Geology Happens

Metamorphic Core Complex...while on vacation

2012-01-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

I am a snow snob...I admit it. This winter has seen less-than-great ski conditions and so when the temperatures in Southern Arizona were in the mid 70 degree range we thought a visit was in order.

Our major objective was to enjoy the warmth, ogle the Saguaro cactus and hike as much as possible while wandering the hillsides above Tucson we started to notice the abundance and great examples of crystalline rock, both igneous and metamorphic rock. The outcrops we examined were not anything we were familiar with beyond a very general way. The granites appeared to have been drastically changed and the gneisses looked like they had been put through the wringer.

The mountains we were hiking in were formed in mid-Laramide time when a large detachment fault allowed a decidedly large rock mass to slide while the Catalina Mountain were arching upwards. The material that moved along the fault was metamorphosed considerably, giving us some awesome outcrops to examine. Since then, erosion and weathering has moved materials from the mountain tops into the broad valleys. Many of the hiking trails use these alluvial fans to gain access to the higher elevations. Garry at geotripper has also just recently written about these mountains

Hiking in the Catalina Mountains with examples of granite that had not been altered during the formation of the Catalina Mountains.

Further out from the mountains we came across this outcrop of mylonitic gneiss, a former granite that was abused by its passage along a detachment fault as the Catalina mountains were being uplifted 25ish million years ago.

A fun outcrop of gneiss, another remnant of movement of granite along the fault.
You can never be too careful riding your bike around interesting geology.
A trail crew with an eye for aesthetics and geology. An assortment of metamorphic rocks making a wall.
Hiking across an alluvial fan; Saguaro and geology at the same time.

AW #41 a significant geologic event

2011-12-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

From Ron: What we seek for Accretionary Wedge #41 is an account of a geologic event that you experienced firsthand. It could be an earthquake, a landslide, a flood, a volcanic eruption, etc. (but don’t feel compelled to stick to the biggies – weathering, anyone?) – some geologic process that you were able to directly observe and experience. The event itself need not have been dramatic or life threatening, or it may have been.

It has been said that as we grow older our tendencies to be high in the mountains change into spending quality time in the desert. I am in that stage where my summit time is being eclipsed by my canyon time. So it was just last summer on a blue sky day that I saw the very beginnings of a flash flood coming down the canyon.

Lucky for us, the catchment basin was small and so was the run off amount, but the idea to see the very tongue of red frothy water coming down the once dry stream bed was enough to make us sit up and take notice.

We were actually between two choke points of narrow slot canyons. So it was easy to step up and out of the way of the water. If we had been up or down stream just a little it would have been harder to get out of the way.
I have taught classes about the bed load and suspended load of streams. I have had my students put pfd's on and act as particles as we float down the Colorado River, but to see the red mud flowing around the corner where there was no water just moments ago was pretty cool. It was so cool, that we just watched and didn't take as many pictures (or video) as you might imagine.

The last part of the canyon, where we would rather not be during any water event flashing or not.

A mid-continent shallow snowpack

2011-12-11T17:01:00.001-08:00

Went snow shoeing this weekend near the summit of Red Mountain Pass where we were a bit disappointed with the snow depth and quality of the snow. However, I admit that I am a snow snob and expect quite a bit when I am recreating on snow.

The snow is always dry and light here, but today it was dry, light and bottomless. Any step off of the packed trail would send our snow shoes to the ground (albeit that was not far away). The snow crystals looked very much like the image below, large facets not anything like their original snow flake self. This is what happens with a shallow snowpack.

Snow crystals on a pine tree after a little bit of metamorphism.

This winter saw a very nice snowfall of at least 50 cm, a few weeks ago, but since then hardly anything. The weather, clear and cold each day and it can get cold at 10,000 feet. In fact, when we started that morning the temperature at the car was 9 F.

The metamorphosis of snow crystals depends on a few factors, not the least of them is the temperature gradient through the snowpack. What we were seeing was a large gradient. The bottom of the snow pack at the ground is usually thought to be at 0 C while the top of the snowpack is equal to the air temperature. Lately we have seen temperatures approaching -25 F or -31 C. Making a gradient of 32 C over the depth of the snow which originally was 50 cm. It seems that if the gradient is smaller than 10 C/m then the metamorphosis of snow will lead to a more rounded grain of snow that can connect with its fellow snow grains easily making for a more stable snow pack while gradients greater than 10 C/m will result in a more faceted grain which will not connect all that well with its fellow snow grains. Our gradient of 32C/0.5 m is certainly within the this-snow-grain-does-not-play-well-with-others category.

A fantastic picture of a snow flake "growing" a large facet. Image courtesy of the Utah Avalanche Center

It seems that the newly fallen snowflake will sublimate small amounts of water vapor from the tips of the crystal arms (where the vapor pressure is greater) . If the temperature gradient is small enough (<1 C/cm) then the vapor will re-condense in the areas between the arms (where the vapor pressure is less) effectively making the snow flake into a round snow grain. If the temperature gradient is too large (as in the example) then the water vapor will sublimate from the tips of the crystal arms and re attach onto a cold region of a nearby snowflake creating the large faceted crystal. These crystals will not connect with its fellow snow grains well creating an unstable snow pack.

This is the problem with the early season snow followed by a week or so of good weather. The snow pack is now made of a bunch of grains that will make a poor base for the coming winter.

Stay tuned for any avalanche reports as the snow pack starts to pile up. But, perhaps the La Nina will keep the snow depths to a minimum and we can worry about drought instead of snowslides.

A tortured inner canyon

2011-12-10T19:15:00.001-08:00

I accept the blame that my Grand Canyon trip was in early October and we are currently observing early December.

I think what impressed me the most about the Grand Canyon was the tortured rocks in the inner canyon. I am used to being around 1.7 billion year old gneiss and schist while floating the upper stretches of the Colorado River. The Vishnu schist and Zoroaster granite exceeded my prior experiences greatly.

Putting my hand on the Great Unconformity. An amazing amount of missing earth history under my hand.

An old river runner told me that most river guide books will identify any crystalline rock as schist so I wanted to visit the bottom of the Grand Canyon to see what was there. Take a look at the folding!
An intrusive Zoroaster vein. There are so many times I wish I had normal color vision to see these outcrops as others can. It is pretty vivid with my red/green problems.
The dark inner gorge

Trilobites before lunch

2011-10-21T18:40:00.001-07:00

The last time I tried this blogger decided to stop working.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to hike across the Grand Canyon from rim to rim. Wow! what a trip. I went with a group from the Grand Canyon Field Institute taking a geology class (of course) The trip met all of my expectations both as a backpack trip and as getting to know the geology of a part of the Colorado Plateau I am not familiar with. Most of my time is spent around Canyon lands where I am quite familiar with the Mesozoic sedimentary sequence. This Paleozoic stuff was all new to me. Hence the title of this post. We started with the Kaibab limestone and ended in the Cambrian Tapeats sandstone where we spent some quality time during lunch looking for trilobites. This is just the trip down. It gets better!

Looking over the edge the night before our descent into the canyon.

The Coconino sandstone. A layer that scares the hikers traveling back up to the rim. This Permian aged sandstone creates a 300 foot cliff with some great cross bedding showing the "petrified" sand dunes .
Lots of chert nodules throughout the Redwall limestone, another formidable cliff former!
Ribbon falls, notice the travertine dome at the base of the falls. Calcium carbonate rich water has created a fantastic dome similar to a stalagmite in a cave.
Next will be about time spent at the bottom of the canyon.

A new campsite for geology field class

2011-09-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent an enjoyable 4 days floating down a nearby stretch of the Colorado River looking for new places to take my geology-by-canoe class. There is a campsite almost 1/2 way down this particular stretch that has a name made for a geology field class. "Fault Line".

These images show the Kayeta-Wingate combination being bent downward by the actions of the fault. The canyon just to the left of the fold continues upward right along the fault. It is an easy hike with the exception of minor 15 foot pour over that requires a touch of scrambling.

How easy is it to find this fault line? The BLM post identifying the campsite. Unfortunately the site is found on an outside bend and with the fast water of last week the landing was not pretty. We stayed dry but just barely.
The view across the river from the campsite. Although not as dramatic as the big fold in the first image, I think the fault line is easier to see. The right side (upriver) shows the mid-Jurassic Entrada sandstone. Just downstream from the fault is the early-Jurassic Kayenta formation.
As an added attraction, the cobbles on the gravel bar encompass examples from all directions in the Colorado Rockies. And, if that wasn't enough the channel in the fore ground makes for an awesome float. I love having my students become particles and float down stream.

It truly doesn't get any better

Serendipitous geology

2011-09-07T18:44:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it has been over a month since I last posted anything...well I can believe it I guess. It is a combination of it being summer and constantly on the move and being a bit lazy when it comes to posting.

Last week I was poking around an un-excavated Pueblo III site in the Montezuma Valley near Mesa Verde NP. I am quite used to looking at cliff dwellings all around the 4-corners area, this was the first Pueblo aged, non-cliff dwelling that I had spent any time in. What struck me first was that the Mancos shale does not have much of the favorite building materials- sand stone blocks. The Mancos shale is an incredibly deep layer of marine sediment left over from the Cretaceous Seaway. It is not known for it's sandstone building blocks. However, as the inland sea retreated somewhat, there were deposited three units that can be used for building blocks: the Point Lookout sandstone was deposited followed by the Menefee formation, a coastal plain region and a local source of coal and lastly the appropriately named Cliff house sandstone. The Cliff house is where most of the famous cliff dwellings are found.

However, the Montezuma Valley is dominated by the Mancos shale.

Lucky for the former inhabitants of this little pueblo the Menefee formation, is not only rich in sandstone but has a habit of slope failure creating sandstone deposits on the valley floor. The search for local building materials just got easier. A little bit of driving around the nearby county roads found a potential sand stone quarry.

To be a more complete geology day and completely overshadow the archeology was the discovery of fossil shells in the sandstone building blocks. My knowledge of paleontology is quite limited and I won't even hazard a guess at the names of the fossils we found.

A section of wall peeks out from beneath some vegetation with Mesa Verde in the background.

Some of the pottery shards found near the site.
A chunk of ancient building materials complete with even more ancient fossil evidence.

...and more
A close up of the surviving Pueblo wall.

Summer, a time for roving bands of geologists

2011-07-29T15:26:00.001-07:00

We just returned home from a spontaneous road trip to the Pacific Northwest. While traveling through the Inter-mountain West we saw many a van load of students standing along side the road with notebooks at the ready with an older guy in front waving his arms around. The only part of the scene that changed was the rock cut, sometimes flood basalts (and some cool columnar basalt) sometimes river terraces and often rock units known for their fossils.

Field Trip Season!

Unfortunately I never had a camera ready when we came across a group of geology students learning the ways of rock cuts. And, only once did we have the chance to talk with any of the groups. A group from the University of Kentucky were on a western National Park tour after spending some quality time in a field camp near Gunnison Colorado.

It is good to see the tradition continues.

First summit of the year

2011-07-03T14:34:00.001-07:00

It really is a testament to the amount of snow and the cold spring that our first summit (and it really wasn't a real mountain) was on July 1st. Even now, many trailheads are not open and if they are the amounts of snow, especially in the sub-alpine forest is still pretty deep. We had tried other peaks earlier and were unsuccessful on everyone. So Twin Peaks right outside of Ouray was our first summit of 2011.

The summit rock is part of the San Juan formation or just the San Juan Tuff a volcanic-clastic sedimentary rock. Within this impressively thick formation (3000 feet in places) , you can identify breccia clasts from long ago pyroclastic flows and thick welded tuff segments resulting from falling ash. A cool place!

The "little sister" right before the last big climb. Even without zooming in you can see the brecciated surface.

There is still a bit of snow in the high country
A long way down to the City of Ouray CO. This was a fun 3000 foot climb.
An close up showing the volcanic-clasts within the matrix. Unfortunately there is quite a bit of biology hiding the rock details.

The only geologist on an archeology trip

2011-06-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

Way back in graduate school my emphasis was on the glacial history of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. At the time, I loved the alpine environments, the cold temperatures and the climbing associated with glaciers. However, as I have grown older I have found that I enjoy the warmer climate of the desert southwest. Please don't get me wrong, I still spend time in an alpine environment, but the desert places have captured a big part of me.

While exploring the canyons found in the southwest I have changed my geology interests from glacial episodes of the Quaternary to the ergs of the Mesozoic. With more and more time spent in the canyons, I have found a strong interest in the previous occupants of the canyon country. You can only look through so many ruins and see so many rock art panels before you are just driven to know more.

So, a few weeks ago I joined a group of both professional and amateur archaeologists on a float down the San Juan river in SE Utah. What fun! What great examples of rock art. And, I was able to explain how some of the geology happened to be. The story in the rocks actually started 350 million years ago...not just 1100 years ago

Chert nodules

iron concretions. Many of my fellow explorers were not ready for a little chemistry lesson at river side to explain the origin of either the chert or the concretions.
The rock art was tremendous

The Mexican Hat. What a great example of the more resistant cap rock
The Raplee anticline

Where did the Wingate go?

2011-06-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you have already gathered that my favorite formation on the Colorado Plateau is the Wingate sandstone. In fact, the cover photo of the blog is of the Wingate sandstone along the Green River. It is a late Triassic- Jurassic aeolian sandstone. The grains are very uniformed in size making fantastic conchoidal fractures when blocks fall from the cliff face. Making a very nice cap rock on top of the Wingate is the Kayenta formation. The Kayenta, an early Jurassic siltstone-sandstone showing evidence of mid energy stream action is cemented very well and acts as an excellent cap rock. The top most component of this group (the Glen Canyon Group) is the Navajo Sandstone. This sandstone is another Jurassic aeolian sandstone that hints at being one of the largest sand islands ever seen on planet earth.

