If you're a geology professor at a two-year college (community college, junior college, etc.), then please consider attending a planning workshop June 24 to 27 here at my campus of NOVA. My department and I are hosting, and the talented crew at SERC, including Heather MacDonald, are organizing. More details at the SERC website.

Labels: geology, nova, teaching

I'll shut the NOVA Geoblog survey down in a couple of hours. Last chance to express your opinion and give me a sense of who you are. Thanks in advance for taking three minutes to do that. For the 83 of you who have already completed the survey, my heartfelt thanks.

Labels: blogs, nova

People see the most interesting things in the world around them. Some people see Stephen Hawking's initials in the universe's microwave background radiation. Others seek patterns in the clouds or lines on a palm. People are hard-wired to look for meaning in patterns. Not all patterns have meaning, but many do. Geologists, for instance, pay a lot of (legitimate) attention to patterns in ancient sediments: these patterns, called primary structures, give information about current flow direction, exposure to air, and the presence of living organisms. Others can orient us to which way was "up" when the sediments were deposited. Cross-bedding, mudcracks, and bioturbation are some examples of patterns with meaning. Seeing a dog's face in a rock exposure is an example of a pattern that lacks meaning, as surely as if one saw the same dog's face in the meaningless blobs of ink in a Rorschach test.

Lately, I've been thinking about the human predisposition for perceiving meaning in patterns.

The week before last, I gave a presentation at a local middle school about climate change. Before my talk, one of the teachers came up to me to ask if I thought that global warming could have triggered the earthquake. He whispered conspiratorially, "There have been a lot of earthquakes lately!" I said no, because (1) I couldn't think of a plausible mechanism for that to work in Haiti* and (2) there are perfectly good tectonic reasons for the Haiti earthquake, and (3) there haven't been more earthquakes lately than usual, at least not in any significant way.

As I type these words, the first snowflakes are falling in the second major snowstorm to hit Washington, DC, in less than a week. The first, dubbed Snowmageddon or the Snowpocalypse, dumped more than 18 inches of snow on the capital city. The city does not respond well to that amount of snow: schools shut, the government closed, and there were insane panicked runs on groceries at the area's stores. The new storm, dubbed Snoverkill, adds insult to injury with another 6 to 16 inches predicted. The schools I teach for, NOVA and GMU, have both been closed since last Friday. The way it's looking now, I'm not going to be working again until this coming Friday -- a full week lost due to the white stuff.

What's interesting to me is how people react to the snow. I mean this on two levels: one is the obvious fact that both the culture and infrastructure of Washington, DC, are quite poorly equipped to deal with a couple feet of snow. However, that's not as interesting as the way the snow serves as a reflection on people's mental states. Some people look at the two big snowstorms coming back to back and say, "Where's global warming now?" Others look at the same two storms, with fear that this is the new paradigm like The Day After Tomorrow, and say, "See what climate change hath wrought?" The thing is, they are both wrong.

Weather is not climate, even when two weather events occur in the same week. Tamino calculates that you need about 14 years of temperature data to tease out the long-term trend. Nine years isn't enough, and one week isn't enough. Yet people notice the "clumping" of these data: "two storms in one week! That's a pattern! It must therefore be significant! If it's significant, it's therefore reflective of a common cause, and that common cause is the one I have already decided to be true. Therefore these two storms are evidence of global warming / global cooling**" (depending on who you're listening to).

The thing is, data are clumpy. There is going to be noise in the data. When it comes to snowstorms, the noise is the weather. The noise is superimposed upon a longer-term trend. That trend is the climate. Likewise with earthquakes: no one expects earthquakes to occur with a periodicity regular enough to set to music. Earthquakes of a certain size have a certain probability of occuring in a given period of time, but there's no guarantee that one will occur. If you calculate the average number of earthquakes during a given period of time, and then compare any period of time to that average, your comparison time period will either have more earthquakes than the average or less earthquakes than the average. Ditto for snowstorms: some winters will be more snowy. Some winters will be less snowy.

There are exceptions, such as earthquakes triggered by other earthquakes, or a common cause. The recent earthquake storm at Yellowstone is sufficiently constrained in time and space to suggest that it indeed is a group related by a common cause (though it does not show a magmatic signature, another case of people seeing what they want in the data). Haiti's aftershocks play the same game, though not every earthquake that occurs in Haiti is necessarily connected to the big shock.

Anyhow, this stuff has been on my mind this week. The world is one big Rorschach blot, and humans see what they want in it. We are psychologically all too likely to jump from pattern recognition (noticing clumps in data) to conclusions (often pre-determined), without taking the time to really analyze whether there is in fact a trend present, and if that trend is significant, and if there is a logical causal mechanism to explain that trend.

We are a species that seeks meaning: some augur the future from tea leaves, while others engage in science and reason. Some methods of gaining access to meaning are themselves meaningful. Others are meaningless. Both surround us.

Stay warm out there.
________________________________________
* Though potentially up in Greenland it could work due to glacial melting causing unloading on the crust, changing the stress field that's keeping a fault locked in place.
** It's probably also worth pointing out that snow does not equal temperature. It's precipitation. People are visually susceptible to the sight of snow: it registers more than numbers.

Labels: analogies, climate change, dc, movies, nova, primary structures, science and society, snow

Today we have a special post here at NOVA Geoblog. Author Michael Welland joins us to answer a bevy of questions about the topic of his expertise: sand. Michael's book Sand: The Never-Ending Story is now out in paperback, and this post is one stop on his "virtual book tour" through the geoblogosphere. I really enjoyed reading Sand, and I reviewed it last year in EARTH magazine (hardcopy only, I'm afraid: no link possible). I was tickled to see that a quote was mined from my EARTH review for the back cover of the paperback edition of the book, a first for me.

If you have a sand question to ask, leave it in the comments, and Michael can respond there, too.

This post also serves to kick off "Book Month" here at NOVA Geoblog. All this month, I'll be blogging about the books that I have read recently.

All questions in this post come from my spring 2010 Physical Geology students. Enjoy! -CB

What are people who collect sand as a hobby called?

"Odd!" ...They are also often called arenophiles, "sand lovers" but strictly, that's a mixture of Latin and Greek - "arena" is the Latin for sand. To be consistently Greek, they should be "psammophiles" but then that term tends to be used by biologists and botanists to describe critters and plants that live in the sand.

How come sand gets everywhere when you go to the beach? And by everywhere, I mean everywhere...sealed Ziploc bags, inside cell phones, places you don't want it...everywhere. Or, on a more scientific sounding note-beaches that are eroding. Is it due to sand being swept out by the ocean waves faster than it can be replaced? (How is sand formed?) If that's the case-why do some beaches erode faster than other? Is it because of the width between the dunes(?) and the ocean?

Boy, do I know about sand getting everywhere! After my Sahara travels, my backpack pockets still contain sand, my camera zoom makes uncomfortable grating noises, and I had a hell of a time explaining to my cellphone company why there were sand grains under the keys (I'd stupidly used its calculator for map scale conversions when we were trying to figure out where we were). I guess this problem is just another of the strange behaviors of granular materials in that size range.

Now, as for beaches, they are just about the most dynamic environments on earth, changing every day, with the seasons, with every storm, and with changing sea levels. Check out the story of the wholesale move of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Every beach has a sediment budget - incomings and outgoings that constantly change. Sand is added to the beach (but also carried away) by longshore drift and by the action of every wave. A storm will erode unimaginable amounts of sand - which is then deposited elsewhere. Sand blows off the beach and onto the dunes, or off the dunes and onto the beach - an incredibly complex system. Typically, at certain points along a coast sand will be swept into the head of a submarine canyon and flushed out into the deep sea - essentially never to return (check out, for example, the Monterey Submarine Canyon).

Here are a couple of interesting photos of where sand ended up after Hurricane Katrina:

And here are three photos of Dauphin Island, Alabama, before Hurricane Ivan, after it, and after Hurricane Katrina - spot the differences!

Over the course of several thousand years, can a black sandy beach turn into a white sandy beach? I have heard about green sand. Is green sand existent and where can you find it? What elements is sand made out of ? ...And why does its color change in other places?

In talking about the definition of sand in terms of size rather than composition, and the different types of sand, I've begun to answer these questions. Just as the cuisine of a local restaurant is dominated by local ingredients, so is the composition of a sand in any one place. You wouldn't expect to find beaches of coral fragments in Greenland, or sand grains of old metamorphic rocks in Hawaii. The sands of a particular beach may have been carried a long distance by rivers and coastal currents, but they originate from the same system, a system that is stable over long periods of time. The river and beach sands of the east coast of the US tell the story of the erosion of the Appalachians and the effects of the Ice Ages. So no, a black sandy beach will not turn into a white sandy beach over the course of a few thousand years - but if, over the course of a longer period of time, different source rocks are exposed in the areas where the sand grains originate, or if there is a major reorganization of sand-transporting currents, then the beach composition will change to reflect that. We see this all the time in the geological record - changes in sand composition that tell us about changes in provenance, tectonic activity and so on.

But then, as I was writing this, I suddenly remembered an example of a black beach turning into a normal beach - overnight! If you go to any beach and look at the ripples in the sand, there will generally be smears of dark-colored grains emphasizing the forms of the ripples. These are grains of heavier minerals, often iron oxides, which are winnowed by the action of waves because of their weight. If this winnowing, by waves, currents, or rivers, takes place over a long period of time, then considerable concentrations of heavy minerals can result; these deposits, called placers, can be commercially important and are the sources of diamonds, gold and many other important mineral commodities. But on a beach, just as easily as such a deposit can form, so can it be removed by a storm; I described an example of this in the book:

...such an occurrence was the cause of one of Thomas Edison's many business failures. On a fishing trip with friends off the coast of Long Island, Edison put into shore for lunch and found the beach covered with a layer of black sand. He took some home and discovered that the black grains were a magnetic iron oxide mineral - magnetite - which stuck to a magnet while the common sand grains fell off. Edison's enthusiasm ran, as it often did, ahead of his business sense, and he immediately arranged for the purchase of the beach and the manufacture of separating machinery. Unfortunately, by the time he and his colleagues returned to Long Island, a winter storm had reworked the beach and completely removed the black sand.

