U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Research Geologist Barbara Lidz, the original editor of Sound Waves and for 12 years the contributing editor and Sound Waves liaison at the USGS Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Florida, has passed the torch to Theresa Burress. Theresa, who is the librarian and outreach coordinator at the St. Pete center, will now handle the center’s submissions to the newsletter.

In a note to scientists and staff at St. Pete, Barbara wrote:

It has been a genuine pleasure for me to call for and edit newsletter articles over the years. For those of you who don’t know, the newsletter was initiated in the St. Pete Field Office in 1999 at the request of Reston [Virginia] headquarters. I was asked to be its first editor, and a member of my family coined the name Sound Waves, intending to encompass the many types of waves experienced in the natural terrestrial, hydrologic, and atmospheric realms of the Earth, as well as those propagated by the many types of man-made scientific-research instruments. The newsletter has been and remains a successfully established outreach tool that highlights Bureau-wide research on coastal and marine-science efforts. It is widely read throughout the country by members of academia, scientists of all disciplines in State and Federal agencies, government officials and their staff, and students, teachers, and interested members of the general public. Thank you for the opportunity to help disseminate our St. Pete contributions to USGS scientific endeavors and those of the entire USGS to the public. I know I am passing the torch on to competent hands!

Barbara joined the USGS in 1974 and has a long record of research on upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic stratigraphic sequences on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Cenozoic planktic biostratigraphy of the Great Bahama Bank, and the Quaternary sedimentary and seismic stratigraphy, coral reef history, and present benthic habitats of the Florida Keys and shallow shelf-wide reef tract. She passed the Sound Waves torch once before, when she stepped down from the position of original editor in late 2001. Thank you, Barbara, for having launched Sound Waves and for being a mainstay of its success for so many years!

Below, Among her many research activities, Barbara Lidz was part of a USGS team led by Gene Shinn that used a custom-designed hydraulic drill to collect cores from modern and ancient carbonate reefs.