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By
Christina Reed
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Contents:
With
a world of questions, a geologist looks for answers everywhere
In Italy’s
small town of Piobbico, where the population is about 2,000, a geologist sits
with the townsfolk in a local café discussing a riddle that has intrigued
Italians and explorers of the country for generations. Closer to the Adriatic
than the Tyrrhenian Sea, Piobbico sits on the Marche side of the Umbria-Marche
Apennines mountain range, which dips and rises like waves traveling coast-to-coast
across Central Italy.
In the foothills of the Apennines are the historic cities of Florence and Siena.
The geologist is Walter Alvarez — most famous for work done with his late
father, Louis, on the impact event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary that killed
the dinosaurs. He has returned to Piobbico to examine the surrounding landscape
and improve the understanding of its evolution.
Walter Alvarez is this year's GSA
Penrose medalist. Courtesy of U.C. Berkeley Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
“The particular pattern of rivers is puzzling and clearly relates to the
tectonics of these young mountains,” Alvarez says. “And in fact, the
pattern of rivers around Florence is so curious and striking that even Dante has
a reference to the course of the Arno in Purgatory, the second book of
The Divine Comedy, questioning how this pattern of rivers and landscape
came together.”
Since the 1970s, the Italian Apennines have drawn Alvarez away from the University
of California at Berkeley during summer field seasons. Then in December of last
year, Frank Pazzaglia of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., contacted Alvarez
to tell him about a special session on the Apennines at the American Geophysical
Union fall meeting. Alvarez knew the Pazzaglia family in town, but didn’t
realize one of their relatives was a geologist in the United States. After lunch
and a walk around the poster session, the two both knew they should work together
as colleagues.
“Where he has been working for many years happens to be the area and town
that my family originally came from,” Pazzaglia says.
Both geologists are working with U.C. Berkeley graduate student David Shimabukuro
and geologist Massimiliano Barchi of Perugia University on the evolution of the
Apennines. At the Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting this month,
the team will present a means to help test some of the recent models that are
calling into question long-held beliefs about Italian tectonics.
Also at the meeting in Denver, Colo., GSA will recognize Pazzaglia and Alvarez
for their individual achievements. Pazzaglia will share the Kirk Bryan Award of
the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division with colleague Mark Brandon
of Yale University. Brandon and Pazzaglia reported in the American Journal of
Science last year that their study of ancient river terraces through the Olympic
Mountains in Washington showed that the region has reached a steady state, in
which erosion balances the amount of tectonic uplift when considered over time
scales longer than 50,000 years. They also show that the west coast of the mountain
region is moving to the northeast at a rate of three meters every 1,000 years,
relative to a fixed Puget Sound. The subduction zone under the Olympics drives
this motion and accounts for the uplift of the range.
Alvarez will receive this year’s annual GSA Penrose Medal for his lifetime
achievements in geology. “Walter Alvarez has made outstanding contributions
to geology in a variety of disciplines and areas that include South American geology,
Mediterranean tectonics, structural geology and magnetostratigraphy,” says
Ron Clowes, chair of the 2002 Penrose Medal Committee. “His greatest and
best known contribution is the novel and provocative hypothesis for the mass extinction
of species due to a meteorite impact at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, first
published in the journal Science in 1980. Tests of this hypothesis were initiated
around the world, bringing together disparate fields within the Earth sciences
and attracting many of the best minds.”
Part of Alvarez’s success is inherent to his personality, Shimabukuro says.
“Walter is the kind of person who is interested in everything.” Alvarez’s
fourth-year graduate student, Diane O’Conner, is working with him to study
the Permian-Triassic boundary in the western United States. With his graduate
students, Alvarez is also working with Berkeley physicist Richard Muller to study
a field they have dubbed astrogeophysics, which studies questions involving astronomy,
geology and physics.
Alvarez’s high-profile status as a scientist does not intimidate his students.
“As an advisor he is always available and always takes time to talk to you,”
Shimabukuro says. “Walter immediately puts you at ease.” Indeed, whether
talking to local residents and shopkeepers in the hills of Italy or discussing
the philosophy of geology with graduate and undergraduate students at U.C. Berkeley,
Alvarez continues to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to tackle
questions in the earth sciences.