So there's a case of a black sand beach disappearing!

Green sand - yes, it exists, most famously on Hawaii. Local ingredients again, the volcanic rocks contain crystals of the apple-green mineral olivine, and this can become concentrated on some beaches to become the main constituent of the sand - placers again. Here's an example from the Big Island:

Sand comes from sediments that are carried down from rivers that come from mountains. So is sand a mixture of minerals and dirt? ...Or just a lot of different broken down minerals? I just watched something about China's issue with being continuously battered by massive sandstorms. What I want to know is: Where is the sand coming from? Why is it hitting China, and what are the health risks/other consequences of these sandstorms?

The breakdown of rocks by chemical and physical weathering and the transport of the debris by rivers is the most common origin of sand - but it's not the only one. Beaches in the tropics are made of sand that is biological in origin - shell fragments, bits of coral, and the shells of minute organisms. Which brings us to a key point: Sand is defined purely by size.

This is for a very good reason - granular materials that fall in this size range behave very differently from things smaller and things bigger. And those behaviours are often bizarre. It really doesn't matter what the sand is made of, its composition. And note that, reflecting the fact that nature works in multiples, each category is twice the size range of the next smaller one. So, it doesn't matter if the material is made up of 1 mm quartz grains, shells, diamonds - or sugar - technically it's coarse sand. It can be made up purely of quartz or purely of foraminifera shells, or a mixture of minerals and rock fragments, or a mixture of coral and shell fragments - it's all sand. Some beaches in the tropics are made up almost entirely of sand-sized pellets of dried fish shit.

Dirt is the non-technical (and mostly American) term for soil, and soil is the in situ material that results from the conspiracy of chemical and physical weathering and organic material and activity. Once it's eroded and transported by wind or water, it isn't dirt any more. So, technically, the dirt in much of Nebraska is sand (the Sand Hills support only very poor vegetation); once the dunes become active again (perhaps as a result of changing climate) that sand will be on the move once more.

And that's a big part of what's happening in China. More than 2.5 million square kilometres (a million square miles - more than four times the area of Texas) of the country is desert, and so sand and dust storms have always been a problem. But poor land management on a massive scale - removal of forests, over-grazing, and soil-depleting agriculture - has made the problem worse. What had been stable soil, dirt, is now exposed to the winds and on the move - very much like the dustbowl conditions of the American Midwest in the 1930s. The total area of China's deserts is growing at around 200 square kilometers (80 sq mi) every month, and every year tens of thousands of tons of sand and dust are blown into Beijing. China's capital has always suffered from dust storms, helped again by the ice age, when grinding glaciers wore rocks down to flour, technically known as loess, which, once airborne, blankets huge areas for long periods of time. But Beijing's dust storms are turning into sandstorms. It's not necessary to travel to the Gobi Desert to find encroaching sand; it's a mere hour's drive out of Beijing. The Great Wall, built to defend against invaders from the west, is proving no match for the onslaught of sand: whole sections are being destroyed by the storms.

So the sand is coming from the interior deserts, but more and more from degraded landscapes that are newly becoming desert. The problems for homes and infrastructure are enormous, but so are the health risks in populated areas from particulates - hence the dramatic measures taken at the time of the Beijing Olympics.

How come there is so much sand on the shores and coastlines of the earth, and absolutely none as you move toward the middle of a country or continent?

Don't tell the residents of Nebraska that - a quarter of their state is covered in sand dunes! The Sand Hills are the largest area of dunes in the western hemisphere, covering 60,000 square kilometres and were active and mobile between 1000 and 1200 CE. They were formed originally from the debris of the glacial erosion of the Rocky Mountains. The hills were stabilized eight hundred years ago but have had episodes of reincarnation since: a long drought toward the end of the eighteenth century resuscitated dunes on the Great Plains, whose activity caused problems for the westbound wagon trains decades later.

You can find more imagery and information here. And think about the great active deserts of the world where huge amounts of sand are to be found - the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula, essentially the entire interior of Australia, a quarter of the land area of China. But it's not just the deserts - every river bank and lake shore has sand. About the only places on the earth's surface where sand is rare are the very deep ocean floors - and it's rare but not absent. Sand can be dropped from melting icebergs and flushed out into the deep oceans by the tremendous energy of turbidity currents, slurries of water and sediment hurtling down the continental slopes and spreading out across the deep ocean floors; any of the great deep ocean currents can move sand around - and they do. And there are countless sand grains in your back yard, mixed up in the soil.

Here's a Google Earth image of Nebraska:

Hoping this question related enough to sand, because I'm still under the impression that all/most glass is made of sand. I've heard that in stained glass windows inside ancient churches, there is a "bulge" at the bottom of the glass, and that because of its disorderly atomic structure, gravity can "pull" it down a bit after hundreds of years. I've also heard that this is totally wrong, and that the bulge is just an effect of the way they made stained glass at the time. I'd love it if your friend could shed some light on the issue.

It's an old and common "urban myth." Although glass does flow, the timescale over which it happens is far too long for even the oldest windows to show any effect. Old methods of making glass did not create perfect sheets and, logically, if a piece is thicker at one end than the other, you would install the thick end at the base of the window. There's a good article about the myth on Corning's website.

What makes quicksand so powerful that it can drag a human down?

Another "urban myth!" There's a great episode of Mythbusters that examines "killer quicksand" and has them bobbing around in a giant tub of quicksand, trying to be sucked in. They bust the myth: "Quicksand is denser than water; the greater the density, the greater the buoyancy of objects within. Any victims found in quicksand likely died for some other reason (i.e. exposure to the elements)." You can watch the episode here.

Quicksand is an example of one of the strange behaviours of sand-sized granular materials - dilatancy. Here's a bit about this from the book:

Quicksand forms when there is sufficient water in between the grains to separate them - to push them apart through dilatancy - but the water is prevented from draining; the sand is in suspension. This can happen when an incoming tide scours large holes in the sand that are rapidly filled by the outgoing tide, trapping water and air in the sand. Or a subsurface spring or other source of water percolates upward through a body of sand, dilating it. The result is a slurry, delicately balanced between solid and liquid, switching instantly but briefly between the two states with the slightest disturbance. But being a mix of water and sand, quicksand is more dense than water, and the human body floats well in it. The problem arises when a person floating in quicksand tries to move too quickly; the movement destroys the dilatancy of the slurry and the grains reconvene and jam back into a solid, effectively cementing the unfortunate person in place. It has been estimated that the force needed to pull your foot out of jammed quicksand is about that needed to lift a medium-sized car. The key is to wiggle, allowing water to fill the space created around you, and then swim, very slowly. Quicksand is lethal because lone individuals die of exposure, starve, or drown when the tide comes in, not because they are sucked under.

What is the calculated estimate of the amount of sand on Earth?

Essentially impossible to calculate - particularly if you include all the sand grains in ancient sandstones. But that hasn't stopped people having a stab at it. I wrote a bit about this in the book:

In 1980, Carl Sagan, the enthusiastic popularizer of all things astronomical, kicked off one of the most enduring, entertaining, but quantitatively pointless debates about large numbers. He declared, in his television series Cosmos, that "the total number of stars in the universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth." The calculations are ongoing and the debate rumbles on, particularly in the ethereal realms of the internet, and there are, predictably, two schools of thought. While estimates are always increasing, the number of stars is the easier number to calculate: anywhere between 1020 and 1022. As for the grains of sand - well, it depends. What are the assumptions in terms of grain size and, indeed, what counts as a beach? Only the areas of sand above high tide, or areas underwater as well? Depending on how you choose to do the calculation, you can derive a number that is larger or smaller than 1022. And if all the sand grains of the Earth are included, not just those on beaches, then it's again a different matter.

Is sand from different places unique enough for someone to determine where it came from?

Absolutely - to the extent that sand stuck under a vehicle or in the sole of a shoe can and is used in criminal forensics. Simplest if I quote the section on this from the book:

With the sophisticated microscopic diagnostics now possible, the character of soil and sand as evidence in a wide variety of criminal cases has taken on increasing significance. There are crimes that rarely make the headlines, such as cactus smuggling, that can be routinely solved by being able to point to the origin of sand clinging to the roots of the contraband. Investment scams where evidence for a new gold prospect is "salted" with grains of gold from elsewhere can be uncovered by a microscopic look at those grains.

A significant amount of the world's gold supplies comes from the sands of ancient and modern rivers. In 1997 a shipment of these grains of gold worth $3 million was made from mines in the interior of Ghana to the coast and then on to London for processing. After a dispute over the arrangements and cost, the shipment was moved on to Canada via Amsterdam. Canada was the first place where the crates were tagged and given new seals. When they were eventually opened, they contained ordinary sand and iron bars. Where on the shipment's circuitous route had the substitution taken place? The sand was examined by Richard Munroe, a Canadian forensic geologist and policeman. If the substitution had been made in London or Amsterdam, the sand would likely bear the imprint of its northern European origins - particularly the action of ice from the glaciers that had so recently sculpted the continent. But none of those signs were there. Instead, the grains bore the distinctive features of being subjected to a tropical climate, and their composition was typical of the geology of the interior of Ghana. While local security difficulties prohibited making an exact match of the sand grains, any Canadian involvement was ruled out and the insurance claim filed by the mining company was dropped. Sand is a popular material in crimes of "substitution"; in the lively commerce between North and South America, sand has been substituted for, among other goods, cigarettes going south and perfume going north. The genetic fingerprint of the sand involved has pinpointed the location of the crime and helped prove innocence and guilt.

