ISGS - October 2010 Activity Highlights

ILGISA Award to Lund for ILHAP Project

Dee Lund received a Service Award from the Illinois GIS Association (ILGISA) at its fall conference. This award is presented to an individual or organization that has provided exemplary professional service or support to the GIS community. No more than three such awards are presented each year.

The award was for Lund's work on the Illinois Historical Aerial Photos (ILHAP) project to create, archive, and distribute a unique collection of more than 35,000 archival aerial photographs for Illinois. The photographs were taken from 1936-1941 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Currently, scanning has been completed for 90 counties (almost 29,000 photographs), and the remaining county photographs will be completed in 2011. All of the aerial photographs are available at the Illinois Natural Resources Geospatial Data Clearinghouse.

As noted in the fall ILGISA program, as the project progressed, Dee continually sought to overcome workflow obstacles while she personally manipulated each aerial photograph many times in a very complex sequence of tasks from identification of print collections, to creating GIS index data, to establishing on-line file access. Her skills at assessing numerous print collections, coordinating the transportation of secure photos between collection sites and scanning technicians, and working under tight project constraints are making it possible to complete the project to provide free access to Illinois' first historical aerial photographic collection of the state.

This collection of 1930s and 1940s aerial photographs is proving to be a valuable resource for geological mapping in Illinois because they show subtle landscape features, such as glacial features in northeastern Illinois, which are now obscured by suburban development. Additionally, the photographs were taken prior to current agricultural practices that can mask features such as the sinkholes in southwestern Illinois. (Contact: Dee Lund)

Dating Illinois Loess and Dune Sand

On October 27, 2010, Xiaodong Miao presented a talk at the 2010 Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa Joint Fall Field Trip on Soil at Quincy, Illinois. The title of his talk was "Application of Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating (OSL) on Loess and Dune Sand in Illinois." A brief introduction of the OSL methodology and its application on sand dunes and loess in Illinois was presented. The tour was organized by the Illinois Soil Classifiers Association, together with the Missouri Association of Professional Soil Scientists, Professional Soil Classifiers of Iowa, and Association of Women Soil Scientists. About 50 individuals participated in this tour, and the field sites were along the Mississippi River valley in Adams and Hancock Counties near Quincy and Warsaw, Illinois. (Contact: Xiaodong Miao)

Earthquake Swarms

Robert Bauer provided a summary report concerning the swarm of earthquakes about 60 miles north of Little Rock, Arkansas, to the Illinois Emergency Management Association and Illinois Department of Transportation in response to their requests for information. The summary also included information on a swarm in Illinois near Olmsted that occurred during the period of December 1983 through February 1984. During that time about 100 earthquakes occurred during the last half of February; the largest was a magnitude 3.6 earthquake. (Contact: Robert Bauer)

GSA 2010 Technical Program

Dick Berg was the Technical Program Chair for the 2010 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, held on October 31-November 3, 2010. His responsibilities included being a member of the Annual Program Committee, Chair of the Joint Technical Program Committee, and organizer of more than 250 sessions with about 3,700 talks spanning 27 geoscience subdisciplines. Over 6,500 participants attended the meeting. Berg previously served as the Technical Program Chair for the 2009 GSA Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon. (Contact: Dick Berg)

Highlights Archive

Updated 08/01/2012 SLD