Strock talk focus: Nicaraguan Interoceanic Canal

Geologist Paul Mann of the University of Houston will present Skidmore’s 2015 Lester W. Strock Lecture in Geosciences at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 9. Free and open to the public, the talk is titled “Tectonics and Geology of Lake Nicaragua:  Potential Impacts on the Nicaraguan Canal Project.”

The lecture will be in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. A reception will follow.

The Panama Canal is about to have serious competition, as construction has begun on the massive Chinese-backed Nicaraguan Interoceanic Canal project. The new canal will cut through Lago Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua) and the diverse San Miguelito wetlands, pristine forests, and Indigenous reserves to connect markets in Asia to the Atlantic.  Mann will explain the implications of the geologic setting of Lake Nicaragua and regional volcanic and earthquake hazards for the long-imagined Nicaraguan Canal, and address the megaproject's environmental impacts. His talk will provide information about the new Nicaraguan Grand Canal project, along with the emerging implications for the environment, social justice, geopolitics, and global trade.

Mann is a graduate of Oberlin College (B.A.) and the University at Albany, State University of New York (Ph.D.). He is a member of Houston’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty. According to his web site, his research interests include tectonics, basin analysis, and petroleum geology. He is a principal investigator of Caribbean Basins, Tectonics and Hydrocarbons industry consortium at University of Houston. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on such topics as basin analysis for petroleum exploration, petroleum prospecting, petroleum geology of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and Circum-Atlantic margins, and a seminar on structure, tectonics, and petroleum topics.

Skidmore's annual Lester W. Strock Lecture in Geosciences was endowed by the late Dr. Lester W. Strock, a Pennsylvania-born geochemist and the world's foremost authority on Saratoga's mineral springs. Strock, who died in 1982, spent much of his distinguished career in research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and with the Sylvania Electric Co.