Sand and soil found in the soles of shoes, on clothing, or on tires can place people or vehicles in a particular place - however much they may deny it. Geology has become a standard tool in the kit of government forensic laboratories the world over, but it has been around for some time. The fictional Sherlock Holmes claimed to be able to describe an itinerary from mud splashes on trousers. In real life, evidence from sand has been used for over a hundred years. In 1908, in Bavaria, a poacher was suspected of murdering a young woman. His wife had cleaned his shoes the day before the murder, but they now had three layers of sand and soil stuck on their soles. As part of the investigation, one Georg Popp, a local chemist, applied his geological expertise to these layers. He reasoned that the layer next to the sole of the shoe was the oldest; it was made of the same materials as those outside the suspect's house. The second layer contained red sand and other materials identical to those from where the body had been found. The last and most recent layer contained brick fragments, cement, and coal dust that matched samples from where the suspect's gun had been found. What this layer did not match was the soil from the fields where the suspect claimed to have been walking at the time of the murder. The prosecution case was complete.

On a dark, rainy night in September 2002, a black truck parked beside the Shenandoah River in Virginia. Another truck pulled up, and the window rolled down to reveal the barrel of a shotgun. The driver of the first truck was killed at point-blank range. The murderer left in a hurry, the wheels of his truck spinning in the sand and gravel. After a preliminary investigation, the police had a suspect but insufficient evidence to prove guilt. When the suspect was seen starting to wash his red pickup truck, the police swooped. The truck was spattered with fresh mud: time to bring in the forensic geologists. The mud contained some very distinctive sand grains, a variety of minerals that could only have come from a local quarry. While the quarry was not where the murder had taken place, water washed debris from the quarry into the river, which carried it downstream, mixing and diluting it with the other sand and mud in the river. At low water levels, these were dumped in sandbanks along the river's edge. Geological sleuthing demonstrated that each successive sandbar downstream from the quarry contained less and less quarry debris, and the only one that precisely matched the material from the suspect's pickup was the scene of the murder. The suspect pled guilty in the face of this incontrovertible evidence.

Forensic geology has played a part in a wide range of criminal cases worldwide, but perhaps the most high-profile, yet disappointing, example was the murder of the Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. In May 1978, the body of the kidnapped prime minister was found in a car in Rome. Sand from his clothes and shoes, and from the car, was shown to have come from a particular stretch of beach near the city, yet searches of the area provided no evidence. Other forensic work confirmed the association with this beach, yet the connection with the suspects could not be proved. Years later, the kidnappers declared that they had planted the beach sand as a decoy - whether this is true or not remains unclear.

The world's first database of sand grains has been assembled from soils in the United Kingdom, specifically for police forensics. This database contributed key evidence for one of the country's particularly appalling recent criminal cases, the murder of two young Cambridgeshire schoolgirls in 2002. Once again, distinctive soil under the murderer's car tied him to the location where the victims had been
buried.

I know we use sand for glass (and in turn all products that use glass), however, are there any odd or interesting uses for sand that people don't usually know about? Are there any surprising or "out there" uses for sand?

Well, how about computer chips? And all the important minerals (as well as gold, diamonds, sapphires, rubies and garnets) that are found as placer deposits? These include titanium, tungsten, tin, platinum, and niobium. Sand is used as a filter, as a casting method in foundries, in different specialist sports surfaces. Silica and silicon products are used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, paper, and paint. Oh, and don't forget concrete.

Is sand a good medium for fossilization to occur in, and if so what signatures would a fossil show in relation to being formed in sandy soil?

Sand is not a great "fossilizer" compared to mud, for example, simply because sand is deposited in very dynamic and high energy environments - beaches, rivers and so on - and is constantly being re-transported by currents and moved on. Organic remains are easily damaged and broken up. That said, a lot of fossils are found in sandstones and trace fossils, footprints, tracks, trails and burrows can be quite common.

Because of the large size of rocks, it can be easy to use distinguishable features to date and classify them by. Can sand grains be dated in the same fashion as a large slab of granite, or do they need a more precise way to measure how old they are?

Dating a rock like granite involves finding the age of cooling and crystallisation of individual minerals through the radioactive isotopes or fission tracks they contain. Some minerals are better for this than others - quartz doesn't contain much in the way of radioactive components, so isn't much help for this. But some minerals that end up as sand grains are - zircon grains are the classics. They are tough as old boots and preserve a very good record of their cooling history. The oldest earthly possessions that we have are zircon sand grains from sandstones in Australia - they're up to 4.2 billion years old. But that's the age of the mineral grains, not the sandstone that now contains them.

One thing we can do with quartz grains is measure how long they have been exposed to cosmic radiation - e.g., how long a sand grain has sat on the surface of a place like the Atacama Desert. There are various different methods all of which are referred to as luminescence dating. It takes an awful lot of work but the results can be amazing - the Atacama has been a desert for far longer than we thought, for example. The USGS has a very good section on the different methods. It's a powerful method for unravelling the history of a landscape and for archaeological research. One example that I particularly like relates to prehistoric rock paintings in Australia. There are no materials that allow dating of the paintings, so their age is often a mystery. However, there are places where now-vanished wasps built their nests over part of a painting, using sand grains in the process. Those sand grains can be dated using luminescence methods and thus give a minimum age for the rock art. I came across exactly the same thing in the Sahara:

I remember sculptures of sand being struck by lightning can occur on beaches at times. My question focuses on how lightning makes sand form into random shapes of "glass" like structures? And when lightning does strike sand, does it have to be a certain type of sand?

It really is glass - the instantaneous and intense heat from the lightning fuses the sand grains into a solid structure, often a tube, and the result is called a fulgurite (from the Latin for lightning). This can happen in essentially any kind of sand and they can be really big - the record is one 17 feet long. They can also be found in ancient sandstones - lightning strikes from a couple of hundred million years ago. Silica glass was also formed by the energy of the first nuclear test explosion at White Sands in 1945 - the sandy soil was fused into glass by the heat. Fulgurites come in all shapes and sizes - the one here is fairly typical:

CB again: Have any additional sand questions for Michael? Leave them in the comments! If you found this blog post interesting, I recommend Michael's book. I have a copy I can loan to NOVA students, or better yet, you can buy your own!

Labels: books, nova, sediment

Part-time geology program assistant: up to 20 hrs./week. Minimum: AA degree w/18 credits of geology; can start in January 2010. Contact Callan Bentley (cbentley@nvcc.edu) or Ken Rasmussen (krasmussen@nvcc.edu) for more details.

Labels: jobs, nova

Yesterday, I showed you these photos...



...and asked you to guess what they reminded me of.

Man, there were some great ideas people pitched forward! I was really impressed. One person even came up with the same idea that occurred to me!

Okay, so clearly what we've got here is a puddle that's drying up right? Some leaves and other botanical debris fell into the puddle and has thus become concentrated in this spot.

The pattern I noticed was a linear pile of debris [consisting mainly of the woody little "petals" of the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) "flower"] as well as a dark color due to being damp. The edge of the damp patch parallels the edge of the linear tulip tree debris field. I think the way this formed was that in the puddle's earlier (larger) state, it was deep enough for the tulip tree "petals" to float, and wind pushed them all over to the same side of the puddle (the southern edge). As the puddle dried out, this stranded flotsam preserves either an earlier "shoreline" or an offshore parallel to the shoreline. (The second possibility would apply if the "petals" were too big to get pushed all the way to the actual shoreline: they may run aground some distance "offshore.")

This brought to mind the relationship between a continental ice sheet and the end moraine it leaves* behind. Glaciers expanded outward, reach their maximum size, stay there for some amount of time, flowing along and depositing a scum of debris all along their edges. Later, they melt back, or possibly melt away entirely. However, the debris belt marks how far out they once reached. Here's a geological equivalent, in a map** showing end moraines (green) in Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota:


As the moraine marks the former extent of the glacier, so too does the stranded line of tulip tree flotsam mark the former extent of the puddle. Fresh from my lectures on glaciation and the Ice Ages, I got the sense I was looking from west to east across North America, seeing Canada recently scraped clean (wet areas) and the far-right ("south") accumulation of tulip tree petals morphed in my mind into a terminal moraine complex.

The main problem with this analogy: puddles are standing water, not flowing ice. Still, I can't help but see a similarity in process, regardless of the huge differences in scale and materials. I see the world through geology-colored glasses.
_______________________________________
* no pun intended
** From the U.S.G.S.'s "Glacial map of the U.S. east of the Rockies, west half" (1959)," via here

Labels: analogies, contest, glacial landforms, glaciation, iowa, minnesota, nova, plants, south dakota

Walking to my car in the lower NOVA parking lot last week, I saw this:


A closer view:


I was immediately struck that the patterns observed here could be an analogy for another geologic process. Any ideas what occurred to me?

Labels: analogies, contest, nova

Woodbridge Campus Closed for Evening
December 8, 2009
Woodbridge, VA (December 8, 2009) – There was a shooting incident at the Woodbridge Campus of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) that occurred today at approximately 2:13 p.m. At this time, there are no injuries reported from the incident. The incident is under investigation and more information is forthcoming.All Woodbridge classes will be cancelled, including NOVA classes being held at Freedom High School for the remainder of the evening.For more information about students, faculty and staff, families should meet at Freedom High School.Our goal is to ensure every possible measure is taken to guarantee the safety of our faculty, staff and students. We will keep the public informed regarding any new developments as soon as they occur.

Labels: news, nova

This was in today's paper. Considering that I'm serving on NOVA's "Honors Task Force" to evaluate our Honors program, this is certainly food for thought.

Labels: dc, economics, nova

From Funny Graphs, via Lockwood.

Labels: graphics, humor, nova

I hung up my new copy of the Geological Map of Shenandoah National Park Region, Virginia in my office, using neodymium magnets (the best!) to "pin" it to a metal shelf. Gosh, it's beautiful.