But...back to the missing Wingate.

Most of my play area is in Southeast Utah along the Colorado and Green Rivers. This past month we have spent some serious time in South central Utah in the Paria drainage. Here we see the familiar Glen Canyon Group wit the navajo sandstone along the horizon, the Kayenta formation directly below but instead of another aeolian sandstone there the Moenave Formation with reddish siltstone and pinkish sandstone showing clear evidence of water deposition. What a difference from the windblown Wingate.

The story in the rocks suggests that perhaps, in the early Jurassic we would have been in a desert resort area with ponds and streams with a large desert just to the east. A paleo-Palm Springs?

Canyon cliffs of Navajo sandstone with the Kayenta formation making the canyon bottom

Canyon walls of Wingate sandstone
And 100 miles to the west... the high white cliffs of Navajo sandstone, the reddish ledges of the Kayenta formation and the reddish-pink slope forming Moenave formation near the bottom.

high water

2011-06-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

Last weekend while exploring different parts of the Uncompahgre Plateau we came across an unfortunate place to leave a truck. With the recent warm weather (and the extra long cool spring) the rivers are coming up high and fast.

Its not only the rafters that need to be careful around rivers.

History lesson turns to a chemistry lesson

2011-04-25T18:26:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I described a snowshoe history field trip of the Red Mountain Mining District. This area took out millions of dollars of metals in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Unfortunately the profits are long gone and we are left with the clean up. There was lots of evidence of iron in most every mine in the area. Obviously, the RED in Red Mountain is due to iron mineralization in the rocks.

What hard rock mining did was increase the air and water exposure to the iron pyrite found naturally in the geology of Red Mountain Pass. Iron pyrite (FeS2) reacts with the water and oxygen to form sulfate (SO4). which combines readily with water to form sulfuric acid and ferrous iron.

FeS₂ + O₂ + H₂O = Fe²⁺ + SO₄^2- + H⁺

The ferrous iron reacts with the air and water to create ferric iron. The ferrous ions are soluble in water while the ferric ions are not. The ferric ions precipitate out of the water coating the entire substrate with an almost impervious layer of iron. No matter the water chemistry, this iron pavement alone signals the end for any biology in the water, there is no place for macroinvertebrates to live, no place for aquatic plants to take hold. The food chain dies at the lowest trophic levels.

Fe²⁺ + O₂ + H⁺ = Fe³⁺ + H₂O

However, the water chemistry is not normal. Most biology needs a near neutral pH to live. The sulfate ions reacting with water results in the formation of sulfuric acid, lowering the pH to extreme acidic conditions. I have measured the pH of alpine creeks down to 2.0.

FeS₂ + Fe³⁺ + H₂O = Fe²⁺+ SO₄^2- + H⁺

Part of trying to fix the Uncompaghre water shed is to determine how bad was the water prior to mining. At the time, the miners did not do any environmental impact studies before they started digging. The best we can do are some anecdotal comments about catching fish just outside the mining camps- an impossibility today. It is obvious that there was natural mineralization present before the advent of mining. So, how much can be cleaned up today?

Do we have the will to clean up seriously degraded waterways way up in the headwaters?

Red Mountain #1

Looking for red rocks next to the channelized and embedded Red Mountain Creek
Part of an old tailings slurry pipeline. The miners used wooden flumes because the metal corroded to quickly with the acidic water.
Red Mountain Creek in the winter. The yellow water stands out nicely against the white snow.

feng shui on the trail AW 33

2011-04-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

This month, John in the Taconic Mountains has asked about how we incorporate geology into our homes. I was thinking about some landscaping we had done in the backyard or about the fireplace in Ed Abby's old home in Moab UT where the rocks represent the stratigraphic column of the Canyonlands. BUT

I didn't have any pictures. I know that this isn't exactly what John had in mind, but it sure beats the shelf with my "prettiest" hand samples.

Last week I was visiting Zion National Park and hiked up the West Rim Trail past the infamous Angels Landing. While walking up "Wally's Wiggles" we saw this fantastic example of a Navajo sandstone iron concretion used in the retaining wall. Whoever was trail crew leader had a great eye for aesthetics and incorporated some fun geology in the trail.

Looking way down at Wally's Wiggles. Click the image for a larger version.

the concretion in the wall
up close

A history lesson

2011-04-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I attended a ski/snow shoe tour of the Red Mountain Mining District courtesy of the Ouray Historical Society and the Uncompahgre River Project. The area I took the most pictures was the picturesque Yankee Girl mine.

The Yankee Girl was discovered in 1881 and by the time most mining had ceased in 1896 over 3 million dollars of gold, silver and lead had been brought to market (while leaving tons of debris on he ground near the mine). The Yankee Girl. like most mines in the district took advantage of several volcanic breccia chimneys, a result of the creation of the Silverton caldera. The most productive ore seems to be associated with the quartz porphyry found in the chimneys. Lead and zinc ore paid he bills, the silver provided the profit and the little gold that was found provided the headlines.

lunch at the Guston mine

The Yankee Girl headframe
The Yankee Girl up close. The main mine shaft dropped over 1000 feet from this point.

windy spring= disappearing snowpack

2011-03-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

The snowpack in the northern San Juan mountains is still looking pretty good at 113% of normal. However, every spring we get these nice breezes that move the red dust from the desert landscape of Utah and Arizona to the mountains of SW Colorado. Between the sublimation of snow in these warm winds and the decrease in surface albedo from the dark dust, we can lose a large portion of our snowpack in just one wind event.

This "weather story" is courtesy of the National Weather Service explaining what we have in store for today and tonight. The first major wind event of the new spring. Notice how the SW winds come from the deserts right onto the southern mountains. Through most of the winter much of the west was damp, but now it seems that the snotel sites in New Mexico and Arizona are showing snowpack percentages in the single digits. Not a good sign at the END of winter.

The Cutler divided and undivided

2011-03-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

Back in the Permian the Uncompahgre Mountains in western Colorado were experiencing extensive erosion and creating some great alluvial fans to the west all the way into now what is Utah. These red beds, now called the Cutler formation after a small creek just north of Ouray CO can be seen from western Colorado into central Utah. What is interesting is that the Cutler seems to have two sets of identities. In western Colorado, extreme eastern Utah and other places along the Colorado River we find the Undivided Cutler.

The undivided identity is a thick mix of irregular collection of dark red, lumpy sandstones, mudstones and conglomerates.

The divided sequence looks a little different. It too has the debris from the Uncompahgre Mountains but it also shows a more complex geologic story. The earliest layers show a shale/limestone mix complete with fossils indicating a marine origin. Resting above the limestone is the Cedar Mesa Sandstone an inter-fingering of near beach white sandstone and the red from the Uncompahgre Mountains showing a changing sea level. The sequence is finally topped with a brilliant white aeolian sandstone showing again a very different environment.

Taken from the Colorado River overlook. The Undivided Cutler in the foreground with the Needles of the Cedar Mesa Sandstone of the divided Cutler in the background.

A closer look at the Undivided Cutler looking down at the Colorado River

AW #32. Favorite images The anticline overlook

2011-03-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

Ann said the festivities don't start until tomorrow night so I have a chance to hand this in late! Thanks!

This was taken from the appropriately named "Anticline Overlook" of the Canyon Rims Recreation Area in eastern Utah. The anticline is obvious, you can see the upward curve of the rock units. I love the part where the river cuts through the anticline making a natural road cut.

The river cuts through the Permian age Cutler formation, the left overs from the formation of the Ancestral Rockies. The upward arching of these rocks is from the squishing (a very technical term) of a buried salt layer. Far below the Cutler lies the Pennsylvanian Paradox formation, a mile thick layer of salt that has a tendency to move about creating some fun landscapes in the desert southwest. The buildings and ponds you see in the picture are a potash mine. Water is pumped underground into the Paradox layer, dissolves the salts and the brine is pumped back to the surface into the blue evaporation ponds in the background. The water evaporates away leaving the salts for transport.

The fun part of this area are the roads. They are barely visible in the picture but they travel hundreds of miles through the red rock desert . A mountain biking heaven!

Highway engineering, aquatic ecosystems and a little bit of gold

2011-02-14T16:04:00.000-08:00

A second installment of Geology begets biology

This is a view looking east towards the Continental Divide in Summit County Colorado. The highway snaking up the hill is Interstate 70. The highway bottoms out at 8900 feet and then climbs steadily to 11,150 feet where the road enters the Eisenhower Tunnel and makes its way under the Continental Divide to the east slope.

The original plans had the tunnel a few miles west and a couple of thousand feet below its current placement. However, before construction began, the bean counters started to complain about the length of the tunnel and asked if there could be another placement for the bore. So, apparently the powers that were decided that the geology in the mountain should all be somewhat similar and decided to drill the tunnel in its present configuration. So, the highway now climbs up the Straight Creek drainage to the 11,150 foot elevation and then makes its way east.

The problem with this plan is the gradient of the highway exceeds the Interstate standards and requires massive amounts of sand to keep the highway open. It is just too steep on those icy days.

Normally, a high country stream like this is relatively sediment poor and would be able to easily transport any sediment it receives from erosion. However, now as spring arrives and the snow melts, huge amounts of sand are washed into Straight Creek severely impacting water quality. The towns of Dillon CO. and Dillon Valley CO. rely on this watershed for their potable water. In addition, Straight Creek runs into the Blue River with its gold medal fisheries.

In the early 1990's my biology classes spent some quality time in Straight Creek doing pebble counts and macro-invertebrate census collections. Yes, the water was quite cold. Our findings: There were no macro-invertebrates as their habitat had been inundated by feet of sand. The pebbles we found, were all sand grains. No matter our findings, this was a wonderful experience for a group of high school sophomores and our data ended up in someone's Master's thesis.

By now, the Colorado transportation department, local water quality agencies and the state wildlife agency saw the problem and created a series of check dams and sedimentation ponds to catch the sand. In 1993, over 1100 tons of sand were removed from the ponds, about 10% of the total sand applied. Since then, more check dams and sedimentation ponds have been built and by 2000, the majority of sand has been kept from entering the creek. This is an incredible long term maintenance process that in the long run, costs more than the longer tunnel would have back in the 1970's

Cold across the Country

2011-02-02T19:04:00.001-08:00

Cool image of the cold across much of the country.

Thank you weather underground.

Geology begets biology. North facing vs. South facing slopes

2011-01-27T14:51:00.000-08:00

I taught High School biology for a long time, almost my whole K-12 career. Of course, that meant my biology classes had a decidedly geological slant to them. One concept I tried to instill in my biology students was that the literal underpinnings of the ecosystem was the underlying geology.

I called these explorations "Geology begets Biology"

One idea that seems simple but created problems with many students was north facing slopes vs. south facing slopes. Both sides of a hill receive approximately the same amount of precipitation, have similar soils and experience the same temperatures but can appear very different from each other. However, the south facing slopes receive more direct sunlight and snow will melt faster, soil moisture will evaporate faster creating a dryer micro climate than the shady north facing slope which might be only meters away. The slower evaporation on the north side means that plants (that biology connection) will have more available moisture. With the snow melting at a slower rate, there is more water available longer in to the spring.

Ultimately, the species of plants found on south facing slopes will be more drought tolerant while their north facing cousins less skilled at surviving with low water amounts. Here, in Colorado's southern mountains, the north facing slopes are full of large evergreen trees, while the south side has more shrubs like the ubiquitous sage brush. So, in just a glance we should be able to roughly decide on "north" even without a compass.

In the foreground, the grassy slope is facing south and west while the heavily treed area is more north and east.

Notice the scrub oak. What you can't experience is the snow depth under the oak is only a few inches.
Looking across the gully at the fully melted south facing slope. I was traveling on the north facing slope in 8-10 inches of snow from a recent storm while the other side is clear.
Again, looking across the gully at the melted out slope. I was in the shade of a large Ponderosa pine tree. The south facing side is home to a large population of scrub oak trees

A visit to our Grandson and the Pacific Plate

2011-01-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

We spent the MLK weekend visiting our almost one year old grandson (and family) in California. One day, we traveled across the Santa Cruz mountains to the ocean and visited a small state park, Natural Bridges State Beach with its namesake natural bridge sitting just a little bit off shore. I will admit, I was too busy making faces and goofy sounds and generally playing grandfather with the baby to notice when we crossed over from the North American Plate to the Pacific Plate. I guess I will pay more attention on the next visit.

Once at the state park we spent some time exploring the beach. Having spent most of my geology career in Colorado and Utah, I find visiting a current beach to be lots of fun. The beaches I usually frequent were sea side back in the Permian.
The rock was a fun mudstone. A very fine grained sedimentary rock, Miocene in age. Again, I am used to pretty soft sedimentary rock in the canyons of Utah. This mudstone was, pardon the expression, rock hard! The cementing agent of SiO2 has created a very erosion resistant rock that made some great tide pools, ocean side cliffs and
... of course the natural bridges. In the recent (historical) past there were three bridges present. Two have succumbed to the power of erosion leaving the sole remaining bridge, for now. Reading a web site from the University at Santa Cruz the author suggests that the bridges have been transformed from a natural wonder into an educational resource.As for being on the Pacific plate. It didn't feel very different, but I thought I could just faintly detect a little more northward motion instead of the constant westward traveling I have been doing my whole life.

The earth will survive

2011-01-11T15:07:00.001-08:00

I had the chance to visit an upper elementary classroom just a few days ago. While there I shared how the earth's climate has changed over time. I led them through the idea that we have all kinds of clues about past climate by looking at rocks. So, we examined hand samples of sandstone, shale and limestone and compared the clues from each rock type. We discussed how differences in temperature, atmosphere, proximity to water can change how a rock looks (not bad for a group of kids with no chemistry in their academic history) And if the weather cooperated we would have taken a field trip to some nearby cliffs to see the story they tell.

