Colorado Scientific Society Past-Presidents Award for Best Paper of the Year

This award has been made for the presentations at a CSS Meeting since 1962.
The year and the name(s) of the awardee(s) are engraved on a plaque, which the awardee(s) keep until the next year. We are currently filling our fourth plaque. The current plaque includes a short description of the presentation as well as the name(s) of the awardee(s).

Another source for this information is the History of the Colorado Scientific Society from 1882 through 2002 (PDF). Recipients of the “Past-Presidents Awards of the Colorado Scientific Society (Presented for Best Presentation during the year)”, are listed on pages 16-17. This includes information not on the plaques, including title of the presentation and the recipient’s organization.

When we have an abstract of the presentation, the name of the talk is a link. Click on it to see the abstract and often a short biography of the presenter(s).

1962 – Arnold L. Brokaw, U.S. Geological Survey:
Mineralization south of Ely, Nevada: Geochemical prospecting and structural mapping have revealed major mineralization coincident with a magnetic anomaly

Robert J. Weimer, Colorado School of Mines, and J.H.Hoyt:
Callianassa major burrows, geologic indicators of littoral and shallow neritic environments

1963 – Lloyd C. Pray,Marathon Oil Co. and F.G. Stehli, Western Reserve University:
Bone Spring bioherms, reefs or rubble, Permian of West Texas

1964 – Richard P. Sheldon,U.S. Geological Survey:
Ancient trade wind belts and continental drift

1965 – Frank C. Armstrong and Steven S. Oriel, U.S. Geological Survey:
Tectonic development of the Idaho-Wyoming thrust belt

1966 – Harry W. Smedes, U.S. Geological Survey:
Relation between faulting and volcanism near Butte, Montana

1967 – C. Ronald Willden, and R.W. Kistler, U.S. Geological Survey:
Early Paleozoic orogeny in the Ruby Mountains, northeastern Nevada

1968 – John T. Andrews, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder:
Pattern and forms of post-glacial rebound in Arctic Canada

1969 – Warren Hamilton, U.S. Geological Survey:
Plate tectonics and the western United States>

1970 – James T. Neal, Captain, U.S. Army Airforce:
Giant cracks in playas

1971 – Adel A. R. Zohdy, U.S. Geological Survey:
Mapping basaltic aquifers in southern Idaho by deep electrical sounding

1972 – Edwin E. Larson, University of Colorado at Boulder:
Nature of a geomagnetic reversal

1973 – Willis H. White, Climax Molybdenum Co. and W.B. MacKenzie, Mine Finders Inc.:
Hydrothermal alteration associated with the Henderson molybdenite deposit

1974 – K. L. Pierce, L. Friedman and J. D. Obradovich, U.S. Geological Survey:
Obsidian hydration dating of Yellowstone glaciations

1975 – Gordon P. Eaton, U.S. Geological Survey:
Deformation of Quaternary deposits in two intermontane basins of southern Arizona

1976 – Gordon P. Eaton, Harold J. Prostka, Kenneth L. Pierce and Steven S. Oriel, U. S. Geological Survey:
Cordilleran thermal anomaly

1977 – Thomas W. Oesleby, Marathon Oil Company:
Geophysical investigations in Unaweap Valley, western Colorado

1978 – Christine E. Turner-Peterson and Fred Peterson, U.S. Geological Survey:
Facies controls in sandstone-type uranium deposits

1979 – Frank Royse Jr., Chevron Oil Company:
Structural geology of the western Wyoming-northern Utah thrust belt and its relation to oil and gas accumulation

1980 – Donald A. Coates and Charles W. [or N.] Naeser, U.S. Geological Survey:
Clinker and landform development in the southeastern Powder River basin

1981 – C. M. Molenaar, U.S. Geological Survey:
Stratigraphic relations of Nanushuk Group, a thick mid-Cretaceous deltaic sequence, and coeval slope and basinal deposits, North Slope, Alaska

1982 – Robert L. Schuster, U.S. Geological Survey:
Recent catastrophic landslides

1983 – Richard W. Hutchinson, Colorado School of Mines:
Significance of tectonostratigraphic and compositional diversity in massive sulfide deposits

1984 – C. Dan Miller, U.S. Geological Survey:
Recent developments in Long Valley California: assessment of potential volcanic hazards

1985 – Norman J. Silberling, U.S. Geological Survey:
Mesozoic tectonic accretion in the western Great Basin

1986 – David A. Lindsey, U.S. Geological Survey:
Laramide and Neogene structure of the northern Sangre de Cristo Range, Colorado

1987 – Dwight R. Crandell, U.S. Geological Survey:
Gigantic debris avalanche of Pleistocene age at Mount Shasta Volcano, California

1988 – C. M. (K) Molenaar (speaker), K.J. Bird, and L.B. Magoon, U.S. Geological Survey:
Petroleum geology of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, northeastern Alaska

1989 – Eric A. Erslev, Colorado State University, Fort Collins:
Basement control of Rocky Mountain uplifts