Labels: blue ridge, geology, maps, nova, shenandoah

A couple of shots of the Thursday Physical Geology lab section, out hiking on the Billy Goat Trail:



A great group of students.... Photos courtesy of Judi Scharfman.

Labels: field trips, maryland, nova, piedmont, teaching

Next semester, the Annandale campus of NOVA has need for two instructors: one for a section of Physical Geology and a second one for a section of Historical Geology.

Both sections meet (in different rooms) Monday and Wednesday evenings, from 6:30 to 9:20 pm.

Minimum degree requirements: an M.S., with at least 18 graduate credit hours in geology. Remuneration is probably millions of dollars, though I'm not sure about that, and I'm sure that's not why you would want to do it, anyhow. Contact my boss, Dr. Craig Jensen, if you're interested: cjensen@nvcc.edu

Labels: geology, jobs, nova, teaching

Come be the Annandale campus' new Physics/Geology lab tech!

• The position description is now available on the NOVA HR website.

Labels: geology, jobs, nova

Ouch. Rough stuff for those in-state students applying to in-state schools. (Out-of-state students pay more money...) from the Washington Post.

Labels: nova, politics, virginia

The past week has been one of the more frustrating weeks for me at my workplace. It's been a litany of bureaucracy and incompetence, and my faith in (some of) my coworkers has dropped precipitously. I had to send twenty e-mails to get the college Catalog updated with my correct position title and educational information. Yesterday, I saw a delivery man pushing a cart, opening the door with the handicap access motor (wasting the building's heat), and his special cargo that he needed the cart for was... a lone letter measuring 8.5" by 11"! The particular incident that's raised my ire this morning is the following:

We run these one-credit Field Studies in Geology courses, GOL 135. The Spring 2010 Schedule of Classes lists the different sections of GOL 135 inconsistently across NOVA's different campuses. Here's a comparison between the Alexandria and Annandale campuses' listings. Guess which campus is going to have its sections fill up with students based on this? Guess which campus is probably going to have to cancel classes due to insufficient enrollment? (Guess which campus I work at?)

Someone has screwed up here, and I'm not pleased about it. Grrr.

Labels: field trips, nova

Yesterday, we had a joint NOVA-University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown field trip to Shenandoah National Park. It was a great day of examining new rock outcrops and old treasured favorites. UPJ is responsible for one of the only departmental student-centered geology blogs that I am aware of, Mountain Cat Geology. A couple of weeks ago, igneous and metamorphic petrology professor Elli Goecke contacted me about local rock options, and I invited her crew to team up with the NOVA GOL 135 field course to check out Shenandoah. [Geoblogger small world: Elli studyed under Kim Hannula in Vermont!]

Together, the sixteen of us checked out evidence for the two Wilson Cycles recorded in the rocks of Virginia's Blue Ridge province, and had a pleasant time hiking around and enjoying unparalleled fine weather. Unfortunately, November means the days are short, and we had the sun set on us before we got to the final stop (at Signal Knob Overlook). We took a group photo there: see if you can spot who's a NOVA person and who's a UPJ person...


The annotated version, to show who's who:


Thanks for a great day in the field, everyone!

Labels: blogs, blue ridge, field trips, national parks, nova, pennsylvania, shenandoah, virginia

Science Seminar, presented by the Math, Science, and Engineering Division, Annandale Campus and also supported by Lyceum

"The Scientific Basis of Music"
Herbert A. Smith, Director Jazz Studies, Northern Virginia Community College.
Friday, November 20, 2009, CE Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

This presentation will focus on music and its essential relationship to science. It will explore areas, aspects and elements of music that most reasonably could be termed the science of music. The talk will also illuminate unique principles, concepts and procedures shared within the sciences as well as music. It will highlight the benefits of music study and practice in the intellectual and philosophical development of the educated and enlightened individual.

Professor Smith has taught at NOVA since 1976 and has performed with notable local and internationally known jazz musicians throughout his long career in music. He has taught a variety of courses including Jazz Improvisation, History of Music, Music Theory, Composition and Music Appreciation. Before he joined the faculty at NOVA he taught at Howard University and Southern Illinois University, hosted two radio jazz shows and was in the US Air Force band for three years. Herb Smith has a passionate interest in history, politics, economics, philosophy and the study of world cultures.

All students, staff, and faculty are cordially invited.

Labels: meetings, music, nova

Whew! A busy day at the Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon. I started off the day in the two-year-college session, culminating (for me, anyhow) in my talk about the role that field trips play in my geology classes at NOVA. I believe in spirited presentations, so I moved away from the lecturn and spoke extemporaneously about my images and data, and the talk was well-received by the audience -- or at least that portion that chose to tell me what they thought. After the talk, I was really tired out (I hadn't realized I was stressing about the talk, but apparently I must have been.) I went back to the hotel and took a shower, dealt with some mortgage stuff (I'm buying a condo in DC), and then semi-refreshed, headed back to the fray at the Convention Center.

I've met another several geobloggers: Brian Romans and Kim Hannula. Geoblogger Lockwood Dewitt sent me a rock (natrolite in calcite! likely from a pillow basalt!) via roaming geoblogger "Silver Fox." Cool. I dig it. I had some people come up to me out of the blue and tell me that they read this blog, and that is super cool to hear. Thanks!

In the afternoon, I went to a few sessions about volcanism and the end-Permian extinction, history-of-geology, and I forget what else.

In the late afternoon, the beer began flowing. I started off at the W.W. Norton publishing company's beer bash, where I brushed shoulders with Walter Alvarez, met the author of my Physical Geology textbook, Steve Marshak, and chatted at length with Bob Lillie of Oregon State University about getting the National Park Service better educated about their geological resources. Then it was off to the AGI reception, where I won a bottle of wine and got to chat with David Williams, author of Stories In Stone. Meg Sever, the editor of EARTH, with whom I've e-mailed a zillion times, but never met. Turns out Meg went to William & Mary, like me (and Jessica Ball, also at the AGI reception), so the three of us trooped upstairs to the William & Mary alumni reception. It was good to see Brent Owens, Heather McDonald, and Chuck Bailey there, as well as other W&M geology grads (including Graham, who reads this blog! Hi Graham!).

The evening's final event was the much-ballyhooed geoblogger's meet-up. At 8pm, about fifteen of us assembled at Tugboat Brewing Company, a cozy, charming little pub in downtown Portland. Every time someone walked through the door, a rousing, "Yeeeaaaahhh!!!" cheer went up. And every time someone left, they got booed! It was terrific fun meeting everyone that I've had these online geoblogging relationships with over the past ~1.5 years, and I think a good time was had by all. I'll put some photos up later... [Other online reminiscences about the meetup: Chuck and Jessica.]

Labels: books, geology, meetings, national parks, nova, oregon

I've just submitted a list of the classes I intend to teach for summer 2010. Here they are on NOVA Geoblog, before you can access them in the official Schedule of Classes...

GOL 135 (070N) The Bedrock Geology of Washington, DC. HYBRID COURSE: pre-trip reading, field study and post-trip report. One-day field trip Saturday, June 12. Rain date: Sunday, June 13. Important pre-trip logistical information and preparatory readings located online. This trip will focus on the land upon which the capital city is built, including exposures in Rock Creek Park, Georgetown, and Adams-Morgan. Includes discussion of oceanic sediments, the Rock Creek shear zone, igneous rocks emplaced during Appalachian mountain-building, Cretaceous river gravels, dinosaur bones and recent faulting. Students will be evaluated with a field trip report which will be completed after the trip itself. NOTE: This trip involves moderately strenuous hiking on forest trails. Meet in back of the CT building at 9:00 a.m.; Return by 7:00 p.m. For information about meeting time/place or other questions call (703) 323-3276 or email cbentley@nvcc.edu
HYBRID course
Additional info online

GOL 295 (4 credits) Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains: July 10 to July 25, 2009. Pre-trip meetings Wed. June 9 and Wed. June 23, 6:30pm, in CS 217. Western Montana and Wyoming showcase tectonic, sedimentary, geomorphic, and volcanic features which provide world-class examples of geologic processes. Students in this course will complete field studies of locations in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, as well as several other field sites. The course will involve VERY STRENUOUS outdoor physical activity: Students are expected to hike several miles at high elevations in rough mountainous terrain in order to accomplish course objectives. Airfare, lodging, and transportation are covered in the approx. $1400 course fee (does NOT include tuition). For up-to-date information and a complete itinerary, see the course website or contact the instructor at cbentley@nvcc.edu or (703) 323-3276.
Extra fee
Instructor permission required
Additional info online

GOL 299 (071N) (2 credits) Snowball Earth. June 14-19, 2009. HYBRID COURSE: pre-course reading, lab, field study and post-course report. An episode of glaciation 700 million years ago, dubbed Snowball Earth, may have provided for the evolution of multicellular life. The Snowball Earth glaciations stretch our conception of the limits of climate change: the ice apparently reached from the Earth's poles to its equator! Scientists infer that the runaway freezing event was only ended due to volcano-induced global warming. This course examines the geological, chemical, and biological evidence for Snowball Earth, and includes a field trip to local "Snowball" deposits. Course meets four times: three evening sessions (6pm-9pm) in CS 217 and all day on a Saturday (9am-5pm). The schedule is: Monday June 14 (lecture), Wednesday June 16 (lab), Friday June 18 (discussion), and Saturday June 19 (field trip). For further information call (703) 323-3276 or email cbentley@nvcc.edu or go to the course website.
HYBRID course
Additional info online

Anyone in the Northern Virginia area who's interested in any of these classes, drop me a line!

Labels: dc, field trips, geology, montana, nova, snowball earth, teaching

NOVA's accurately-named student newspaper, Fortnightly, is now online. New issues every fortnight (two weeks)!

