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What do cycling and rocks have in common?

July 15, 2024

I’m not talking about the Olympics, but the Tour de France, which kicked off on June 29 in Florence, Italy and will finish July 21 in Nice, France. This is the first time the iconic bicycle race won’t finish in Paris, due to the city hosting the Summer Olympics.

The star they’re highlighting rises above the competition, literally. It’s also below and all around.

Peter Lippert and Sean Hutchings

The Geo Tour de France project (Geo TdF) is a blog exploring the geology of the various stages of the bike race. Lippert and Hutchings are two of the five North American contributors to the blog this year. They covered Stage 14, a 152-kilometer ride through the Pyrenees held Saturday and won Saturday by overall race leader Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia in just over four hours.

“The centerpiece of the stage is the Col du Tourmalet, a very famous fabled climb in the Tour de France that has lots of amazing history,” said Lippert, an associate professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics and director of the Utah Paleomagnetic Center. “This is going to be one of the really decisive stages of the Tour this year.”

The entire race covers 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles) in 21 stages.

“I’ve always loved this project, because it’s just such a fun way to share our science and share how we see the world with the public and particularly a public that’s probably not often thinking about the geology,” Lippert said.

For Lippert and Hutchings, as well as many of their peers across the world, geology and cycling go hand in hand.

“Riding a bike up and down a mountain gives you a lot of time to see how the mountains put together the rocks you’re riding over in the landscapes that you’re on,” Lippert said. “We’re both trained geologists for most of our lives so it’s hard not to always be thinking about [geology].”

Utah in particular boasts captivating and diverse geological features.

“It’s mountain biking Candyland around here,” said Hutchings, a graduate research assistant in the U of U Seismograph Stations. “It’s fun to be able to climb up to the top of the hill and it’s hard to not interact with rocks on the way as well.”

“You have this new identity with the landscape you’re on if you’re able to understand what’s going on beneath your feet and what made the landscape,” Lippert said. “I think cycling is a really great high impact sense of place type of experience. You’re going a little bit slower. You get to look around.”

Geo Tour de France project

This same sentiment was the original inspiration for Geo TdF project creator Douwe van Hinsbergen, professor of geology at the Netherlands’ Utrecht University.

“He wanted to explore a different way of sharing geology with the public,” Lippert said. “This is a total goldmine.’

Fans who watch the livestream of the race are inadvertently watching hours of spectacular geological features. The Geo TdF project enhances the viewing experience by telling geological stories that ground the competition in the larger history of the landscape.

Lippert first contributed to the blog two years ago, and this time around included Hutchings. The pair worked together during Hutchings’ bachelor’s degree at the U and often bike together.

“I know nothing about Pyrenean geology, so this was a great learning opportunity for me,” Hutchings said. “For graduate school, I’ve dipped more into the seismology realm, so getting back to my geology roots was a fun exercise.”

Col du Tourmalet. Photo credit: Gilles Guillamot, Wikimedia Commons

Tectonic training camp

Stage 14 passed through Pyrenees, the mountains on France’s border with Spain, with an average grade of 7.9%. That’s just under 95 miles at an average grade more than twice as steep as the incline from President’s Circle to the Natural History Museum of Utah.

“Let’s think big” is what Lippert and Hutchings thought when they were presented with the opportunity to cover this pivotal stage of the race.

“I mean the Tour de France is big, the Pyrenees are big, tectonics are big. Sean is more of a geophysicist working with earthquakes and things like that,” Lippert said. “My expertise is in collisional mountain builds, like what happens when oceans close and mountains form. So we thought let’s just go back to basics and keep it big.”

What could be bigger than beginning with the ancient supercontinent Pangea? For their portion of the project, Lippert and Hutchings focused on the creation of the Pyrenees mountain range which began with the separation of Pangea and subsequent plate collisions, a process they describe as a “tectonic training camp.”

