Bats are critical to their surrounding environment, providing numerous beneficial ecosystem services. For instance, they are natural pest controllers, and in urban environments they can control the mosquitoes that cause West Nile Virus. Nevertheless, loss and degradation of habitat, along with disease, have led to declining bat numbers. Restoring and creating suitable habitat will certainly help encourage bats, but first we need to know what resources bats need to survive, such as water. Many available water resources in urban areas, such as streams, ponds, and drainage ditches are ephemeral and dry up during the hot Texas summers. We believe that bats are able to utilize swimming pools in Texas urban areas, thus we explored this by radio-tracking bats in a local park, Foster Park in Fort Worth. We caught bats in this park using a technique called mist netting. Upon capture, we attached a radio-transmitter which emits a signal that can be picked up by a hand-held receiver. We then followed the bats using the transmitter’s signal and triangulated their position every minute to map their nightly routine. From March to September 2017, we tracked a total of 10 evening bats (Nycticeius humeralis). Using ArcGIS, we mapped the bats flight paths and determined home range sizes. From March to May, and September, we found that bats tracked tended to restrict their movement and remained within or near to the park, however from June to August the bats expanded their home ranges and moving longer distances into local neighborhood. This expansion coincided with drying up of water sources within the park, and included areas with swimming pools. Our finding supports the hypothesis that urban habitats have the potential to maintain healthy bat populations, which in turn can aid bat conservation.

Intermittent power outages at Texas and New Mexico border stations has caused significant delays in customs services and information losses through computer shutdowns. The U.S. General Services Administration approached us to address these power quality problems at the border stations through a review of potential distributed generation sources through microgrids to “combat or support” these frequent power outages. The overall aim aside from solving power outages and brown outs at stations is potentially addressing the implementation of renewable energy sources as a power generation for microgrids and coming closer in compliance with Executive Order 13693, “Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade”. Our approach includes analyzing background information through analysis of GSA documentation and current studies on implementing microgrids in a variety of locations. Current data suggests proposing wind power, solar power, and battery storage based on size and locations of border stations. However, results are pending data collection and GSA input.

The geomechanical properties of Eagle Ford cores from the San Marcos Arch were measured by hardness tools to test that calcareous rocks are stiffer than the clay-rich shales. Results were quantified and graphed to reinforce the idea that the Maness shale could be more ductile than the superimposing Eagle Ford Shale.

Lithology and facies of the Lower Williams Fork in the Piceance Basin, Colorado were interpreted using spectral gamma ray logs on Petrel. Models were created using this correlated data to predict the facies in an area with no well data. Different modeling methods will be used, such as object modeling and sequence indication simulation to compare and search for the best fit. Published outcrop measurements were used to constrain subsurface geobody geometry. Models were also used to estimate reservoir rock potential in the Lower Williams Fork.

The 1.2 Ga volcanic arc rocks in the Barby Formation are well exposed in desert terrain in SW Namibia - this formation records the establishment of a major continental margin arc following earlier accretionary events. Recent field work has shown that large portions of the formation consist of pyroclastic fall deposits erupted from small volcanoes (fissures and scoria or spatter cones) in a region with poor drainage and abundant lakes.

Detailed mapping of a well-exposed section of the Barby Formation provides a cross-sectional view of a succession of pyroclastic fall units intercalated with planar bedded lacustrine sediments. Massively bedded units up to ~80 m thick show abundant bombs up to 60 cm across in a matrix of fluidal to angular lapilli, indicating deposition close to source vents undergoing primarily Strombolian-type eruptions. Hypabyssal dikes and sills are common, often cutting through the massively bedded pyroclastic units.

Also present are pyroclastic deposits that intrude lacustrine sedimentary packages at 12 locations spread out over a horizontal distance of ~600 m and a vertical stratigraphic sequence of ~300 m. These deposits contain similar bombs and lapilli as the pyroclastic fall deposits, but show clear fluidal intrusive relations with adjacent sedimentary units. In most cases, zones of peperite are formed in between the pyroclastic intrusions and the lacustrine sediments, consisting of fluidal bodies of vesicular basaltic andesite mingled with fine-grained sediment with preserved lamination. We infer that jets of intrusive pyroclastic material were blasted laterally into weak, unlithified lake sediments from one or more vent conduits feeding explosive eruptions at the surface; these jets are likely to have been forced out by collapse of the conduit inward. Fluidization of the sediment would have occurred as pore water was converted to steam, which would have facilitated lateral motion of the pyroclastic jets.