Labels: news, nova

Friday, October 23, 2009, CE Forum
12 noon - 1pm

"Community-Based Environmental Action"

Chris Bright, President and Co-Founder of the Earth Sangha, a non-profit environmental group

The Earth Sangha is a Buddhist environmental group based in Fairfax County co-founded by Chris and his wife, Lisa Bright, to work with volunteers on ecologically significant restoration projects in natural areas. Every year over 500 volunteers donate more than 10,000 hours of their time to the Sangha's restoration projects throughout northern Virginia. Volunteers have built the Sangha's Wild Plant Nursery, DC region's most comprehensive local-ecotype native-plant propagation center. (Local ecotypes are local, wild native-plant populations; the use of local ecotypes is a standard best practice in restoration because that helps to conserve the genetic diversity and local adaptation in the species planted.) The Earth Sangha is also a kind of low-tech innovator in the control of invasive alien plants; such plants are a major threat to local natural areas. In 2006, the Sangha transplanted a version of its community-nursery approach to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The Sangha's Tree Bank / Hispaniola program works along a portion of the Dominican Republic - Haiti border, where it helps impoverished farmers improve their incomes and restore patches of native forest on their lands.

Chris Bright will describe the Earth Sangha's work, the rationale behind it, and its implications for the conservation agenda. Before founding the Earth Sangha, Chris was a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank that tracks global environmental and social trends. He is the author of numerous articles and one book, Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World, the first global, interdisciplinary study of biological invasion written for a general audience.

Labels: action, environmental, meetings, nova

Today I took a group of students to Sideling Hill, a syncline in western Maryland. Here are a few photos from the trip. All photos by my iPhone, via Facebook (which is why the quality is lower than my usual standards):

The group all kitted out at the Sideling Hill Visitor's Center (which was closed due to budget cuts in Maryland):


Jared points out fast-weathering shale layers betwixt slower-weathering sandstone layers:


Diamictite outcrop on the far western side of Sideling Hill:


More diamictite... enigmatic sediments...

Labels: maryland, nova, primary structures, sediment, structure, teaching, valley and ridge, weathering

My colleagues in NOVA's biology department were featured in today's Washington Post, which includes some photos of my building (the Shuler Building) and one of our labs. The point of the article is that community colleges in the DC area are adding classes like crazy to keep up with demand. The weak economy is blamed for the uptick in enrollment. Our student population increased by about 10% this semester. NOVA's numbers tower over other area schools:

Hat tip to Doug Dupin for alerting me to this piece!

Labels: nova, teaching

My colleague Ken Rasmussen and I were among ten faculty featured in a video that NOVA-Annandale Provost Barbara Saperstone commissioned to brag to the NOVA Board about all the cool stuff going on at her campus. If you're interested in watching the video (~17 minutes), it can be downloaded here. If you're only interested in the geology portion, fast-forward to 14:57 or so. (They saved the best for last.) Enjoy!

Labels: field trips, movies, nova, teaching

The first of our monthly science seminar series is coming up at the end of the month:

"Cameras we cannot picture"
Dr. Ravi Athale, Senior Principal Scientist, The MITRE Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009, Ernst Center Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

Abstract: The world of imaging has evolved from its humble origins as a pinhole camera to its current incarnations of very large (Hubble Space Telescope) and very small (pill cameras that one swallows). Last 10 years, in particular, has seen more rapid growth in our ability to record static and moving images than anytime in human history. This has been enabled by replacing film with semiconductor devices for recording imagers. Dr. Athale argues that as dramatic as this progress has been, the future will bring even more startling and unimaginable changes due to the integration of imaging with equally spectacular progress in computing, communications and storage technologies.

Ravi Athale is Senior Principal Scientist and Department Head, Emerging Technology office at the MITRE Corporation. Over past 30 years he has worked as a scientist, educator and manager in government, academic and industrial institutions. In 2007, he received Leadership Award of the Optical Society of America and Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. In addition, he is a co-author of a high school engineering textbook published by Prentice-Hall and is a co-founder of company that develops consumer products based on computer generated holograms.

Please join us, if you can!

Labels: art, meetings, nova, science and society, tech

(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 of this series...)

Today's episode: The route down the mountain, and the long way back to camp.

After our "summit" of the arete between Hanging Canyon and Cascade Canyon, we begin carefully picking our way back downhill, switching between talus piles and snowfields, and back again:




We popped over the threshold, and started dropping down towards Jackson Hole. As the sun was dropping lower and lower in the sky to the west, we were pretty much in shadow from here on down... but the light still lingered on the highest peaks, like Teewinot Mountain, Mount Owen, and the Grand Teton itself:


By the time we got all the way back down to Jenny Lake, the sun was pretty much gone. However, it was illuminating a tall cloud north of us, sitting atop the Yellowstone area. We joked that this was the big one: Yellowstone had finally blown up and the orange color we were seeing wasn't "alpenglow" but incandescence from the long-awaited eruption of the Yellowstone volcanic center...


It wasn't, though. Just a little jest to take our minds off the fact that we had missed the last ferry across Jenny Lake, and so that meant adding an additional "2" (it sure felt more like 3) miles to our hike. As darkness closed in, we hoofed it along (only Pete had been prepared enough to bring a headlamp). For me, a highlight of this long slog came when Joel and I spotted an animal I'd heard of but never actually seen before: a pika! They are very, very cute animals that live in talus piles and make little squeaky noises. But they're quite elusive, at least in my experience. I've seen plenty of marmots and other alpine rodents, but this was my first Ewok pika.

We eventually got back to the vehicle and rolled back to camp, getting there about 10pm. We wolfed down some dinner, quenched our thirst, and sacked out. What a great day! In spite of being dog tired, I felt mentally rejuvenated and ready to take on the second half of the Rockies trip.

This post concludes the Hanging Canyon series. Thanks for coming along!

Labels: mammals, nova, travel, volcano, wyoming, yellowstone

(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 of this series...)

As we were climbing up a steep snowfield, we saw something that made us rush up to the top:


Interpretive sketch:

At first, we thought this was a big isoclinal synform that was cross-cut by a ptygmatically*-folded granite dike, but closer inspection at the "axis" of the "fold" revealed that it was instead just the trailing edge of a big boudin. It pinched down and then swelled again in the downward direction, hidden in this photo by the snowpack. Not quite as cool... but still pretty cool. And I can never say no to ptygmatic* folding, regardless of the setting.

This is also kind of cool:

What you're looking at here is a gneiss, with alternating layers of coarse-grained mafic and felsic minerals. The view of the photo is orthogonal to the plane of foliation, but the boulder has been weathered so that in some places the uppermost mafic layers has been worn away. There's one spot where you can "see through" the mafic layer into the underlying felsic layer (upper right) and another spot where there's a little isolated scrap of the mafic layer where the surrounding material has been weathered away. This reminded me of a larger-scale phenomenon where the same thing happens to thrust sheets: an erosional hole through a thrust sheet into the rock beneath is a tectonic "window" or "fenster" (German for window). An erosional remnant of a thrust sheet is a "klippe." The Grandfather Mountain Window in North Carolina is an example of a fenster. Chief Mountain in Glacier National Park, Montana, is an example of a klippe. So this little boulder gives us a nice physical analogue for regional-scale tectonic/erosional features.

Ahh... what cool stuff to see and think about. But the sun was setting, and we had to head back to camp and the rest of our team... Tomorrow: the story of the long hike home.

________________________________
* Really, more of a "cuspate-lobate" fold, without the parallel limbs that make for a truely ptygmatic fold.

Labels: analogies, art, montana, national parks, north carolina, nova, structure, travel, wyoming

(Parts 1, 2, 3 & 4 of this series...)

Today we'll look at some of the structural geology photos I took in Hanging Canyon, Teton National Park, Wyoming. These are all rocks of the Archean-aged Wyoming Terrane (or "Wyoming Craton"), one of the most ancient pieces of crust that make up the quilt-like North American continent. They include both metamorphic and igneous rocks that have been suffered enjoyed being deformed by tectonic processes.

Labels: archean, igneous, metamorphism, national parks, nova, structure, travel, wyoming

Parts 1, 2, & 3 of this series are at these links.

Today and tomorrow, I'll share some of the gorgeous Archean rocks that are exposed in Hanging Canyon, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. Today: the igneous stuff. Tomorrow: the structural stuff.

There were many pegmatite dikes that we saw along the hike. Here's a lovely one cutting across the metamorphic host rock:


A close up of some big muscovite "books" in the pegmatite:


A couple of parallel pegmatite dikes cutting across granite:


Here's the largest single feldspar crystal I've ever seen in the wild. The crystal starts to the left of my boot and continues for over a foot to the left of that. Its color varies between bluish gray and whitish. Where the left-most and most prominent blue stripe is, that's the edge of this monster megacryst:


Huh... Only four "igneous" photos... I guess I'll make up for that with tomorrow's structural geology post about Hanging Canyon... I have about forty photos of folds and boudins and what-not to share...

Labels: archean, granite, igneous, minerals, national parks, nova, structure, travel, wyoming

Today, picking up where we left off yesterday, some images from the hike upwards from Jenny Lake to Hanging Canyon...

Joel and Ken take a breather:


The approach to the final lip of Hanging Canyon:


A view down over Jenny Lake and Jackson Hole:

Jenny Lake is dammed by an end moraine (which is characterized by pine trees growing on it here, making for a nice dark stripe around the lake).

We could also see across Jackson Hole to the Gros Ventre valley, where the Gros Ventre lanslide scar was readily visible:


...And lastly, the view to the north, over Jackson Lake (with String Lake in the middle distance):


More tomorrow about what we found once we got up into Hanging Canyon itself... (Hint: it's white and cold and fun to ski on...)