One student, obviously getting information from her parents, decided to trap me about climate change. She was pretty smug when I replied that yes, the planet itself has survived past changes and will survive any future climate change except perhaps resulting from a large impact or our sun growing into a Red Giant.

Her face fell though when I said, we weren't concerned about the planet as much as we were concerned with the animals and even the human beings on the planet. I am amazed that we must still argue over the presence of climate change here on earth. I guess I'll just keep taking my show on the road one classroom at a time.

I bet the dinner discussion that night was interesting.

The traveling meme

2010-12-22T11:38:00.001-08:00

I caught this over at Looking for Detachment and thought I would add my two cents. I love traveling and seeing different places around the world..or at least different places of my part of the world.

The year started skiing on Red Mountain Pass. The winter ended with "normal" snowfall and good water all summer.

The big trip was flying to San Francisco for the birth of our first grand child. It is so much fun watching your kid being a parent!
I spent some time outside the Colorado Plateau in Ladore Canyon last summer. We followed the Green River down from Flaming Gorge dam all the way through Dinosaur NM. Some fun geology!
The Green River
Riding bikes in the Circle Cliffs of Utah
I took a couple of trips to DC. One working with NG who keeps us busy every second we are there.
We have always been interested in the ruins and rock art we see as we look at geology across the plateau. This summer we started getting serious about studying archeology. Here we are on a back country hike in Mesa Verde
The Colorado high country!
This fall I spent a lot of time in and around Moab. Whether it was bike riding, canyoneering or geology field trips, I learned more about the area this year than in many other field seasons.
We even caught a flash flood.

..and now it is winter again. Another full season of exploring the 4-Corners area.

Here is the Black Canyon
and the Red Mountain mining district.
We were able to catch one more riding weekend in Moab. Riding towards the La Sal mountains
No, I didn't crash. I just wanted my bike in the picture right below "the tombstone" a Wingate monolith.

What is in a name?

2010-12-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

I am a bit slow on the uptake sometimes. It took me awhile to regularly use the Neogene and the Paleogene instead of the Tertiary period. I am dreading the day when the Quaternary will no longer exist. But last month while in the Canyonlands I noticed that one of my favorite formations apparently does not exist. No its not some revisionist erosion but a change in naming.

Elephant Canyon is a really fun little canyon deep in the Needles. The canyon bottom has miles of a classic grey/ greenish grey limestone that is full of obvious Permian fossils. It was always a joy to walk the length of the canyon right on the bedding plane between the limestone below and the Cedar Mesa sandstone above. The problem was that the mappable unit called Elephant Canyon Limestone is just not that easy to determine, so for years maps have shown that the Elephant Canyon was inter-fingered with the Halgaito Formation. But now, I see that the Halgaito formation is inter-fingered with the Lower Cutler.

To make the area a little more complicated, just a little bit to the west, the whole sequence of rock units is lumped into the Culter-undivided. Who thought up this system?

Not only does this give me a great excuse to do more research in my favorite place in the world, but I have to learn a new naming system. As any teacher will tell you, I have only so much room for names and that was filled way back in the mid-90's, so wish me luck.

The old stratigraphic column. Taken from the NPS web site. Notice down in the Permian that the Elephant Canyon is listed with the Halgaito Fm. You may have to click to expand.

The new stratigraphic column in miniature font. Please click it to read! Again, down in the Permian the Halgaito shale is now interfingered with the Lower Cutler.

What I love about the geology of home AW 29

2010-11-30T15:35:00.000-08:00

This month's question comes from Ann and her musings. She asks what about the geology of home do you love or perhaps not like. This was an easy one! Back in 2000 when the world seemed lighter and fresher and open to all manners of imagination, we moved ourselves from perfectly good jobs to the western part of Colorado just to be near the canyons and mountains. I won't go into how the education job market has been in a steady decline since 2001, but I will talk about the geology.

How can you not love the San Juan Mountains of Colorado? Just in a single glance we can see sediment deposited in ancient seaways and ancient deserts, intense mountain building with its accompanied faults and folds and the topped off with all sorts of volcanic evidence from lava flows and ash deposits to hydrothermal mineral deposits then the whole mix was well glaciated just a short time ago. My only compliant is that the area is so complex that my small mind has trouble wrapping around some of the views. I keep saying that the rocks tell a story, well this story is a bit complex.

The story doesn't end there. Just a short distance west is the Colorado Plateau. A fantastic playground full of red rock canyons, fast flowing desert rivers and evidence of previous occupants in the form of ruins and rock art. I have been so fortunate to spend the last 9 summers teaching K-12 teachers about geology while canoeing down some of the west's most iconic rivers, often in the footsteps (or paddle strokes) of John Wesley Powell. We explore pre-Cambrian rock units in some of the rapids we negotiate. We have a campsite on a 1.5 billion year unconformity. Students can observe the difference between sandstone deposited by water and sandstone deposited by wind. Then, at the end, we play particles ourselves and float towards the Pacific Ocean. What an awesome place.

A high country lake near Silverton Colorado

Red Mountain #2, taken from Red Mountain #1 on the edge of the Silverton caldera. Obviously a heavily mineralized area with not-so-original names.
An arch found in the Cedar Mesa formation
That's me on top of Bow Knot bend, named by Powell as the Green River flows 7 miles to travel 600 yards through a very tight entrenched meander.
Entering spilt mountain in Dinosaur NM on the Green River

metamorphism of snow

2010-11-29T15:43:00.001-08:00

Last weekend we took advantage of a few days off and some new snow up high. One interest of mine has been watching the snow pack change over the course of the winter. This was more than an academic exercise during my search and rescue days since the character of the snow pack was a big indication of avalanche potential.

Right now the snotel site indicates we are a little shallow in snow depth for this time of year. The crystals (yes I know I didn't even think of taking a picture) are all small and are fairly evenly sized through the snow piles. The only different sized crystals were found at the surface where a thin layer of surface hoar is forming.

What we will look for now is to see if the cold night time temperatures will continue creating new crystals that will influence how cohesive the snow will act. The fun part...I will have to keep skiing and snowshoeing through out the winter. I hope to have periodic updates as time goes on, so stay tuned.

Making first tracks through a meadow.

Climbing towards a mine dump-avalanche chute. It is just the right angle for a slide
Winter has come back to the Colorado Rockies

Moab, Rivers and Geology

2010-11-15T15:23:00.001-08:00

Last weekend found me back in Moab...go figure. This time I was attending the Moab River Rendezvous a get together created by Plateau Restoration, a group dedicated to protecting and restoring native habitats on the Colorado Plateau. The rendezvous was a chance for lovers of the plateau and its rivers to get together and learn more about the place, do a service project, see some phenomenal movies and have a blast while doing it.

I could not get away for the whole event, but Saturday afternoon and Sunday were lots of fun. Saturday afternoon, the keynote speaker Wayne Ranney discussed his newest book on Carving the Grand Canyon. The river runners in the room were held spellbound by his description of what lava falls would have looked like in the beginning. Later that night were some old home movies, taken by Grand Canyon river runners in some of the high water years in the 1950's before any dams were in place...it was a different world.

Saturday's field trip into Arches National Park was the highlight for me. We walked out Bloody Mary wash to fossil falls which is on the Moab fault. Slickensides and fossils on the same stop! We then drove into the park and spent most of our time looking at the salt valleys (collapsed anticlines) that were so instrumental in making the modern landscape we see today. There was lots of discussion looking at the orientation of the salt valleys and their relationship to the nearby laccolith mountains, the La Sals.

The Moab fault up close. This is called fossil falls as the (Honaker Trail, Pennsylvanian period) limestone on the left is just chock full of crinoid parts, horn coral and brachiopods.

Looking across the Colorado River towards the La Sal Mountains a 25 million year old igneous intrusion.
Looking across the salt valley into the fiery furnace. The salt valley is a collapsed anticline created by the movement of subterranean salt. The furnace is a maze of Entrada sandstone fins.
Not the best picture, but one of Utah's state emblems, Delicate Arch can be seen in the center of the image by its distinctive shadow. This view is also across the Salt valley collapsed anticline

A canyon flashes

2010-10-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was spent in Moab UT at a literary festival about water. The weekend as a whole was a bit wet and fall in the desert never looked better. Saturday afternoon, however, the heavens opened and the town was treated to a good soaking with severe thunderstorms, a half hour downpour and hail. The canyon we were exploring did not have a gauging station but a nearby stream showed a 10 fold increase in discharge from about 7 cfs to 70 cfs in a matter of minutes. Actually the storm was a perfect addition to a festival about water.

Below are images of Courthouse Wash which originates in Arches N.P. Usually the water is clear, but the sediment load is easily seen as the silt is an especially red color.

A nearby gauging station showing a spike on Saturday October 23.

This is usually an easy river crossing.

A view from the other side.
Using a beaver dam to cross the river. The flash certainly impacted the integrity of the dam and my walking across it didn't help either.

Middle School in the mountains

2010-10-19T19:09:00.001-07:00

The weather cooperated today and I was able to take a group of local 8th graders "out into the field". We looked at some nearby outcrops and tried to describe their characteristics and decide their rock type. It is lucky for us that there is quite the geology field trip right out the front door.

Ms. J, their teacher and I were also getting the kids to formulate some simple questions that they can research and perhaps even answer. Their teacher has created an impressive science program that has the kids doing some real world research both in the field and library.

The big picture of the field trip location.

Gratuitous picture of my truck with geological background
The class sitting on limestone outcrop

A trip to Grandmothers house- Colorado style

2010-10-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we took a trip to Colorado's Front range to visit some relatives. Since we are having a fantastic fall we took the scenic route. the idea came as we were driving back, so all of the images were found online and do not represent actual conditions. It did snow, but accumulations were in the low inches.

McClure pass from the North Fork of the Gunnison drainage to the Roaring Fork of the Colorado drainage

From the Main stem of the Colorado drainage to the Blue River drainage
From the Blue River drainage to the Williams Fork of the Colorado River drainage
Up and over the Continental Divide
We spent our time between Loveland and Fort Collins for a few days and then headed back. This time we used Interstate 70 to get us into Summit County where we lived during the 1990's.

Back over the Continental Divide to the west side
...and back again to the east side as we traveled from the Blue River drainage to the South Platte Drainage.
No, there was no snow when we traveled across Trout Creek. This small pass divides the S. Platte and the Arkansas river drainages.
...and for the last time, across the Continental Divide towards the Pacific Ocean and down into the Gunnison River drainage and back home.
The Gunnison River takes a strange turn into the Black Canyon. The highway department (and railroads and old trails) thought it would be easier to drop down into the Uncompahgre drainage instead of following the Gunnison River.

AW 27 “What is the most important geological experience you’ve had?”

2010-09-24T13:57:00.001-07:00

This month's Accretionary Wedge is all about important geological experiences. I am not sure if this is the most important or just one that hit my brain at the same time I took some pictures, but the theme has existed ever since I took Geology 101.

I entered the University of Colorado with geology on my mind. I never took anything beyond Earth Science as a freshman in high school and now I was in a real university with a geology department. From the first day I found that there was a story to be found in the rocks. By the end of the first semester, I could start to tease out those stories myself...as long as they were simple stories.

My important geological experience was that with some simple tools I could interpret a rock, a outcrop, a road cut and even a mountain range. This idea shook me up. Here is something that happened a long time ago and with a few rules of physics I could construct a story about the origins of a landform...I was hooked.

This week, I have been working on some landscaping in the backyard. Part of the plan needed some small river cobbles and even though I hate the idea of paying for rocks, it sure was easier to get a truck to dump 3000 pounds (1361 kg)in the driveway. While moving the rocks, I started looking at them ( surprised?) Since the gravel pit is on the Uncompaghre River I knew the source area and I picked out examples of the different rock units I have played in over the years. There was a cobble from the Ancestral Rockies caught in the Cutler formation, some Ouray Limestone and as I would expect lots of examples of the San Juan Tuff. I washed some up and placed them in chronological order. What a geo-geek. But then it was back to work and only a few pictures were taken.

I now take this show on the road and invite all kinds of kids to try their hand at telling the story in the rocks.

The headwaters of the Uncompaghre River near Red Mountain Pass

The 1361 kilogram pile in the driveway.
A small collection before I had to get back to work.

latent heat of vaporization

2010-09-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

A non-geology topic for a second.

We have been canning peaches this past week and as I was waiting and waiting for the canner water to start boiling I was thinking of a quick blog post. Canning is the culinary analog for splitting firewood. Lots of work in the fall leads to fresh peaches in February. All together we have about 40 jars of peaches. That sounds like a jar a week until next summer!

yes it was night by the time we had put enough energy in the system to change states from liquid to a gas.

Working the peaches
Filling the jars

Check out how much energy it takes to boil water compared to other materials. At a point in my ancient history, I was an operator in a coal fired power plant. That is when I first learned that much of the coal we burned was to put water over the edge from a liquid to a gas. (chart taken from wikipedia)

Substance	Latent Heat Fusion kJ/kg	Melting Point °C	Latent Heat Vaporization kJ/kg	Boiling Point °C
Alcohol, ethyl	108	−114	855	78.3
Ammonia	339	−75	1369	−33.34
Carbon dioxide	184	−78	574	−57
Helium			21	−268.93
Hydrogen(2)	58	−259	455	−253
Lead^[3]	24.5	327.5	871	1750
Nitrogen	25.7	−210	200	−196
Oxygen	13.9	−219	213	−183
R134a		−101	215.9	−26.6
Toluene		−93	351	110.6
Turpentine			293
Water	334	0	2260 (at 100^oC)	100

Peri-glacial evidence

2010-09-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we were hiking across the north facing slopes in a basin at about 13,000 feet when I saw these great examples of protalus ramparts. At one time there was a permanent snowfield above the piles of rock. Erosion happens (is that a band or a bumper sticker?) easily in the rotten San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado. The mountains fall apart easily with all of the freeze-thaw cycles that occur. The material falls with the help of gravity and rolls right down the snow bank coming to rest at the base of the snow. Now that the snow is gone we see hills of rough, angular debris that does not touch the "parent" slope.

