Category: Pacific Northwest geology

Gallin, Will

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Will Gallin is the carbon sequestration project lead at the Washington Geological Survey’s (WGS) Dept of Natural Resources (DRN). He has worked for the Dept. of Ecology in Lacey, the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro, New Mexico, and the Hess Corporation—an oil and gas exploration and production company in Texas. He graduated in 2005 from Carleton College in Minnesota, and got his MSc in 2010 from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His other DRN job is as a mapper for the landslide hazards program.  His favorite geological disciplines are sedimentology, stratigraphy, paleontology, and salt tectonics.

Will presented on “Geologic carbon sequestration in Washington State” in Dec. 2020.

Ward, Peter

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Dr. Peter Ward is a paleontologist and astrobiologist at the University of Washington and a world-renowned authority on mass extinctions, climate change, evolution, and astrobiology.  His research examines the history of life on Earth over billions of years, focusing in particular on mass extinction events.  That work gives him unique ‘deep time’ perspectives on the future of life on this planet, as well as the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.  Dr. Ward has appeared on NOVA and Ted Talks and written over a dozen popular science books including “Rivers in Time: the Search for Clues to Earth’s Mass Extinctions” and “The Flooded Earth: Our Future In a World Without Ice Caps.”   In Dec. 2019, Peter presented on “The (Coming) Great Simplification.”  (Updated Oct. 2021)

Kelman, Melanie

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Melanie Kelman is a volcanologist with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) in Vancouver. She first became interested in geology as a child, when her father, a hobby rock collector, took the family to quarries, gravelly lake shores, and mine dumps around western Canada and the United States. She completed a B.Sc. at the University of Saskatchewan in 1994, an M.Sc. at Oregon State University in 1998 (studying altered seafloor rocks from the Tonga trench in the southwest Pacific), and a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in 2005 (studying volcano – ice interaction at southwest BC’s Mount Cayley volcanic field).

After brief stints working in industry, drilling for metallurgical coal and then looking for gold in ancient volcanic rocks, Melanie started work with NRCan in October 2007 during the Nazko region volcanic seismic swarm (which did not lead to an eruption). She currently devotes her time to volcanic hazard research, volcano emergency planning, and the preparation of educational materials. If volcanic unrest were to occur again in Canada, she would play a major role in monitoring, hazard assessment, and eruption forecasting.

In May 2018, Melanie lectured to the QGS on the “Sea to Sky Geo Tour—Geology of the Vancouver to Whistler, BC road.)  (Updated Oct. 2018)