Labels: glacial landforms, mass wasting, national parks, nova, travel, wyoming

One of the highlights of this past summer's Northern Rockies field course was an afternoon set aside as a "choose your own adventure" hike in Teton National Park. Some students opted for Cascade Canyon; others climbed Blacktail Butte. Four of us wanted something really challenging, so we chose Hanging Canyon at the recommendation of my friend Amy Manhart, who lives in Jackson and knows the Tetons like the back of her hand.

We took a ferry across Jenny Lake along with the Cascade Canyon Crew, and then started climbing up. A thunderstorm rolled up Jackson Hole, with much ominous booming and lightning, but we didn't get hit with the storm directly. The climb was very steep, but we entertained ourselves along the way with a geological conundrum: We discussed how best to interpret a hypothetical piece of float that is half granite and half diorite: Is it more parsimonious to guess that the granite represents an intrusion or an inclusion? The implications for the relative dates of the two units are huge: if the diorite is an intrusion, it's younger than the granite. If the diorite is a xenolith (an inclusion) within the granite, then it's older than the granite. Consider the possibilities:



Ultimately, there's no answer to this question without finding an outcrop of the rock in situ, which is why it's entertaining to consider when you're slogging up a 2000 foot hillside. My co-instructor Pete Berquist and I upped the ante by each doggedly defending one of the two indefensible interpretations and sticking to it for the sake of argument. Pete was the xenolith man, whereas I came down fully on the side of the dikes. Our students Joel and Ken were "fortunate" enough to listen to Pete and I bicker about the relative merits of our favored interpretations. Rest breaks came whenever either Pete or I found a boulder along the hillside that showed evidence to support our position. We would stop to consider it, catch our breath, and the resume the uphill climb and the argument. The bad weather passed and the day was beautiful. We were unencumbered by the need to reach a conclusion or acknowledge the obvious: the best interpretation is that such half-&-half clasts "cannot be interpreted."

Here's Pete posing with an obvious dike (I forced him! Ha!):


Here's me posing with an obvious xenolith (Oh well, fair's fair...):


We had a similar ongoing "argument" on the trip about the merits of "Tertiary" versus "Paleogene." I think it keeps students amused to see their professors going back and forth over geologic ideas -- surely if these fellows spend this much energy and thought discussing some geologic question, it must be valid and important... ...right?

More on the Hanging Canyon hike tomorrow...

Labels: archean, geologic time, igneous, national parks, nova, structure, travel, wyoming, xenoliths

Last night, I took a group of Honors students to the United States Geological Survey's National Center in Reston, Virginia, for a public lecture by Bruce Molnia about Alaska's disappearing glaciers. The talk was all well & good, but a nice little surprise came afterwards, when Jared noticed a display in the lobby of the Dallas Peck Memorial Auditorium:

That's the classic "ancient Chinese seismograph" featured in so many introductory geology textbooks as the lead-in to their chapters on earthquakes and seismology. Pretty cool to see it in the flesh brass.

The way it works is that each of the little dragon heads projecting off the urn had a little brass ball in its mouth. If it got shaken by an earthquake, that little brass ball would pop out and into the waiting mouth of the little brass frog down below. The frogs aligned with the wave propogation direction would be the ones to be "fed." This implication of the temblor's source direction would allow authorities to direct scouts and relief operations to the appropriate corner of the dynasty.

Neat!

Labels: alaska, earthquakes, gear, glaciation, nova, rept, teaching

We just got a new position approved for our campus Science Learning Center!

Job Title: Science Learning Center Coordinator

Job description: Assist in setting up and coordinating the Science Learning Center. Provide lab help and advising outside of regularly scheduled class and labs. Provide help to science faculty for individual supervised classess, laboratories & undergraduate research. Work with laboratory assistants in reviewing & updating experiments. Organize study sessions and open study hours. Gather needed equipment and supplies; properly store and inventory these materials. Work with the Math, Science, and Engineering faculty, staff, and steering committees.

Degree Requirement: Bachelor’s Degree in Science, or equivalent training and experience. Master’s preferred.

Salary Range: $35,693-$53,345

Apply at our Human Resources page.

Labels: jobs, nova, teaching

Over the summer the rest of the geology department and I moved into our new home, the Shuler Building (CS) on the Annandale campus of NOVA. As part of our refurbishment, I got a nice new display case which is prominently displayed in the hallway of the second floor of CS, just down from our lab. For its inaugural display, I put together a collection of photos and samples from this summer's Rockies course. I think it looks pretty good:



If you're on campus, stop by and check it out!

Labels: gear, geology, montana, nova, teaching

Rockies co-instructor Pete Berquist was quoted in a nice little article appearing recently in Thomas Nelson Community College's internal newsletter. Here it is.

Labels: field trips, montana, nova, teaching

This was composed by Rockies student (and new full-time NOVA math faculty!) John Weidner. It's the one he sung for us in the airport on our way home from Montana (resulting in this photo):

The Geology Song

to the tune of the theme from the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai
(MP3 download)

Geol - ogy: we study it.
We think - that we know quite a bit.
Mountains - shoot up like fountains.
We know that sandstone's - a grand stone - So's chert!

Granite - a rock that forms a lump.
Landslide - that's what we call a slump.
Gravel - in streams does travel.
We know that claystone's - a gray stone - So's chert!

(triumphally)
The layered rocks, - that everywhere here we see,
are defined through stratigraphy.
And ig - neous rocks we see here too,
wi - i - ith-out a volcano in view.

Oh, Hutton - he looked at Siccar Point
Lyell - he said time's out of joint
Callan - and Pete no failin',
have taught us limestone's - a fine stone - So's chert!

Labels: geology, humor, music, nova

Please forward this post to anyone who you think might be interested. Thanks!

The Annandale campus of NOVA has an opening for an instructor to teach a Monday / Wednesday evening section of Physical Geology this semester. The class runs from 6:30pm until 9:20pm on Monday nights (lecture) and from 6:30pm until 9:20pm on Wednesday nights (lab). It is a four-credit course.

Applicants should have at least a master's degree in geology or a related Earth Science field. The general starting salary range for this position is between $730 and $862 per credit hour. The specific salary for each position will be calculated based on the selected individual's academic preparation and experience. Apply by sending a resume and expression of interest to Craig Jensen, Assistant Dean for the Physical Sciences, at cjensen@nvcc.edu.

I can provide any and all lecture PowerPoints, tests, and ready-to-go lab exercises for the instructor, if they so wish. We can make this really easy! (The instructor also has complete academic freedom to teach the course as they see fit.) NOVA students are diverse and fun, and this is an excellent opportunity to try out some teaching if you've never done it before, or if you're just looking to earn a few extra bucks sharing your knowledge.

Please don't hesitate to contact me or Craig with any questions!

CB

Labels: jobs, nova, teaching

Imitating the detail of a tartan plaid, perhaps?



These perpendicular cross-cutting dikes were observed by NOVA associate professor of geology Victor Zabielski on a trip this summer to Scotland. Thanks for sharing, Victor!

Labels: igneous, nova, scotland, structure

All photos in this post by Rockies student Charlie Corrick.

Obstacle in the road...


Tetons...


Charlie and Jared on Blacktail Butte:


Luke on Blacktail Butte:


Charlie, Luke, and Jared on Blacktail Butte:


Checking out the fault scarp of the Hebgen Lake Fault, north of Hebgen Lake:


Examining the Grinnell Formation for the first time:


Looking down the St. Mary Valley, Glacier National Park:


Stromatolites in the Helena Formation, Glacier National Park:


Victoria points out the contact of the Purcell Sill with the surrounding Helena Formation (limestone), Glacier National Park:


Callan points out the contact of the Purcell Sill with the surrounding Helena Formation (limestone), Glacier National Park:


Pete and Joel point out the contact of an apophysis of the Purcell Sill with the surrounding Helena Formation (limestone), Glacier National Park. Notice that the sill cuts across stratification down by Joel's legs.


At the Bozeman Airport on the way home, John entertains us with geology songs he composed, which cracked up the instructors:

Labels: glacial landforms, montana, national parks, nova, proterozoic, travel, wyoming

Following on this morning's video from Jason, here are a few more Rockies class final projects:

Ringing Rocks (Bob)
Lewis & Clark Caverns (Charlie)
Gros Ventre Landslide (Chris)

Labels: montana, nova, teaching, websites, wyoming

Labels: art, evolution, nova, teaching

WHAT: Top Ten Things You Should Know About Climate Change

WHEN: Tuesday, August 4, 5:30-8:00 PM; program begins at 6:15 PM.

WHERE: The Front Page Restaurant, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, Located near Ballston Metro on the ground floor of the NSF building. Parking is available under the NSF building or at Ballston Common Mall.

WHO: Keith Dixon, Research Meteorologist and Climate Modeler, NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Joe Witte, Meteorologist, Newschannel 8

HOW: Special 1/2 price burgers start at 5:30 PM. Please come early to order table service and socialize. Short presentation begins at 6:15 PM, followed by Q&A. No science background required—only an interest!

Cafe Scientifique is free and open to the public. Register online here.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: In the coming decades, scientists expect climate change to have an increasing impact on human and natural systems. In a warmer world, accessibility to food, water, raw materials, and energy are likely to change. Climate change will also affect our weather, human health, biodiversity, economic stability, and national security. Come learn the top ten things you should know to know about climate change.

SUPPORT THIS CAFE: The Ballston Science and Technology Alliance, a nonprofit organization, is the sponsor of Cafe Scientifique Arlington. Since April 2006, the goal of Cafe Scientifique has been to make science more accessible and accountable by featuring speakers whose expertise spans the sciences and who can talk in plain English. Cafe is held each month on first Tuesdays at the Front Page in Arlington. Please go to www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/bsta and contribute. Help keep Cafe open and free to all!

COMING NEXT MONTH: September 1, BioDiversity: How Special We Are! Dave Harrelson and Susan Jewel, Biologists, Endangered Species Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service SPECIAL BSTA PROGRAM: August 25, 4:15 PM at Room 110 NSF, Climate Change Communication 2.0, Ed Maibach, Director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. Register online here.

