Soils Program

Join us in welcoming Dr. Kata McCarville to Whiterock Conservancy this summer for an incredible 3-part series FREE and open to the public at the Bur Oak Center from 10 a.m.-Noon! Katherine McCarville (Kata) got started with Iowa geology in 2005 when she joined the faculty at Upper Iowa University in Fayette. Born at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, she is a river rat. She’s spent time on and along many Iowa rivers, as well as the Colorado, Green, Platte, Snake and Mississippi. Kata has roots in the Midwest but grew up in California. She studied geology at UCLA as an undergraduate and worked as a uranium miner in Wyoming after graduation. She earned a master’s degree in geology Colorado School of Mines, working on uranium deposits in the Red Desert basin of Wyoming, and then worked for a number of years in computing and networking at universities and for engineering consulting firms. As a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow, she did her doctoral work in avian paleontology of Fossil Lake, Oregon, at the South Dakota School of Mines. Her work resulted in an innovative interpretation for the locality, as a volcanic maar. Kata’s interests span the earth and environmental sciences and often cross disciplinary boundaries. Her current research centers on the origins of the Iowan Erosion Surface, soil health and soil organisms, and the role of disturbance in prairie ecosystems. Dr. McCarville offering rock and fossil identification before and after each talk.