News Release, Kansas Geological Survey, March 26, 2002
The five were recognized at the annual meeting of the society in Houston on March 11. The Survey, based on the west campus of the University of Kansas, was the only organization with multiple awardees at the meeting.
Survey director M. Lee Allison was presented with the society's public service award for his activities in public policy. Those activities included mitigating geologic hazards during his tenure as state geologist of Utah, speaking out on the evolution controversy in Kansas in 1999, and involvement in geologic investigations of natural gas explosions in Hutchinson in January 2001. Allison was director of the Utah Geological Survey before coming to Kansas in July 1999.
Lawrence Skelton, head of the Survey's Wichita Well Sample Library, was also given the society's public service award for his work in public programs explaining geology to the public. Skelton is the author of Wichita's Building Blocks: A Guide to Building Stones and Geological Features. He has managed the Well Sample Library since 1981.
Survey geologists Martin Dubois, Alan Byrnes, and W. Lynn Watney were honored for the best technical poster presentation at last year's meeting in Denver. The scientists' poster was entitled "Field Development and Renewed Reservoir Characterization for CO2 Flooding of the Hall-Gurney Field, Central Kansas." It described a project in which carbon dioxide, produced from a newly constructed ethanol plant, will be used to produce additional oil from an older field south of Russell, Kansas.