AIPG Luncheon Speaker - 5 January 2010- Calvin Alexander, Univ. Minnesota - Twin Cities Campus

Southeast Minnesota's Trout Springs

AbstractLCCMR sponsored research designed to help protect and manage the springs that source SE Minnesota's trout streams is revealing this group of springs to be remarkably diverse. Fluorescent dye traces from recharge points (sinkholes, stream sinks, and loosing streams) to springs are slowly defining the springsheds of individual springs. These springsheds often bear little resemblance to surface water sheds.

In an effort to accelerate the rate at which we are able to define the springsheds several new spring characterization tools are being tested. Continuous data loggers are showing a variety of temperature (and stage and conductivity) responses in individual springs. We can currently define four different patterns. The best dye-trace defined springsheds are being used to establish Normalized Base Flow relationships between the area of a springshed and the baseflow from the springs. That relationship will allow the rapid estimation of each springshed's area.

The temperature records and quantitative dye breakthrough curves are being used to determine more about the details of the karst plumbing between the recharge points and the springs. Finally, we are trying to improve the resolution of structural contour maps to look for structural control on the springsheds.

Bio
Calvin Alexander was born and raised in Oklahoma. He graduated with a BS in Chemistry from Oklahoma State University in May 1966. While an undergraduate at OSU he developed a sport interest in cave exploration. He graduated with a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Missouri at Rolla in January 1970.  His thesis project was on noble gas isotopes and the early history of the Solar System. In February 1970 Calvin accepted a position as a post-Doctorial researcher in the Physic Department at the University of California at Berkeley where he was part of the Apollo Lunar Sample Analysis effort.  In September 1973 he joined the faculty of the Geology and Geophysics Department at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where he is currently employed.

One of his career-long interests has been Planetary Geology both of the other planets in the Solar System and of the Earth as a planet. It has been his great privilege to be alive and involved in Planetary Geology during the initial exploration of the Solar System. He is the curator of Meteorites at the University of Minnesota and teaches classes at several levels on Planetary Geology, meteorites, geochronology and cosmochemistry. Calvin’s early sport caving morphed into a major research interest in Karst Hydrogeology in the mid 1970s. Karst phenomena are the second career-long focus of Calvin’s scientific interests. Much of his research and teaching in the last three decades has focused on how the human species interacts with karst hydrogeology. That has placed him on the interface between science and society an interface that is intellectually exciting, challenging and can also be frustrating but is a critical place to be as our species faces unprecedented challenges in managing the Earth’s surface environment.