Professor Toke's Geoscience Blog

Just bullet points: Finished a full draft of the second chapter (DEM derived products and Topographic differencing) for my advanced GIS textbook. Still need to do edits and tidy up some references. Will complete that this week.  Next week will check in with Thousand Lake coauthors and try to finish a long overdue draft of the Dry Lake Valley Trench study along the San Andreas Fault. Goal will be end of September for that. Will feel good if I can get two manuscripts in review before December and a full draft of the GIS textbook by Christmas. January will be preparations for the IAG conference and Spring will be Topliff Hills and Genola North Fault studies. Would feel really great to have all those done before June 2026.  Tori’s lymph nodes biopsy was negative (no sign of cancer spread)! Still watching her surgery site with fingers crossed. I do feel some weird nodules, quite pointy, small, and several of them, very unlike the original tumor. I really wish that they are just sca...

This week I drafted most of the text of chapter 2 of the advanced GIS book that I am writing (10 pages of writing so far). I also created 3 figures, but I still need to create 5 more figures and I need to create two separated practical application sections of the chapter along with accompanying video examples. This will likely the be next week's work. It would be great to be able to finish the chapter in just two weeks!  Tori's results from her radiography and ultra sound came back as positive news with no sign of spread to the lungs or other vital organs. The results from the lymph node biopsies on her leg have not yet come back and we are also waiting on some other blood work. While she is really quite happy and playful with the cooler weather that has arrived, I am worried that I can feel some small bumps on her leg near the surgery scar. I really hope these are not already re-growth of the tumor, but that is possible given it's aggressive nature. If true then additional...

I finished a ~9000 word manuscript (plus 8 figures) about the earthquake geology of the Thousand Lake fault this week/end and emailed it off to David Johnson (2nd coauthor) for initial editing before sending it to the whole coauthor group.  Need to decide what’s next on the agenda and whether to accept a manuscript review for GSA Bulletin tomorrow. I think I’ll try to finish a long overdue San Andres Fault MS or I’ll begin working on the second chapter of the GIS course textbook.  Had a pretty poor showing on the bike this AM. I think it was due to two pretty emotionally heavy days after Tori’s visit to the oncologist on Friday. The gist is that her cancer is a type that probably had some roots embedded in otherwise healthy tissue and thus it will likely come back. Because the cancer cells were grade III, it could have spread too and if it does come back it will likely spread. So we had them do X-rays, sonogram, blood work, and lymph node biopsy on Friday. The point was to che...

Main accomplishments: Reviewed GE committee bylaws and attended first GE committee meeting of 2025-2026. Big news is that departments will take control of how they assess their GE courses. The committee has guidelines and will compile assessments, but this should make committee work manageable and put the assessment where it should be - departments working to make sure students are learning what they want them to. Also, the assessment will rotate through on a four year cycle by which ELO the GE course maps to.  Earth science will not have a course reviewed until two years from now!  I finished reviewing about 25 proposals and sat in on the all day grant review committee for the federal government on Tuesday. We finalized our reviewer summaries and priority ranking. Was a good experience.  All figures for the TLF manuscript are done, but I’ve got a big lift to get a full draft of the paper together by the start of September. That was my goal… I’ll shoot for the third....

August 18-23 was a busy week! Monday the 18th was an all day department retreat at UVU's fancy cabin next to Sundance Ski Resort. It was great to see everyone. We discussed Dan Stephen's replacement position and the fact that we need a faculty that is a true sed/strat professor, especially since that is a huge employment area within the Geosciences, it would be a disservice to the students if we just said oh we can teach it with a Paleo-seismologist or a Paleo-Climate person (which we could). We acknowledged the possibility of finding overlap with either paleoclimate, hydrology, or basin tectonics, these would be seen as pluses. We also discussed near-term goals (5 years out) for the department and I think everyone was in agreement that we should focus on projects that can be collaborative between multiple faculty and multiple students, helping to train students with team work skills and building more cohesivity amongst our various programs. We also acknowledged that prioritizi...

Tori got her sutures out, but still has to wear her cone for 5 more days until the wound’s scabs are gone. Still no biopsy results. Because of that I have decided not to attend the annual SCEC meeting. That and it would have been at least $1000 out of pocket and there are no grants available to apply for due to Federal budget cuts. Will have to make it a 2026 priority, lest too much time pass and I fall out of touch with that community. The agenda looked really interesting too. Oh well. I can use the time for writing, perhaps sending off an overdue SCEC manuscript instead.  Otherwise I enjoyed a quick 1 hour road ride this am in the cloudy weather. Hit some short power personal bests in the recent past with 1100 W for 5 seconds and 800 W for 15 seconds. Only tied my 4th place out of 450 finish from 2021 across an overpass in Vineyard for all the effort. The wind was not favorable. Guess the 4 days off from riding has rejuvenated me.  Started reviewing USGS grant proposals for ...