Megan Anderson is an earthquake geophysicist at the Washington Geological Survey.  Megan spent her early years in Kent, WA during which the eruption of Mt. St. Helens probably spurred her fascination with geology, which was her major at Carleton College in Minnesota.  She studied subduction processes and earthquakes in South America for her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona.  She has studied numerous tectonic regions of the world but has always made her way back to the Pacific Northwest because there is so much left to discover.  She taught for 10 years at Colorado College, dragging her students and equipment across the country to do research here every summer, but now (as of June) has made her home at the WGS in Olympia.

Her talk in Nov. 2018 was entitled “Revelations about active faulting in the Puget Sound region from geology and geophysics.”  (Updated Oct. 2021)

Christina is a geologist who spent most of her career working for the U.S. Geological Survey on active volcanoes.  Her first job with the USGS, however, was working on glaciers from an office in Tacoma.  When Mt. St. Helens erupted in May 1980, she quickly transferred to Vancouver, to what was soon to become the Cascades Volcano Observatory.  She worked there for the next four years while completing a Master’s degree at Western Washington University in Bellingham.  In 1984, she moved to the USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on the Island of Hawai`i, where she monitored the 35-year-long eruption of Kilauea until retiring. Christina returned to the Northwest in 2012, settling in Sequim, where she spends her time hiking and snowshoeing in the Olympic Mountains and working on her photography.

Since returning to the Northwest, Christina has revisited Mt. St. Helens’ crater, hiking in as far as the terminus of the fast-growing glacier that has wrapped around dome. Her talk entitled Working in the crater of Mount St. Helens, 1980-83, will  include an update on current conditions at Mount St. Helens, nearly 40 years after the big eruption. (Updated Oct. 2021)

Kathryn Neal, P.E. is Civil Engineering Manager with the City of Port Angeles.  Kathryn has a Bachelor of Architecture and Civil Engineering from the University of Washington and has been a practicing Professional Engineer since 1994. In her time with Port Angeles, this has been one of the largest and most significant projects she has been involved in, and arguably the most unique. The project, which was completed this year at a cost of about $21.3M, protects the environment, will last for many decades, and was successfully accomplished within the financial constraints of a small city.

She grew up in Port Angeles, and was thrilled to be able to move back to the Olympic Peninsula about 15 years ago. She recently retired from her job; now she enjoys hiking, kayaking, reading, and imagining alternate realities.

In Ddec. 2016, Kathryn described how the city Stabilized Port Angeles’ Coastal Landfill, which was in danger to sliding into the sea.  (Updated Oct. 2021)