Several old projects have re-awakened in early 2021, plus some new ones have come on-line. Read the details below:

COASTAL GAS LINK PIPELINE, BRITISH COLUMBIA: for Worley-Parsons Canada

This 667 km-long pipeline crossing BC has been approved and construction has begun. We are finalizing the results of earlier Desktop and Field Studies on surface faulting hazards to the pipeline, and performing final interpretation of 1-meter bare earth lidar DEMs for newly-realigned sections of the line. This work, begun in 2013, is capitalizing on the recent lidar studies of surface faulting in Scandinavia, a similar terrain to BC (i.e., covered by a Pleistocene ice sheet; deglaciated 10-15 ka; lots of weird glacial landforms; and now heavily forested). 

DESKTOP STUDY ON DISTRIBUTED FAULTING IN DIFFERENT TECTONIC SETTINGS, SCANDINAVIA: for Swedish Radiation Safety Authority

In the past decade lidar surveys in Sweden and Finland have discovered additional postglacial faults, some in the vicinity of proposed high-level nuclear waste repositories. These principal faults, and distributed (DF) and triggered (TF) faults near them, may cause measurable displacements in the future lifespan of repositories (~100 kyr). The client wishes to check current rock-mechanics based predictions of fracture movement in the repository volume, with empirical data observed during historic distributed and triggered faulting. Projects such as these will provide the eventual stimulus to replace today's empirical predictions of DF-TF faulting, with more physics-based algorithms.

 HYDROLOGIC IMPACTS OF EXPANDED OPERATIONS, GRAND TARGHEE SKI RESORT, WYOMING: for SE Group

Grand Targhee Resort has proposed a significant expansion of ski trails, base area development, and snowmaking, which has triggered an Environmental Impact study by the US Forest Service. One off-site impact of concern is surface water and groundwater changes downslope of the resort, in the populated Teton Basin of Wyoming and Idaho. Geo-Haz is building a 3D GIS database of water wells to help establish the hydrogeologic framework.

ASSESSING LATE QUATERNARY ACTIVITY ALONG THE UTE PASS FAULT, EL PASO COUNTY, COLORADO FRONT RANGE: for US Geological Survey

In this1.5-year research study, Geo-Haz is assisting the Colorado Geoloical Survey in characterizing latest fault movements on the enigmatic Ute Pass fault zone (UPFZ). The southern part of the 71 km-long UPFZ is on the Colorado Front Range Urban Corridor and passes through Colorado Springs, Colorado's second-largest city. The fault hugs the base of Cheyenne Mountain, passing just beneath the entrance to NORAD Headquarters. We are using 1-meter bare-earth lidar DEMs to make a fault-oriented strip map, followed by geophysical surveys, to identify candidate sites for paleoseismic trenching. 

NOT A PROJECT, BUT.....

In July 2019 our Principal, James P. McCalpin, was elected President of the Terrestrial Processes Commission (TERPRO) of INQUA, the International Union for Quaternary Research. INQUA was founded in 1928 to unite scientists from diverse fields who study the physical, biological, and anthropological changes during the past 2.8 million years, which forms the Quaternary geologic period. The TERPRO Commission has about 500 members who specialize in geology, earth surface processes, geomorphology, and geologic and seismic hazards.

More recently, Dr. McCalpin was appointed as one of two INQUA representatives to the Committee on Disaster and Risk Reduction, of the International Science Council GeoUnions (http://www.iscgacrdm.com/). The Committee provides guidelines and Policy Briefs on how the earth science & technology communities can contribute basic science data input needed in the overall global Risk Reduction Process (Science-to-Engineering-to-Planning-to-Insurance).

INTERPRETATION OF SUSPECTED LANDSLIDE AT PROPOSED ‘GULCH A’ BRIDGE, SOUTH ABUTMENT, US HIGHWAY 550 REALIGNMENT, DURANGO AREA, COLORADO: for Shannon and Wilson-Denver

Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is planning to realign the intersection between US Highways 160 and 550, 7 km south of Durango, CO. In late 2019 one of the bidding design-build companies asked Geo-Haz to examine a suspected slump landslide in the area of a proposed bridge abutment. Field review indicated that the site had failed, but in thin slab slides of colluvium. In the evacuation area the failure plane was near the surface, so bridge piers could be placed through it and into stable material. As of March 2021, the bridge is being built.

GEOLOGY AND GEOLOGIC HAZARDS OF THE 2018 PROPOSED SNOWMAKING AREAS, UPPER FRONT SIDE, VAIL RESORT, EAGLE COUNTY, COLORADO: for SE Group and Leonard Rice Water Engineers

This 2018 study examined the entire northern slope of Vail Mountain, which hosts the original ski trails of Vail Resort. Since the 1970s the entire 850 m-high, 5.5 km-long slope has been portrayed as a landslide on published geologic maps. But the slope had never been geotechnically studied. Using Vail Resorts’ bare-earth 1-meter lidar, we were able to subdivide the slide mass into various lobes, to drill three boreholes, test material strengths, and make a preliminary slope stability analysis.