Professor Toke's Geoscience Blog

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...

Over the last week I completed the Geologic PCA analysis section (half) of chapter 4 of the Advanced GIS textbook, including four video tutorials, seven figures, and three tables along with 10 pages of writing. I aim to get this chapter done in the coming week or so and finish the next chapter/book before Christmas, gift for Dr. Olsen and next semester!  Additionally, I made a few of the figures for the Topliff Hill Fault Paleoseismology paper and got the go ahead from Dr. Bunds to prepare it for Seismica. So far, four figures, one table and a few pages of writing are there. Aim is to get a draft of this paper to Dr. Bunds before I go to New Zealand. 

Bulleted List: -Submitted the Thousand Lake fault MS to Geosphere.  -Attended the 2025-2026 USHE geology major meeting, representing UVU. Was a good meeting overall. Sad to see some Utah programs having trouble replacing retired faculty (Utah Tech especially who is kind of down to 1-2 one faculty members at the moment). -Attended the last GE committee meeting of the semester where we finalized and approved the committee bylaws.  -Reviewed my IAG conference abstract and began planning my talk which will take place on Feb 5 in Christchurch NZ in the Tectonic Geomorphology of Mountains Session.  -read a recent Geosphere paper about the east Traverse Mountains by the BYU group studying mega landslides want to reread it a bit, certainly interesting.  -listened to my first undergraduate research mentor Keith Klepeis on Geology Bites. how awesome!!! Third professor I know that has appeared on that program.  -Started a book about the history of New Zealand.  -Worke...