For more information contact Kaye Breen, ballstonscience@yahoo.com, visit www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/bsta or join us on twitter: http://twitter.com/sciencecafeva or facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ballston-Science-and-Technology-Alliance/116954825970.

Labels: climate change, dc, meetings, nova

My colleague Ken Rasmussen (the other full-time geology professor at NOVA-Annandale) takes issue with George Will's most recent climate-change-denying column for the Washington Post.

Labels: climate change, dc, environmental, global warming, nova

Labels: art, dc, field trips, geology, nova

It's been busy round these parts. My apologies for the lack of posts this past week.

I leave tomorrow for Montana, and I'll have limited e-mail access while out there. I'll do my best to post when I can, but it will likely be more on the ~weekly timescale rather than ~daily.

On the agenda: (1) Bahama Montana, (2) present and defend my MSSE capstone project, and (3) lead my Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rockies class for NOVA.

More later...

Labels: blogs, montana, msse, nova, travel

Two cool courses taught by my esteemed colleagues... If you're local and love rocks, you should enroll in both of these!

Birth of the Appalachians. GOL 135-003A. Saturday, June 20. A one-credit field course to investigate the paleogeography of Virginia, prior to the initial uplift associated with the Appalchian Orogeny. We will be specifically looking at rock outcrops representing the pre- and post-uplift topography and environments, based on evidence in the present Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Light hiking and roadside geology. Contact Victor Zabielski for more information: vzabielski@nvcc.edu

Mid-Atlantic Field Geology (for educators and interested others). GOL 295-050N. A coherent series of one-day regional field trips, plus on/off-campus lectures and labs on Thursdays (2 - 8:20 PM) during second summer session (also two Saturdays: 7/18, and 8/1). This is an introductory-level, four-credit lecture/lab/field hybrid course, tailored to educators and interested others. It considers local outcroppings of the mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, and Valley and Ridge, as natural classrooms for the demonstration of geologic principles, the study of earth history, and the collection of demonstrative hand-samples. Specific meeting places/times and preparation will be sent via student VCCS email addresses & Blackboard. Class # 12594. If more information is necessary, feel free to email: krasmussen@nvcc.edu

Labels: field trips, geology, nova, virginia

On Saturday's Bedrock Geology of Washington, DC class, my students and I had the good fortune to stumble upon two geologists out doing field work: Tony Fleming, lead author of the geologic map of the Washington West quadrangle, and Steve Self, senior volcanologist with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They were out looking at the Sykesville Formation at Chain Bridge Flats, assessing a potential reinterpretation of the unit.

Fortunately, they were willing to take a little time and discuss their findings with the students. Here's a couple shots of Steve talking to the group:




I joined Steve and Tony in the field yesterday (Monday) too, looking at some outcrops on the other side of the river, and trying to make sense of them. Fun stuff! More on that at a later date...

Labels: dc, field trips, geologists, geology, igneous, metamorphism, nova, piedmont, sediment, volcano

There's a brief blurb (with a few photos) on the first few pages of this week's Intercom about the NAGT meeting last month on the Loudoun campus, and Ken Rasmussen's award.

Labels: geologists, meetings, nova

So, it's a month until my Rockies class starts. I've been encouraging all the students to get in shape, because the high elevations, rough terrain and multimile distances we'll be hiking in Montana and Wyoming could really kick an east-coast flatlander's arse. So we've scheduled a few training hikes to help everyone physically prepare for the Rockies experience. Last weekend, we did a 5.5-mile circuit up the steep Little Devil's Stairs trail in Shenandoah National Park. I was joined by five Rockies students + one of their kids. Here's a map of the loop we did:



Here's a few photos of the hike, and the geology we encountered along the way:



John poses next to some jointed columns in the Catoctin Formation, a Neoproterozoic rift-related series of flood basalts (subsequently metamorphosed during Alleghenian mountain building).


End-on view of one of the columns:


Overhanging cliff showing columns weathering out along jointed surfaces:


Bob poses next to a cliff, helping me demonstrate how difficult it is to take a well-exposed photo in the jungle of the Virginia hardwood forest:


A wiggle in some columns:


Jared thought these columns were better than the first ones he saw, at Old Rag Mountain.


Here's me with a fifteen-foot-long section of columns, indicating that the flow from which this boulder was derived must have been at least fifteen feet thick, maybe more:




But it wasn't all columns. There was also a lot of column-less massive Catoctin Formation, and some nice inter-flow conglomerates which are interpreted as stream deposits that developed atop a cooled flow before the next flow erupted. These conglomerates imply a reasonable amount of time passed between successive eruptions of the Catoctin flood basalts. The lichens obscure the rock, but note for instance the fingernail-sized chunk of greenstone an inch above my hand:


More chunks in the conglomerate:


And more:


Jared guards the way forward:


The view from the top:

Labels: basalt, iapetus, igneous, metamorphism, nova, primary structures, proterozoic, sediment, shenandoah, structure, teaching

Article in today's Post: "Community Colleges Get Student Influx In Bad Times"


"One-quarter of the enrollment growth at all two- and four-year colleges in Virginia over the past year occurred at Northern Virginia Community College."

Labels: economics, nova

And now, a few images from April's Environmental Geology class field trip. We made three stops: (1) a large coal-fired power plant in Maryland, (2) Westmoreland State Park in Virginia to look at coastal erosion, and (3) Prince William Forest Park in Virginia to look at pyrite emplacement and acid mine drainage.

Here's one of the bluffs on the Potomac River at Westmoreland:

Note the recent pile of breakdown in the middle of the bluff where all the water seepage is, and also the orange trail as soil from the uppermost bluff has marked another mass wasting event's passage down to the river.

These are Miocene-aged sedimentary layers known as the Calvert Formation, part of the Coastal Plain. In places, the gray clay has been altered along fracture surfaces, as shown by these orange stripes criss-crossing one another. My toes for scale:


The students spent some time searching for fossils: this is an area where lots of shark teeth are found. We didn't have much luck, but after a long cold winter, it was nice to be standing in the warm sunshine and water:


At Prince William Forest Park, we hiked down to the Cabin Branch Pyrite Mine to look at the massive denudation there due to acid mine drainage, and we also spent some time poking around for treasures, in this case chunks of pyrite:


We had better luck than at Westmoreland...




...But of course we were in a national park at Prince William, so we left the pyrite where we found it. (Westmoreland, in contrast, allows you to keep any fossils you find in loose sediment: that figures, eh?)

I'd like to say that the group of students I had in Environmental Geology this past semester was terrific, one of the best groups I've worked with in a long time. Maybe it was because the class was discussion-focused, or maybe it was the cookies we ate every Tuesday night, but it was a great experience for me, and I'm looking forward to teaching the course again. Thanks, everyone, for making it so much fun!

Labels: coastal plain, environmental, field trips, maryland, miocene, nova, ore, piedmont, virginia

Last Saturday was my Field Studies in Geology trip to Shenandoah National Park. Here's a few shots from the day's geologizing...

Garnets in the Pedlar Formation granite gneiss, oldest rock in the park at ~1.1 Ga.


Meta-basalt columns of the Catoctin Formation (photo by Mathina Calliope):


At the end of the trip, I have the students order a series of strips of paper with different geologic events in the park's long geologic history. They have to figure out the proper order based on what they learned that day:





Lastly, a group photo overlooking the Browntown Valley:

Labels: field trips, metamorphism, minerals, national parks, nova, shenandoah, teaching

These videos were shot by NOVA's videoman extraordinaire Richard Attix, who helped me immensely this morning by splicing together these movies for use in my MSSE capstone presentation at the end of next month. Enjoy!

Teaching on the Billy Goat Trail (a blend of instructor-focused lecture and student-focused exploration):

Hiking on the Billy Goat Trail:


End-of-trip activity - "Ordering Geologic Events":

Labels: field trips, nova, piedmont, teaching

Hey there Northern Virginia-area readers,

Our readers in Kansas, California, Colorado, London, India, & Australia* can't do what you can do.

Only YOU can sign up for NOVA summer field geology courses.

Check them out. See you out there in the real world.

Sincerely,

Callan

* = representative sample only, chosen for geographic diversity. No slight intended for the many other readers in equally far-flung, equally worthy locations.

Labels: field trips, nova, teaching

My former Honors student Laura graduated from NOVA a year ago and transferred to the University of Virginia. But during her second semester at UVA, she joined the SEA Semester program, and sailed around the world.

During Honors presentations this year, current Honors student Kristen (and friend of Laura's) brought in a gift from Laura: a collection of rocks and photos from Namibia, one of their ports of call on the trip.

With Laura's permission, I'm sharing some of the photos here today.

The scene in the Namib Desert:




Note the black stripe on the crest of the hill in this shot:


It appears to be a dike of basalt/dolerite/mafic rock:



Boulders of the mafic rock go tumbling down a ravine:


The SEA Semester group's campsite:




Laura pulls a folded & boudinaged granite dike out of her hat:


Closer shot of the geology:






The rock cross-cut by the granite dike. Namibian dollar for scale; same size as American quarter:




Little tafoni hole:


Bigger tafoni holes:


Medium-sized collection of tafoni holes:


While I'm sharing other people's Namibia photos, go check out the collection from Greg Willis, a blog reader who attended the GSW spring field trip on Sunday.

Thanks, Laura, for the rocks and for the photos!

Labels: africa, geology, granite, namibia, nova

Whew!

Sorry I haven't posted much here in the past week. I've been swamped.

The good news is that my biggest task is now off my plate (just turned in the first draft of my MSSE capstone to my advisor), and that means I've got some spare attention left for the blog.

I thought I would take the opportunity to share some images from this past weekend's NAGT (National Association of Geoscience Teachers) Eastern Section conference, held at the NOVA Loudoun campus. On Saturday, I led a version of my "Bedrock Geology of Washington, DC" trip for a group of eight conference attendees.