A Wealth of information

Some readers might be wondering if these passionate geologists will eventually run out of topics to discuss, even though the Tour course changes each year. Lippert and Hutchings aren’t concerned about that at all.

“One nice thing about geology is that rocks usually stay put and you can go back to check them out year after year. So the rocks don’t change, but the way that we can talk about them does. The limit is our creativity now, what the rocks can provide, because they’re full of really good stories,” Lippert said. “There’s a wealth of information that a single rock can tell you. Where it came from, and the time it took to get there, and what it looked like at the time.”

Two New Interim Department Chairs

June 24, 2024

Peter Armentrout

A Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Armentrout was appointed the Henry Eyring Presidential Endowed Chair in 2018. He will begin his term on July 1, replacing Matt Sigman.

Earlier, Armentrout served as Department Chair from 2001 to 2007. During that time, he instituted several reforms regarding parental leave and secured funding for the David M. Grant NMR Center (Gaus House) and partial funding for the Thatcher extension to the South Chemistry Building.

Armentrout whose research spans thermochemistry, kinetics and the dynamics of simple and complex chemical reactions, early on invented and constructed the guided ion-beam tandem mass spectrometer which has provided highly accurate thermodynamic measurements on a multitude of chemical species. He says of the appointment to interim department chair, “I am honored to be asked to take the reins of this exceptional department for a couple more years. The research and teaching abilities and collegiality of this faculty are second to none and will enable us to collectively advance and lead within the U. I look forward to working with them as well as our supporters outside the university system in the near term.”

Peter Trapa, dean of the College of Science, said of the appointment, "In addition to being a world-class chemist with a towering international reputation, Peter is also an exceptional teacher, mentor, and administrator. His appointment as interim chair will continue to advance Utah's Chemistry Department as one of the best in the world. I look forward to working with Peter as we continue to build on the department's strengths.”

Trapa continued, “I'm also deeply grateful to Distinguished Professor Matt Sigman for his outstanding leadership as chair over the past five years. Matt’s contributions to the department, especially his unwavering commitment to excellence, will be felt for many years to come.”

A member of the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society (fellow), American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow), Armentrout presently has over 560 research publications that have appeared in the literature. Forty-four students have received their PhDs with Professor Armentrout.

In 2011, he received the prestigious Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence from the U — the university’s highest honor awarded to a faculty member.

Kip Solomon

Solomon holds the Frank Brown Presidential Chair in the Department of Geology & Geophysics and will replace William Johnson as department chair also beginning July 1, 2024.

Solomon has a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Waterloo and BS and MS degrees from the U’s Department of Geology and Geophysics. He joined the department in 1993 and served as chair from 2009-2013.

His research includes the use of environmental tracers to evaluate groundwater flow and solute transport processes in local-to regional-scale aquifers. He has developed the use of dissolved gases including helium-3, CFCs and SF₆ to evaluate groundwater travel times, location and rates of recharge, and the sustainability of groundwater resources. He constructed and operates one of only a few labs in the world that measures noble gases in groundwater. His research results have been documented in more than 120 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports.

Outgoing chair Johnson said of his replacement, “Kip will be a steady lead as ... [recent] changes settle and as additional institutional changes occur.”

Solomon thanked his predecessors: “Geology and Geophysics is a great department and has been strengthened considerably by the hard work and dedication of previous chairs Thure Cerling and Bill Johnson. With new hires and academic programs, the future looks very bright.”

In September Solomon will receive the 2024 O.E Meinzer Annual Award by the Geological Society of America.

By David Pace and Ashley Herman

Restoring the GSL & Environmental Justice

June 24, 2024

Using the Great Salt Lake in Utah as a case study, researchers show that dust exposure was highest among Pacific Islanders and Hispanic people and lower in white people compared to all other racial/ethnic groups, and higher for individuals without a high school diploma. Restoring the lake would benefit everyone in the vicinity by reducing dust exposure, and it would also decrease the disparities in exposure between different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. These results are reported June 21 in the journal One Earth, co-authored by University of Utah researchers in the College of Science and the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences.

