UIS Commission on Karst Hydrogeology and Speleogenesis

Dear Colleagues:  This is an invitation for you to participate in an important session on "Evaporite Karst in the Greater Permian Basin of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado."  I will chair the session at the South-Central Section, Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting that will be held in Stillwater, OK, on March 19-20, 2015.  Work being done by you or your colleagues on dissolution of evaporites (gypsum, salt, potash), brines generated, brine emissions, dissolution processes or results, caves, cavities, sinkholes, collapse features, engineering/environmental problems, etc., are all appropriate for the session.  The work can be a state-wide or regional survey, or site specific, and the evaporite karst can be either natural or human induced.  Oral and/or poster presentations are welcome. 

An earlier session on "Evaporite Karst and Engineering and Environmental Problems in the United States" was convened by James Neal and me at the 2002 Annual Meeting of GSA, and we published the proceedings of that session as Oklahoma Geological Survey Circular 109.  Now I want to focus on evaporite karst in Permian strata in the extended Permian Basin of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado.  It is my hope that we can pull together the upcoming-GSA presentations (plus a few others) into a well-deserved publication, after the Stillwater meeting.

Permian Basin

The attached map shows the approximate extent of the Permian salts, but I know that Permian gypsum/anhydrite beds extend beyond the salts in some of the shelf areas, and these strata are also fair game.  This map covers a vast area of the southern Great Plains, east of the Rockies, and I know there are many projects that are (or have been) carried out in the area that have not yet seen publication, or where new work is leading to modified and/or updated reports.   

Submit your abstract online at: www.geosociety.org/sections/sc/2015mtg   Then open the link “Call for Papers,” then open “Please submit your abstract online,”, then open “1. Theme Sessions,” then open “4. Evaporite Karst….,” then fill out the “Abstract Characterization” and subsequent links (and FINALLY, you are finished).  The deadline for abstract submittal is December 16, 2014.

Some of you reading this are not now working on Permian Basin evaporite karst, but I would appreciate it if you would pass this on to colleagues who may be able to contribute.

Thanks for your consideration of this request, and I look forward to hearing from (and seeing) many of you in Stillwater next March.

Ken Johnson, Retired
Oklahoma Geological Survey