Some web research led to a serendipitous discovery and further exploration. Wherever you’re sheltering in place, you don’t have a view that’s this grand. Slip away for a few moments to the high country of Montana’s Glacier National Park, where an anticline may be seen in the towering cliffs…
This week marks the launch of a new digital revision of a field guide to the geology of San Francisco, “Streetcar 2 Subduction.” Learn more here!
We return today to the scene of last week’s Friday fold, for it turns out that you can see some additional awesome folds from outer space (via Google Earth). Do not adjust your monitor: these patterns mean show up a stark and wavy reality!
A glance out the airplane window over New Mexico triggers a bit of web research and a new view of tectonic extension via Google Earth and geologic maps.
Here’s the answer to the contest: This is an outcrop on the beach at Funzie Bay, Fetlar, Shetland, U.K. The modern beach sediment is the lightest-colored, rounded cobbles at both the top and bottom of the photo. Poking out in between is a layer of light-gray colluvium (angular fragments) overlain by dark peat, now perhaps … Read more
We’ve taken a look already at an exemplary tombolo from Shetland. Today, I’m dialing up the tombolosity of the blog with a Triple Feature: Click to make much larger (8000 pixels wide) If you look closely here, you’ll see that only the rightmost bar fully connects the two islands. It’s the only true tombolo, sensu … Read more
One of my favorite places in Northern Ireland is the east side of the peninsula that hosts the tourist town of Portrush. There, two early schools of geological thought engaged in a battle. The opposing sides were: the Neptunists, who thought all stratified rocks, and in particular basalt, must form from precipitation from the sea, … Read more
Callan’s mother-in-law lives in one of the most strongly-shaken regions of Ecuador. Here, she and her boyfriend recount the experience of the earthquake Saturday night and its aftermath. Includes 8 photos from the scene.
My Historical Geology class was in for a new experience for the semester’s capstone field trip. Before we headed out into the field (to the exceptional roadcuts along Corridor H in Grant and Hardy Counties, West Virginia), we had them examine all the outcrops virtually, in the comfort of the classroom, using digital imagery. I … Read more
What is Matt looking at here? Matt was one of my Rockies students this summer, a geology major at the University of Virginia. Together with another UVA student and students from Mary Washington University and George Mason University, Matt embarked on a mountain-climbing hike during our evening camping at Swift Dam, near Depuyer, Montana. The … Read more
I’m very nearly delinquent on posting the Friday fold… Here you go – a Google Earth view of a differentially-weathered fold partly above and partly below sea level in Chilean Patagonia, south of Puerto Natales: They call it Isla Escarpada. Awesome. Here’s a Google Maps link if you want to explore it yourself. Happy Friday!
My student Josh B. found this beautiful map view of a plunging fold in the bed of the Shenandoah River, as viewed in Google Earth: Josh posted his results on Facebook, and then the other Josh (Joshua Villalobos of El Paso Community College) poked around the area and found some others downstream (north): Here’s a … Read more
While in Santorini, Greece, your humble geoblogger braves a warm afternoon to search the hillsides for evidence of subduction.
A glimpse out an airplane window reveals some Cycladean geology in the Aegean Sea. Somewhere down there among the metamorphic rocks is our Friday fold… but nary a volcano in sight.
The geologic story of Santorini begins, with some tectonic perspective on the two major aspects of subduction recorded in the island’s rocks.
Dan Doctor of the US Geological Survey contributed this week’s Friday fold. It’s a lovely view of the asymmetric folds in the Cambrian-aged Weverton Formation (part of the Chilhowee Group, a Sauk-Sea passive margin transgressive sequence), exposed on the western flank of the western limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium. It’s a LIDAR image, and … Read more
In last week’s Friday fold, I featured this image… …which prompted commenter Lynn David to ask, What’s going on to the west side of that red/green rock cored syncline in #2? It looks like some sort of disconformity but then I looked closer (and man, does that rock redden up) and it appears that the … Read more
Found these lovely places over the past few weeks while searching (unsuccessfully) for Where On (Google) Earth? scenes… Click on any of them to make them bigger.
Callan hosts the 357th installment of the popular satellite imagery / geologic search game “Where on (Google) Earth?”
Mountain Beltway reader “Earth Mama” responded to the recent geo-meme (which started here, folks!) by compiling all these visit-worthy locations in a single Google Earth KMZ file. If reading the lists from the various geobloggers didn’t whet your appetite, now you’ve got the ‘virtual globe’ option…. Hi Callan, I wanted to thank you for the … Read more