Club Meeting: Commemorating The Ice Age Floods

Dr. Scott Burns will speak on the ice age floods, how they shaped the local geology, and what is being done to educate the public today, including the opening of the second Ice Age Flood Geologic Trail Visitor Center in Tualatin. He will talk about the Tonquin Scablands that are located in the area between Wilsonville, Tualatin and Sherwood, as well as many other things! We have had Dr. Burns as a guest before, and we know that it will be a fascinating presentation loaded with information and things we never knew about our local area!

The Rotary Club of Wilsonville meets weekly Thursdays at noon to carry out its purpose of providing service and fellowship to members and the Wilsonville community. The club is holding hybrid “Virtual In Person” (VIP) meetings. People may attend in person, or they may use Zoom (http://www.tinyurl.com/Rotary97070). Guests are welcome. For more information, email president@wilsonvillerotary.com.

Scott is a professor emeritus of geology and past chair of the department of geology at Portland State University. He served as associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at PSU from 1997–1999. He has been teaching for more than 50 years, starting in 1970, with past positions in Switzerland, New Zealand, Washington, Colorado and Louisiana. He is a sixth-generation Oregonian who grew up in Beaverton. He specializes in environmental and engineering geology, geomorphology, soils, and Quaternary geology. In Oregon, he has projects involving landslides and land use, environmental cleanup of service stations, slope stability, earthquake hazard mapping, the Missoula Floods, the terroir of wine, paleosols, loess soil stratigraphy, radon generation from soils,  the distribution of heavy metals and trace elements in Oregon soils, and the alpine soil development. He has been active in mapping landslides in the Pacific Northwest since his return to Portland. Scott has won many awards for outstanding teaching with the most significant being the Faculty Senate Chair Award at Louisiana Tech University in 1987, the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Portland State Alumni Association in 2001, and the George Hoffmann Award from PSU in 2007. He has authored over 100 publications and has had over 25 research grants. His first book, Environmental, Groundwater and Engineering Geology: Applications from Oregon, came out January of 1998. His second book, Cataclysms on the Columbia, the Great Missoula Floods came out in October of 2009 and is co-authored by Marjorie Burns, a friend and professor at PSU. Scott has been the president of the Faculty Senate at three different universities: Louisiana Tech University and the American College of Switzerland and Portland State University. He actively helps local TV and radio stations and newspapers bring important geological news to the public. For the past 48 years he has been studying wine and terroir – the relationship between wine, soils, geology and climate.

He holds bachelor of science and master of science degrees from Stanford University, plus a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a member of more than 20 professional organizations and is most active in the Association of Engineering Geologists, Geological Society of America, National Association of Geology Teachers, and the Soil Science Society of America. He is past president of the Oregon Society of Soil Scientists and the Oregon Section of the Association of Engineering Geologists. He was national chair of the engineering geology division of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in 1999-2000. He was national president of the Association of Engineering Geologists from 2002-2003. He is today president of the International Association of Engineering Geologists. He was chosen a fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2004. Scott was chosen a fellow with the Kellogg National Fellowship Program from 1990–1993 based on his national leadership performance. He was president of the Downtown Rotary Club of Portland, Oregon’s oldest and largest Rotary club, in 2009.

Scott has won some national awards in geology: distinguished practice award from the engineering geology division of GSA in 2012, the Richard Jahns Award for engineering geology (top engineering geologist in the U.S.) from GSA and AEG in 2011, the Shoemaker Award for Public Service to the US (GSA) in 2011, and on the state level, the “Outstanding Scientist for Oregon for 2014” from the 73-year-old Oregon Academy of Sciences. Scott has been active working with youth as a basketball coach. Scott enjoys all sports, especially basketball, running, skiing, hiking, swimming, tennis, and golf. He and his wife, Glenda, have three adult children and one grandchild and reside in Tualatin.