Category: Recorded Event

2025-12-06 David B. Williams – Exploring History and Nature in the City and beyond…

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The Lecture – Exploring History and Nature in the City (Seattle)

Quimper Geological Society (QGS) welcomed back our friend David B. Williams, author, naturalist, and tour guide on December 6, 2025.

David B. Williams presented his two new books: Seattle Walks and Wild in Seattle. QGS leader and advisor, Carol Serdar Tepper interviewed David about his new books. He discussed how urban dwellers can get to know their city better by getting outside, walking, observing, and paying attention. He shared some of his adventures including birding at 60 mph, the pleasures and discoveries to be made by going back to the same location repeatedly, and how to date a 1100-year-old earthquake. During this talk, David shared some geologic connections and insights about his 2025 trip to Japan when he walked along the seawall constructed after the 2011 tsunami.

This talk appealed to newcomers, visitors, and longtime residents, giving everyone new ways to appreciate Seattle, as well as inspire them with ways to connect with their hometown.

About the speaker

David B. Williams is an author, naturalist, and tour guide whose award-winning book, Homewaters:  A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound is a deep exploration of the stories of this beautiful waterway. He is also the author of Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography, Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology, as well as Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City. Williams is a Curatorial Associate at the Burke Museum and writes a free weekly newsletter, the Street Smart Naturalist (https://streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/ – by clicking the “No thanks” you may access the previous newsletters). More information about David’s books may be found at www.geologywriter.com

2025-09-13 Tom Badger – Hazards and Highways: Troubles for the NW Olympic Peninsula

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The Lecture 

Hazards and Highways: Troubles for the NW Olympic Peninsula

On September 13, 2025, Quimper Geological Society welcomed back Engineering Geologist, Tom Badger.

The presentation featured State Route 112. This section of the highway is the sole access road for the northwestern Olympic Peninsula and the remote communities situated along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, west of Port Angeles. Tom emphasized particularly unfavorable geology underlies the western half of this road and this, combined with steep topography and an exceptionally wet winter climate, make it one of the most landslide-afflicted highway corridors in the state. Landslides and lowland flooding impact travel most winters, causing short duration closures of one or both lanes and necessitating persistent maintenance efforts. On a longer cycle of years to decades, major landslide events severely damage or destroy the highway at one or more locations, resulting in closures lasting three to six months or longer. Detour options are limited to nonexistent, so communities and local businesses suffer from these closures until highway repairs can be made or floodwaters recede. Low frequency-high consequence hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis add to the risk profile and further complicate mitigation strategies.

Tom’s presentation summarizes the results of a planning-level study commissioned by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) that examined the geologic and hydrologic hazards that threaten this highway, conducted a comprehensive risk analysis, and provided recommendations to improve its resiliency and reduce community impacts. The study, completed in 2023, enabled WSDOT to secure a 5-yr $30 million allocation from a NOAA Climate Resiliency grant in late 2024 to proceed with initial recommendations, which are expected to begin Spring 2025.

About the Speaker

Tom Badger

Happy to leave the Midwest flatlands behind in 1981, Tom completed his BS in geology in 1983 at WWU and his MS in geological engineering at the University of Nevada Reno in 2002. He is licensed in Washington as an engineering geologist, hydrogeologist, and civil engineer. Tom worked for WSDOT for 32 years, the last five serving as chief engineering geologist, before retiring in 2016. Tom specializes in the assessment and mitigation of slope hazards, soil and rock slope engineering, and risk management for transportation infrastructure. He has published and lectured extensively on these topics, and consults part-time for the Portland-based firm, Landslide Technology.

 

2025-04-12 Dan Muhs – Tectonic Uplift in the Pacific Northwest

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The Lecture
Subduction-related late Quaternary tectonic uplift and sea-level change in the Pacific NW and around the Pacific Rim

This was a Zoom-only lecture.

Quimper Geological Society welcomed Dan Muhs, an emeritus USGS geologist. He provided marine terraces as evidence of tectonic uplift along the Pacific Ocean plate.

In 1979, Seiya Uyeda and Hiroo Kanamori introduced a tectonic model with two end members of a subduction-boundary continuum: the “Chilean” type (shallow dip of the subducting plate, great thrust events, compression, and uplift of the overriding plate) and the “Mariana” type (steep dip of the subducting plate, no great thrust events, tension, and little or no uplift). The concept has been used to explain variable rates of Quaternary uplift around the Pacific Rim, and the paper has been cited over a thousand times since its publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research.  We now have a sufficient number of dated late Quaternary marine terraces from around the Pacific Rim to test the veracity of this model. In this presentation, well-dated emergent shorelines of the Pacific Rim was explored, from South America, North America, the Aleutians, Japan, and the Marianas.

About the Speaker

Dan Muhs is an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He earned B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. He was a research geologist with the USGS from 1985 until his retirement in 2022.  Despite his retirement, Dan remains an active researcher, lecturer, and writer.

Dan’s interests are in the fields of coastal and eolian geomorphology, Quaternary stratigraphy, soil genesis, and paleoclimatology. Most of his work has been in the US (Alaska, western US, and Great Plains), but he has also worked in Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Spain, and western Pacific. Over the course of his career he has authored more than 150 scientific papers on a diverse range of subjects focused on the Quaternary period, including the origins and history of loess and dune fields, paleozoogeography of marine fossil invertebrates, tests of glacial isostatic adjustment models, and sea-level histories and tectonic uplift rates deduced from emergent marine terraces. Dan has received numerous awards and recognition, including the Geological Society of America Kirk Bryan Award.