Evidence of a colder time.

A straight on view.You can see that there is no cirque above the debris hill suggesting that this is not a moraine.

Another protalus rampart in the same vicinity. In this case, the oblique view allows you to see behind the debris hill.
Another example in the same basin and approximately the same aspect. No shortage of the raw material for talus.
Just had to add the picture of the lake.

Mesa Verde- geology and archeology

2010-09-08T15:38:00.001-07:00

(after Wanek 1959 and Griffitts 1990)

A while ago we decided that we would spend the last of the summer explorations looking at the back country of Mesa Verde National Park. In the past few years, the park has allowed ranger led treks to look at some of the less explored regions of the park. It was one of these we decided to join.

Mesa Verde is made of basically four different formations, all of Cretaceous age. The Mancos shale forms the lower slopes and valley bottom. The Mancos is a marine shale and is ubiquitous in Western Colorado. Above the Mancos shale is the Mesa Verde Group composed of the Point Lookout sandstone, a beach front sandstone; the Menefee formation, a near sea-level marshy shale and the Cliffhouse sandstone, another shoreline sandstone. The regional dip is a shallow 2-3 degrees towards the south away from the La Plata mountains.

Many of the cliff dwelling are found in alcoves created where the permeable Cliffhouse sandstone meets the impermeable Menefee shales. The waters from rain and snow slowly percolated through the Cliffhouse sandstone until they reach an impermeable layer. The slight dip of the rock units channeled the moving water to the south creating many springs on the north facing slopes. These springs over time undercut the overlaying sandstone creating alcoves. The Anasazi (or Ancestral Puebloans) found these ready made alcoves complete with water sources a natural place to build some dwellings.

Looking up from the canyon bottom. The Menefee coal beds can be seen in the center. The cliffhouse sandstone at the top.

A large dwelling area built in an alcove created by water running through a horizontal crack. A large spring is just visible in the lower right at the bottom of the Cliffhouse sandstone.
While crossing a large expanse of sandstone we were treated to an amazing collection of hematite concretion shapes.
Another ruin showing how a spring created the alcove. The floors of the dwellings are built directly on the Menefee.
An alcove in the making right at the interface between the permeable Cliffhouse sandstone and the impermeable Menefee shales.

"The Blowout"

2010-08-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday hiking above and west of the town of Ouray Colorado. At one point we had an awesome view of what is locally known as "the blowout". This highly mineralized area is actually a Larimide intrusion effectively marking the center of the Ouray Mining District. At about the turn of the era (late Cretaceous-early Paleogene), Colorado was upset with numerous magma invasions along an ancient (Precambrian) structural zone, called the Colorado Mineral Belt. The blowout is just our little part of the whole belt. The mines in the area are all related to the laccolith that forms the blowout. I found an older paper, written in 1947 that suggests that the center of the mineralization was mainly magnetite-pyritic ores with little gold and silver but that just a short distance outward ores containing pyritic gold and even some native gold could be found. As this fall rolls around, I hope to climb up and explore some of the mines in the area and will try to share my findings. My background is notoriously blank in geo-chemistry and so as usual I will keep things simple.

I just saw that this is post #100!

The blowout, now known as a source of gravel when the afternoon summer thunderstorms deluge the small catchment area.

Another view. You can just make out parts of town in the lower left.

Forgot the camera

2010-08-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

Last week was spent on a favorite section of the green River through Labyrinth Canyon. Because I have traveled this stretch so many times, I decided to leave the camera at home.

well

The flash flooding was awesome. Whole sand bars gone, with new ones created downstream. Almost every side canyon through Labyrinth had flashed leaving large holes through the sand that is normally found as each tributary reaches the main stem.

A lightning storm that is easily the best light show I have ever experienced. (of course lightning is notoriously difficult to catch on digits)

That will teach me.

Class time

2010-08-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

As in most states, public K12 teachers must collect some college credits every so often in order to keep their license current. A crazy notion in Colorado is that I can't get credit for the classes I teach, so I signed up for a few classes to reup my license for the next few years. Not surprisingly, I decided to take a geology class that uses river craft to explore an area.

This class used rafts and canoes to float the Green River from the Flaming Gorge Dam through the Gates of Ladore into Dinosaur NM. It was fun exploring a site close to where I do most of my work. Many rock units were the same as on the Colorado Plateau while others were new to me. What fun! Geology aside, it was interesting to watch an instructor and see how she taught. The canoeing and rafting wasn't hard to take either. I know have my requisite credits and soon should have my license approved for the next five years.

The geologic time walk. The instructor took us on a little hike with each step as one million years, giving a whole new meaning to "that was one small step for a man". It is always fun to see how different instructors try and explain the vastness of time.

The Green River in Ladore Canyon. The Ladore formation is a Cambrian sandstone that lies above the Uinta Mountain Group, a late Proterozoic sandstone/conglomerate. Between the two is a 480 million year unconformity.
Ducky-ing into Split Mountain. One of my highlights was to look at the same evidence as John Wesley Powell and see how he came up with his two working hypothesis of an "antecedent canyon" or a "superimposed canyon".

The antecedent canyon had the river channel established first. Subsequent uplift was slow enough that the river followed its original channel as it cut deeper.

The superimposed canyon had geology first, where bedrock was deformed and then buried under sediment. At a later date, a river eroded through the sediment and eventually cutting into the harder bedrock creating a conundrum for hydrologists.

Powell's notes suggest he leaned towards the antecedent method while more modern reports lean the other way towards a superimposed canyon.
Deformation at the entrance to Split Mountain. The Split Mountain Anticline. The opposite side of Split Mountain can be seen with one of Ron's gigapan images.

Games Geologists Play

2010-07-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

While teaching classes on western rivers, I often give descriptions of the upcoming rock units. After describing mappable units, grain size, shape, color and other macro-characterizations, I ask them to determine where the next rock unit appears as we float the river. The winner often receives an extra Oreo cookie at lunch. (A game needs a prize) Other games have included: find the river, and the ever popular where are we.

Can you find the break between the Ladore formation and the Madison limestone?

Last week we were traveling in Northern Colorado and found ourselves looking at some fantastic glacially polished rock. I was explaining to my ever-patient wife about the life and death of glaciers when we created a new game: Find the Equilibrium Line.

The equilibrium line divided the ice sheet into two parts. The upper section is where material was being added to the glacier as more snow was accumulating than melting. We can observe paleo-accumulation zones from the presence of erosional features- such as glacially polished rock.
The area below the equilibrium line is where more material was melting than being accumulated. Because there was an excess of material, ice moved from above the equilibrium line to below the equilibrium line. Paleo-ablation, or melting zones can be determined by observing depositional features such as a moraine. (The image below was shamelessly right-clicked from a google image search as it showed a moraine way better than any of my pictures.)The trick is to find the point where erosion ends and deposition begins.
Here, the elevation of the paleo-equilibrium line is is roughly 11,300 feet above sea level.

For extra cookies, or credit. a very rough estimate of the paleo-climate can be determined with some simple calculations. The difference between the "modern" equilibrium line ( approximately 14,000 feet (a number created a long time ago while in grad school) and the "paleo" equilibrium line is 2700 feet. The dry adiabatic rate is roughly 3.5^o F/ 1000 feet, giving us a rough temperature difference between the ice age maximum and now would be 9^o F.

I know that there are a multitude of factors not being taken in consideration, but this seems an easy exercise where students can observe geology, do some simple calculations and go home with an answer that makes sense.

And, of course the winner gets an extra Oreo cookie.

Part of the "Why I blog" series

2010-07-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

Last month between trips in Utah, one to Grand Staircase and the other to Dinosaur NM, I quickly penned a guest blog for the plainspoken scientist. It took them awhile to fix all of my grammatical mistakes, but it is up and running now.

Why I blog

I hope to get a new blog post up soon...but it is summer.

Geological interpretation in a biological world

2010-07-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

We spent much of June exploring both front and back county areas of the Grand Staircase NM. Our journeys took us from Bryce Canyon to the Circle Cliffs. This is an amazing country and we are so fortunate that much of it is protected as a national monument.

However, it appears, to me anyway, that much of the interpretation of the natural world is done by biologists. We visited Bryce Canyon with its hoodoos of the Claron Fm eroding out of the plateau. As we walked about I was expecting that most interpretive signs would be about geology...but no. We did learn about the harsh conditions the trees are subjected to as well as how the animals survive in such a dry climate. While biology is quite important, I was hoping for more "rock" signs for obvious reasons. Nothing registered in my mind yet, that is until we visited Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. Once again, with "petrified forest" as the title feature I expected a geology inspired hike. Hiking up the marquee trail we found some cool basaltic boulders left over from eruptive excitement on the nearby Boulder Mountain. Later in the hike we observed handfuls of nodules eroding out of a Navajo Sandstone outcrop. And, of course, all along the hike we were treated to fossilized trees scattered over the hillside. Our little trail guide mentioned only one of these observations, that of the petrified trees. Interestingly, a team from Utah State University has created a fantastic geologic trail guide for the same trail, but copies were not available at the visitors center and I have only seen them online.

A new outreach goal of mine is to help our federal land naturalists with more geologic interpretation.

Bryce canyon at sunrise. The Eocene aged Clarion Fm is a colorful freshwater limestone.

A fantastic cross section of the area from my favorite Utah State Park.
Petrified tree eroding out of the Morrison Fm
nodules from the Navajo Fm
Basaltic boulders transported from nearby Boulder Mt and the Aquarius Plateau

National Park meme

2010-06-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

I am great fan of the national parks. I had to jump on this one. The rules are simple: Bold the ones you have visited, and italicize the ones you’ve never heard of before.

Most visited:
10: Glacier
9: Acadia
8: Grand Teton, climbed the Middle Teton years ago, no crowds, in fact no others.
7: Cuyahoga Valley , yes the river that caught fire is certainly doing better now
6: Rocky Mountain, I was a ranger here for 3 summers. Enjoyed every minute
5: Olympic
4: Yellowstone
3: Yosemite
2: Grand Canyon
1: Great Smoky Mountains

Least Visited:
10: City of Rocks NR, Idaho
9: Cumberland Island NS, Georgia
8: Florissant Fossil Beds NM, Colorado
7: Chiricahua NM, Arizona
6: Tonto NM, Arizona
5: Dry Tortugas NP, Florida
4: Katmai NP & Preserve, Alaska
3: Kalaupapa NHP, Hawaii
2: Hagerman Fossil Beds NM, Idaho
1: Russel Cave NM, Alabama

A busman's holiday...a Geologist on Vacation

2010-06-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

We camped for 12 nights, visited 3 National parks, 2 wilderness areas and one fantastic national monument. We hiked about 80 miles and rode bikes for an additional 130 miles using some single track and lots of remote desert jeep tracks. We were also able to enjoy the melt water from an above average snow pack in Central Utah. A few of the canyons we visited sported full on rivers that felt so good in the usual desert heat.

To set the scene.

Riding the trails in Kodachrome State Park. The Entrada sandstone normally erodes in some great shapes, but here, the strange "sand pipes" add an interesting structure. Up close you can see that the sand pipes have a great variety of grain sizes compared to the run-of-the-mill sand stone suggesting a little more water in their formation.
Riding in the Grand Staircase. Entrada cliffs in the foreground. The cliffs Clarion limestone in Bryce Canyon in the back ground.
Wading the Escalante River. Above normal snowpack provided a full river. I used the USGS water level email service to keep me informed of the water levels prior to our visit.
Biology n the foreground and Chinle Fm in the background. The desert was in bloom everywhere we went.
Riding in the circle cliffs. The west side of the waterpocket fold in the background. The roads are made entirely of eroded shale making for a great riding surface in the dry. There was plenty of evidence that people had been caught way out here in the rain just the week before.

What do I work on??

2010-06-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of dinner last night with Ron Schott after following his tweets across the country. Sitting in the backyard enjoying some beverages before dinner Ron asked me what is it exactly that I do? I found that a difficult question. My career as a high school teacher has certainly allowed me to take many kids into the field and show them the wonders of our planet...but what about now?

I guess what I do now is to try and explore as much of my neighborhood (the 4 corners) as time allows. My research is all about what I am interested in, that day. High school teachers don't have to publish :) and so I follow my whim.

What do I work on? Getting outside, walking, biking, climbing or traveling on a river. Observing interesting sights and giving a try at interpretation. Reading books about my region. and lastly sharing what I have found out. So, the month of June will be in the field, or God's navel if you are an Ed Abbey fan. Plans include backpacking along the Escalante River, mountain biking in the Grand Staircase and on Cedar Mesa and rafting through the Gates of Ladore. I am of course traveling with my wife, who told Ron, yes every day is a field trip.

See you on the other side.

1st peak of the season

2010-06-01T17:13:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day was a blue bird Colorado day. With the weather cooperating, we decided that it was a good day for our almost-traditional climb of Baldy Peak. The peak can be found just south of Ridgway and just north of "The Blowout" the eroded remnants of a Laramide age intrusive stock. Baldy itself is made primarily of Mancos Shale with a few outcrops of San Juan Tuff at lower elevations.

