Tuesday, April 26, Charles Real, California Geological Survey

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1 AEG Sacramento Section Student Night!! Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Location: Speaker: Topic: Sudwerk Restaurant and Brewery nd St, Davis, CA. Lots of free parking! Link to map Charles Real, California Geological Survey "Reducing Tsunami Risk in California" Agenda: 5:30 6:30pm Social hour and student posters 6:30-7:30pm Dinner 7:30-8:30pm Speakers: Katy O Donnell (CSU Geology Field Trip) Charles Real (Reducing Tsunami Risk) 8:30-8:45pm Questions Meeting Cost: $30 members (with RSVP) and $35 non-members There will be a $3 surcharge for no RSVP $5 students (no surcharge for student walk-ins) Student Sponsorships welcomed! Sponsor a student for $20 (or choose your amount) You may RSVP by going to -- or by sending an to: Tim.McCrink@conservation.ca.gov 1

2 Speakers for AEG Sacramento Section Student Night Apr. 26, 2011 Student Speaker Katy O Donnell CSU Sacramento Geology Katy will be giving a short presentation on the CSU Sacramento structural geology field trip that AEG helped sponsor last year. Guest Speaker Charles Real, Registered Geophysicist (Charles.Real@conservation.ca.gov) California Geological Survey Reducing Tsunami Risk in California The March 10, 2011 Tohoku Earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami in Japan that reached California s coastline where damage to harbors may exceed $50 million. The California Geological Survey has been engaged in tsunami hazard mapping in partnership with the California Emergency Management Agency. Having completed inundation maps to facilitate preparedness and evacuation planning by California s coastal communities, current efforts are now directed toward products for land-use and development applications, having the potential for implementation through California s Seismic Hazards Mapping Act. Future products are planned that will reduce tsunami risk in the maritime community. Highlights of the recent event and efforts to reduce tsunami risk in California will be presented. About the speaker: Charles Real is a Registered Geophysicist in California, and has worked in the field of earthquake hazards for over 35 years. He is currently a Supervising Engineering Geologist with the California Geological Survey (CGS), where he helped establish and currently manages California s Seismic Hazard Zonation Program. During his career he has been principal investigator for federal grants totaling over $20 million, and has recently completed a National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program grant to evaluate earthquake-induced liquefaction hazard in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region. 2

3 Chairman s Message April 2011 Greetings fellow AEG members, Expo! Expo! Expo! Deadline for registration is this Friday, 15 April This will likely be the best professional event you will attend all year. Not only are you going to find a fantastic lineup of drillers, labs, and other vendors, but you will have the opportunity to get one-on-one with each and every one of them and get all your questions answered. If you are just starting out in your career this is the place to be if you want to get a first rate field education in a short amount of time, taught by local folks, the same folks you will be using on your jobs this summer. If you have been around a while this is the place you want to be, with your new folks, to help them learn all the tricks of the trade. If you are like me, and have been around for quite a long while this is definitely the place to be to find out all the new developments in field methods and get the inside story on what these vendors can really do. Most importantly, this Field Expo is about giving back to the community. This is your chance to help our students, the next generation of engineering geologists, geotechnical engineers, geologists and all the folks who are going to be building and fixing the infrastructure and cleaning up the environment in California and around the world for the next 40 years. All the proceeds from this event go into the AEG Sacramento Section Student Scholarship Fund. Mark your calendars and make sure you don t miss the event. Also, make sure you don t miss our student awards night, Tuesday, 26 April, at Sudwerks in Davis. We will be awarding two scholarships and getting to hear from some of our great students. We would also like to take this opportunity to ask for sponsors for our student awards night. Help us to make this event as affordable as possible for all our students. If your company can step forward and help sponsor some students it would be greatly appreciated. If you as a professional could sponsor a student ($30, $20, or even $10), every bit helps us to keep the cost down for students and help them to start building their professional careers by getting to know their peers and future co-workers. Remember, register now for the Field Exploration Expo and make a difference (oh, you also get a free lunch and munchies). Sincerely, Garry Maurath, Chair AEG Sacramento Section Garry_maurath@urscorp.com 3

