The trip will be to Florida Caverns State Park, Marianna FL.  More info to come.

Fall 2011 Newsletter

Download the pdf by clicking here

Elections completed for 2012 SEGS Officers

Congratulations to the incoming Executive Committee officers for the SEGS in 2012!  Marc Hurst of Winter Haven, FL has been elected as Society President, and he is joined by Vice President John Herbert of Gainesville, and Harley Means has been reelected to the post of Secretary-Treasurer to complete the lineup of incoming officers. Past President Andy Lawn will also be active on the Executive Committee board, and a special thanks is extended to Roger Portell for serving as SEGS vice president last year. Roger was instrumental in facilitating special field trips, and we are fortunate to have his continued support and involvement in the coming year. Plans are already in the works for the 2012 annual business meeting and field trip, as well as many other possible field trip events this year.

Ballot Initiative Passes for Membership Dues

In addition to the officers elections, the ballot question to enact a modest increase to the membership dues has been approved by a super-majority of active members.  Thank you everybody for your participation, we appreciate the continued support and involvement with the SEGS, and will continue to make our society beneficial to its members.

2011 Annual Meeting Recap 

We had a great meeting and field trip  for the 2011 society Annual Meeting event. A healthy-sized  group arrived at the Florida Museum of Natural History (FMNH) on the University of Florida campus that Saturday morning to meet our hosts and take a guided tour of the museum exibits. The afternoon time was spent at the Haile Quarries in Newberry where Roger Portell, SEGS Vice President and FMNH invertabrate collections manager, explained the multitude of important and significant fossil discoveries across the property. Everybody got some up close and personal rock-hammering time with the Ocala Limestone in the quarries, enough to satisfy the field geologist-at-heart in all of us who spend most of our time in front of a computer screen these days.

The evening business meeting included a catered dinner at the FMNH, exclusive access to the museum exibits, and a very interesting dinner presentation by Dr. Richard Hulbert on the Haile Quarry fossil vertabrate fauna. Quite an unbelieveable and rich treasure trove of Pliestocene skeletons! A wrap up of the business meeting was conducted by society president Andy Lawn, with a discussion of our accomplisments over the past year and a half, and what can be done further to improve SEGS in continuing  to serve the geological community. More details of this and other society happenings will be posted with the 2011 SEGS newsletter in August. Thanks again to the Executive Committee for organizing the annual meeting and special thanks again to Roger and the museum for the hospitality.

SEGS Constitution Revisions Approved

The proposed revisions to the Constitution and Bylaws for the SEGS have been approved by our members, and will go into effect for 2011. By a margin of 98% of the votes cast on the October 2010 ballot, revisions to how the Society will now conduct business were approved by our members. A second ballot question, asking SEGS members for an increase in the annual dues, did not meet the two-thirds super majority approval for adoption, but a return of 58% indicated our members may be receptive to a dues increase in the future. For now the Executive Committee will continue to improve the benefits and services to our members, and this question may be revisited at another time. We are pleased to have our Constitution and Bylaws updated so we can move the Society forward and keep working on rebuilding our membership rolls. Thank you everybody for particpating in the voting!

The new constitution that was revised by the 2010 Executive Committee makes changes to how the society conducts business, including the make up of the Executive Committee, the official fiscal year of the SEGS, and how we will communicate with our members in the future. Old provisions in the Society constitution required mailout ballots for elections, and other business correspondence, which is cumbersome and expensive to do. We will be working in 2011 to accomplish most of this electronically via the SEGS website and by email correspondence. The Society newsletters will likely also be distributed by email and posted on the website, although there may still be a few members who wish to have it mailed to them, which we will try to accommodate.  As always, we want to know what you think, so please don’t hesitate to contact us and we will post the comments we receive, where appropriate. Thank you for your continued interest in the SEGS, and we hope to see many of you next year at our Annual Meeting and field trip events!

