Knight translates knowledge into honour

Renowned German geologist Hans Cloos once wrote that his ilk translate the Earth’s language into their own through trained senses and disciplined thinking. Ian Knight, a geologist with the Newfoundland and Labrador Geological Survey (NLGS), is one of this country’s best “translators.” Knight possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of western Newfoundland’s extensive geology and was recently awarded the 2004 Provincial Geologists Medal.

The medal recognizes significant geoscientific research and other work that contributes to the mandate of Canada’s provincial and territorial geological surveys. Each year all the surveys nominate a candidate, and a selection committee representing industry, academia and the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) selects the winner.

Knight has devoted the better part of the previous 30 years to mapping and deciphering the geological history of western Newfoundland. His work included a definitive memoir on the Carboniferous rocks of the Bay St. George sub-basin, but he is best known for producing highly detailed maps, reports and papers focusing on the Cambro-Ordovician sedimentary platform of the Newfoundland Appalachians. Through his thorough descriptions of the geology of this vast area, Knight has elegantly portrayed the geological evolution of the ancient continental margin of Laurentia.

Knight is described as a “classic” field geologist, who brings extensive knowledge of carbonate and clastic sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, metamorphic and structure geology, and paleontology and diagenesis to each outcrop he finds — without bringing much attention to himself.

His exhaustive knowledge of western Newfoundland, from individual outcrops to depositional cycles, has made him an invaluable source of information for the petroleum industry. Indeed, the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists recognized his exceptional work by presenting Knight with the 2000 R.J.W. Douglas Medal, which honours outstanding contributions to the understanding of sedimentary geology in Canada.

Knight received his bachelor of science degree from Bristol University in the U.K., and later earned a PhD from Memorial University in Newfoundland. At Bristol, his interest in sedimentary rocks was stimulated by summer field research in central-eastern Greenland with the Scott Polar Research Institute, part of Cambridge University in U.K. The primary focus of the expedition was to examine the Devonian basin. Knight, however, also studied the cyclic peritidal carbonate rocks of the limestone-dolomite series of the Eleonore Bay Group for his honours paper at Bristol.

At Memorial University, he focused on Proterozoic sedimentary and volcanic sequences of the Seal Lake and Ramah groups of Labrador and Carboniferous rocks of western Newfoundland. His work included studies for the GSC, the British-Newfoundland Exploration Co., and the government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Knight joined the NLGS in 1974 and has since mapped, studied and published papers on the Carboniferous Bay St. George sub-basin and the Cambrian-Ordovician siliciclastic-carbonate platformal sequence in western Newfoundland. His work includes ongoing mapping, stratigraphic, sedimentological and biostratigraphic studies with Douglas Boyce of the NLGS and David Rohr and Elizabeth Measures of Sul Ross University in Texas.

In the past, Knight’s work included collaboration with Prof. Noel James of Queen’s University on several aspects of Ordovician carbonates in western Newfoundland and with the University of Manitoba’s Nancy Chow, and James, on the stratigraphy of Cambrian rocks in western Newfoundland. In the mid-1980s, Knight contributed to stratigraphic and sedimentological studies of late Proterozoic sedimentary basins of the Avalon zone of eastern Newfoundland with co-researchers Sean O’Brien and Tomasz Dec of the NLGS.

Since 1991, Knight has been working with several oil and gas companies exploring for hydrocarbons in Cambro-Ordovician rocks of western Newfoundland.

In 2000, the Greenland Geological Survey, under the leadership of Svend Stouge, invited Knight to be part of a multi-disciplinary team to study the Lower Paleozoic siliciclastic and carbonate-shelf sequence of central-eastern Greenland.

More recently, Knight has collaborated with several archeological groups studying and identifying the source of stone tools used by prehistoric indigenous peoples and Norse settlers. This has entailed studies at Memorial University, the University of Calgary, and the anthropology division of the Buffalo Museum of Science.