The climb was a delight, the weather was warm with just a slight breeze (this spring has been exceptionally windy) and we saw no other people until almost all the way back to the trail head. There was plenty of mountain lion evidence but no bear scat. With such a large deer population, it isn't too surprising to see lion spore.

Here is a USGS bench mark that actually has the name and elevation.

The calendar might say June 1, but at 10,000 feet it is still spring. Pasque flowers lining the trail
Eating lunch on the summit, contemplating the universe
The two 14'ers in the background are Wetterhorn and Uncompaghre. The aspen trees are just starting to show leaves at this elevation. The large areas of meadow suggest a more basic soil made from the erosion of the Mancos shale.

a Geo-Image Bonanza AW 25?

2010-05-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

This month's Accretionary Wedge is all about geo-images, specifically one image that means something to you (or actually me) and the science of geology.

My image is taken from the needles section of Canyonlands National Park. The vantage point is on a pass between two small drainages. You can see the bulk of the Abajo Mountains, the cliffs of the Canyon Rim area, one of the six-shooter peaks and the red and white striped Cedar Mesa formation. This image has it all. The Abajo mountains are one of the laccolithic bodies that can be found on the Colorado Plateau. With elevations over 11,000 they catch a bit of precipitation which provides the water to carve these magnificent canyons. The Canyon Rim wall is made of the Kayenta, Wingate and Chinle formations. These three rock units are a wonderful example of how the past climate here has changed from desert to underwater. Six Shooter Peak, (Wingate and Kayenta) not only has a decidedly Western name, but is an example of erosion here in the arid west. The Cedar Mesa formation, another aeolian deposit, shows how the source material can change how the rocks look today.

Most important, to me, is that this image has a story to tell. Currently, I travel around the Intermountain West doing field trips on my own, I sometimes feel like those movie-prospectors with a map, compass, rock hammer, GPS and my old note book wandering around in the canyons. Most of my geology talking is now done in front of elementary and middle school kids and their teachers. My theme is always that the rocks have a story to tell and it is up to us to pull out the story.

Taking 3rd graders into the field

2010-05-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

One of the objectives in 3rd grade science around here is to see examples of each rock type. What better way to that than by taking the kids out to see the rocks in situ (and even take home a sample or two)

The day started in the classroom with a quick reminder of the parts of the rock cycle. Once we established the names of the three main rock types, it was time to head for the buses.

The big yellow taxi took the 2 teachers, 4 chaperone's, 32 school kids and 1 geologist up into the nearby mountains. Once in place, I showed them some local sand stone and limestone and then asked the kids to examine the rock and describe what they saw. My goal was to have them see geology as a descriptive and interpretive science so we stopped a number of times so the kids could look at the bed rock or pick up pieces of rock. You just can't stop a bunch of 8 year olds from picking up rocks!

We ended the day with a hike up to an outcrop of the Uncompaghre formation and a view across the valley of a pretty nice unconformity. Here the entire class is pointing towards the missing billion years of earth history.

We ended the day by telling the story that we heard from the rocks.

The JASON Project: Operation Tectonic Fury

2010-05-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

About once a year I get invited to Washington DC for the annual training of the newest JASON project curriculum. JASON has been around for many years. The early years were site specific, where they would mount an expedition, invite a few kids and teachers along and then invite the middle schools of the world to join with some live video feed from far flung locations.

The new JASON is more curriculum based. Before this year, the new JASON curricula consisted of weather, ecology and energy. This year I was excited to see the roll out of the newest Geology based JASON curriculum: Operation Tectonic Fury. The idea behind all of JASON is that we need to get middle school kids excited about science. JASON writers team up with scientists who are working on some pretty interesting stuff and then share this cutting edge research while developing the building blocks of the science. In this case, the researchers are examining crystal growth, soil formation in the aftermath of volcanic eruptions, looking for candidate locations for carbon sequestration and creating more detailed maps of the ocean floor. As the writing begins, a group of students, called "Argonauts" are picked from applications from all over the world. The Argonauts, accompanied by Argonaut teachers then visit the research areas where a camera crew video tapes lessons that pertain to the "unit" being studied.

Because JASON is a part of National Geographic and has partners the likes of NOAA, NASA and Oak Ridge labs, the research is fascinating and the product is excellent.

However, in my mind what sticks out as best in the whole JASON experience are the hands on labs that are created for each concept. In this day of school budget being slashed, the labs must be inexpensive to replicate but still must show the concept being taught. Too many times in my career have I seen labs that don't clearly show the concept being taught. Not here. The labs are inexpensive, easy to do and make a statement about the concept being taught. In Operation Tectonic Fury, labs ranged from the simple rock and mineral identification to modeling convection currents in the mantle resulting in moving plates and exercises with both relative and absolute dating. The IT department has also made some fantastic online games for all the JASON curricula. I am sure the teachers play these games as often as the kids do.

Everything JASON does is designed to help kids discover scientific concepts through inquiry. It does a good job.

I wanted to share my experiences with the rest of the geoblogosphere and invite you to visit the JASON site at jason.org. All JASON materials are free! Send this along to any 5-8 grade teacher you might know.

just an observation

2010-04-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

My wife is an elementary media specialist, which means librarian to most people. I help out as much as I can which means I put lots of books on the shelf. To give you an idea, to date, this school year, she has checked out almost 8000 books. All of which must be put back on the shelves.

My observation: Elementary kids (boys and girls) check out enormous amounts of books in the 500's and 600's of your basic Dewey system. These books are science and applied science. Dinosaurs and horses/farm animals/pets are checked out the most but all of geology, biology, chemistry and physics are well represented.

Why is it then that many of the elementary teachers I meet are so hesitant to teach science when obviously their students are more than ready for the challenge?

Next week I will be in DC the whole week getting more training with the JASON project of National Geographic. This program aims teaching good science to middle school kids.

mining era pipeline

2010-04-20T17:27:00.001-07:00

Late last week, when I was looking at dirty snow, I was really scouting out a location for a geology/Colorado History field trip I was going to take a third grade class on. There are many areas to choose from and this trip (I use any excuse to get into the mountains) I wanted to check out Corkscrew Gulch, part of the Red Mountain Mining District. This pipeline was used to carry tailings from the mill down to the Ironton Park area. I am just totally amazed at what these guys did with wooden pipelines. Most of the pipeline is gone, and what is left is still under lots of snow, but I was still able to see a few of the sites.

The pipeline had to cross Corkscrew Gulch. Here, looking up at the pipe from the bottom of the gulch. Rumor has it that this was the second longest suspension bridge in Colorado.

Along the pipeline route there are small wooden boxes where the tailings slurry would drop some quick elevation. The gradient of the pipeline had to be such that the whole slurry would continue downhill. If the gradient was too shallow, gravity wouldn't be able to help the material to move. If the gradient was too steep, the water would run of leaving the solids behind. here you can see the uphill entrance for the pipeline. The downhill exit is below the snow.
This is the view across Corkscrew Gulch. The supports for the bridge are still in place, but the bridge itself is only for use in Indiana Jones movies. No one else would ever dream of crossing the span. There is a ski trail up to this spot and it makes a great afternoon of winter exploring.
The field trip is scheduled for mid-May. There is a chance that the snow might be melted. However, I think I need to scout out some lower elevation spots just in case.

Dirty snow means a quick melt

2010-04-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

I was able to get up into the high country this week. The day was warm, the sky was blue and the snow was covered with red dust. This is not the pink snow of bacterial fame, but snow that is covered with the red dust of the Utah and Arizona deserts. The week before we had had some powerful "wind events". There was a record report of winds at Red Mountain Pass at almost 90 mph. These spring winds not only do an efficient job of melting back (or I guess I should say sublimating) the snow. We lost 12% of the snow pack in just a few days. The winds also drop dust particles from the desert onto the snow. Studies have shown that this dirty snow will melt at a much faster rate than clean snow. A recent article in the aspen times discusses this effect.

As the climate changes, models suggest that the American Intermountain West will become warmer and dryer. A warmer and drier desert could provide even more dust in future years. The snow pack, which might be less than average, will melt even faster. No matter why the climate is changing I think we need to start thinking about how we can best survive these changes.

A dirty hillside. Looking towards Hayden Peak.

The north facing slope is still white from new snow on top of the dust. The south facing slope shows the extent of dust as the newer snow has melted.

Snow shoe tracks showing clean snow below the dusty layer.

AW #23 Busy People

2010-03-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

Hi all, The 23rd installment of the Accretionary Wedge asked a simple question: What are you working on right now? It was sort of a twitter-on-steroids where we were encouraged to use more than 140 characters in our description. I hope I spelled everything correctly!

My first impression of just how busy everyone is came from Silver Fox who told me she was waay busy but we could use this post about her visit to the Turnagain Arm mudflats. Thanks for the virtual visit to the Alaskan coast.

Our favorite hydrophillic geologist (what a great name for a blog), Anne writes about her many and varied interests concerning the hydro-geosphere from watershed/ climate change interactions to examining landscape evolution in response to changes in hydrologic regimes.

Lockwood sent in his comments about his current project. It doesn't involve geology as much as it involves geologists and the making of a virtual community in the geoblogosphere. A great post with some great ideas.

Another geologist with much on his plate is Kyle at Geologic Frothings. His post comes from his "all about me" page on his blog. His note to me was to look under the biographical stuff and there is a pile of stuff that he is currently working on.

At this point I could see that my question, while seemingly simple was actually difficult for our multi-tasking geo-scientists and bloggers.

Callan at his new home the Mountain Beltway, describes a day in the life of a NOVA geologist. Between teaching and grading and getting ready for the next presentation, Callan paints a picture of a busy guy.

One problem many geologists faced this month was that they can't share their current research because of industrial demands. The Lost Geologist decided to instead share potential research passions.

After a few visits to the volcanoes of Guatemala, Jess over at Magma Cum Laude shares her current work on the long road to become Dr. Volcano, by creating maps and learning the tools necessary for studying samples taken from the mountain. Good luck Jess.

Another geology teacher is Garry over at Geotripper. His post is about not falling through the cracks . This is a common teacher-ism but can also be used by geologists and by actors in certain end of the world movies.

This question seemed to open up some deep thoughts among the geoblogosphere. We have already seen that everyone is busy working on a variety of projects. But some posts have gone beyond the current project list and started looking at their online work as geobloggers. Ron Schott at the geology home companion blog, who was the very first geo blog I ever read writes about where blogging has taken him and where he would like it to go. In his own words, an introspective blog post.

If you want to read about earthquake dynamics, take a look at Julian's research over at Harmonic Tremors . Like others, he is working on a PhD and starting down that long slippery slope. Good luck Julian.

Poor David at Cryology and Co. has to work in Alps as a field area. His current work looks at the formation age of rock glaciers. He discusses some of the issues when trying to date when the rock and ice started behaving as a glacier.

The Riparian Rap blog discusses the Little River Research and Design company. Steve's comments concern not only the issues of a small company in the current economic climate, but also the new ideas in creating river modeling systems. I know my students enjoyed even the simplest of stream tables.

Chris at Highly Allochthonous discusses the ideas of a snowball earth while studying in Oman. Not only is the post good, but the comments are also worth reading. I think it has something to do with who reads science blogs, compared to the comments on my blog which are usually just long strings of Chinese characters.

Sediment grains are the star attraction at Research at a Snail's Pace. Pascal is looking at how individual grains interact with each other.

Another geologist in the private sector, Brian at Clastic Detritus reminds us that he does not blog about his for-pay-work, but does discuss his published research and everything that is turbidite related.

The depth and breadth of the different research areas discussed here is amazing. The Lab Lemming's research is in a totally different area than everyone else. He explains that the subject of his study is a few orders of magnitude larger than his usual subjects, zircons. The subject's name is LLL-Y and the pictures are worth the visit to this site.

On-The-Rocks at geosciblog is another geo-scientist with a full plate, including retyping a thesis from the 1980's when electric typewriters were all the rage. Good luck with that project!

As for myself, I am still working with teachers to help them share geology with their little kids. Next week is a field session in the canyons of Utah where I will examine friction coefficient between my mountain bike and several different sand stone varieties. Later in the month I will be with National Geographic again with their new geology curriculum which will be rolled out this fall. I hope everyone enjoyed The Accretionary Wedge #23

New Accretionary Wedge

2010-03-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

I think this will be AW #23.

Not everything I am studying ends up in a published paper, well actually nothing I study ends up in a published paper. Sometimes my HS students hear about my adventures and sometimes I write a blog post, but mostly it is just for me.

This AW is to share your latest discovery with all of us. Please let us in on your thoughts about your current work. What you are finding, what you are looking for. Any problems? Anything working out well?

Lets try to get everything in by March 26. I will be out (mountain biking in the field) for the 1st half of April and I want to get this done before I head out.

The Grand Mesa

2010-02-15T19:35:00.000-08:00

What a fabulous President's Day, a ski tour atop the "largest flat topped mountain in the world". The Grand Mesa is a large mesa found in western Colorado. I am not sure who decided that it was so special, but I read it on the Internet...so it must be true.

The top of the mesa is covered by lava flows dated at 10,000,000 years ago. These lava flows make quite a nice cap rock and have slowed erosion down. The top of the mesa sits a little over 11,000 feet, and in the summer the volcanic evidence is abundant. In the winter, not so much. On either side of the mesa, the Colorado River to the north and the Gunnison River to the south, deeper valleys have been incised down to 5,000 feet in elevation.

Because we can date the lava flows and we can measure the depth of the valleys next to the Grand Mesa, it makes for a very convenient yard stick. I teach geology classes along both the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers. By doing some simple math, (6,000 feet in 10,000,000 years) we get an idea how long it takes for neighborhood valleys to erode. We then measure nearby tributaries and get an idea how long that tributary has been down cutting. I love getting simple math into classrooms!

