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2015–2016 Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer
GSA TODAY | NOVEMBER 2015 Jerome V. De Graff has been
named the Richard H. Jahns
Distinguished Lecturer for 2015–
2016. This lectureship was jointly
established in 1988 by the Association
of Environmental & Engineering
Geologists (AEG) and the
Environmental and Engineering
Division of the Geological Society of
America (GSA) to increase student
awareness about applied geology.
Having retired in February 2014,
De Graff brings his 36 years of expe-
rience as a geologist for the USDA Forest Service in Utah and
California, USA, to this coming year’s lectureship. “I was fortu-
nate to work for a land management agency where a variety of
projects needed geologic information. And for the opportunity to
be officially sent to work on projects or teach in Italy, Bulgaria,
Thailand, Guatemala, and several countries in the Caribbean,”
says De Graff. He also notes, “I never imagined how much my
work as a geologist would involve being an integral part of an
emergency response or disaster preparedness action.”
De Graff continues his geology career, periodically teaching
graduate courses for the Earth & Environmental Sciences
Department at California State University (Fresno), writing
professional papers, and being both a reviewer and editor for
several journals. His first action after retirement was posting
“Before the Smoke Clears…” on GSA’s “Speaking of Geoscience”
blog (https://geosociety.wordpress.com/?s=after+the+smoke
+clears). His experience speaking to groups started before his
geology career as an instructor from 1968 to 1973 for the
Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York, USA. Over the
years, he has given a variety of talks at regional, national, and
international venues.
A native of the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, De Graff
found his calling as a geologist while obtaining a B.S. in education
and earth science at the State University of New York at Geneseo.
Once employed, he soon realized an advanced degree would help
his career and obtained an M.S. in geology at Utah State
University. His thesis project involved mapping across a moun-
tainous 595-square-mile-area managed by the USDA Forest
Service on the Utah-Wyoming border, which ultimately resulted
in his becoming the first forest-level environmental geologist in
their Intermountain Region.
De Graff has drawn upon his background and experience to
develop five topical presentations. Interested institutions should
contact him at jdegraff@csufresno.edu to schedule one or more of
the following talks:
1. Fire, earth & rain: Emergency response for wildfire-induced
landslide hazards: Wildfire is a unique natural hazard because
it poses immediate threats to life and property and creates
conditions that can lead to subsequent debris flows and
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accelerated rock fall. This is a significant problem in the western
United States, where large wildfires have become more frequent
since the mid-1980s. Limiting the impact of these post-fire
geologic hazards requires determining their likelihood and
location within the burned area. A rapid assessment is needed
to ensure mitigation measures can be implemented prior to
initiating rainfall.
2. What does it take to effectively monitor for environmental
and engineering geology projects?: Monitoring is often part of
environmental or engineering geology projects. Monitoring of
surface crack development over an active coal mine, herbicide
movement in groundwater, and long-term temperature and pH
trends in an area of hot springs illustrate how this activity can
develop information important to project objectives. This
presentation will also explore how to ensure the effectiveness of
monitoring efforts.
3. The challenges of providing landslide information during an
emergency response: Geologists may find themselves
becoming members of a team called as part of an emergency
response to a destructive landslide. Being successful during
such a stressful and intense assignment requires rapid acquisi-
tion of needed geologic information. De Graff will illustrate
strategies for effectively accomplishing the tasks necessary to
provide required information based on his experiences with a
large landslide event that dammed a river in Dominica, West
Indies, in 1997 and a large rock slide that buried a major
highway in California in 2006.
4. Dealing with hazardous mine openings—blasting is not
always a good option: Openings into abandoned mines can
pose a physical hazard that is not always apparent to the general
public. There is a continuing effort by state and federal agencies
with mining or land management responsibility to implement
measures to prevent people from entering abandoned mines.
Often the suggestion to just “blast the opening shut” is
advanced as being a reasonable way to handle the problem. This
presentation explores a number of reasons why this approach is
not as simple as it would appear and one situation where this
option turned out to be the best approach.
5. The story of the Matthieu landslide-dam, Dominica, West
Indies: Natural dams created by large landslides blocking rivers
are found in many parts of the world. Upstream flooding from
impounded water is often followed sometime later by down-
stream flooding. Consequently, these impacts call upon geolo-
gists involved with such events to make predictions or forecasts,
especially about when later downstream flooding will take
place. The behavior of the Matthieu landslide dam in the small
island nation of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean clearly
illustrates how far off the mark these predictions can be.