Director’s Message The Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey (WGNHS) had another successful year in 2021. We began the year working remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but restrictions started to ease during the spring …
WGNHS research
2020 Year in Review
Director’s Message 2020 was one of the most unusual years in the long history of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. January began normally, with WGNHS staff involved primarily in office projects and participating …
Aerial survey in northeast Wisconsin
In January 2021, northeastern Wisconsinites may notice a low-flying helicopter towing a large, hoop-shaped sensor. The helicopter’s sensor uses airborne electromagnetic (AEM) technology to gather data that will help scientists update depth to bedrock maps. …
2019 Year in Review
Curious about what the Survey was up to in 2019? As always, it was a busy year for us. We worked on projects across the state of Wisconsin, from the shores of the Great Lakes to the Mississippi …
Streams of Data from Streams of Wisconsin
In this August 2019 talk for Wednesday Nite @ The Lab (WN@TL), WGNHS hydrogeologist Dave Hart explained how he and his team used canoes outfitted with an array of sensors to record vast amounts of …
The Precambrian Geology of the Baraboo Hills
In this March 2019 talk for Wednesday Nite @ The Lab (WN@TL), WGNHS geologist Esther Stewart shares her insights into some of Wisconsin’s oldest rocks. It’s a story of reading the deep-time sedimentary record and …
2018 Year in Review
2018 was another busy year for the Survey. We worked on projects across Wisconsin, from the bluffs of Lake Michigan to Bayfield County, from the Driftless Area to the Door County peninsula and many parts …
Pulling together the pieces of the Bayfield County Groundwater Atlas
WGNHS geologist Grace Graham is producing a map of the depth to bedrock in Bayfield County using a passive-seismic geophysical survey to supplement data from well construction reports. The combination of new methods (passive seismic) …
Big Data from Small Streams (and Small Lakes—the 2018 Update)
Dave Hart, a WGNHS hydrogeologist, is designing and implementing a project that is challenging ideas about how much data is enough data. Dave collects data and uses models to understand Wisconsin’s water quantity and quality …
Investigating bluff collapse along Lake Michigan
J. Elmo Rawling III, a WGNHS Quaternary geologist, is working with Dr. Lucas Zoet in UW–Madison’s Department of Geoscience to monitor bluff stability to identify what conditions are likely to lead to slope failure in …