Over the weekend, I ran a 1-credit field course for NOVA, on the geology of Shenandoah National Park. I was about eight minutes early getting to the meet-up location, so that allowed me to check out a promising new outcrop of rock along the road (route 33, ~100 m west of Swift Run Gap). Here … Read more
In addition to the projects I linked to last week, here are a few more: Jessica H. made a Prezi about the Kananaskis Trail outcrops, with a bonus trip up to Peyto Lake. Sean D. made a PowerPoint tour of the sedimentary features we saw in the Great Plains. James focused on the Cougar Creek … Read more
I’ve got some student work to share with you today. Like yesterday’s guest post on deltas growing into Canadian Rockies glacial lakes, my Rockies students are turning in their final projects – digital products that aim to serve the world at large by introducing key places in the Canadian Rockies to a wider audience. The … Read more
Last week, the “Border to Beltway” field exchange team went to Dora Kelly Park in Alexandria, Virginia. There, a ravine reveals the boundary between the Coastal Plain and the underlying metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont… My NOVA colleague Ken Rasmussen joined us for the day, leading us deep below the soil profile to examine the … Read more
Folks, I’m off to lead another field course – so don’t expect much on the blog this week. This is “phase 2” of the Border to Beltway community college field exchange program. In March, over spring break, I took a dozen NOVA students to Texas to team up with a dozen students from El Paso … Read more
Check out the immense climbing ripples preserved in surge deposits at Hunt’s Hole (a maar volcanic crater in southern New Mexico) and imagine the strong currents couples with an extraordinary amount of entrained pyroclastic material.
I just wanted to let readers know that posting will be light this week, as I’m down in Texas running my field exchange course with Joshua Villalobos of El Paso Community College. Joshua’s supplying 12 students, and so am I. Together with talented colleagues, we’re aiming to give these students, many of whom hail from … Read more
At the eroded gully known as Devil’s Coulee in Alberta, you can find armored mudballs, dinosaur fossils (including eggshell), and even marine clams at higher levels in the sequence. Check out these lovely beasts: They lived and died on the western shore of the Western Interior Seaway during the Cretaceous period of geologic time. My … Read more
Spring break field course: GOL 295 Regional Field Geology of west Texas: March 8 to 15, 2014, and Appalachian Geology: May 19-24, 2014. West Texas and southern New Mexico showcase tectonic, sedimentary, geomorphic, and volcanic features which provide world-class examples of geologic processes. Students in this course will travel to El Paso, TX, and complete … Read more
As soon as I got back from GSA, I had to run two field trips, back to back. Both are the same trip: my Historical Geology field trip to the Massanutten Synclinorium. Here’s yesterday’s crew perched on a moderately-dipping slab of Massanutten Sandstone along Passage Creek: Today, it’s the same routine all over again, though … Read more
This is the third of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Matthew Mann University of Virginia The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff is a 2.1 Ma tuff deposit that is centrally located in Yellowstone … Read more
This is the second of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Cate Pearson University of Virginia A drive along Going-to-the-Sun Road is an amazing experience for many reasons. To any traveller, the … Read more
This is the first of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Madeleine Rushing Northern Virginia Community College Sedimentary deposition typically is seen as horizontal strata, layered one on top of the other … Read more
My Rockies field course has wrapped up for another year – the fifth year in a row I’ve run this intermediate-level ‘regional field geology’ course in collaboration with Pete Berquist of Thomas Nelson Community College. We were fortunate to be joined by two other professional geologists this year: Chris Khourey of NOVA and Tom Biggs … Read more
The community of Scientists’ Cliffs in Maryland is a private community that happens to sit on some of the most amazing fossil exposures in the Coastal Plain. The strata in question are part of the Miocene-aged (~14 Ma) Calvert Formation. The Scientists’ Cliffs outcrops are better than the more famous outcrops at Calvert Cliffs State … Read more
Yesterday, I worked on my sabbatical project, the Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection (M.A.G.I.C.). Whether I go outside on a given day to shoot GigaPans of local geology depends on multiple factors: (a) How’s the weather? (b) Do I have to watch Baxter? (c) Can I bring Baxter with me? (d) How are the lighting conditions? Yesterday … Read more
Callan reflects on major moments this week in his personal and professional lives.
Today is the first day of class for the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College. For the first time in seven years, however, I won’t be in the classroom. For the 2012-13 academic year, I’ll be on sabbatical. Sabbatical is a magic word in my mind. It’s a brilliant idea to allow motivated professors … Read more
A guest post by Nicholas Rossi, a student in Callan’s Canadian Rockies field course. Turtle Mountain is located in the Blairmore Range in Alberta Canada about 160km south of Calgary. It is the site of the Frank Slide, a landslide of over 90 million tons of rock that gave way on Turtle Mountain’s East side … Read more