1990 – Martin B. Goldhaber, U.S. Geological Survey:
Rifts, elephant tracks, and the southeast Missouri lead belt

1991 – Susan M. Landon, Consultant:
Comparison of the Midcontinent Rift, USA, and the East African Rift System

1992 – Michele L. Tuttle, U.S. Geological Survey:
Understanding the 1986 Lake Nijos disaster, Cameroon West Africa

1993 – Stephen T. Hasiotis, University of Colorado at Boulder:
Crayfish and their burrows – the antiquity of behavior

1994 – Wendy J. Harrison, Colorado School of Mines:
Disposal of CO2 in ocean basins

1995 – Thomas J. Casadevall, U.S. Geological Survey:
Active volcanos in the Goma Region, Zaire and their role in the Rwandan Refugee crisis

1996 – John T. Turk, U.S. Geological Survey:
Risk in the Rockies

1997 – James H. Butler, NOAA:
Climate monitoring and diagnostics: quantifying the source and sinks of atmospheric methyl bromide

1998 – Roger N. Clark, U.S. Geological Survey:
The use of spectroscopy data for geological and environmental studies

1999 – Robert M. Kirkham, Colorado Geological Survey:
Dissolution of evaporites causes widespread active collapse in west-central Colorado

2000 – Arthur W. Snoke, University of Wyoming:
Geological evolution of Tobago, West Indies

2001 – Carol A. Finn, U.S. Geological Survey:
Aerogeophysical measurements of collapse-prone hydrothermally altered zones at Mount Rainier volcano

2002 – Daniel R. Muhs, U.S. Geological Survey:
Sand Dunes on the Great Plains and their not-so-ancient history

2003 – Paul L. Heller and Margaret McMillan, Department of Geology, University of Wyoming
Evaluation of Tectonic and Climatic Controls on Late Cenozoic Incision of the Rocky Mountains

2004 – Matthew L. Morgan(1) (presenter), Vincent Matthews(1), Jon P. Thorson(2), Francisco Gutierrez(3) and Matthew T. Grizzell(4),
1 Colorado Geological Survey, Denver, CO, USA
2 Consulting Geologist, Parker, CO, USA
3 University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, SPAIN
4 BEK/Terranext, Lakewood, CO, USA
From Buttes to Bowls: Repeated Inversions in the Landscape of the Colorado Piedmont

2005 – Craig H. Jones, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO:
Haunted by a Cryptic Orogen: The Sierra Nevada and its Impact on the Evolution of California

2006 – Michael Machette, U.S. Geological Survey:
Lake Alamosa and Middle Pleistocene Integration of the Rio Grande

2007 – Peter Lipman, U.S. Geological Survey, The paper may be:
Large Ignimbrite-caldera Eruptions in the Southern Rocky Mountains Volcanic Field: Comparisons with the Central Andes of South America and Relation to Assembly of Subvolcanic Batholiths,
presented at The Volcanoes of Colorado, a Colorado Scientific Society Symposium in honor of Thomas A. Steven, pages 4-9

2008 – Jaelyn Eberle
Paleontology, Paleoecology, and Climate in an Early Eocene, High Arctic Swamp Forest

2009 – Emmett Evanoff
Colorado and the Four Great Geological Surveys of 1867-1878

2010 – Jeffrey Coe
Debris Flows in Colorado

2011 – Jeff Pigati and Kirk Johnson
The Snowmastodon Site: Discovery, Science, and Initial Results

2012 – Whitey Hagadorn
What’s New in the Cambrian? Death of a Megapredator
Surfing Cambrian Coasts: First Animals on Land

2013 – Richard Goldfarb
Tectonics and Gold Metallogeny

2014 – Steven and Kathleen Holen
The Mid-Wisconsin Human Colonization of North America: A Call for Archaeological Investigations in Older Geological Deposits

2015 – Jonathan L. White
The May 2014 West Salt Creek landslide in Mesa County, Colorado

2016 – Joseph Sertich
Relict Dinosaurs of Madagascar: New Discoveries from Treasure Island

2017 – Will Yeck
The Far-Reaching Effects of Wastewater Injection: Recent Case Studies of Anthropogenic Earthquakes

2018 – David Krause
Science With a Social Conscience: A Natural Outgrowth of Fieldwork in Remote Regions of the World

2019 – Don Becker and Jeff Sloan
Kilauea’s 2018 Eruption – New methods and perspectives for monitoring volcanic eruptions

2020 – Ian Miller and Tyler Lyson
Rise of the Mammals: Exceptional Continental Record of Biotic Recovery after the Cretaceous–Paleogene Mass Extinction

2021 – Robert B. Smith
Old Faithful Anatomy and Magma from Earth’s Core Fueling The Volcanism of Yellowstone, Its Geysers and Hot Springs

2022 – Jeff Pigati and Kathleen Springer
The White Sands footprints — humans in North America 23,000 years ago

2023 – Robert Anderson
Climate as seen through the lens of Colorado’s Glaciers