"People here in Utah are concerned about the lake for a variety of reasons -- the ski industry, the brine shrimp, the migratory birds, recreation -- and this study adds environmental justice and the equity implications of the drying lake to the conversation," says first author and sociologist Sara Grineski of the University of Utah. "If we can raise the levels of the lake via some coordinated policy responses, we can reduce our exposure to dust, which is good for everyone's health, and we can also reduce the disparity between groups."

The Great Salt Lake has been steadily drying since the mid-1980's, exposing its dry lakebed to atmospheric weathering and wind. Previous studies have shown that dust emissions from drying salt lakes produce fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which is associated with numerous health effects and is the leading environmental cause of human mortality worldwide.

"We know that the dust from these drying lakes is very unhealthy for us, so the question becomes, what does that mean in terms of people's exposure to the dust, and what does it mean in terms of inequalities in exposure to that dust," says Grineski. "Are some people more likely to have to suffer the consequences to a greater degree?"

To answer this question, Grineski teamed up with a multidisciplinary group of, among others, U atmospheric scientists, geographers, and biologists, including Derek V. Mallia, Timothy W. Collins, Malcolm Araos, John C. Lin, William R.L. Anderegg and Kevin Perry.

You can read the full story in ScienceDaily.
Read more about this research in an article by Brian Maffly in @TheU, and stories in The Standard Examiner and at Fox 13.

Meet Lokiceratops: Giant Blade-Wielding Dinosaur 

June 21, 2024

A remarkable, new species of horned, plant-eating dinosaur is being unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The dinosaur, excavated from the badlands of northern Montana just a few miles from the USA-Canada border, is among the largest and most ornate ever found, with two huge blade-like horns on the back of its frill. The distinctive horn pattern inspired its name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, meaning “Loki’s horned face that looks like a caribou.” The study included the most complete analysis of horned dinosaur evolution ever conducted, and the new species was announced today in the scientific journal PeerJ.

More than 78 million years ago, Lokiceratops inhabited the swamps and floodplains along the eastern shore of Laramidia. This island continent represents what is now the western part of North America created when a great seaway divided the continent around 100 million years ago. Mountain building and dramatic changes in climate and sea level have since altered the hothouse world of Laramidia where Lokiceratops and other dinosaurs thrived. The behemoth is a member of the horned dinosaurs called ceratopsids, a group that evolved around 92 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous, diversified into a myriad of fantastically ornamented species, and survived until the end of the time of dinosaurs. Lokiceratops (lo-Kee-sare-a-tops) rangiformis (ran-ɡi-FOHR-mees) possesses several unique features, among them: the absence of a nose horn, huge, curving blade-like horns on the back of the frill—the largest ever found on a horned dinosaur—and a distinct, asymmetric spike in the middle of the frill. Lokiceratops rangiformis appeared at least 12 million years earlier than its famous cousin Triceratops and was the largest horned dinosaur of its time. The name Lokiceratops translates as “Loki’s horned face” honoring the blade-wielding Norse god Loki. The second name, rangiformis, refers to the differing horn lengths on each side of the frill, similar to the asymmetric antlers of caribou and reindeer.

PHOTO CREDIT: MARK LOEWEN.
Completed reconstruction of Lokiceratops mounted for display. Study authors Brock Sisson (left) and Mark Loewen (right) peer through the frill fenestrae (windows) of Lokiceratops.

Lokiceratops rangiformis is the fourth centrosaurine, and fifth horned dinosaur overall, identified from this single assemblage. While ceratopsian ancestors were widespread across the northern hemisphere throughout the Cretaceous period, their isolation on Laramidia led to the evolution of huge body sizes, and most characteristically, distinctive patterns of horns above their eyes and noses, on their cheeks and along the edges of their elongated head frills. Fossils recovered from this region suggest horned dinosaurs were living and evolving in a small geographic area—a high level of endemism that implies dinosaur diversity is underestimated.

