typically have in their classrooms,” said Sturgeon, a former teacher. Getting classroom sets of earth science materials could “cost a fortune,” she added; Discovery Trunks provide specimens for free use.

“Holding a real specimen in your hand sparks curiosity in a way that worksheets or photographs cannot,” she said. “Students can examine fossils that formed hundreds of millions of years ago, feel their textures, and make firsthand observations just like trained scientists do in the field or lab.”

Discovery Trunk check-outs were paused during the 2020-21 school year because of the pandemic but resumed in the summer of 2021. Check-outs of the two original trunks had been averaging about 10 per year, and now they’re back on pace, with eight check-outs in the past nine months or so, mostly to homeschool co-ops and park naturalists. The three new trunks were developed based on user suggestions gathered over the past five years, as well as best practices by the museum education community.

Sturgeon hopes the new trunks will result in more opportunities for more students. The trunks are geared for learners in the fourth through 12th grades, but can be easily adapted to other ages, she said.

Right now, trunks must be picked up and dropped off in Bloomington, but Sturgeon is working to set up more distribution locations in central and northern Indiana by next school year.

Read more about the offerings and reserve a trunk at https://igws.indiana.edu/trunks.

Do you know an Indiana student interested in an oil and gas career path? If so, please tell them about the Indiana Oil and Gas Association (INOGA) scholarship program, underway now for the fall 2022 semester.

Eligible recipients must be high school seniors, home school graduates, or current post-secondary students who are planning to attend an accredited college this fall and pursue a career in the oil and gas industry. Recipients must be working on a bachelor’s degree, with preference given to earth sciences, petroleum engineering, chemical engineering, or geology majors. Requirements also include being an Indiana resident, having financial need as determined by the scholarship committee, and having a grade-point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale when applying.

The group typically awards five to seven scholarships per year at $1,000 to $5,000 each. Awards are for one year but can be renewed by reapplying.

The INOGA, an all-volunteer organization founded more than 60 years ago, includes representatives from oil and gas exploration and development companies, and professionals working in the pipeline, refinery, land acquisition, service, supply, legal, engineering, and geologic services sectors. In 2021, the INOGA awarded $15,000 in scholarships to students attending four-year colleges, funded by an annual golf outing.

The deadline to apply is Friday, April 1. Click here to download the application.

A bill is on its way to the governor’s desk to make the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) the Indiana state fossil—a decision that’s been debated off and on for at least 10 years, if not longer.

In 2012, IU professor P. David Polly and other scientists proposed that Indiana’s state fossil should be a crinoid: a group of ancient marine creatures often entombed in bedrock—including in Salem Limestone, the official state stone. In 2015, two senators coauthored a bill to honor a crinoid, the elegant sea lily, Elegantocrinus hemisphaericus. That bill, however, didn’t make it out of committee.

Crinoids lived in Indiana 200 to 400 million years ago during the Paleozoic era, when the state was covered by a warm, shallow sea. They appear to be plants, but they were actually animals—echinoderms, the same classification as starfish. You may have hunted for cylindrical crinoid fossil pieces in creek beds when you were a kid.

The mastodon suggestion came this year from Rep. Randy Frye (R-Greensburg), who said he was inspired by seeing a mastodon skeleton at Hanover College. Retired geology professor Stanley Totten testified in favor of the mastodon, calling it “the most common Ice Age fossil found in Indiana.”

IGWS staff were not involved in the mastodon proposal. “This came out of the blue,” said IGWS Director and State Geologist Todd Thompson. Personally, he was in favor of honoring the Archimedes, which professor Bill Elliott at the University of Southern Indiana had championed around the time of the crinoid bill, because Indiana’s first state geologist, David Owen, named the spiral-shaped bryozoan in his initial survey of Indiana geology. Polly also made a case recently for the dire wolf; Thompson said bones from that animal were found in a mud-filled grike when State Road 37 was being widened to a four-lane. For years, Scouts and students wrote letters to their senators and representatives lobbying for a particular fossil to become the official state fossil, remembered Polly Sturgeon, education and outreach coordinator for the IGWS, but a proposal never came up for a vote. “It’s exciting that we have one now,” she said.

The mastodon is also the state fossil of Michigan, so designated in 2002. Mastodons were once abundant in what is now the Midwest, and coexisted time-wise with mammoths during the Pleistocene, but not in the same area. Mammoth teeth are flatter, like those of modern elephants, because they were grassland dwellers; mastodon teeth have more ridges, suitable for eating the twigs and branches of forests.

Mastodon bones have been found in nearly every Indiana county, Totten told the House Committee on Natural Resources. The most recent big find was in 2019, when a contractor uncovered a partial skeleton in Seymour while excavating for a wastewater system. Those bones and many others are now in the care of the Indiana State Museum.

The IGWS has some specimens, too. In 2012, a farmer walked in with a mastodon jawbone and asked if the IGWS wanted it. He’d found it in his field near Rensselaer in Jasper County. That bone, known as “Chompers,” is now part of the IGWS educational collection. If you have access to a 3-D printer, you can even print a replica of a mastodon tooth with these instructions posted to our website.

Indiana does not have an official state mineral yet, Sturgeon pointed out, so there’s still time to lobby your legislator about that if you’re so inclined.

• Four students joined the IGWS as hourly staff members in February. Amanda Wollenweber is an IU student studying for a master’s degree in museum curatorship. She’s working with IGWS Education and Outreach Coordinator Polly Sturgeon to rehouse specimens, set up the Learning Lab, help with programming, and eventually transfer metadata to a new collections management system. Nathaniel Decker is an undergraduate in the IU College of Arts and Sciences majoring in geography. He’s working with IGWS Assistant Director for Information Services Matt Johnson to map Monroe County parks for the Eppley Institute. Addie Jenkinson is an undergraduate at the University of Florida Online (living in Bloomington) who is majoring in geography and environmental sciences. Sam Gillam is a student at the IU Kelley School of Business studying supply chain management with an interest in water systems and economic development. Jenkinson and Gillam are working with IGWS research scientist Babak Shabani on the Indiana Water Balance Network, making sure the 15 weather and water monitoring stations around the state report data continuously.

• IGWS research scientist Ginger Davis has been named chair of the Source Water Committee of the Indiana Section of American Water Works Association (INAWWA).

• The application deadline is today (March 4) for four open jobs at the IGWS: database developer, GIS analyst, GIS and cartographic analyst, and systems programmer/analyst. The application deadline is later this month for two other jobs: project management specialist and laboratory research assistant. Visit igws.indiana.edu/jobs to read all descriptions and apply.

• The IGWS will have a presence at the Indiana Academy of Science annual meeting in Indianapolis on Saturday, March 26. Polly Sturgeon will promote the Survey’s expanded mapping efforts through the STATEMAP program and the new Learning Lab.

• Speaking of the Learning Lab, save the date: Friday, June 4. An open house is being planned to celebrate this new teaching and learning space. Geologists, university colleagues, and K-12 teachers will be invited for lightning talks and lab tours of the renovated building.

• The 10-week IGWS Indiana Master Naturalist Class series which starts this month is SOLD OUT! Thanks to IU Bloomington Today for helping spread the word; all remaining slots were filled within five hours of the news blast going out to campus.

• The IGWS's Indiana Water Balance Network was featured on the all-campuses news site IU Today on Feb. 22.

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.