December 10, 2014, Wednesday - A Sip of Science at Aster Cafe

Time: 5:30pm

Location: Aster Cafe (River Room) 125 SE Main Street

December Sip of Science - A Slippery Slope: Using Geology to Better Understand and Mitigate At-Risk Hillsides

This past June was not only Minnesota’s wettest June, but Minnesota’s wettest month on record. The amount and intensity of the rainfall led not only to wide-spread flooding, but created ideal conditions for landslides and/or slope failures. A slope failure, characterized as a failure of rock, sediment and vegetation, occurs whenever gravitational forces overcome the resisting forces holding up a hillside or bank. While soil saturation from rainfall events can be a triggering factor of many slope failures, the geology of the slope is also of prime importance, as well as understanding how human alterations to the landscape affect slope stability. Join us as Carrie Jennings, a geologist with the Minnesota DNR, discusses a preliminary inventory of slope failures in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and along the Minnesota River corridor from Jordan to St. Peter, with an emphasis on looking at the underlying geology of those slopes and what may have triggered failure.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Carrie Jennings became a glacial geologist after deciding to go to Alaska for her mandatory six weeks of field camp. Today, her research interests are glacial geology - the deposits of landforms created by glaciers and glaciology - the study of the physics of ice movement. Considered an expert in the field, Carrie applies her knowledge of the distribution of glacial sediment in Minnesota (as well as the history of landscape and river evolution) to better define sources of sediment to modern river systems of the state, most notably, the Minnesota River and its tributaries. Before going to work for the DNR in spring 2012, Carrie Jennings worked twenty-one years for the Minnesota Geological Survey doing the same thing - glacial mapping. She received her PhD in 1996 from the University of Minnesota.

RSVP for Sip of Science  No cover; food and drink available for purchase.

A SIP OF SCIENCE bridges the gap between science and culture in a setting that bridges the gap between brain and belly.  Food, beer, and learning are on the menu in a happy hour forum that puts science in context through storytelling.