BY KAREN BOSSICK
If you’ve wondered just what the facts are about fracking, you’re not alone.
Conevery Valencius, a professor at Boston College, has, too. And she’s currently working on a book about earthquakes and contemporary energy focused on the emerging science of induced seismology and hydraulic fracturing.
She also has written a book titled “The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes,” which explores the impact and continuing scientific importance of great 19th century quakes in the Mississippi Valley. And she will discuss her findings during a free lecture at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, at Ketchum’s Community Library.
The earthquakes, which briefly reversed the flow of the Mississippi River, occurred in 1811 an 1812. They collapsed homes and snapped large trees but eventually the facts were forgotten, even ridiculed as tall tales even though the role shaped the settlement patterns of Cherokees, lent credibility to Tecumseh for uniting Indian tribes, started a religious revival on the frontier and offered a cautionary tale in a world truggling to respond to global climate change.
Valencius teaches and writes about American environments and American science and medicine at Boston College.
Her classes include “Leaches to Lasers,” a survey of U.S. health and medicine and “This Land is Your Land,” which introduces U.S. environmental history.
Valencius’ book “The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and their Land” won the 2003 George Perkins Marsh Award as best book of the year from the American Society for Environmental History.
Wednesday’s lecture is presented in partnership with The Nature Conservancy in Idaho and The College of Idaho.