Registration:
Advanced registration is necessary for participation in this limited-enrollment short course. Pre-registration is required to reserve space and receive course materials. A minimum of 25 people must be registered at the early registration deadline to conduct any short course, but please note this course normally reaches maximum capacity a few weeks before the early registration deadline. If you require special arrangements for diet, equipment, or handicap facilities, please indicate when registering for the course.

Special arrangements for diet, equipment, or handicap facilities should be indicated when registering for the course.

You can register:
- Online Registration Form
- Phone: 763.607.0092
- Fax: 763.658.1539
- Mail your registration form to:

Midwest GeoSciences Group
6771 County Road 8 SW
Waverly, Minnesota 55390

What you will receive:
You will receive 16.0 contact hours of instruction, a Field Guide for Soil and Stratigraphic Analysis, a comprehensive 200-page course notebook with many reference resources and a CEU completion certificate from Midwest GeoSciences Group. Registration also includes continental breakfast, morning coffee break, lunch, and an afternoon break. Recording devices are not permitted during classroom sessions.

Cancellations:
Cancellations may be made up to two weeks before the course, however, 25 percent of the course fee will be charged. Cancellations made after two weeks before the course will be charged $400. No refunds. One substitute is allowed for each registrant who is unable to attend.

Continuing Education Information

• Continuing Education Units (CEUs) and a Course Completion Certificate will be administered by Western Michigan University.

• Most state professional licensure programs accept CEUs for this course.

Course Premise
The description and characterization of glacial deposits is often complicated by the difficulty in determining the distribution, continuity, and geometries of geologic units. Upland glacial settings in the Midwestern United States are typically underlain by a sequence of fine-grained glacial sediments deposited by successive glacial advances. Stratified sand and gravels may occur at various stratigraphic positions within this fine-grained succession, depending on the history of glacial advances and on the resultant changes in depositional environments. Laterally extensive sandÓýand-gravel units, which constitute rational groundwater monitoring zones, are most likely to occur between the deposits of different glacial advances because this is the setting where widespread outwash deposition can take place; other sandÓýandÓýgravel units within the sequence tend to be discontinuous. The key to determining a suitable groundwater monitoring zone thus depends on the ability to determine the boundary between different glacial advances in these successions of primarily fine-grained deposits. Likewise, the key to determining the engineering properties of geologic units depends on the ability to map and predict the distribution of stratigraphic units.

Numerous factors to date have contributed to less than successful site characterization: inadequate training in glacial depositional environments and glacial stratigraphy, the sole reliance on the Unified Soil Classification for characterizing glacial deposits, and the usual method of analyzing data after the field work has been completed have resulted in site characterizations that rarely answer all of the questions about subsurface site conditions

Adequate training remains a problem. Meaningful understanding of modern glacial environments did not occur until the 1970's, and subsequently there has been a time lag not only in applying these concepts to understanding past glacial sequences here in the Midwest, but to teaching these concepts at the University level as well. Further, although most state geological surveys have made important advances in defining and characterizing glacial stratigraphic units and their distribution, few geology students receive any field training in glacial geology or any significant training in field recognition and differentiation of local or Midwestern glacial stratigraphic units.

There has been limited success in evaluating site geologic conditions using the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS) to characterize subsurface sediments. The USCS was developed primarily for foundation investigations, not hydrogeologic characterization, and it is based on particle-size and plasticity-related properties of the sediments. While these two properties are important for hydrogeologic and geotechnical evaluation, the USCS alone does not include evaluation of important properties necessary to identify and differentiate different glacial depositional environments or glacial stratigraphic units. To be useful for most site characterizations, the USCS needs to be supplemented with description of the properties necessary to identify site stratigraphic units and depositional environments, including primary sedimentary structure, contact relationships (and any associated sedimentary structures), weathering zones (oxidation state and carbonate status), and secondary fracturing.

Traditional site investigations involve office determination of a field scope, assignment of field staff and drilling contractor, a field investigation to carry out the project scope (usually completed in minimal time to minimize drilling subcontractor s costs), and evaluation of the field data after the field investigation has been completed. The problem with such a traditional approach is that most sites are more complex or at least different than that assumed when the project scope was determined in the office, and more often than not, once final office evaluation is begun, it becomes apparent that the original program was not adequate for characterizing the site hydrogeologic or geotechnical conditions.

Click Here to test yourself with the basics of sediment descriptions.

The focus of the short course is to demonstrate practical applications that help answer common questions faced during site characterization:

• What implications do depositional environments and secondary weathering processes have on hydrogeologic and geotechnical site investigations? How can the effects be recognized and analyzed in the field?

• What does the glacial stratigraphic framework look like and what are the implications for characterization? How does a stacked sequence of multiple till units effect a project?

• What are the necessary descriptive elements for communicating our observations of depositional environments and the resulting stratigraphy?

• In a sequence of fine-grained glacial deposits with interbedded sand-and-gravel units, are sand-and-gravel bodies in the sequence discontinuous or laterally extensive? How do we ensure that monitoring wells are set in the same unit?

• What are the best methods for sampling glacial sequences?

The short course will demonstrate some of the ways in which these questions can be answered through understanding the processes which control the distribution of different glacial deposits aided by field methods that improve the accuracy of hydrogeologic and geotechnical data collection. Technology demonstrations conducted for the work shop will include several very useful site characterization methods: rotasonic drilling and cone penetration testing. We again want to thank Boart Longyear providing sample data for the course and encourage to call them for any of your sampling needs.

Accommodations:
TBD