4 Announcements AEG Field Expo is fast approaching on APRIL 22 nd. Deadline to register is April 15 th. See the flyer in this newsletter, or visit for more information on how to register. It s a rare event. Don t miss it!! If you would like to volunteer, please contact Michelle Buller (marketprowest@gmail.com). And remember, all proceeds from this event go to fund more student scholarships!! Help support our next generation of geoscientists by attending this event! STUDENTS!! It s not too late to apply for a scholarship. See the application in this newsletter or go to to submit your application today. Application deadline is APRIL 15 th. If you have questions, please contact Drew Kennedy, dkennedy@sageengineers.com ( ) for additional information. Engineers without Borders meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 6:30pm, places vary. Go to to see how you can get involved. If you find yourself in Fresno on April 21 st, make sure to attend the San Joaquin Valley Chapter s monthly meeting at the Old Spaghetti Factory. The title of the talk is Quantifying post-glacial talus deposition in Yosemite Valley using ArcGIS and nearsurface geophysics, and the implications on hazard assessment given by Master s candidate Anna Brody of the Fresno State Student Chapter. The Northern California Geological Society is hosting a Geology of Lake Tahoe Region field trip on June 25 and 26. The field trip will be led by Dr. Richard Schweickert, Professor Emeritus Geology at the University of Nevada, Reno. For more details visit the NCGS website at Abstract deadline for CalPaleo 2011 has been extended until Saturday, April 23, The CalPaleo 2011 meeting will be held May at Sierra College in Rocklin. Go to for more information Rapid Excavation and Tunneling Conference (RETC), San Francisco, June 19-22, For more info go to 45th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium, San Francisco, June 26-29, For more info go to Have you let your AEG membership lapse? It s never too late to renew! Go to to get your membership up-to-date. 4

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9 Tips for the Tech-savvy Geologist Google Earth Plug-Ins California Geologic Maps This collection contains degree geologic maps covering the entire state of California. The 1:250,000 scale maps were produced in the 1960s and 1970s by the USGS and State of California Division of Mines and Geology. The plug-in will load in your Temporary Places in GE, and will need to be dragged into your My Places. Otherwise, you will have to load the plug-in each time you want to use it. From there, just zoom into your area of interest until the 1x2 degree map boundary lines show and click on the map title that you want. The geologic map will load in several seconds depending on your connection speed. The individual maps will then load in your Temporary Places and will be discarded when you close GE. For a frequently used map, drag the file to your My Places. Google Earth Plug-Ins Updated USGS Quaternary Fault and Fold Database Faults are colored coded for age category. As you hover the cursor over a fault, its name will appear in the same color as the fault. If you click on the fault, a text box will open and you can click a link for the database of information about that fault. Sometimes it takes two clicks to get the text box to open. You can also access a fault through the Google Earth table of contents. Open the folder for the correct age, find the fault name in the list, and double click the name. Google Earth will "fly" to the fault you selected. For more information about the United States Quaternary Fault and Fold Database, examine the metadata document. As with any outside data source, when using this data, please provide proper acknowledgment. earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/qfaults/google.php California Geological Survey For some smaller-scale geologic maps, turn to the CGS website: conservation.ca.gov/cgs/information/geologic_mapping/pages/googlemaps.aspx#regionalseries Facebook!! AEG - National is on Facebook. Become a member and stay up-to-date with the latest developments nationwide and locally. Got something you want to say? Please contact one of the Section officers or the newsletter editor (for contact info see last page) with your news, announcement, job posting, or tech-savvy tip. We d be happy to post it in the next newsletter. 9

10 BOB S BOOK REPORT (contribution by AEG Member Robert H. Sydnor) Liquefaction Monographs On March 22, 2011, Professor Ross Boulanger spoke to the AEG Sacramento Section on liquefaction. About 60 AEG and ASCE members were in attendance and the talk was very well received by practicing engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers. These two monographs are relevant: Idriss, I.M., and Boulanger, Ross W., 2008, Soil Liquefaction during Earthquakes: Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Monograph 12, 243 pages, 7 chapters, 3 appendices. Available from: $45.00 for members, and e-book for $25.00 for members. Idriss, I.M., and Boulanger, Ross W., 2010, SPT-based Liquefaction Triggering during Earthquakes: University of California, Davis; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Center for Geotechnical Modeling, Report # UCD/CGM-10/02, 259 pages. Download free 9.2 MB file from UC Davis website: action_cgm pdf Tsunami References At the AEG Sacramento Section meeting on March 22, a book-report was also given on these two tsunami publications by AEG member Robert H. Sydnor. The devastating Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake that occurred on March 11 makes us Californians fully aware that we also have a tsunami hazard on the West Coast. Specifically, a giant Mw9 Cascadia Earthquake hit our own coastline on January 26, Look for a detailed report in the upcoming issue of AEG News. The California Geological Survey prepared official tsunami inundation maps of the California coastline several years ago, and these will be of timely assistance to consulting AEG members with clients along the coast. Atwater, Brian, and others, The Orphan Tsunami of 1700: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1707, 133 pages. Download free pdf from USGS.gov website ( or purchase bound book (about $25) from the University of Washington Press. Orcutt, John A., Grabowski, Martha R., Atwater, Brian F., Bostrom, Ann, Crawford, George, Eisner, Richard K., Lin, Jian, Suther, Douglas S., Milburn, Hugh B., Mileti, Dennis S., Okal, Emile A., Synolakas, Costas E., Wood, Nathan J., Yeh, Harry, 2011, Tsunami Warning and Preparedness --- an assessment of the U.S. Tsunami Program and the nation's preparedness efforts: National Academy of Sciences, National Academy Press, Report 12628, 40MB pdf, five chapters, 12 appendices, 285 pages. The book and its pdf may be purchased separately or together. Tsunami Run-up Zonation Maps of the California Coastline. Download from the website of the California Geological Survey: o For follow-up questions, refer to Rick Wilson, Engineering Geologist, California Geological Survey for more information about the tsunami mapping program. 10

