UNM to Host 64th Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Geological Society of America

The Depart­ment of Earth and Plan­e­tary Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico is host­ing the 64th annual meet­ing of the Rocky Moun­tain Sec­tion of the Geo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Amer­ica, May 9–11 at the Hotel Albu­querque. The annual meet­ing title is “Rio GeoFi­esta!” About 500 par­tic­i­pant geol­o­gists from across the coun­try will debate top­ics about the geo­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion of the region in a series of theme sessions.

A pub­lic lec­ture, given by Dr. Robert Smith, dis­tin­guished research and emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of geo­physics at the Depart­ment of Geol­ogy and Geo­physics, Uni­ver­sity of Utah, will be held on Thurs­day, May 10 from 7:30–8:30 p.m. at the at the New Mex­ico Museum of Nat­ural His­tory and Sci­ence. Smith’s lec­ture is titled, “The Yel­low­stone Super­vol­cano: Past, Present and Future.”

Smith’s pri­mary research inter­ests are in the­ory and meth­ods in seis­mic stud­ies of lithos­pheric struc­ture, earth­quake seis­mol­ogy, crustal defor­ma­tion, tectono­physics of intraplate tec­tonic regimes and mechan­ics of crustal exten­sion. Smith, who is con­sid­ered the world’s lead­ing expert on the geol­ogy and geo­physics of the Yellowstone-Teton area, has con­ducted sem­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions of lithos­pheric struc­ture, geo­phys­i­cal and geo­detic inves­ti­ga­tions of the Basin-Range Province, Yel­low­stone hotspot and the Wasatch fault fol­lowed by prob­a­bilis­tic seis­mic haz­ard eval­u­a­tion of the Inter­moun­tain West.

Addi­tional meet­ing co-sponsors include the New Mex­ico Bureau of Geol­ogy and Min­eral Resources, New Mex­ico Museum of Nat­ural His­tory and Sci­ence, and the New Mex­ico Geo­log­i­cal Society.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on events and meet­ing ses­sions, visit: Geoso­ci­ety Events

The annual meet­ing is chaired by Pro­fes­sor Laura Crossey, meet­ing tech­ni­cal pro­gram chair is Karl Karl­strom, Gary Smith. field­trip cood­i­na­tor and Gary Weiss­man, stu­dent vol­un­teer coor­di­na­tor, all from the UNM Depart­ment of Earth and Plan­e­tary Sciences.

Addi­tional media infor­ma­tion and selected meet­ing high­lights are avail­able at: Geoso­ci­ety News.

Note: press rep­re­sen­ta­tives with accred­ited cre­den­tials will receive com­ple­men­tary meet­ing registration.

Media Con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu