YOU CAN MAKE A LIVING DOING THAT? A CAREER PERSPECTIVE ON TILL FABRIC

In 1969, a young Ed Evenson completed an unassumingly titled Master’s Thesis at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, “The relationship of macro- and microfabrics of till and the genesis of glacial landforms in Jefferson County, Wisconsin”, unexpectedly establishing an intellectual undercurrent that would persist throughout his career. While always exploring new methods, questions, and field areas, the methods and the questions developed during Ed’s early work in his home state of Wisconsin would resurface time and again to be refined and applied in new and novel ways. In the last decade of his career, till fabric once again became the major focus of his intellectual activities, buoyed by a renewed interest of the glacial geology community and recent developments in the methodology. Precisely fifty years after submission of that thesis, Ed’s final publication showcased a novel application of fabric analysis focused on debris-ice mixtures to assess the partitioning of deformation within basal ice. Herein, we review the evolution of fabric analysis as encapsulated in the 50-year career of Dr. Ed Evenson. Yes, you can make a living doing that.