G. Michael Clark
Associate Professor
Surficial Geology and Geomorphology
Already well into my doctoral dissertation research on structural geomorphology involving bedrock mapping for the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, I was introduced to Appalachian regolith as a viable field of research by Professor Anders Rapp of Uppsala University in Sweden who came to the Department of Geography at Penn State as a visiting professor. After completing my dissertation in Geological Sciences on the origins of wind and water gaps through the Wills Mountain Anticlinorium in Mineral and Grant Counties, West Virginia, I received a Thord-Gray Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for study in Uppsala University, again under the tutelage of Professor Anders Rapp. Our work in Swedish Lapland, in part with Professor Sidney E. White, of Ohio State University, Columbus, produced papers in Geografiska Annaler on nonsorted polygons and palsas. Here in the Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I have received research grants and published on central and southern Appalachian regolith topics, and lately, with colleagues in the Department of Geography on regoliths in the Cordillera Central, Dominican Republic, Hispaniola. I am sole author or lead author of three invited book chapters in the Binghamton Symposia in Geomorphology Series, on the topics of cataclysmic flooding, water and wind gap origins, and periglacial geomorphology in the Central and Southern Appalachians. Since its inception in 1987, I have been active in The Southeastern Friends of the Pleistocene, missing only the September, 1991, meeting on the geomorphology and plant ecology of the Shenandoah Valley, and the 2001 meeting on the geomorphology of the Appalachian Great Valley in southeastern Pennsylvania.
My teaching interests are manifested in the yearly teaching of: General Geology 1 (Geological Sciences 101); Geology of the National Parks (Geological Sciences 203, which will be taught Spring Semester 2004); Process Geomorphology (Geography-Geology 450, which is being taught Fall Semester 2003), and Seminar in Geomorphology (Geography-Geological Sciences 650), which will be taught Spring Semester 2004.
In the public service arena, during the last five years, as State Coordinator for Tennessee, I have assisted in the development of an eight-state Earth Science project that uses maps, aerial photographs, and remote sensing imagery from space to teach Middle School and High School Earth Science. This is the SEMAPS Project, headquartered in Clemson University and sponsored by the National Science Foundation. SEMAPS is nearing completion, with a publisher being sought. For the State of Tennessee, the spinoff project from SEMAPS will be a new product dedicated to the teaching of Earth Science in the schools using the natural geologic regions of Tennessee. There is considerable evidence that a dedicated state product can be a powerful tool in promoting the effective teaching of Earth Science. The forerunner of SEMAPS, SC MAPS (South Carolina Maps and Aerial Photographic Systems) is successfully used in about 50% of all South Carolina Middle Schools.
G. Michael Clark
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
1412 Circle Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996-1410
Phone: (865) 974-6006
Email: clarkgmorph@utk.edu