March 28, 2000

Bowling Green, Ky. -- Two faculty members in Western Kentucky University's Department of Geography and Geology will present their research April 6-7 in Indianapolis.

Assistant professors Michael T. May and Fredrick D. Siewers will make their presentations during the annual meeting of the North Central Section of the Geological Society of America.

Dr. May's project is titled "Paleopedology -- A requisite for environmental geologists and hydrogeologists?" In his presentation, Dr. May will discuss the need for more of those scientists dealing with polluted groundwater and polluted soils to be able to recognize ancient buried soils in underground locations.

"Many times, buried ancient soils control migration of fluids in the subsurface," Dr. May said. "Getting more hydrogeologists and environmental geologists to be able to map or at least predict the three-dimensional arrangement of ancient erosional surfaces or ancient buried soils translates to society being better equipped to model groundwater flow and to cleanup contaminated groundwater."

Dr. Siewers' project is titled "Exceptional preservation of plant remains in ancient coal seams: Insights from microtextural analyses of Pennsylvanian coal-ball concretions." He will discuss research into how plant remains have been preserved in coal seams, which represent ancient swamp environments.

The Pennsylvanian System of Indiana and Illinois represents swamps that existed 300 million years ago. Certain coal seams have unusual rock bodies called "coal balls" that preserve the anatomy and cellular structure of the vegetation of the original coal swamp.
"My research is not so much about the ancient vegetation of the coal swamps, but the fossilization of plant remains preserved in coal balls," Dr. Siewers said.

His presentation focuses on scanning electron microscope studies of those minerals in coal balls responsible for the preservation of coal-ball plants. "These observations and conclusions are new and provide the scientific community with new insight into the fossilization process and the physical-chemical environment of ancient coal swamps," Dr. Siewers said.

About 700 geoscientists are expected to attend the two-day meeting.