“Previously, paleontologists thought a maximum of two species of horned dinosaurs could coexist at the same place and time. Incredibly, we have identified five living together at the same time,” said co-lead author Mark Loewen, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah and professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics at the University of Utah. “The skull of Lokiceratops rangiformis is dramatically different from the other four animals it lived alongside.”

The fossil remains of Lokiceratops was discovered in 2019 and cleaned, restored and mounted by Brock Sisson, paleontologist and founder of Fossilogic, LLC in Pleasant Grove, Utah. “Reconstructing the skull of Lokiceratops from dozens of pieces was one of the most challenging projects my team and I have ever faced,” said Brock, “but the thrill of bringing a 78-million-year-old dinosaur to life for the first time was well worth the effort.”

Discover more about Lokiceratops by visiting the full article by Mark Loewen at @The U.
Read more about the story in Discover Magazine, ABC 4 News, KSL News, Science Daily, Science News.

Backtracking Core: Earth’s Inner Dynamics Unveiled

June 18, 2024

For the past two decades, the movement of this solid yet searing hot metal sphere, suspended in the liquid outer core, has been studied closely and debated by the scientific community. Past research has shown that the inner core has been rotating slightly faster than the planet’s surface.

But a different picture is emerging under a study led by the University of Southern California and published this week in Nature. The research team, which includes U geology professor Keith Koper, verified with new evidence—built on analyses of seismographic data—that the inner core’s rotation began to ease and synced with Earth’s spin about 14 years ago.

Keith Koper, University of Utah

The inner core is a solid sphere composed of iron and nickel, surrounded by the liquid iron outer core. Roughly the size of Pluto at 2,442 kilometers in diameter, it accounts for only 1% of Earth’s mass, yet it influences the magnetic field enveloping the planet and the length of the day. But the core’s location, more than 3,000 miles below Earth’s surface, presents a challenge to researchers since it can’t be visited or viewed.

Past research into the inner core’s movement has relied on data from repeating earthquakes, which occur in the same location to produce identical seismograms. Differences in the time it takes for the waves to pass through Earth indicate how the core’s position changed during the period between two repeater quakes.

In the latest study, researchers analyzed seismic data associated with 121 earthquakes that occurred in the South Atlantic between 1991 and 2023.

“The inner core is just sitting in this fluid outer core, so it’s decoupled a little bit from the rest of the planet. It’s rotating at a different rate,” Koper said. “The angular momentum has to be conserved, so if it’s rotating differently, then that could affect the rotation observed at Earth’s surface. One of the big ideas in this paper is we have basically a new model or new observations about how the inner core is rotating slightly differently than the rest of the planet.”

The College of Science Welcomes New Faculty Fellows

June 12, 2024

The College of Science welcomes Associate Professor Lauren Birgenheier and Professor Akil Narayan as its inaugural class of Faculty Fellows. By working closely with colleagues on key projects, the new Fellows Program is designed to develop emerging academic leaders who are interested in learning more about college administration.

Lauren Birgenheier

Birgenheier is a sedimentary geologist and geochemist. Her research studies fluvial, shallow marine and lacustrine systems, shedding light on the processes that shaped our planet's past with a view toward implications for energy development, critical mineral exploration, carbon storage and paleoclimate reconstruction. Previously, Birgenheier served as Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Chair for the Department of Geology & Geophysics.

Akil Narayan

Narayan is an applied mathematician specializing in numerical analysis. As a member of the University of Utah's Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute, his broad research agenda at the forefront of computational innovation includes machine learning, model reduction and uncertainty quantification, among others. Narayan has previously held many departmental and university roles, including serving on an Academic Senate subcommittee and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Department of Mathematics.