The Grand Mesa is important for more than just being a yard stick. It is a formidable barrier to moisture as it makes its way east. The south side of the mesa is part of the Gunnison River drainage while the north side of the mesa is part of the Colorado River drainage. Much of the water needed throughout the arid west will be dropped here as snow each winter.

The Grand Mesa seen from a distance. It makes an obvious landmark for mile around.

A summer time shot from the valley bottom.
Winter! Skiing next to a basaltic ridge.
The state flower, The blue Columbine growing among vesicular basalt boulders.

Flash Wedge

2010-02-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

Fearing the demise of the geocentric carnival, several geoblogosphere members started a flash wedge. A sort of meme carnival or a carnival meme. So, I thought I would join the action.

I have been working with a group, Teachers Without Borders. They did some great work with the recovery of the large 2008 earthquake in Sichuan China. Those lessons will be used as the recovery occurs in Haiti. Currently, TWB has a one page "this is what happened" link that explains some of the science, how to contribute and some resources.

to borrow from John McPhee

2010-02-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

I really needed a Californian.

Our 1st grandson was born about 1 month ago and we (being the grandparents we are) traveled to San Francisco to help our son and daughter in law make that transition from not-being-a-parent to parenthood. You know where you don't get to sleep any more. What a fun place to watch your new grandson. They live on top of one of the famed SF hills and there are outcrops all over the place. I have become lazy with the Colorado Plateau outcrops where the story is somewhat easily interpreted. Not so in SF! Pretty much made little sense to me. So, went to a book store and started researching. That and geotripper's posts sure helped. Thanks!

Most of the pictures taken were of people holding a baby. I will try and find one with people holding a baby next to a rock and post it.

teachable moments

2010-01-14T14:46:00.001-08:00

The Haiti earthquake happening right on the heels of the Eureka earthquake has brought tectonics into almost every elementary classroom in the region (and I would imagine most everywhere else also). Because of my geology background and flexible schedule, I have been asked to discuss the geology of these events in a few of these classrooms.

I would like to thank all of the bloggers in the geoblogosphere. Your posts have helped me sound like I almost know what I am talking about.

Avalanche

2009-12-20T15:23:00.001-08:00

Last week we saw our first major accumulation of snow. In some places there were reports of four feet! Not so much here, but a blue sky day and new snow that was just aching to be skied on. We climbed up into the basin, and noticed very few ski tracks and a few recent avalanche paths, including this one large slide.

The crown fracture line was just a few feet deep. You can see the major slide and then a smaller sympathetic slide right next door.
The debris crossed the valley, all the way to the small drainage.
A little over exposed (I don't know who left the setting at 1600ISO?) But this gives a better idea of the size of the event. We skied a little closer and then turned around and went someplace safer.

traveling meme

2009-12-15T18:52:00.000-08:00

Well I haven't posted for quite some time due to some family traveling, with night time flying and events where it would be extremely bad form to photograph any surrounding outcrops.

Most of my field trips are close to home, the San Juan Mountains in SW Colorado and the red rock canyon country of Utah. I will also admit that most of the geology I do is done on the back of a mountain bike. My wife calls in recreation, but I am convinced we are doing real science.

This year, along with visiting my usual nearby haunts, there were three trips further afield. In April, my first trip to Hawaii! June saw us visiting Yosemite. Much of August and September was in New England helping family members.

Skiing near Red Mountain Pass last January

The black sands of Hawaii during spring break

Eye of the Whale arch in Arches National Park

Exploring Keg Spring Canyon and finding some great examples of late Paleozoic petrified logs.

Iconic Yosemite valley

Teaching a field class while floating the Colorado River.

Riding in Crested Butte. Great flowers among spectacular mountains.

The Colorado River flowing through an anticline.

As each year progresses, the to do list for the next year gets longer. 2010 is no exception. Hopefully there will be lots of time in the field, because as every geologist knows, life is a field trip.

Laccoliths as landmarks

2009-11-18T17:40:00.001-08:00

A friend was asking about some interesting places to visit on the Colorado Plateau. I gave her some names of trails, canyons, drainages and ridge lines that I thought were fun. When it came time for directions I didn't use the typical cardinal directions, but instead used the location of the three main laccolithic mountain ranges of the Colorado Plateau. Needles to say...she gave me a hard time. Again, needless to say I gave her a little geology lesson concerning these mountain ranges.

In the late Paleogene-early Neogene, igneous rocks intruded into the area, "doming up" the overlying sedimentary rock creating laccoliths across the Colorado plateau. Over time, much of the overlying strata eroded away leaving the root of igneous rock surrounded by steeply dipping sedimentary rock. We just don't see much of a dip in sedimentary rocks in much of the plateau.

These small mountain ranges have captured some of the scarce water vapor that has crossed the arid Colorado Plateau creating many of the systems of canyons we see today.

These mountain ranges are also great landmarks as they can be seen from many parts of the eastern portion of the Plateau. It is comforting when you emerge from a canyon, look to the west and see the Henry Mountains. That and a GPS can get me to the car.

The Abajo Mountains west of Monticello.

The Henry Mountains. One of the last areas explored in the US.
Riding towards the La Sal Mountains. Right outside of Moab. These mountains are a beacon all across this portion of the plateau.
Looking south towards the Abajo mountains.

cause and effect

2009-11-11T19:06:00.000-08:00

Here the Colorado River is cutting through an obvious anticline. The anticline was created when salt, deep underground, squished around and pushed sediment up.

What makes this image interesting is the potash plant. The right side of the picture shows the potash plant where they pump water down into the Paradox formation (salt from the Permian) The left side of the picture shows the vivid blue evaporation ponds. Water filled with paradox brine comes up to the surface evaporates away and leaves the salt behind.

misconceptions and difficult concepts

2009-11-10T14:01:00.001-08:00

Last weekend we were riding bikes between the Anticline overlook, Canyonlands overlook and the Needles Overlook in the Canyon Rims National Recreation area.

Looking just above the Colorado River towards the Islands in the Sky, you can see a white strip creating a rather wide bench. The bench is named the White Rim and the rock unit is named after the bench. The sandstone is a brilliant white (hence the name) quartzose. In early Permian times, this region was a great inland sea of sand.

When I talk with teachers and students they almost universally understand that sediment was originally deposited horizontally. Most can at least intellectually understand the geologic time scale. What they don't seem to understand is that the rock unit does not exist in all places. Most of my students expect the White Rim, Wingate, Chinle etc to be found in all areas of the Colorado Plateau.

What seems to happen though in the translation from my field lecture (pointing, waving and talking) to their brains is that they believe that each rock unit is of equal depth for its entirety. It is only through much diagramming of sea level change and beach strands moving all over the state for me to get the bulb to light up. In this case, the White Rim's showcase is here on the Rim itself. As you travel north and east the rock unit itself thins out to nothing.

For a more in depth look at the geology of the White Rim sandstone visit Geotripper.

sharing earth science with the next generation

2009-10-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks TC for the extension. Jess at Magma Cum Laude is hosting this month's Accretionary Wedge and has given us an extra week. Thanks!

This month is all about sharing our

love of geology with budding geologists. I get to work with K12 teachers every summer. We do a quick day on campus

(Colorado School of Mines) and then we take off for the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. Depending on the class we spend either 3 or 5 days on the river while studying geology. The teachers as students try their hand at calculating river discharge, suspended solids and total dissolved solids. We use inclinometers/Brunton compasses/ rulers-taped-to-protractors to determine the height of canyon walls. Once the height was calculated we determined the rate of incision using some local lava flows that have been dated. And sometimes we visit old Uranium mines. It is so cool to do such simple calculations that have real results. Oh-ya we also have a lot of fun doing geology outside!

I also spend some time with the kids themselves. Locally, Colorado History is taught in the 4th grade. We spend time wandering around old mining districts and trying to see what the old prospectors were looking for before they dug their hole. The kids love wandering around outside and looking at rocks!

Just last week I spent a day with some local 8th graders. We looked at geology with 2 views: identification and interpretation. We first identified the rock and then we interpreted what the rock could tell us about ancient times. We discussed rock units and mappable units. We examined sedimentary rock from an ancient ocean, igneous rocks that indicated a massive volcanic explosion and a metamorphic rock that showed us some impressive forces from Pre-Cambrian times. Again, you can't beat walking the mountains with a bunch of kids and just let the rocks tell their story.

Back in the Mountains- rock glaciers

2009-09-29T19:47:00.001-07:00

My kids already know that I enjoy the finer things in life. The sun setting with palm trees in the foreground, fresh squeezed orange juice and rock glaciers. The San Juan mountains seem to have more than a few rock glaciers to observe and very few palm trees. These two examples are near Molas Pass on Highway 550. Hike south on the Colorado Trail and you will pass both within the first fifteen miles.

The basic ingredients to rock glaciers are pretty simple.
1. Lots of rocks! In both cases, the raw materials, talus, are made from the weathering of volcanic tuff. This volcanic rock is brittle and weathers easily into smaller chunks of rock. Mountains are great places for freeze-thaw weathering as almost every day of the year sees temperatures above and below 0 degrees C.

2. Frozen water. Within the pore space of these talus fields we find ice. Water has filtered between the rocks of the rock glacier and has frozen into place. Even though temperatures will rise above 0 C often, the insulating property of the rocks coupled with the lack of direct sunlight beneath the rocks keep the water frozen.

3. A slope. After even a small time hiking these mountains it is easy to see there is very little level ground. A slope is not hard to find.

Plenty of rock available. An obvious slope and we will assume some ice present under the surface layer of rock.
Notice the ribbing of rock. An ice glacier will exhibit similar crevasse fields from the movement of the mass.

serendipity and planning

2009-08-31T19:25:00.000-07:00

Once again today I was transporting myself across the country...but this time by air. I had the opportunity to spend 4.5 hours in a small airport waiting for the small plane to be fixed. While waiting I met a man who worked in Antarctica during the IGY. ( I am being somewhat vague as we didn't discuss sharing his life story on the Internet)What a serendipitous meeting. We discussed life on the ice, science in the 1950's and how he used planning and homework to turn (even more) serendipitous meetings into a career. His interest in earth sciences dated back to a work study job as an undergrad. He started in his specialty because he needed one more class to fill scholarship scheduling requirements. He spent 5 years in Antarctica because he was the only one in his field that applied to go. I am not saying he lucked into his work, but that hard work and chance meetings enabled his career to take him to some amazing places. His stories were amazing and I would love to have him sit down in a high school science class and discuss field science in Antarctica in the 1950's.

It got me thinking about my circuitous path to my present position and how I can, maybe, help the next generation of scientists turn some serendipitous meetings into full time careers.

Only biology, but what a beautiful summer for wildflowers

2009-08-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

I wish I knew all of the names. We had a fast snow melt but then a long cool wet summer. The rain coupled with a rich volcanic soil made the best wildflower season in years.

Near Crested Butter

Blue Columbine, the state flower

Elephant heads

Waterfall dropping through a thick layer of volcanic tuff

An incredible outcrop of conglomerate. As my wife said, every trip is a geology trip!

Wheeler Geologic Area

2009-08-16T07:35:00.001-07:00

The Wheeler Geologic Area is found within the La Garita Wilderness. Once named a national monument the area lost that designation but is now protected as a special geologic area within the wilderness area. The rock is a welded rhyolite tuff formed during the formation of the San Luis caldera, one of many explosive volcanic remains in the San Juan Mountains.

The geologic area is at the end of a 7 mile hike. The trail crosses some incredible meadows with views in all directions. I would not want to be caught in a lightning storm out there! The geologic area is eroding out of a hill side and shows all of the usual hoodoos, pinnacles and towers. It appears that the tuff in this area is not quite as welded as in other places giving rise to these great eroded remnants.

Crossing the meadows

The Wheeler Geologic Area in the distance

The hoodoos of Wheeler

Educational unconformity

2009-07-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

I find myself in New Hampshire right now because we received a phone call that had the words "dad, brain, surgery and cancer" all in the same sentence. Unfortunately air travel tickets were at a premium so we elected to drive. The drive while long was uneventful but it brought to mind a question poised by a student on my last field class.

How are continents made? Every earthscience teacher in the K12 world teaches about continents. They all explain to their students about how continents "float" while oceanic crust "sinks" They all explain how new oceanic crust is "created" at spreading centers, but none of the group I had ever discussed how continents are made.

A quick survey of my class found that no one really discussed this chapter of geology. I was wondering. Do university classes skip this? Do university students just forget this part? Or has this knowledge level eroded away?

Out of context

2009-07-12T18:52:00.001-07:00

Callan talks about desk crop-samples. Here are two examples of "parking-lot-crop-samples".

How many times has someone come up to you as a geologist and asked you to identify a rock sample? How many times has the sample in question come from a nearby parking lot? This happens to K-12 teachers all of the time.

Many K-12 teachers are not geoscientists and I tell them that context will help them in trying to identifying the rock sample. They must ask the kids about the location that the rock came from. It helps the kids in creating the description of the

their rock sample as well as giving you an idea of what the name is .

I was particularly interested in how the crystalline sample was found next to the conglomerate sample. It is obvious that the they did not originate in the same place but both had been transported to this location. This can lead to a great discussion about how rocks can be moved: water, wind, truck.

Over the years, these parking lot samples have kept me on my toes, especially that one GEO 101 lab where the TA gave me some aged concrete to identify. I quickly learned that lesson.

Why Geology?

2009-07-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

In response to Magmalicious' question about why I ended up as a geo-scientist instead of perhaps a stock broker??

Neither of my parents nor anyone in my immediate family was interested in science...never mind the geo-sciences. It was in high school when I found that the landscapes I had been walking, climbing. biking and canoeing through had stories that could be teased out of the rock. It seemed that by following a few simple rules anyone could piece together this tale. I was hooked. What other field allowed me to be outside all the time and to do real science?