11 AEG Sacramento Section Event Calendar 2011 January 25th Aviator's, Sacramento Speaker: Dr. Glen Borchardt, Soil Tectonics "Building on Ancient Soils Immediately Adjacent to Active Faults" February 22nd Speaker: John Russell, State Water Resources Control Board Aviator's, Sacramento " Changes to the Underground Storage (UST) Tank Cleanup Fund " March 22nd Aviator's, Sacramento April 21st Old Spaghetti Factory, Fresno April 22nd April 26th Sudwerks, Davis May 24th Aviator's, Sacramento Speaker: Dr. Ross Boulanger, Professor UC Davis "Cyclic Failure and Liquefaction: Current Issues" San Joaquin Chapter Speaker: Anna Brody, Fresno State " Quantifying post-glacial talus deposition in Yosemite Valley using ArcGIS and near-surface geophysics, and the implications on hazard assessment " AEG Sacramento Section 2011 Field Exploration Expo Wildlands Fire Training Center, McClellan Business Park Sacramento Section Annual Student Night: Charles Real, California Geological Survey, Reducing Tsunami Risk in California Speaker: Bruce Hilton, National AEG President " CA High Speed Train How to Cross Active Faults at 250mph" June 21st Speaker: TBD TBD " TBD " July No meeting - summer break August 21st Speaker: TBD TBD " TBD " September October TBD No meeting - Annual AEG Meeting in Anchorage, AK Joint meeting with GeoInstitute TBD November Speaker: TBD TBD " TBD " December Joint Holiday meeting with GRA TBD " TBD " 11

12 Speaker for AEG Sacramento Section May 24, 2011 California High Speed Train How to Cross Active Faults at 250 mph Bruce Hilton, National AEG President In 1996, CA passed legislation that appropriated funds to begin environmental permitting processes for the first US high speed rail system that could operate at speeds up to 250 mph and provide a system that would enable travelers to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2 hours. In 2009, CA approved Proposition 1A resulting in $10B in Bond sales followed by $2.25B in ARRA (Stimulus) dollars that have spring boarded system wide project design that is now well underway. Geotechnical and engineering geologic hazards across nearly 800 miles of high speed corridor are daunting challenges. Among these, 42 active faults are crossed by the project that require analysis and mitigation to ensure passenger safety and relatively uninterrupted revenue service. This talk focuses on the history and project components of High Speed Train systems, the overall technical challenges, and in particular the risk based methods of analysis and mitigation alternatives developed at fault crossings. About Bruce Hilton Mr. Hilton began his career at Leighton & Associates in Southern CA in 1978 and continued his career in Northern CA with KLEINFELDER since His focus has been with Engineering Geology of private and public projects throughout the US during his 32 years in the business. He is KLEINFELDER s Chief Engineering Geologist and, in this role, he is responsible for the quality, external exposure, marketing, and mentorship throughout the firm. His experience spans both environmental and engineering geology with emphasis on geomorophology, fault studies, landslides and slope stability, GIS, dams and transportation, and soil and groundwater contamination assessments. He resides in Sacramento California with his wife and enjoys, volleyball, golf, and body surfing. 12

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15 Newsletter Advertising Eighth Page (Business Card) - 2-in high by 3.5-in wide Quarter Page - 4-inches high by 3.5-inches wide Half Page - 4-inches high by 7-inches wide Full Page - 8-inches high by 7-inches wide Advertisements may be full color and include logos and other artwork. Please provide a PDF or JPG format proof of the advertisement to be incorporated into the newsletter. Questions regarding advertising may be directed to Garry Maurath, gmaurath@urscorp.com, or Holly Nichols, hnichols@water.ca.gov, Advertising rates are based on a per-issue basis of the newsletter or all four issues over a oneyear period. The newsletter is published on a quarterly basis. Advertisement Size Cost per Issue Cost per 4 qtr issues Eighth Page $50 $150 Quarter Page $75 $225 Half Page $150 $450 Full Page $250 $750 15

16 Section Officers Chair Garry Maurath Vice Chair Pete Holland Treasurer Tim McCrink Secretary Chase White Scholarship chair Drew Kennedy Newsletter Editor Holly Nichols Legislative chair Bill Fraser Membership chair Theresa Butler Immediate past chair John Pfeiffer Sponsorship chair (vacant) Legislative committee Bill Fraser, John Pfeiffer, Eric Chase, and Garry Maurath Lobbyist Judy Wolen Section website: 16