We as instructors and organizers often measure the success of courses based on participant engagement and energy. Each year, the aquifer testing course seems to overflow with enthusiastic participants with a noticeable positive energy, and this year was no exception.
Thank you to all of the participants for making 2023 a truly enjoyable and enriching experience. Let's keep working together.
-Dan Kelleher.
Midwest GeoSciences Group recently received an unexpected and cherished gift. In response to receiving a Hydro(beer)ology Pint Glass along with the pint koozies, Tim "GeoMan" Miller, created a brilliantly designed tribute to the GeoMan concept.
It's Tim Miller's design. There is no other tribute like this one. He created this platform from his personal vision and then made it with this hands using wood, paint, and a wood burner.
Tim created this platform to hold a "his" and "her's" Hydro(beer)ology Pint. And although I appreciate Tim's kind words about the GeoMan concept, it's a humbling gesture he used in writing.
A common question we ask ourselves at some project sites is:
Is this surficial soil either NATIVE or FILL?
It can be daunting to determine when the soil sample looks exactly like the surrounding soil. There's lots of observations we can contrast between the soil sample and the surrounding soil. I'd like to officially state the determination is important. Just because the soil material all looks alike doesn't mean we can just blow off looking for the subsurface boundary.
Here's why: we only get one chance to do our work right the first time.
Sure, maybe the soil all looks alike and may be it even behaves similarly. But if nearby soil has been moved into place where the soil boring is located, do your best to identify the presence of reworked or moved soil and it's bottom boundary.
Some reasons include:
1. Physical properties may be similar but will be different, every time.
2. Re-worked sediment may contain a different invisible chemistry or chemical constituent.
3. The boundary may prove valuable in a following boring or later work.
For soil that has been moved, re-worked, or piled, Midwest GeoSciences Group refers to it as "Quaternary Fill" on our soil boring log. We differentiate fill types based on their nature and content.
Here's some photos of a site that I recently assessed the near-surface sedimentary sequence to determine if it was moved or re-worked sediment. The variables to observe are few because the local depositional environment is an alluvium/colluvium mixture. So even the stratified re-worked soil appeared similar to the stratified water-lain soil. Scale differences of deposition are not a clear indicator and neither are color, soil classification, moisture content, associated sediments, or a measurable geotechnical property. Any of it could be native and in-situ when I see the soil sample perspective.
But luckily, this excavation was large and exposed a full 2D south sidewall. It allowed a visual inspection far, far beyond what a soil boring would reveal. So, stratification features and their positioning coupled with a subtle color change related to moisture revealed a boundary that would be nearly impossible from even a line of borings. I'll never know for sure if my hypothesis is perfect, but it's a working one for now.
This post is dedicated to Becky, Barry, Chris, and the other great people who work at my local UPS Store.
Midwest GeoSciences Group released the SOIL CLASSIFICATION EXAM KIT on November 1, 2022 and we are happy with this unique training experience featuring both soil samples and an online journey of quizzes, questions, and tutorials, not to mention lab data sheets for each of the five testing methods for all 18 samples.
It took nearly 10 years to assemble this special collection of 18 soil samples because it took that long to find sources of soil that were both uniform and had sufficient volume (and accessible). From another perspective it took 4 months longer than expected for the release date to arrive due to subtle, little, squeaky QA metrics with soil batch index testing. And lastly it took a couple of months longer than expected because the online portion grew from just providing the answers and lab data sheet to a myriad of quizzes, questions, and tutorials.
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| Rockstar SuperHero Barry coming to the rescue. |
Responsive distribution of the SOIL CLASSIFICATION EXAM KIT is a priority after an order is received. Great help from Becky, Barry, Chris and others who are professional and knowledgeable help the entire process. I tip my hat to them. -Dan Kelleher
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Midwest GeoSciences Group will be a featured exhibitor at the Annual AGU Meeting in Chicago, December 11-16, 2022.
With the recent release of the new SOIL CLASSIFICATION EXAM KIT coupled with an AGU presentation summarizing the Environmental Sequence Stratrigraphy of a complex site in Illinois, AGU has chosen Midwest GeoSciences Group as a featured exhibitor.
Thank you to those at AGU for your kind gesture.
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We're in the midst of history-making days (and nights).
May 15, 2022 offers 85 minutes of a total lunar eclipse that begins at 11:29AM ET. All that's required to witness the event is (1) clear skies, and (2) go outside and look.
Midwest GeoSciences Group will join science-minded friends in Carmel, Indiana to watch the eclipse, but the real exciting topic of conversation will be these history making days where astrophysicists have captured the imagery of the massive black hole at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy.
Why Environmental Sequence Stratigraphy?
May be first, let's recall it’s derivative, Sequence Stratigraphy.
In the most basic terms, Sequence Stratigraphy is a study of sedimentary deposits with respect to depositional environments and changes in sea level, sediment supply, and sediment-storage area through time.
Sequence Stratigraphy is the means to understand the subsurface architecture of marine sediments on the basis of understanding how depositional environments (and the resulting sediments) shift and change as sea level rises and falls.
Environmental Sequence Stratigraphy is a subsurface characterization approach applied to hydrogeologic and environmental projects based on understanding the geology. This approach allows us to understand the architecture of the sedimentary succession beneath our sites; that is, recognition not only of coarse- and fine-grained sediments in the succession, but their geometries, continuity, variability, and uniformity.
Isn’t the name of the game: understanding subsurface relationships !? It's more than just mapping a secondary attribute such as soil classification, permeabilities, or contaminant occurrence. Understanding subsurface relationship relies fully discerning the SOLE INDEPENDENT VARIABLE (i.e. depositional processes).
So again, why Environmental Sequence Stratigraphy? Call it anything you want. Midwest GeoSciences Group has called it the “Sedimentary Stratigraphic Approach”, “Holistic Stratigraphy”, and “Holistic Hydrogeology” and we’ve even trademarked “Taking the Mystery Out of the Subsurface” along with creating an online training experience to do it.
In the end, it’s the job we are hired to do as geoscience professionals: take the mystery out of the subsurface.