Studies in glaciology let me see why our backyard was full of cobbles from distant places and why the nearby lake was called a kettle pond and why Cape Cod is so rocky

Later, as an undergrad in Colorado, learning how seas had come and go through the years creating alternating layers of sandstone and shale out on the Eastern plains.

And then I found western Colorado with tertiary volcanics and sandstone canyons.

I decided to enter the world of the K-12 science teacher. In that time I figure that I have seen over 3000 students. I hope that I have shared this love of the outdoors, the story of landscape formation and how we can tease information out of the very rocks themselves.

Class time

2009-07-03T17:33:00.001-07:00

One of the greatest classrooms I have ever had the opportunity to use has been the Colorado River. We spend 3 days camping and canoeing and doing geology for a teacher enhancement course. That means I teach teachers some simple geology and we all share ideas how we can bring kids into the world of rocks and rivers.

Looking down into the Grand Valley on day 1.

Canoeing past Entrada walls

Hiking into side canyons. Here the stream cuts into pre-Cambrian "Black Rocks" dated at 1.7 b.y. and is overlain by the Chinle formation aged approximately 0.2 b.y. Everyone thought that walking on 1.5 b.y of missing time was an impressive Saturday afternoon stroll.

getting ready

The arches of Mee Canyon. The erosive potential of the Wingate sandstone is seen here. The Kayenta caprock is missing and the windblown Wingate creates evenly placed joints that erode into columns. Our lab that day was to establish the height of the columns and then using the average local incision rate of 0.14 ft/1K years to calculate how long this canyon has been around...a fun time with math!

The crew

Summer vacation continued-Sierra Nevada

2009-06-26T13:56:00.001-07:00

After leaving the Silver State we made our way to Yosemite. I had last visited as a 12 year old kid but I had some expectations after reading through geotripper's travelogues. I had read his posts and in the text books, I understood the batholith that is today the granite of Yosemite...but it was the brilliant white of the rock that took my breath away. The granite's that I have played on have not been as white as what I saw in Yosemite. The image on the left is the view of Yosemite valley that we saw. The white is not the granite, but a meteorological event called a storm.

All the rain of the day before translated into some incredible waterfalls. Most of the water falls entering Yosemite valley are from hanging valleys, a byproduct of the last ice age. Here Nevada falls makes its way downward towards the ever popular and aptly named mist trail. The mist trail is in near Vernal falls and every hiker is "misted upon" making a favorite hike on a hot day.

The rocks along the roadside in King's Canyon showed a little bit of deformation here. From what I could find, this area was positioned immediately above the great batholith as a pendant of former rock. It was not quite melted but sure had some significant changes take place.

What visit to the Eastern Sierra would be complete without a visit to the Devil's Postpile. This classic... nay textbook example of columnar basalt was at the end of a short fun hike.

I remember when I read John McPhee's annals of a former world, he made a statement about needing a Californian to understand the geology of the Golden State. I am sure glad that there were a variety of guide books as well as geotripper's comments to help me along a great road trip.

our summer vacation-Nevada

2009-06-23T20:39:00.001-07:00

It has been awhile since my last post and actually its been awhile since we had regular Internet access. This is just a quick update.

The summer started with a whirl wind trip to Yosemite. We crossed Nevada and did some geology at 70 mph. We stayed a total of 3 nights in the Silver state. Our very first night of the trip was spent in Cathedral Gorge State Park. Very cool place, reminded me of the Badlands of South Dakota. The sediment is all from a Pliocene era lake bed. The erosional features are cathedral looking hence the name. The best part were the long narrow gullies that are called "the caves". The picture on the left is from inside one of the gullies. The picture below is one of the Cathedrals in the park. We then took the extraterrestrial highway to the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Our final stop on the tour was in Great Basin National Park. We visited years ago and said we needed to visit again. What a fantastic representation of the basin and range province.

Unfortunately it snowed quite a bit while we were there and we couldn't see everything we wanted to. What amazed me the most was the elevation change from the desert floor to the summit of the park...over 8,000 feet.

more to come when time permits...

summer reads

2009-05-31T07:50:00.000-07:00

The summer season has been busy already. I had 5 fantastic days doing geology through Labyrinth Canyon with a Denver museum. There were 4 of us geologists all with different specialities and a boat load of interested lay people with us. Great fun! We are now getting ready to visit Yosemite and some places in Nevada (I have been studying Silver Fox's posts to get a lost together). The editors of my latest writing assignment have been busy so if I am not packing I am fixing edits.

But

I am also getting a list of geology books together for the back of the truck. I am re-reading McPhee's Basin and Range and Assembling California for our next trip.

Let's get a list together of great geology books that we can all read this summer!

Playing in the Entrada

2009-05-17T19:07:00.001-07:00

Way back in the mid Jurassic, about 150 million years ago the Colorado plateau region of Utah was in the middle of a huge, Sahara-esque desert. Sediment from the rising mountains in Nevada blew across western Utah and was deposited in huge dunes in what we now call the slick rock member of the Entrada formation.

The Entrada formation is divided into three members, the middle member, called the slick rock member gets most of the press. The oldest member is named after the now burned-to-a-crisp Dewey Bridge. It consists of siltstone and is a holdover from the underlaying Carmel formation. The oldest portion, called the Moab

member slowly grades into the Summerville formation.

But it's the middle member we all go to Arches NP to see. These last two weekends were no exception. The first few images show the landscape near the Herdina park section in the national park. We wandered around this sandstone island finding balanced rocks, arches and alcoves.

Eye of the Whale arch

This past weekend was looking at the arches in the Black Ridge Wilderness. The trail starts at the river and climbs, sometimes steeply as evidenced by the BLM trail marker.

At trails end is the second largest concentration of arches in the US.

Dirty Snow

2009-05-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

I spent the other day checking out the early May snowpack on Red Mountain Pass here in the San Juan Mountains...some one had to do it! Our winter produced an above average snowpack (just barely) which bodes well for the summer wildflowers and low elevation irrigation, but it is melting rapidly. This winter also produced three strong wind events that blew red dust in from Utah. The higher elevations were covered in red snow while the lower elevations saw muddy rain. The dust on the surface of the snow impacts the albedo and less solar energy is reflected back into the atmosphere. In addition, the desert dust that is mixed throughout the snowpack has a different specific heat than the snow. As the spring temperatures warm, these dirt and dust particles heat up faster and in turn melt the snow faster than historical records would suggest. Snowpack that once would last into July is now melting out in June. Rivers which should run high into the early summer peak out in May.

The last image shows the current state of the Gunnison basin snowpack. The smooth line represents the 30 year average. Look at the slope of the last few years of snow melt. I think there is a message here.

dirty snow at 11,000 feet

harder to see, but the snow fields are covered in dirt

National Park Week

2009-04-24T10:26:00.001-07:00

National Parks have been called the best idea America has ever had. I have to agree. This past week has been National park week, a time to celebrate our idea to set aside and save some of the best that our country has to offer. Its a hard job to balance the millions of visitors parks get every year with the mission of protection.

In the late 1980's, I actually postponed grad school graduation ( I was one course shy of finishing) because of a job offer with the NPS, in my favorite national park. I was a ranger in Rocky Mountain national park for 3 summers. My kids will tell you that those summers were their favorite

while growing up. I worked in a campground, was trained to fight forest fires, helped with search and rescue and was impacted for the rest of my life. It was also handy that my graduate work was all in trying to make sense of the different glaciations the Colorado Rockies had seen. I was working in my field area :)! and, yes that is me in the Smokey the Bear hat.

Since then, I have been a enthusiastic visitor to as many different national parks as I can every year. This would be a good place to start a "how-many-parks-have-you-visited" meme, but I am too lazy to make a list. Buy the pass, even at its newer-higher "Bush era" price increase its still the best deal in America.

concretions

2009-04-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

A portion of last weekend was spent walking through Ute canyon in the Colorado National Monument. In some areas we were walking across an eroded Wingate surface. The Wingate sandstone is early Jurassic in age and is a windblown quartz dominant sandstone with obvious crossbedding through out the formation. While walking on the Wingate (or the Navajo ss) there are sometimes collections of small marble like objects on the ground. These marbles are iron concretions.

When the rock was originally going through the rock forming process a thin patina of hematite coated the quartz grains creating a cement holding them together. Later, water (with certain reducing agents) moving through the sandstone picked up the iron. When this dissolved iron combines with oxygen the dissolved iron loses an electron and its solubility is reduced. The hematite is immediately precipitated out forming the iron concretion.

This process happens all through the sandstone creating all sorts of shapes. The marbles are the most common, but concretions can be found as buttons and towers and sheets along the ground. As the softer sandstone erodes away, the harder concretions stand out making a surface of small marbles.

Hawaiian volcanoes

2009-04-15T14:47:00.001-07:00

I have to thank my fellow geobloggers for giving me some ideas for my Hawaiian vacation. Spring in the Rockies can have glorious weather that allows for quality time outside, or it can be snow and cold and wind, with the emphasis on the cold and snow and wind. What better time to visit Hawaii? Our choice of the big island was easy, where else do you get to combine all of the earth sciences? Geology was everywhere we looked, with the concentration of course being with volcanic rock. Astronomy was well represented by the Mauna Kea observatories and oceanography is self explanatory.

We did see steam rising from the ocean as new lava poured in. The NPS sure wanted to keep us safe so the view was a distant one. The highlight here was the walk across Kilauea Iki, the smaller Kilauea caldera. There are no pictures as it was raining too hard to get the camera our or to see anything.

What I found amazing was to hike across large open areas of fairly new lava flow. It must of been quite a sight watching lava pour over this cliff. The biology was incredible watching the succession of plants create soil.

The black sand beaches were fun just to play in. It was hard to imagine the interaction between the hot lava and the cooler water while we were playing in the sand watching sea turtles in the surf.

Just a reminder of the earthquakes that can occur around the Pacific Rim. This is definitely an image that will make it into my class slide shows.

What a tropical look. The lava flows coming right down to the ocean with palm trees on the beach...I could live here.

Spring break in Hawaii

2009-04-06T07:30:00.001-07:00

Just back from a week in the tropical rain of Hawaii. We visited Hawaii Volcano NP and peered through the mist to see what could be a caldera...any way more of that to follow. This was also a visit to the only state I had not been to.

visited 50 states (100%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or website vertaling duits?

Regime change

2009-03-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

I was able to spend time in one of my favorite places in Utah, Cedar Mesa also known as the monument uplift. This area is directly south of Canyonlands NP and much of the southern drainage from the Abajo Mountains comes this way. The soft Cedar Mesa sandstone has eroded into a set of incredible canyons from this drainage. What makes this doubly fun is the amount of Anazasi (Ancestral Puebloan) ruins and rock art found throughout the canyons.

The upper elevations of the mesa tops is known as the Red House cliffs. The base of the cliffs are made of the Permian Organ Rock shale while the mesa top is capped with Triassic Moenkopi and Chinle formations. These red beds indicate bright oxidized muds from the Ancestral Uncompaghre uplift to the east. The drainage at the time making large alluvial fans that filled this part of Utah.

Below the red beds of the Organ Rock/Moenkopi/Chinle lies my second favorite rock unit on the Plateau: Cedar Mesa sandstone. Being as this is the type area, the Cedar Mesa sandstone makes up the majority of Cedar Mesa. Almost every canyon is cut into this very thick white Permian sandstone. The sandstone shows obvious large scale crossbeds and a uniform grain size suggesting wind blown deposits. You can see the crossbedding in the space below the granary. I have read a petroleum description that this is a wet eolian deposit. This is in keeping with the idea of a cyclic rising and falling of local sea level.

Under the Cedar Mesa is the Elephant Hill Limestone . This is one of those limestones I enjoyed using as a prop in intro geology labs. Its a sandy limestone more than a limy sandstone. There are fossils present and samples will do all the things limestone should do in field tests.

So for about 80 million years you can see regime changes happening; seas coming and going all the time. Now this area is very arid region. If the regime was different, lets say similar to the East coast, so much of the existing rock would have eroded away and these magnificent canyons would be nothing but a flat plain.

The newest crop of Earth Scientists

2009-03-17T08:35:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to be a substitute teacher yesterday for a local 5th grade class. While there we did the usual elementary school daily events: math, writing, recess, reading and spelling. Unfortunately I was not to be the science teacher, but I quickly made the math class into an hour filled data collecting exercise and study of probability. It was at lunch when I was looking at the stuff all around the room and noticed a wall full of astronomical posters. One poster highlighted variable stars. I thought that was an unlikely topic for a 5th grader to study. I asked the other teacher about the choice of variable stars. I wasn't expecting her answer. The girl who studied variable stars choose the topic because the picture in the book showed a pink star.

I am sorry to say my first reaction was very guy-like with a laugh (to the teacher not the student!). But, I quickly started wondering. Do we create our elementary science posters/text/web pages etc. To attract both genders? I don't know? I think that the newest images coming from the Hubble are beautiful works of art. I am reminded of Jodie Foster in Contact saying that they should have sent a poet. But, I am a guy. What do these images look like to 5th grade girls? And what do you think about creating more pink stars to find the next Vera Rubin, Jill Tarter or Annie Cannon.

writing and more writing

2009-03-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

Last fall I was offered a contract to create a new middle school online earth science course. I was slowly working my through their outline and keeping up with all the small yet numerous editing changes. Three weeks ago I was told that I really needed to be finished by the end of the next budget cycle...you know what that means. I'm an independent contractor so I am not employed anyway but I wanted the money. My deadline is this next Monday morning.

