Reports: ND852114-ND8: Characterizing Quartz Microtextures in a Proglacial and Nonglacial Fluvial System as a Means Toward Improved Paleoenvironmental Analysis: A Pilot Study
Gerilyn S. Soreghan, University of Oklahoma
Impact on Students: This grant provided partial support for my PhD student, Leslie Keiser— support critical to sustaining Leslie through to completion of her PhD (May 2013). PRF support enabled Leslie to conduct the fieldwork, and the extensive lab work with the scanning electron microscope (SEM) to collect a large dataset on quartz grain microtextures that enabled her to craft two primary manuscripts and one secondary manuscript— all currently either in revision or in review at peer-reviewed journals. Leslie grew enormously in confidence in the latter stages of her PhD, and is now employed full time as a petroleum geologist at Conoco-Phillips.
The PRF grant also supported the field work for Curtis Smith, who is a new MS student, but travelled on grant support in summer 2014 to collect the data he will now use to conduct his graduate work at OU. This work involved travel to Puerto Rico, and during that work we invited two undergraduates from the University of Puerto Rico to join us, as an outreach effort. These two students (Fabioloa Cartegena and Alan Velez) accompanied us the entire time, and learned about the work we conducted. Both wish to attend graduate school, and noted that this experience was extremely valuable to them.
Impact on PI:This grant has taken me (the PI) in new research directions in several ways. Firstly, this PRF research includes plans to immerse myself and students into the realm of the sedimentology of modern systems, with the promise of developing “proxies” for climate applicable to ancient strata. To date, I have focused on Earth’s “deep-time” record, so this is very new for me, and has inspired me to craft additional projects based on sediments from modern systems. Secondly, this research involves intensive work with scanning electron microscopy, physical weathering and fracture formation, quartz microtextural analysis, and advanced statistical analysis-- all new subdisciplines for me.
Impact on Field:If our approach is successful, it will enable clarification of paleoenvironmental interpretations for fluvial systems from various geologic ages, even given one-dimensional (e.g., core) access to a system. Such information is critical for prediction of reservoir character, owing to the influence of paleoenvironmental setting on channel belt geometry, proportion, and sand connectedness. It will also be of great benefit to paleoclimatic interpretations, because it is otherwise very difficult to assess whether a fluvial system emanated from a proglacial or nonglacial drainage basin in the deep-time record, yet this determination has major implications for paleoclimatic reconstructions.