NEW EVENTS   SEGS Field Trip to Lake Wales Ridge Sand Mines, Oct.16

                         November 20 – Field Trip to the Fl. Panhandle/Alum Bluff

Proposed 2010 Revisions to the SEGS Constitution

During the SEGS 2010 Annual Meeting on May 14th we discussed proposing revisions to the old and outdated Society constitution. Following that discussion, the Executive Committee has now drafted a revised Constitution which has been mailed to Society members along with a ballot to vote on the revisions. We will be accepting return ballots through the month of October 2010 and will announce the results to our members by email notice and through this webpage. We wish that every member seriously considers and understands the need for revising the document – it is long overdue. Rest assured, the proposed revisions were carefully deliberated on and crafted prior to being sent to the membership for a vote.

The proposed changes to the Constitution cover many aspects of how the society conducts business, including the make up of the Executive Committee, the official fiscal year of the SEGS, and how we will communicate with our members in the future. We are still trying to move the Society into the electonic age and allow for ballots and other business correspondence to be handled via the Internet. Just doing this requires revisions to the Constitution. Also of great importance is formally establishing the current annual dues amounts in the Constitution so we can continue to run the Society in a legitimate manner and provide improved benefits to our members.

Because the current Constitution is so outdated, the Executive Committee decided to seek adoption the revisions with two separate questions on the ballot. It seems a bit complicated but we believe it was best to ask a separate question for the proposed membership dues increase which, if approved, would not go into effect until 2012. We hope our members agree that a dues increase will greatly improve the viability of the SEGS as an organization. Either way, the second question on the ballot is necessary for approving either the proposed dues increase in 2012, or establishing the current dues amount in the constitution language. We hope our members understand the ballot question language and how it references the specific articles in either the current (1984) or proposed (2010) constitution documents. If there are any concerns about the ballot language, please contact us for clarification.

It’s never a good time to ask for an increase in membership dues, but it goes without saying that the SEGS can a reach much greater potential with additional operating capital. We have had discussions about funding a scholarship for geology students, continuing to pursue the distribution of geologic maps through the Maps in Schools program, and offering more high-quality field trips for our members. There are also additional operating expenses that we will have to cover in the future as the SEGS moves ahead.

We would always like to hear from you in for input and feedback, so please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@segs.org and we will post the comments we receive, where appropriate. Thank you for your continued interest in the SEGS, and we hope to see many of you in November at our Fall Field Trip!

Our SEGS President, Tom Jackson of Lakeland Florida, passed away on December 26, 2009 after a brief illness. Tom was recently elected to serve as the 2010 SEGS President, ascending from the office of Vice President where he served in 2008 and 2009, and was looking forward to an active year leading the society. Tom was 60 years old.

I first met Big Tom in 1984 when we were undergraduate students in the geology program at the University of South Florida in Tampa. We both graduated in 1986 after attending field camp together in New Mexico, and enjoyed travel experiences across the Southwest with our fellow geology classmates. After graduation Tom continued studying geology at USF and received his Masters degree before entering the work force. He was active for nearly two decades working in private sector consulting and for regulatory divisions at both the St. Johns River Water Management District and the Southwest Florida Water Management District. I stayed in contact with Tom through work associations, and more recently with the SEGS, and we shared mutual interests in hydrogeology and Florida’s natural and cultural history.

Tom was passionate about Florida history pertaining to state water law and the effects of human impacts on Florida’s rivers and aquifers. As a Polk County native, and a lifelong resident of Lakeland, he was deeply concerned about the diminished hydrologic condition and ecology of the Peace River.  Most troubling to him was the historical disruption of baseflow in the Upper Peace River from losses of spring discharge to the river due to groundwater extractions, which is especially evident at the historic Kissengen Spring site. While Tom was always pragmatic about the slim prospects of seeing Kissengen Spring flow again, he remained optimistic to the end that it could be possible to restore flow to the spring. One of his favorite sayings in this regard was, “Just follow the science”, and I think Tom was always pretty good at doing that. We will all miss Tom, his sincerity, kindness, and thoughtful insights about geology.

Dave DeWitt,  SEGS President