So three weeks of writing, editing rewriting with 6th grader readability (just watch I'll be writing simple sentences for the next few months). I have been finding just the right image, working on remote servers, having MS word crash just a few times and trying hard to require some inquiry in the lessons. I am tired and as of about 1 hour ago, finished! I beat the deadline. Now the first set of editing takes place but first some serious time outside all next week

Winter returns

2009-03-10T09:50:00.001-07:00

After yesterday's post...we wake up to 4 inches of heavy wet snow. The moisture is needed, it always is! What a difference though.

signs of spring

2009-03-09T21:17:00.001-07:00

1.5 billion year view

2009-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

Last weekend's lunch spot was on an easy scramble to near the top of the Wingate formation (my favorite!) The Wingate is a superb homogeneous sandstone early Jurassic in age. Directly below the Wingate in all that red stuff you can see between my feet is the Chinle, famous for its Uranium mines found all over the Colorado Plateau. The Chinle is Triassic in age. It is difficult to see, but in the upper right of the picture are some darker rocks. These black rocks are Proterozoic in age, about 1.8 billion years old, if my research is right. There appears to be a bit of time missing, like the entire Paleozoic.

If we round and say that the top of the Wingate was deposited 200 million years ago and that the Black rocks were placed about 1.8 billion years ago, then the view from top to bottom takes in a little more than 1.5 billion years, a full quarter of all of the history of the planet. Cool!

Happy Birthday to me

2009-02-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

Wow,

my 1st anniversary as a geoblogger blew right past me. I can't believe it has already been a year. I hope that you have learned 0.085% as much from me as I have learned from you. In this year I have

1. visited another geoblogger.

2. Rode the C&O canal with NOVA geoblogger's notes and maps.

3. Brought our online discussions about teaching science into practice on some national curriculum's.

4. Have made reservations to visit Yosemite...1st time since 1968!

5. Participated in more carnivals and memes and tweets than I would have ever thought possible.

6. Have made plans to visit Hawaii (YES!) using all of your trip guides, ideas and photo essays.

I would like to say thank you to the whole geoblogosphere for your posts, comments and advise.

the subtle desert

2009-02-27T08:54:00.000-08:00

I grew up in New England amidst all kinds of trees that hid the geology from my young inquiring mind. My move west for school opened my eyes to a more grand landscape. I am sorry but Massachusetts is lacking in the 14,000 foot mountain department. My trips to the desert and the canyons of SE Utah was filled with the long view. I loved the naked geology and being able to study the landscape without all that biology in the way. I was into the big picture...

Over time, I have been seeing the desert in a smaller more subtle way. I still get excited about that view from Waterpocket fold out towards the Henry Mountains, just the largeness of it! But... I am also looking at the small things. How the desert varnish highlights the conchoidal fracture patterns on sandstone. The difference in the sand grains on the wind and lee side of obstacles. Following old moki ( is there a better name?) steps up a sandstone wall or the small prints of a rodent who visited camp the night before. And, of course finding evidence of water!

I was reminded that I should explain the picture. This is the Wingate sandstone which has a nice homogeneous grain structure. When a chunk of the sandstone broke off, it broke away making a nice conchoidal fracture. We find these same structures often in strata that exhibit homogeneous grain structure. On one of my first visits to the canyons, I was told that these semi-circles were made by UFO's during the uranium days. Glad I was only 7 when they told me that.

The desert has always been a special place.

Accretionary Wedge #16 where would I go?

2009-02-24T16:28:00.000-08:00

This month's theme is What are the places and events that you think should all geologists should see and experience before they die? What are the places you know and love that best exemplify geological principles and processes?

So I changed it to: If I had my year of geology traveling where would I go?

These are in no particular order.

1. Visit the type area of my favorite formations.

2. Do a Powell and travel the length of the Grand River system by boat.

3. See lava coming out of the earth. This need not be a significant event.

4. Climb in the Himalaya.

5. See a surging glacier if there are any left.

6. Calving icebergs

7. Climb an icefall

8. Walk a transect of some really interesting geology, coast range of California or the Appalachian mountains

9. Visit a deep sea trench

10. Feel an earthquake, again this need not be a major event.

11. Spend a summer at the INSTAAR field camp.

12. Climb the walls in Yosemite Valley

Waterfalls

2009-02-22T20:01:00.001-08:00

Saw this at both NOVA Geoblog and Looking for Detachment. Unlike Callan, I am fascinated by waterfalls and will hike a few miles just to see them. Watching the water fall over the edge is a little like watching campfire flames...anyway

#10 Lower Calf Creek Falls, Escalante National Monument, Utah
#9 Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
#8 Upper Whitewater Falls, in southwestern North Carolina
#7 Snoqualmie Falls, between Snoqualmie and Fall City, Washington
#6 Havasu Falls, Supai Village, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Grand Canyon, Arizona
#5 Shoshone Falls, Twin Falls, Idaho
#4 Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon
#3 Bridalveil Falls, Yosemite National Park, California
#2 McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Big Sur, California
#1 Niagara Falls, Niagara, New York

new scientist time

2009-02-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Last year I was chosen to be a lead trainer for National Geographic's JASON project, a science curriculum designed to engage middle school students using science inquiry methods. Just this last week, there has been having an interesting discussion on All my Faults about Earth Science and the traditional view of being a scientist. This week, I get the chance to work with the newest JASON project and help in the tweaking and fine tuning of some of their newest labs. I will certainly be having Kim's blog post in mind as we test and tweak these new laboratory experiences.

High points meme

2009-02-05T12:14:00.000-08:00

Saw this at NOVA geoblog and couldn't resist. It sure beats doing what I am supposed to be working on.

Cheaha Mt., Alabama 2,405'
Mt. McKinley (Denali), Alaska 20,320'
Humphreys Peak, Arizona 12,633'
Magazine Mt., Arkansas 2,753'
Mt. Whitney, California 14,494'
Mt. Elbert, Colorado 14,433'
Mt. Frissell, Connecticut 2,380'
Fort Reno, Washington, DC 429'
Ebright Azimuth, Delaware 448'
Britton Hill, Florida 345'
Brasstown Bald, Georgia 4,784'
Mauna Kea, Hawai'i 13,796'
Borah Peak, Idaho 12,662'
Charles Mound, Illinois, 1,235'
Hoosier Hill Point, Indiana 1,257'
Hawkeye Point, Iowa 1,670'
Mt. Sunflower, Kansas 4,039'
Black Mt., Kentucky 4,139'
Driskill Mt., Louisiana 535'
Mt. Katahdin, Maine 5,267'
Backbone Mt., Maryland 3,360'
Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts 3,487'
Mt. Arvon, Michigan 1,979'
Eagle Mt., Minnesota 2,301'
Woodall Mt., Mississippi 806'
Taum Sauk Mt., Missouri 1,772'
Granite Peak, Montana 12,799'
Panorama Point, Nebraska 5,424'
Boundary Peak, Nevada 13,140'
Mt. Washington, New Hampshire 6,288'
High Point, New Jersey 1,803'
Wheeler Peak, New Mexico 13,161'
Mt. Marcy, New York 5,344'
Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina 6,684'
White Butte, North Dakota 3,506'
Campbell Hill, Ohio 1,549'
Black Mesa, Oklahoma 4,973'
Mt. Hood, Oregon 11,239'
Mt. Davis, Pennsylvania 3,213'
Cerro de Punta, Puerto Rico 4390'
Jerimoth Hill, Rhode Island 812'
Sassafras Mt., South Carolina 3,560'
Harney Peak, South Dakota 7,242'
Clingmans Dome, Tennessee 6,643'
Guadalupe Peak, Texas 8,749'
Kings Peak, Utah 13,528'
Mt. Mansfield, Vermont 4,393'
Mt. Rogers, Virginia 5,729'
Mt Rainier, Washington 14,410'
Spruce Knob, West Virginia 4,861'
Timms Hill, Wisconsin 1,951'
Gannett Peak, Wyoming 13,804'

The Whole Story?

2009-02-04T18:16:00.001-08:00

By now any one who reads this blog knows that I have this infatuation with following the amount of snow we get all winter. Well we have had two weeks of incredible spring like weather. Not only hasn't it snowed but it was in the 50's today! So what is that doing to the snowpack? The graph above is dated today and shows a basin wide 112% of the 30 year average...pretty good!

But, the lowest snotel reporting site is in the high 9,000 feet. I am curious what did the lower elevations look like back when the snotel network was set up? Could it be that when the upper basins were sitting at 100%, that the lower slopes had 3 feet of snow instead of the 3 inches we have now? Are we missing some data about water availability for next summer because we don't measure that lower stuff? It's time to hit the web sites and see what I can find out.

The Long View

2009-01-31T20:45:00.000-08:00

I think the the desert or specifically the canyons of Utah really enable us to take a long view.

Geologically: the view here shows Permian sediments to Tertiary (I will always be using that word) volcanics to Quaternary (there I go again...so old school) debris on the valley floors.

Literally: the view here is long. No biology to interfere with the view.

Environmentally, the area is so fragile, that we can see how a little degradation can end up a problem for decades or even centuries.

Can we as a society take a long view. I wonder sometimes.

Visit the Carnival of the Arid to read more.

Uncompahgre Gorge

2009-01-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

On the other side of President Obama's inauguration I was blogging about ice climbing in Ouray's Ice Park. The ice park is situated in a very tight gorge just outside the city. It is perfect for keeping ice because there is very little direct sunlight at anytime of the year.

This time I wanted to show the place in the summer time. It is still chilly at the bottom of he gorge but not nearly as it is in the winter!

This image was taken from the "upper bridge" part of the new Ouray perimeter trail. The canyon is cut into the Precambrian Uncompahgre Formation, a quartzite. You can see it here as the almost vertical relict bedding. The gorge then drops for another couple of hundred feet below this point. The almost horizontal layer on top is the Devonian Elbert Formation, a sandy, shaly limestone (or a shaley, limy sandstone or perhaps a sandy, shaly limy rock) ...anyway
What cool geology just staring you in the face. It is so obvious that I have overheard tourists mention it while taking pictures.

If you are interested, the Ouray Perimeter Trail cuts into a short hard rock tunnel right after leaving the bridge. The bridge is cut through the Uncompahgre Formation and gives a good look at a relatively fresh (the tunnel was cut awhile ago) samples. A fun hike!

I am watching

2009-01-20T08:35:00.000-08:00

Have an Ice Day

2009-01-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

So goes the motto of the Ouray Ice Park. Here there are miles of pipes bringing water to the edge of the gorge for the sole purpose of making ice on the canyon walls. Why? So that people can strap sharp objects onto their bodies and climb the frozen water falls. Yes, here I am part way up one of the ice climbing routes in the ice park.

My last post was all about the weathering seen in the San Juan Mountains because of the south facing steep slopes creating many more cycles of freeze-thaw than the more frigid north facing slopes. This is a very tight gorge that sees very little sun. It is very cold belaying on the bottom of the gorge! I must imagine that the extra water being poured on the walls has increase the incidence of rock fall, at least in the spring. I don't know if anyone has done any research.

weathering

2009-01-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Last weekend I started working off my Christmas poundage by snowshoeing up a steep hill side. The snow this year is fantastic, deep and fluffy and definitely adds to the work out. This image shows an outcrop of Cutler, a fine Permian red bed with an abundance of cobbles in the conglomerate. In the past I have taken students up here (in the summer) just to show this amazing outcrop. You can see the icicles that have formed that indicate that the temperatures have indeed spent a small amount of time above freezing. The San Juan Mountains have such steep slopes that the difference between north and south facing slopes is extreme. It is common to find valleys that are one side free from snow while the other side is waist deep. The lower San Juan valleys (this was taken just outside of Ouray Colorado) are also low enough that is is not uncommon to find daytime temperatures above the freezing mark. These two features ensure that there will be plenty of freeze thaw cycles all year round to provide the muscle to break apart the already fragmented rock. The rock fragments then fall down the mountainside creating talus slopes and in the San Juan Mountains you often see rock glaciers...but that is another story. The mountains here are falling down and with abandon. If anyone wants to see geology happen in front of their eyes, I invite them to travel Red Mountain Pass. We have avalanches close the road in the winter, giant icicles fall onto to the road in the spring, rocks fall all year round and mudslides in the summer...and it all starts with that small icicle ice cracking that rock way up on the hillside.

Desert Rat or Mountain Climber

2008-12-22T14:15:00.001-08:00

This has been a gray snowy week. The pass has over 5 feet of snow now sitting on the ground and the avalanche danger is high. So...I am posting an image from my most recent trip into the Canyonlands. I have had a number of friends over the years leave the mountains to become full time desert rats. I am moving that way myself. My youth was spent climbing all over Colorado, a little higher than John Denver campsite. The alpine tundra was the place to be. My graduate work was studying the glacial history of The Colorado Rockies.

Now, I crave the desert. I am enjoying my transition from mountaineer to desert rat.

The image above is looking east from deep in the canyons. The rock is the Cedar Mesa Sandstone...Permian in age. The red layers come from sediment sloughing off the Uncompaghre Uplift in Western Colorado, the white layers come from Sahara like sand dunes to the north. The mountains in the distance are the La Sal Mountains, a laccolith just outside of Moab and in the foreground is one of the six shooter peaks, a column of Wingate sandstone...my favorite formation in the canyons.

It's dumping up on the pass. I really need to go skiing

Hope everyone has a great Christmas.

It's gone

2008-12-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was in Moab Utah and took a fun hike along the "primitive" trail in Arches NP. The trail passes by some of the worlds greatest rock spans. Landscape Arch, the longest span in the world looks like it could collapse at any moment, but it was Wall Arch that actually fell last summer. I walked up to a pile of rubble and looked around to see where it had fallen from...well...the arch is gone!

And as everyone knows: Geology Happens.