UFOP, Great Basin Chapter News April, 2010 Utah Friends of Paleontology Great Basin Chapter Meeting Thursday, April 8 th 7:00 pm Department of Natural Resources Auditorium 1594 W. North Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah Speaker: Mark Loewen Utah Museum of Natural History A New Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Navajo Sandstone of Utah
Other upcoming meetings, lectures, and events: Utah Museum of Natural History Nature of Things Lecture Series: Wednesday, March 31, 7:00 PM: Our Environmental Destiny Keynote Lecture by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kingsbury Hall, University of Utah For more information see: http://www.umnh.utah.edu/nature Wednesday, March 31, 4:00 PM: Transforming public outreach of science from academic burden to benefit: Forest canopy research as a case study, by Dr. Nalini M. Nadkarni, Evergreen State College. Aline W. Skaggs Auditorium (220 ASB) University of Utah. Presented by the Center for Science and Mathematics Education. Free and open to the public. Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 7:00 PM: Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, with Wayne Ranney. Eccles Auditorium, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building, University of Utah. Presented by Grand Canyon Trust and University of Utah Environmental Humanities Graduate Program. For more information: www.hum.edu/eh April 29 May 1, 2010: Third Annual Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium Hosted by The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois. For more information see: www.fieldmuseum.org/prepsymposium Utah Prehistory Week: May 1-8, 2010 Saturday, May 1st, 10:00 am - 3:00 pm - Prehistory Day Open House at the Rio Grande Depot, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City. Sponsored by the Utah Division of State History. Posters will be available at the April Meeting. For more information about Utah Prehistory Week activities and events throughout the state, see www.history.utah.gov Thursday, May 13, 7:00 PM: UFOP, Great Basin Chapter Meeting. Speaker TBA June 11-13, 2010: Utah Friends of Paleontology Annual Meeting, Vernal, Utah. Hosted by the Uinta Basin Chapter. The tentative schedule is attached. Complete meeting information and registration forms will be sent out soon. July 23-25, 2010: Tentative dates for the UFOP Level One Certification Field Training Course, conducted by the Utah Geological Survey at Doellings Bowl Quarry in east-central Utah (this course is usually done by UMNH over the Memorial Day weekend, but this year they do not have an accessible field location). More details will be sent out as they become available.
Dr. Nalini M. Nadkarni Member of the Faculty The Evergreen State College President, International Canopy Network Transforming public outreach of science from academic burden to benefit: Forest canopy research as a case study Wednesday, March 31st @ 4:00pm Aline W. Skaggs Auditorium (220 ASB) Free and open to the public The 21st century brings growing distances between society and science, and between humans and nature. Educators increasingly recognize the need to engage the public with science and scientists, but most efforts go to either formal education or traditional informal science education institutions (e.g., science museums), which largely attract the scientifically aware. Might academic scientists play a larger role in bridging these gaps? Researchers can successfully disseminate research to non-traditional public audiences because they have deep knowledge and a passion for science. However, outreach to public audiences has been poorly rewarded in the universities, and most scientists remain unmotivated and untrained to reach out beyond academia. Over the past decade, I have used my forest canopy ecology research as a case study to understand how to shift outreach activities from burden to benefit. In this talk, I describe my studies on the ecological roles of rainforest canopy biota, and how they may be affected by global climate change and other human activities. I then illustrate how I have conveyed my results and others relating to the values of trees and forests to public audiences such as urban youth, legislators, faith-based communities, and incarcerated men and women. This work has led to the creation of the Research Ambassador Program, funded by NSF, and the Sustainable Prisons Program, supported by the Washington State Department of Corrections. Both have fostered positive exchanges of information and support in multiple directions. ABOUT DR. NADKARNI Nalini Nadkarni has been both a pioneer in forest canopy studies and in fostering the communication of canopy research among scientists and to the general public around the world. She is a Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington and the Adjunct Faculty at the University of Washington. Her research concerns the ecology of tropical and temperate forest canopies, particularly the roles that canopy-dwelling plants play in forests. She carries out field research in Monteverde, Costa Rica and in Washington State, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Dr. Nadkarni has published over 85 scientific articles and three scholarly books. Her recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in scholarship and creativity, the J. Stirling Morton Award of The National Arbor Day Foundation, an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship, Presidency of the Association for Tropical Biology, and the 2010 National Science Foundation Public Service Award.
GRAND CANYON TRUST and THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES GRADUATE PROGRAM PRESENT with Wayne Ranney co-author of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau APRIL 13 7PM ECCLES AUDITORIUM CAROLYN TANNER IRISH HUMANITIES BUILDING THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Wayne Ranney is an award-winning author, lecturer and geologist who inspires residents on the Colorado Plateau with his words and photographs. He is co-author of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, which takes readers on a virtual time machine tour across the stupendous Plateau landscape. Ranney works as a trail and international guide for organizations such as the Smithsonian, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and the Grand Canyon Field Institute. He is also an adjunct professor of geology at Coconino Community College in his hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. He is the author of Carving Grand Canyon, Sedona Through Time, and Defining the Colorado Plateau: A Geologic Perspective. Join him for an evening of learning and adventure on the Colorado Plateau! To request an ADA accommodation, please contact: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, 201 S. Presidents Cr., #135, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, (801)581-8365. Reasonable notice is required. http://www.hum.utah.edu/eh
Utah Friends of Paleontology Annual Meeting 2010 Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum 496 East Main, Vernal June 11-13, 2010 Parts of this schedule subject to change. Field Trip Friday June 11 Experience quarrying Green River fossils in Cowboy Canyon. This site produces leaves, plant stems, and insects. Bring food and water for the afternoon as well as shale splitting tools and boxes for your specimens. Meet at the Utah Field House by 12:00 noon ready to drive to the site. There are 2 miles of good dirt road to get to the site, depending on the weather. Any fossil material determined to be significant will be retained for the museum collections. Please indicate on your registration if you are planning to attend. Meeting Begins At 5:00 P.M. Convention registration opening social with light refreshments, museum tours and tours of the collection and prep lab facility. At 7:00 P.M. Dr. Brooks Brett, BYU Paleontologist will present a talk on Early Cretaceous Brachiosaurid from the Cedar Mountain.
Saturday June 12 7:00 AM UFOP Board Meeting, continental breakfast 8:00 Membership Meeting (voting, chapter reports, etc) Break 9:00 Presentation of Papers - Presentations are to be 15 minutes in length SVP style. Subjects can be scientific, UFOP projects or activities. Indicate title of your presentation on the registration form. A laptop computer and projector is provided. 12:00 PM Lunch 1:00 Field Trip through the Eocene geology and fossil localities of the Uintah Basin 6:30 Dinner with Dippy in the Utah Field House Museum main hall. Due to State regulations no alcohol will be allowed in the Museum. 7:30 Keynote Speaker - Beth Townsend on her work on fossil mammals in the Uintah Basin 8:00 AM Field Trip (with Beth Townsend) Sunday June 13 Convention T-shirts will be light gray with a small UFOP logo on the front, the Field House Museum logo on the sleeve and this map of the Uintah Basin on the back. Contact Dale Gray at daleegr@aim.com or 435-789-5585 if you have questions.