Professor Toke's Geoscience Blog

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 ...

This week, sabbatical really begins as others are now returning to the office to ready their fall classes and attend convocation events for the University and College. I too went to the office to meet with my colleague that will teach geomorphology this fall and clarify the materials I am sharing for that class. On Monday, I will do my best to attend the department's fall retreat if I can find someone to come and let the dogs out in the middle of the day. There are a lot of things ongoing with a new hire to replace our sedimentary geologist who resigned/retired early to move to another state and be with family and as such there will be discussions about the directions of the department, which are important to be there for.  I received my departmental feedback on my annual evaluation, comments were pleasant as expected and I forwarded that on to the Dean's office.  I registered for IAG in Christchurch New Zealand and signed up for two field trips. Still waiting to hear about ab...

The TLF paper has been going well. I made a series of three really nice figures demonstrating how we calculated cumulative fault slip rate of the history of the fault using geologic and topographical profiles, culminating with a slip rate figure along the central 30km of the fault, showing clearly that the geologic slope rate is 0.1-0.2 mm/a whereas the more recent slip rate since 100ka is more like 0.5 mm/a.  Tori is doing well, rambunctious and sick of her cone. Still waiting to hear about the biopsy. 

Tori’s lumpectomy of the tumor on her leg was successful in that they were able to get good margins and still close the would well. They will send off the tumor for further analysis, but things seem good. She was not too loopy from the anesthesia and I can see our biggest issue is going to be keeping her resting until the sutures come out in 10 days or so.  I have now completed 10 pages of the TLF manuscript and 3 of 9 planned figures.  Rest day for cycling 🚴‍♀️ might try to get on the MTB if the weekend really has lows of 59 degrees (doubt it’s true, but maybe). 

This weekend I drafted two figures and wrote 1.5 pages on the manuscript. Not bad, 5 hours work.  Back is 98% healthy… 25 mile ride today, 2 KOMs, two 3rd places and one 8th place (North Orem/Lindon/PG ride). 

Made some significant progress so far on the Thousand Lake fault Manuscript. I have a draft of the abstract, introduction, methods overview, conclusions, acknowledgements, some references, and drafts of two figures (trenching results and map and methods of fault vertical separation measurements).  Amounts to about 10 hours of work over two days.  Took Tori and Badger for a run, Tori is still happy to run, so I take that as a good sign as far as her soft tissue leg tumor. I hope she'll be able to continue her dog jogs after the surgery. I have been having trouble with lower back/hip pain stemming from a long ride on a poorly fitted bike in London (been trying to do some rehab and keep rides here not too frequent or too long). Perhaps traveling with your own bike is worthwhile as opposed to renting a bike... Hopefully the issue keeps improving and I can ramp up the rides again soon. There is no pain while riding, but stiffness and issues follow the riding, so one needs to be car...