Monday, May
9, 2011
6:00 - 7:30 pm
Pellissippi
State Technical Community College
10915 Hardin
Valley Road, Knoxville
J.L Goins Administration Building, Cafeteria Annex
MAY PRESENTATIONS
Award-Winning Student
Presentations
This month&rsquos ETGS
meeting featured three presentations by graduate students from
the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) at the
University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Each year EPS offers a
course on &ldquoProfessional Presentations&rdquo (Geology
596) to provide a formal opportunity for students to develop
their oral communication skills. This one-credit course involves
writing an abstract and preparing, practicing, and delivering a
professional presentation on any geological topic of interest,
usually a portion of their dissertation/thesis research. The
students present their talks at a departmental seminar, and they
are ranked by the seminar attendees and a five-person committee
consisting of faculty, post-docs, and students. Once again, ETGS
is partnering with EPS to further broaden this valuable
experience by offering awards to the student presenters and
inviting them to give their talks to an audience of professional
geologists.
The Pulaski
Fault in Northeast TN and Southwest VA:
Recorder of Possible Two-Phase Alleghanian Deformation
Phillip Derryberry
University of
Tennessee, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
Knoxville, Tennessee
The Pulaski is one of the master Alleghanian thrust
faults in the Valley and Ridge fold-thrust belt, and is the only
major southern Appalachian fault to extend into the central
Appalachians around the Roanoke recess in SW VA. Detailed
field mapping of Cambrian and Ordovician strata in NE TN revealed
key structural and stratigraphic characteristics for
distinguishing the Pulaski thrust sheet from its footwall, the
Saltville thrust sheet. Unlike most thrust systems in the
Valley and Ridge, the Pulaski sheet may exhibit two deformation
phases. The initial deformation, consisting of NW vergent,
tight to overturned, pre-faulting macroscale folds that are
contained within the Pulaski hanging wall, may be a manifestation
of the previously recognized late Pennsylvanian Lackawanna phase
of the Alleghanian orogeny. Transport of the earlier
deformed strata, analogous to deformation sequences that occurred
in the Pulaski sheet near the Roanoke recess, and subsequent
folding would therefore be associated with the main (Permian)
phase of the Alleghanian.
Carbon,
Sulfur and Iron in the Mesoproterozoic
Touirist Formation, Mauritania: Implications for Environmental
Redox
Geoff Gilleaudeau
University of
Tennessee, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
Knoxville, Tennessee
This study looks at how we can
use the mineral speciation of iron and sulfur in fine-grained
siliciclastic sediments to track the oxygenation of Earth surface
environments. Understanding how oxygen was partitioned in the
Proterozoic oceans is important in understanding the evolution of
complex life.
Using
SHRIMP to Trace A Terrane Boundary Through
The Inner Piedmont: And You Thought They Just Tasted Good
Matthew Huebner
University of Tennessee, Department of Earth & Planetary
Sciences
Knoxville, Tennessee
The southern Appalachian Inner Piedmont contains two lithotectonic terranes distinguished by sedimentary provenance and magmatic history, the Tugaloo (W) and Cat Square (E) terranes, separated by the Brindle Creek fault. The Tugaloo terrane consists of Neoproterozoic to Ordovician(?) metasedimentary rocks with Laurentian provenance and a dominance of Ordo-silurian magmatism, while Cat Square metasediments reveal both Laurentian and Peri-Gondwanan sources, with mostly Devonian-Mississippian plutonism. Detailed geologic mapping in the central GA Inner Piedmont along a prominent aeromagnetic lineament revealed a distinct partitioning of granitoids and metasediments on either side of a high-temperature fault, and U-Pb SHRIMP (sensitive high resolution ion microprobe) detrital zircon geochronology and granitoid ages confirm this fault represents the SW extension of the Brindle Creek fault through central Georgia.
Page updated May 26, 2018 |