Achievement

IGERT Trainee Dale Hess (Geology) recently completed a multidisciplinary project with results that have been presented to an international audience and will be published in a scientific journal. The analysis of now-exposed glacial sediments has long been used to reconstruct previous ice flow history. Micromorphology, the analysis of microscale structures in soils and sediment, has been used for decades to analyze the response of various geologic materials to applied stress. One point of criticism directed toward micromorphology has been the significant user subjectivity inherent to the evaluation of microscopic samples. My work has introduced image analysis software to the process and has therefore minimized the human component. Dr. John Menzies, one of the leaders in the micromorphology community, is a colleague on this project and has been excited by the geospatial tools and corresponding potential presented by the project.