"Lauren and Akil are exceptional scholars and leaders," said Dean Peter Trapa. "Their diverse expertise, coupled with their commitment to excellence, will be put to good use in these new Faculty Fellow roles. I look forward to working with them both."

How Earth’s oceans were oxygenated

June 12, 2024

About 2.5 billion years ago, free oxygen, or O₂, first started to accumulate to meaningful levels in Earth’s atmosphere, setting the stage for the rise of complex life on our evolving planet.

Scientists refers to this phenomenon as the Great Oxidation Event, or GOE for short. But the initial accumulation of O₂ on Earth was not nearly as straightforward as that moniker suggests, according to new research led by a University of Utah geochemist.

This “event” lasted at least 200 million years. And tracking the accumulation of O₂ in the oceans has been very difficult until now, said Chadlin Ostrander, an assistant professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics.

“Emerging data suggest that the initial rise of O₂ in Earth’s atmosphere was dynamic, unfolding in fits-and-starts until perhaps 2.2. billion years ago,” said Ostrander, lead author on the study published June 12 in the journal Nature. “Our data validate this hypothesis, even going one step further by extending these dynamics to the ocean.”

His international research team, which is supported by the NASA Exobiology program, focused on marine shales from South Africa’s Transvaal Supergroup, yielding insights into the dynamics of ocean oxygenation during this crucial period in Earth’s history. By analyzing stable thallium (Tl) isotope ratios and redox-sensitive elements, they uncovered evidence of fluctuations in marine O₂ levels that coincided with changes in atmospheric oxygen.

These findings help advance the understanding of the complex processes that shaped Earth’s O₂ levels during a critical period in the planet’s history that paved the way for the evolution of life as we know it.

“We really don’t know what was going on in the oceans, where Earth’s earliest lifeforms likely originated and evolved,” said Ostrander, who joined the U faculty last year from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “So knowing the O₂ content of the oceans and how that evolved with time is probably more important for early life than the atmosphere.”

Kip Solomon announced as interim chair, Geology & Geophysics

June 6, 2024

Solomon in Greenland to measure fresh water aquifer below deep ice in 2016.

Solomon holds the Frank Brown Presidential Chair in the department and will replace William Johnson as department chair beginning July 1, 2024.

Johnson served as department chair beginning April 2022. “I’m satisfied to have spurred new infrastructure (SIRFER and clean room), new faculty and two new positions in play, as well as salary transparency and staff domain clarity,” says Johnson of his term. “Kip will be a steady lead as the above changes settle and as additional institutional changes occur.”

Solomon will also receive the 2024 O.E Meinzer Annual Award by the Geological Society of America in September.

“Geology and Geophysics is a great department and has been strengthened considerably by the hard work and dedication of previous chairs Thure Cerling and Bill Johnson,” said Solomon. “With new hires and academic programs, the future looks very bright.”

By Ashley Herman

Breakthrough in Geothermal Energy at Utah FORGE

June 3, 2024

A major University of Utah-led geothermal research project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), achieved a critical breakthrough in April after hydraulically stimulating and circulating water through heated rock formations a mile and a half beneath its drill site in the Utah desert and bringing hot water to the surface. The test results are seen as an important step forward in the search for new ways to use Earth’s subsurface heat to produce hot water for generating emissions-free electricity. The successful well stimulations and a nine-hour circulation test were the fruits of years of planning and data analysis at the Utah FORGE facility near Milford, 175 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

More than two-thirds of the water that was injected underground and pushed through the fractured formation—acquiring heat on the way—was extracted from a second well, offering proof that enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) technology could be viable, according to John McLennan, a co-principal investigator on the project formally known as the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy, or Utah FORGE.

“Nine hours is enough to prove that you have a connection and that you’re producing heat,” said McLennan, a U professor of chemical engineering. “It really is a Eureka moment. It’s been 60 years coming, and so this actually is significant.”