Annals of the Former
World
In 1978, John McPhee set out to write a short piece for The New Yorker about
a road cut outside of New York City. He wanted to tell the story of the rocks,
their age and how they came to be along the side of the road. But when he visited
the road cut with geologist Ken Deffeyes of Princeton University, what started
as a one-day field trip and write-up grew into a much larger narrative. McPhee
began to think about following the structure across the country east to west
and the story that path would tell. “Once I got into that, I discovered
it involved a great deal more than I imagined,” McPhee says. At first he
anticipated such a project would take him about a year to complete. Then “the
thing you expect to do in one day you do in 20 years, that’s how it goes,”
he says. The complete story is told in his book Annals of the Former World,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999.
The Geological Society of America (GSA) is now honoring McPhee for the
scientific quality of his stories, which have garnered widespread use and acclaim
among educators and the public. “Through his writings and books, John McPhee
has probably done more to popularize the science of geology than any other writer,”
says Mary Lou Zoback, former president of the society. “He not only explains
the science in intriguing terms but also talks about the people behind the science
and the thrill of discovery that motivates them.” GSA will present McPhee
with its 2002 Public Service Award at its annual meeting this month in Denver,
Colo.
“I’m immensely honored,” McPhee says. “I’m not a professional
geologist and that geologists would think enough of this to single it out and
make that award is about as rewarding as anything could possibly be.”
Global tectonics
Richard Gordon of Rice University in Houston is this year’s recipient
of GSA’s Arthur L. Day Medal.
“If I could
dream of any medal that I might be ever so fortunate to get, the one that means
the most to me is the Day Medal,” Gordon says. GSA’s Day Medal makes
an important connection between geophysics and geology and recognizes scientists
for achievements that have substantially affected both fields. “When I
was a graduate student my advisor received this medal, as did his advisor when
he was a student,” Gordon says.
In the years since Gordon studied under the late Allan Cox at Stanford University
in the 1970s, the understanding of plate tectonics has exceeded the pace of
introductory textbooks. Working with fellow graduate students in the 1950s,
Cox had pursued the evidence for reversals in Earth’s magnetic field under
the advice of geophysics professor John Verhoogen. Today Gordon teaches his
students global tectonics, with a skeptical eye on plate boundary maps. “In
introductory textbooks the plate boundaries are drawn as if they were all narrow.
Richard Gordon pictured in St. Lucia.
Photo by S. Singletary.
While that works well for mid-ocean ridges and the transform faults that offset
them, it’s wrong for much of Earth.” He points out for example that
the Indoaustralia plate represented in most maps fails to teach the current
understanding of the plate’s boundary and internal structure. GSA is honoring
Gordon for his use of paleomagnetic data to quantify relative plate motion,
study of diffuse plate boundaries and development of the global plate motion
model, NUVEL-1. “A lot of the basic results of that model have been verified
by GPS,” says Dave Fountain, chair of GSA’s 2002 Day Medal selection
committee.
Gordon’s advice to students is: “Trust your own judgment and convince
others to trust it too.” The trick to doing that, he says, is to provide
high-level documentation and present the material clearly.
Distinguished service
About 40 years ago, Sam Adams of Lincoln, N.H., joined GSA with the idea of
serving the geologic community. Currently Geotimes editor-in-chief, Adams
is now one of three GSA members to receive the society’s 2002 Distinguished
Service Award. GSA is also honoring David Dunn of the University of Texas at
Dallas and John Geissman of the University of New Mexico for their outstanding
service to the society. And John Lovering of Australia will be named an Honorary
Fellow. Lovering is one of the founders of the fission-track geochronology method.
Adams says that volunteering to serve on GSA committees, or any society for
that matter provides benefits few students are taking advantage of these days.
“Inevitably there is a tremendous return to individuals volunteering in
an organization that represents their field of study. By participating and contributing
to a society, your circle of colleagues grows, as well as your professional
credentials,” he says. “This volunteering business is a joint venture
young professionals and professionals take on without merit or ceremony, but
it carries with it a lot of responsibility and opportunities for the future.
Any young professional who doesn’t seize those opportunities and deliver
faithfully has missed a big one.”
