Outreach | Education

Over the past several weeks, Lupe and I have been building a photo gallery to showcase the multitude of geologic settings and features encountered in Arizona.

Each photo is accompanied by a brief description, location, date, geologic age, and key words to assist in discovery. The photo gallery currently resides in the Publications area (http://azgs.arizona.edu/publications/photo-gallery). We have to plans to move it to a new web feature Outreach & Geotourism.

Showcase the Photo Gallery after moving it to the new Outreach & Geotourism section.

Arizona Geological Survey hosts the Arizona Earthquake Manager program. From 1 - 4 May, we are attending the National Earthquake Managers conference in Seattle, WA, along with more than 100 others, including state earthquake program managers, emergency managers, FEMA officials, and PIOs from Washington and Oregon.

Today's program revolved around federal and state resources, and partnerships critical to informing our communities about earthquake hazards.

Later this month, I'll speak to the Southern Arizona Environmental Management Society on 'Tracking and reporting geologic hazards encountered in Arizona'. |Mike Conway Ph.D. / Senior ResearchScientist, Arizona Geological Survey

 Geologic hazards, such as earth fissures, earthquakes,active faults, landslides, debris flows, and volcanism are a fact of life in Arizona. The Arizona Geological Survey is charged by state statute to monitor and report on hazards. I'll provide an overview of survey efforts to inform decision-makers and the public to the nature, distribution and impact of geologic hazards.

On Thurs., 29 March, Dr. Alex Schauss, affiliated with the University of Arizona Mineral Museum, hosted the Arizona Geological Society and AZGS on a tour of the Pima County Courthouse, slated to be the next home of UA's mineral museum, c. Feb. 2020. The courthouse has been gutted and opened up and once refurbished should make a great site for the UA Mineral Museum. As things now stand, UA will receive more than 20,000 sq feet for exhibits and a state-of-the-art mineralogy research program.

In building the Arizona Experience website in 2012-2014, we worked with the Arizona office of Tourism (AOT) and members of the Arizona Council for Enhancing Recreation and Tourism (ACERT) to launch an interactive Recreational and Cultural Map of Arizona.

We were recently approached by the Arizona Dept. of Transportation to share those data as they build an interactive statewide bicycling map of Arizona. They have a number of downloadable PDF bicycling maps already available. With the blessing of AOT & ACERT, we handed off the digital data that underpins our recreational and cultural map. We look forward to the new digital bicycling map.

The 44th episode of the Arizona Mining Review, released today, included an interview of Don Taylor, the discoverer of the world-class Taylor zinc-lead-silver deposit in the Patagonia Mountains of Santa Cruz County, Arizona.

We received word from the Mining Foundation of the Southwest that they would underwrite the Arizona Mining Review for yet another year.  Our thanks to the Exe. Board and members of the Mining Foundation of the Southwest.

Biosphere 2 is hosting a full day of robotics followed by an evening of drone racing. AZGS will be there to discuss our drone program.  For more information and to purchase tickets to the event: http://biosphere2.org/visit/race.

AZGS participated in the Biosphere2's first drone event this past Saturday. We had a table in the Upper Habitat, where we displayed rocks and one of our research drones. The rocks and minerals were a big hit. It was an opportunity for us to talk about using drone technology to visualize and potentially monitor geologic hazards - earth fissures, landslide features and scarps, and Quaternary fault systems.

A compendium of 19 field trip guides stemming from the 1990 Geological Society of America Cordilleran Section meeting in Tucson, Arizona, are now available online (17 Mar. 2018). The field trip guides are for the Sonoran Desert region of Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico.

Our newest web feature, Ask a Geologist, is off and running and we are receiving 3-5 inquiries weekly. Inquiries vary greatly, but common questions include: where to go to see geologic features; is this a meteorite; where can I collect mineral and rocks?

Each inquiry is addressed within 24 hours and when appropriate we include links to online resources at AZGS, USGS or elsewhere.

Steve Trussell, Exc. Director of Arizona Mining Association and the Arizona Rock Products Association, invited AZGS to brief the Arizona Mining Caucus on mineral productivity in Arizona in 2017.  The chief source of information is the U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2018. https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2018/mcs2018.pdf

Yesterday, I joined former AZGS and ADMMR employee Nyal Niemuth and 24 volunteers in boxing the geoscience library that was temporarily stored in the former Arizona Mines and Mineral Museum's Copper Gallery on the Government Mall in Phoenix.  The library holdings were stored in ~500 boxes and staged for transport to a secure facility.

AZGS thanks the volunteers and the individuals accruing the cost for the secure storage site. 

Mike Conway