Kris Pankow, associate director of the U of U Seismograph Stations

Utah FORGE is a $218 million research project, involving numerous institutions and industry partners, funded by a DOE grant to the U’s Energy & Geoscience Institute. The project aims to develop and de-risk new geothermal technologies that could potentially be deployed all over the world, not just where conventional geothermal plants are sited.

For this recent test, FORGE personnel and industry specialists directionally drilled two boreholes—one for injecting water underground and the other for extracting it. The injection well is 10,897 feet long and drops to a depth of 8,559 feet below the surface. “We speculate, and we’ll see this in the 30-day test, that as we fill the fracture system back up, this number is going to get to where I’m suspecting it’s 85 to 90% efficiency,” McLennan said.

Equally promising was the absence of any noticeable ground shaking associated with the stimulations and circulation test. U seismologists led by geology professor Kris Pankow, associate director of the U of U Seismograph Stations, are overseeing an extensive network of seismometers to document ground movement associated with the project.

Discover more about this Breakthrough by visiting the full article by Brian Maffly at @The U.

Tapping coal mines for rare-earth materials

May 23, 2024

This finding suggests that these mines, traditionally known for their coal production, could potentially serve as secondary sources for critical minerals essential for renewable energy and high-tech applications. "The model is if you're already moving rock, could you move a little more rock for resources towards energy transition? " Lauren Birgenheier, an associate professor of geology and geophysics, explains, In those areas, we're finding that the rare earth elements are concentrated in fine-grain shale units, the muddy shales that are above and below the coal seams."

Lauren Birgenheier

This research was conducted in partnership with the Utah Geological Survey and Colorado Geological Survey as part of the Department of Energy-funded Carbon Ore, Rare Earth and Critical Minerals project, or CORE-CM. The new findings will form the basis for a grant request of an additional $9.4 million in federal funding to continue the research.

"When we talk about them as 'critical minerals,' a lot of the criticality is related to the supply chain and the processing," said Michael Free, a professor metallurgical engineering and the principal investigator on the DOE grant. "This project is designed around looking at some alternative unconventional domestic sources for these materials."

The U-led study was published last month in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science. Team members included graduate students Haley Coe, the lead author, and Diego Fernandez, a research professor who runs the lab that tested samples.

“The goal of this phase-one project was to collect additional data to try and understand whether this was something worth pursuing in the West,” said study co-author Michael Vanden Berg, Energy and Minerals Program Manager at the Utah Geological Survey. “Is there rare earth element enrichment in these rocks that could provide some kind of byproduct or value added to the coal mining industry?”

Haley Coe, U geology graduate student, inspects drilling cores. Photo Credit: Lauren Birgenheier.

“The coal itself is not enriched in rare earth elements,” Vanden Berg said. “There's not going to be a byproduct from mining the coal, but for a company mining the coal seam, could they take a couple feet of the floor at the same time? Could they take a couple feet of the ceiling? Could there be potential there? That's the direction that the data led us.”

To gather samples, the team worked directly with mine operators and examined coal seam outcrops and processing waste piles. In some cases, they analyzed drilling cores, both archived cores and recently drilled ones at the mines. The team entered Utah mines to collect rock samples from the underground ramps that connect coal seams.

The study targeted the coal-producing region stretching from Utah’s Wasatch Plateau east across the Book Cliffs deep into Colorado. Researchers analyzed 3,500 samples from 10 mines, four mine waste piles, seven stratigraphically complete cores, and even some coal ash piles near power plants.

The study included Utah’s active Skyline, Gentry, Emery and Sufco mines, recently-idled Dugout and Lila Canyon mines in the Book Cliffs, and the historic Star Point and Beaver Creek No. 8 mines. The Colorado mines studied were the Deserado and West Elk.

Discover more about this groundbreaking research by visiting the full article by Brian Maffly at @The U.

Read more about this story at KUER.

College of Science

What do cycling and rocks have in common?

What do cycling and rocks have to do with each other?