Photo courtesy of Nicholas Kampouris on Unsplash
Oberlin College geologist Amanda Schmidt, Ph.D. will deliver this year’s American Rock Salt Lecture in Geology on Thursday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. in Newton Hall room 214 on the SUNY Geneseo campus. Schmidt’s talk, “People, Erosion, and Chemistry: Tracking the Effects of People on Watershed Process in China and Cuba,” is free and open to the public. The lecture will also be live-streamed to those who register in advance.
Schmidt, who is an associate professor and the chair of geology at Oberlin, will explore the ways that the effects people have on the environment can be quantified the through a variety of chemical metrics. Schmidt will discuss the effects of deforestation and reforestation in China and western Cuba, as well as the influence of indigenous, conventional, and organic agriculture. The geologist will also explain about techniques for measuring water and sediment to get the data needed to understand the effects of people on the environment.
Schmidt was raised in Hong Kong, where she first became interested in studying the effects people have on the environment. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering at Princeton University and a Ph.D. in geological sciences from the University of Washington While at Oberlin, Schmidt’s research has focused primarily on the intersection between people and watershed processes, and developing and testing the geochemical techniques to quantify these relationships.
SUNY Geneseo’s Department of Geological Sciences and the American Rock Salt Company LLC has partnered on the American Rock Salt Lecture on Geology since 2004.