Professor Toke's Geoscience Blog

Whirlwind of a tour of New Zealand in bullet points: *Wonderful pre conference (ICG) field trip from Wellington to Kaikoura and then on to Christchurch: observing uplifted coastal platforms, fault scarps, landslides and discussing sediment cascades through the fluvial network from the thousands of mass wasting events associated with the 2016 Kaikoura EQ.  *great talks at the International Conference on Geomorphology. It was refreshing to experience a non-north American centric conference. So much learning about glacial, peri/para glacial, aeolian, pluvial and other geomorphic study sites around the world. Day 2 was obviously a highlight for me with all day in back to back tectonic geomorphology sessions and presenting my work extending Parker and Veronica’s Ksn of Utah study. I also found myself stuck in a number of planetary geomorphology sessions. fascinating!  *visited the Earthquake City museum in Christchurch and also toured the red zone neighborhoods by bicycle which wer...

I’m writing from the South Island of New Zealand. Spent a few days in Auckland, climbed several cinder cones and swam in the comfortable 70 degree waters. Flew to Wellington, spent an evening there, hiked an escarpment above the Wellington fault and then completed a draft of a manuscript about lidar differencing and ground subsidence in Southern Utah for the Journal Remote Sensing before embarking for the pre conference field trip that I’m on now. The field trip began with a ferry ride on the Cook Straight, great weather today, but I cannot imagine how windy it must get in stormy conditions! Then we spent the day driving across the many valleys and ranges associated with the oblique slip faults in the northern half of the South Island, ending the day near the 2016 Kaikoura ruptures. Looking forward to tomorrow’s second half of the field trip and arriving in Christchurch for the conference! 

Week 3 of Spring 2026 was busy. I attended the first GE committee meeting of the semester where we discussed how to mitigate AI from impacting the GE experience at UVU, even considering how to effectively ban faculty and student from using AI in GE courses (or limiting it to no more than 10% of class structure/content). Seems like a good, but possibly controversial plan given the emails that all administrators here at UVU have been sending for the past 1.5 years.  I got reviews back on the Thousand Lake Fault Geosphere Manuscript and they were positive with some helpful suggestions for clarifying and and precision of language in a few places and adding in some things (e.g., fault scarp profile interpretations) to an e-supplement. Made some initial progress addressing those things and some of my colleagues will handle other aspects, will finish up those minor revisions in mid February upon return from New Zealand.  The figures above are views of subsidence across the Enoch Grab...

This week I went from feeling relaxed and accomplished, easing toward the trip to New Zealand, to  joining the organizing committee for a 3 day SCEC workshop (Parkfield 2.0) with the likes of Bill Ellsworth, Cliff Thurber, and Roland Burgmann. Additionally I was invited to submit a contribution to a Special Issue of Remote Sensing on ground subsidence. So I spent most of the week working on that paper instead of the Topliff Fault paper. I need to submit it in later February, but that feels pretty close by and now Topliff is on the back burner for the moment. Oh well… it’s all exciting! 

Happy to report that it has finally become winter in northern Utah. December and early January's abnormally high temperatures (50 degrees nearly every day) have dipped to a seasonal 35 and it even snowed (a little). We need snowpack for our long dry and warm summers! Cannot say I didn't enjoy my gravel bike riding along the Bonneville shoreline this past week, but this is the time of year bike trainers were made for. Grateful to have had a restful break without the grind of prepping classes in just two weeks. Instead I was able to finish a draft of the Advanced GIS Textbooklet which Dr. Olson is utilizing in his class and I prepared my talk for the IAG meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand at the beginning of next month. (abstract can be found here: https://confer.eventsair.com/iag2026 ). After getting some feedback from the coauthors, I will probably upload a version of the talk to my YouTube page:  https://www.youtube.com/@nathantoke5266   For now, here is a screen capt...

Heading into the Christmas and New Year’s Break I’ll just recap progress on sabbatical goals and outline my plan moving forward: Publication Goals - submit two papers and work on 3-4 papers. Book Goals - Advanced GIS open textbook Conference Goals - Attend International Conference and Field Trip Service Goals - Contribute to GE committee, be occasionally useful to department, participate in peer review. So Far: One Manuscript (Thousand Lake fault) submitted (Geosphere). Two other Manuscripts have received significant attention (Dry Lake Valley and Topliff fault) The advanced GIS book is almost complete (draft): 4/5 content chapters are complete and I am working on the 5th now. I am mostly prepared for the IAG conference in New Zealand and have 3 days of structured geology field trip learning scheduled. Should get two days of independent field learning by bike and boat near the Southern Alps too. Will present on Ksn across Utah landscapes in a Tectonic geomorphology of Mtns session whic...