Author Archives: Michael Purucker

Traditionally, the GSW has adjourned for the summer months to provide time for fieldwork. Our named lecture, the Bradley, will restart the GSW fall season, and will be given by Paul G. Richards, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. It will be held this year at AGU Headquarters (2000 Florida Av. NW), beginning at 8 PM on Wednesday, 13 September. Come at 7:30 PM for socializing (AGU usually has gratis snacks and drinks). The Bradley lecture, ‘Precision Seismology with applications to signals Old and New’ will be 60 minutes with questions to follow. The abstract, and biography, are here, and a flyer is here. You will be asked to sign-in when you enter the AGU building, after you tell them that you will be attending the Bradley lecture of the GSW. If you use the Metro (Red line) you’ll get off at the Dupont Circle stop, and walk north a few blocks on Connecticut to Florida Av. Take a gentle right, and AGU will be on your right in the next block. If you are interested in getting dinner beforehand in the area, the Washington Post had a nice piece last week (7 Sept) on the Square, DC’s new dining collective, located at Farragut Square. Check out the review here.

and will be a Cryosphere-themed meeting. It will be an in-person meeting ONLY. We have talks about measuring our changing Cryosphere one photon at a time (Neumann, NASA GSFC), weighing the Cryosphere and monitoring its changes with the GRACE Follow-On satellite mission (Croteau, NASA GSFC), and using geophysical environmental data to support operations in Sea & Lake ice (Clark, USNIC). A flyer is here, and abstracts, bios & pics are here. The meeting will be held at the Cosmos Club (7:30 PM for socializing, 8 PM for talks. Stay tuned for further updates.

Our meeting secretary, Graham Lederer, has kindly provided the following draft minutes of our last meeting. Let him know of any additions or corrections at glederer[at]usgs.gov.

and is an IN-PERSON meeting ONLY. It will feature talks about the DARPA/USGS AI for Critical Mineral Assessment (Elliott; DARPA), National Flood policy (Honeycutt; Atkins, formerly White House OSTP), and constraining maximum earthquake ground motions (Pratt; USGS). A poster is here. Blurbs, Bios, and Pictures are here. Join us at the Powell auditorium beginning at 7:30 PM to socialize, or at 8 PM for the talks.

The informal ‘meet and greet’ for the Crew-4 International Space Station astronauts at the Cosmos Club was attended by about 40, many of whom were scientists with their families who wanted to meet an astronaut. After a 20 minute narrated video from the astronauts, four NASA/UMD scientists with GSW & Cosmos Club experience (Killen, Kirschbaum, Cohen and Martos) gave short (4 minute) presentations to the astronauts about topics that have direct relevance to the return of humans to the Moon. The astronauts responded with interest, and good questions. At the end of the meeting the astronauts presented a plaque to the Cosmos Club and GSW.

If so, the GSW, in conjunction with the Cosmos Club, is hosting a ‘Meet and Greet’ the evening of Thursday, March 30th for the recently returned Crew-4 astronauts. The event will be in the Crentz Room on the 2nd Floor of the Cosmos Club. We hope the meeting will begin about 6 PM tomorrow night (Thursday) for about an hour. Please adhere to the Cosmos Club’s dress code: “Gentlemen are expected to wear jackets, dress slacks, a collared long-sleeved shirt (tucked-in) or turtleneck. Ladies are expected to dress in an equivalent fashion”. The recently returned International Space Station (ISS) astronauts include one, Astronaut Dr. Jessica Watkins, who received a Ph.D. in geology from UCLA on the topic of ‘Tectonic and Aqueous processes in the formation of mass-wasting features on Mars and Earth’ in 2015 under the direction of Professor An Yin. Note that the event is on THURSDAY, not our traditional Wednesday. We hope that you (and your family) may be able to attend this event. Present yourselves at the front door of the Cosmos Club, and tell them that your host is Steve Mackwell, and that you are here for the astronaut meet and greet. Further information is available from purucker[at]alumni.caltech.edu. Hope to see you there.

Please take a look at the draft minutes of the GSW meeting on 22 March. Any suggested changes or corrections should be sent to our meeting secretary glederer[at]usgs.gov

and features three talks. Learn about the Chinese lunar and planetary program from Jim Head (Brown), the Archean origin of magnetofossils from Joe Kirschvink (Caltech/ELSI), and the Biogeochemistry of Irish bogs from Devin Smith (Ohio State). The talks will be on Zoom, and members will receive a notice soon. The meeting will begin at 8 PM (EDT), with the Zoom link opening at 7:30 PM for socializing. A reminder that we are now on Daylight Savings Time. The talks are open to all, and if you would like to attend on Zoom, send michael.e.purucker[at]nasa.gov an email to request the connection information. Short blurbs, bios, and pictures of the speakers are here.

Please take a look at the draft minutes of GSW meeting on 8 March. Any suggested changes or corrections should be sent to our meeting secretary glederer[at]usgs.gov

And will be a hybrid meeting at the Powell auditorium of the Cosmos Club, and on Zoom. The auditorium will open at 7:30 PM for socializing, and the meeting will begin at 8 PM. Our three talks include ones about joint geochemical & geophysical modeling of the deep continental crust (Sammon), Antarctic ice-sheet dynamics (Weber), and automated moonquake detection (Civilini). Members will shortly receive an invite which will include the Zoom link. Non-members are encouraged to attend, either in person or on Zoom. Anyone needing the Zoom link should email purucker[at]alumni.caltech.edu for it.