EnSafe is pleased to announce that Memphis-based Environmental Scientist Erik Heider has won the First Place Grover R. Murray Award for the Best Published Paper of 2016 featured in Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS) Transactions. His research paper is titled Early Modification Stage Emplacement of Shallow Crater-Filling Units, Wetumpka Impact Structure, Alabama. The GCAGS conferred the award, which Erik will formally receive on Wednesday, November 1, 2017, at the GCAGS Convention in San Antonio, Texas.
Erik’s research and resulting paper examined the dynamics of a hyper-velocity bolide impact into a shallow marine environment using the Wetumpka impact structure in Alabama as a natural laboratory. The submarine target material consisted of Upper Cretaceous sediments that were unconformably overlying weathered Piedmont schists and gneisses.
Erik’s paper focused on the nature and emplacement order of crater-filling sediments along a geologic half-transect through an interior portion of the impact structure. This distinctive morphological feature is important for establishing analogous features in marine impacts of Wetumpka-size on Earth and perhaps Mars as well.
Erik wrote this paper with Dr. David King, his graduate advisor. In 2015 Erik received the Outstanding Graduate Student in Geology and Outstanding Graduate Leadership awards from the Auburn University Department of Geosciences.
GCAGS serves as the Gulf Coast section of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. This nonprofit professional organization seeks to foster education and the communication of topics of interest to geologists. Visit http://www.gcags.org for more information.