All these photos are from Randy Newcomer, Director of Training and Services for Complete Safety Solutions of Lititz, Pennsylvania, and are posted with his permission... and my annotations!















If you're interested in seeing (most of) these rocks, join next Sunday's Walkingtown, DC tour!

Labels: conferences, dc, field trips, meetings, msse, nova, piedmont

One of my Honors students, Hope W. (author of yesterday's discussion of the Chalk Point Power Plant), kept a tally on Facebook of quips and phrases from this semester's Environmental Geology class. Now that the semester is over, I offer them to the public at large, despite the utter lack of context. Enjoy!


"Imagine how the lava feels."

"Earthlings are made of Earth."

"What do meteorologists study? Hint-- NOT meteors."

"It [the oceanic crust] is like a giant sheet of tissue paper."

[Referring to the continental crust, in comparison to the oceanic crust] "It's light and fluffy, like a souffle."

"We don't know the actual specifics."

"When you go up, you're not going North - you're going away from the Earth."

[Dramatizing the extraction of paleomagnetic data from rocks] "Continent, where was the pole for you 600 million years ago?"

"Oceanic crust is like James Dean and continental crust is like Dick Clark."

"Here's what we know about tectonic plates: some of them are big... some of them are itty-bitty."

"You can't forget Djibouti."

[Referring to the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes] "There was just no one west of that to report how much shaking there was. Or at least no one who spoke English and felt like talking."

"Take my word for it man! I'm a scientist... No, that's not how it works."

"I have a nice layer of peanut butter on my arm."

"The same thing happens with rocks... it just takes longer."

"As continents move along they pick up junk."

"L.A. will end up in the armpit of Alaska."

[Referring to Redoubt] "Drama-queen of a volcano."

[Comparing geologic hazards] "If you use up all your water, then you die and you don't have to experience the earthquake."

"If bamboo collapses and falls on you it doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as brick."

Let me know in the comments if any of these requires an explanation...

Labels: analogies, humor, nova, teaching

Today, I present a guest post from my student Hope W., who described her experiences visiting the Chalk Point Generating Station in Maryland on our Environmental Geology field trip the weekend before last. The essay is posted here with her permission. Enjoy! -CB

The Chalk Point Generating Station is a coal burning power plant owned by the Mirant Corporation. Our guide during our tour was Greg Staggers, the plant manager. There were three main subject areas that Mr. Staggers talked to us about: power generation, the economic supply and demand, and environmental regulations and precautions.

Power Generation:
Mr. Staggers explained how the station has two different types of units. They have steam units and combustion units. Mr. Staggers described how the two different types of units are designed. He said that the steam units are like giant boilers, and that the combustion units are like jet engines. The plant has four steam units and seven combustion units, both types use fossil fuels to produce energy. Mr. Staggers explained how when power is first generated it is at too high of a voltage to be safely used by the public in homes or offices; and how the current has to be run through various lines to transformers and substations in order to be brought down from 20,000 volts (the level generated) to 110-220 volts (the level used in homes and offices.) Mr. Staggers pointed out the transformer field we drove past on the way in on the aerial photograph of the plant explaining that that’s where the process of conversion begins.

In response to Sophia's question about why the plant was built next to the water, Mr. Staggers explained the complex system for using water from the river to cool the equipment in the plant. As he talked in depth about this system he described how ideas improved through time and experience, as well as environmental regulations which lead the plant to finding more efficient and ecological ways of utilizing the river water. Later on when we took our tour through the plant we had the opportunity to see the some pipelines that the river water runs through. The water runs through the pipe-lines to cool the steam that is emitted during the power generation process. When the river water is released back into the river from the plant it has picked up no chemicals, and has only increased in temperature by approximately 20°F.

Mr. Staggers told us about four of the units that get run; units 1 and 2 which are combustion units and units 3 and 4 which are steam units. When running at full capacity units 1 and 2 operate at 90% efficiency, burn 2.5 million pounds of coal per hour, and use 14 megaWatts of the energy produced to operate; and when units 3 and 4 are running at full capacity the burn 650 gallons of oil per minute. Mr. Staggers informed us that the enormous pile of coal we saw on our way in would last for 45 days if the plant were running at full capacity.

Economic Supply and Demand:
In the 1990's the system was deregulated, which basically means that the power generation, wholesaling of the utility, and the supply distribution were all split up. So when the Chalk Point station produces energy they sell it to PJM a 'middleman' who will then sell it to the suppliers like Dominion Power etc. who then sell and distribute the supply to the public. I mentioned the transformer field earlier in this paper in reference to the generation process, but the transformer field has economic implications as well. The transformer field is also where the producers pass of the ownership of the energy to the middleman.

Mr. Staggers explained the bidding system for establishing the market value for each day. In the bidding system if you are over producing you get paid the difference in price from your morning bid in real time. During the tour we got to see the control rooms where the market price rates were being adjusted in real time. In response to Dustin's question about how they know when to produce Mr. Staggers explained how the middle men suppliers make that call based on the morning bids and the actual demand by the public, when the suppliers make the decision about production levels they call the plant to inform them of how much they need to be producing.

In terms of the national economy coal is the cheapest in explicit costs, in equivalent quantities the price for coal is 1/3 that of oil and natural gas prices, which is why more than 50% of the U.S.'s power is generated by coal. In terms of the local economy the Chalk Point station produces a 500 thousand volt ring around D.C. It is estimated that in the next five years 1 million homes will be added to the market that the Chalk Point station caters to.

The demand for coal is influenced by seasonal changes which gives it a cyclical demand. Callan asked if the increased attention on alternative methods of energy has affected the demand for coal in terms of reduction. Mr. Staggers said that no such change has been apparent and that the cyclical trend has followed a predictable pattern.

Environmental Regulations and Precautions:
Mr. Staggers told us about the regulations the plant has been mandated to conform to, as well as what the plant has done of their own accord for the sake of the environment. Some of the changes that the plant made in the past include setting up new stack facilities in 1982 because of environmental regulations. When the clean air act was passed in 1992 brought down their level of pollutants they were releasing into the atmosphere from 1.4 to .7 Further regulations such as; the separated overfire air controls in 2000, selective auto-catalystic reduction in 2007, and selective catalystic reduction in 2008 brought the pollutant rate down to .06. All of the methods above have dropped total output capacity by some amount.

The plant has also put up two boundary nets to protect fish from the areas where hot water is released and two more boundary nets as well as a fine mesh screen to prevent the fish from getting sucked up into the pumps for the cooling system. The plant has many systems in place to reclaim energy where they can to avoid waste, such as how they use residual heat from the coal burning process to heat the incoming air from its current temperature to be closer to the temperature required for being used as an infuser in the combustion process. The plant is in the process of building a "scrubber" which will reduce the sulfur emissions by 98%. The method this "scrubber" will use will allow the plant produce and collect gypsum which the plant will sell for its use in drywall. The plant also has a system set up to collect ash by a precipitation method; the ash collected is also sold for its use in drywall.

The plant has continuous emissions monitors which monitor emission levels of CO2, SO2, and NOx. The data from the monitors is sent quarterly to the State and the E.P.A. In the control room Callan asked a question about the plant's ppm output of CO2. Mr. Staggers said that measure by percentage and he did not know the output in ppm . This discussion lead to a very clear statement by Mr. Staggers that he wasn't convinced that it really made a difference. Mr. Staggers informed us that the plant's output of CO2 is 12% of flue gas volume, which Callan calculated to be 120,000 ppm. From Mr. Staggers' point of view as a producer of a commodity it is hard to see much else besides bottom line explicit costs. This was not his position out of greed, but out of responsibility to keep the company running so he has a job to provide for his family, and his employees as well. On the other hand, scientists cannot escape the implicit costs of CO2 emissions.

There needs to be a level headed discussion in a neutral setting were the two groups can learn to understand each other and start to cooperate. We as individuals and a nation must step up and set the example. When we start working together we will create the safe harbor necessary for understanding and cooperation to grow and flourish.

Labels: coal, energy, environmental, maryland, nova, oil, teaching

Here's the results of a neat little experiment my Environmental Geology students did a couple weeks ago. This is the first time I've run this activity, and I was pleased with the results:

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming, nova, teaching

On May 1, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) will host a public hearing to receive comment on environmental sustainability opportunities within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). Community members are invited to participate with faculty, staff and students at the hearing, scheduled for 9 a.m. in the theater at the Ernst Community Cultural Center on NOVA's Annandale Campus, 8333 Little River Turnpike in Annandale.

"For several years, NOVA has been taking steps to make its buildings and operations more environmentally friendly, more energy efficient and more sustainable," President Robert G. Templin Jr. said. "The Virginia Community College System has now made such efforts a major priority for the entire VCCS."

To fulfill this mission, VCCS Chancellor Glenn DuBois appointed a Task Force on Environmental Sustainability. In his charge to the task force, DuBois said, "The sheer size of the VCCS, with nearly 400,000 students being served in more than seven million square feet of space throughout 220 buildings, demands leadership on the issues of energy efficiency, environmental stewardship and curricula development."

The task force will develop environmental sustainability priorities related to construction, renovation and the operation of facilities. The members will also identify opportunities to work with community partners to support and promote environmental sustainability. In addition, the committee will recommend curricula enhancements and new workforce programs that respond to the growing 'green' economy. Contracting procedures will be evaluated with a goal of implementing procurement practices that promote the use of technologies, products and practices that are environmentally beneficial.

To learn more, contact Ray Bailey, chair of NOVA's Committee on Environmental Concerns, at 703-257-6683 or rbailey@nvcc.edu.

Labels: environmental, nova

Almost a week after the field trip to Old Rag Mountain, and the Facebook-hosted pictures keep trickling in. Here's some shots by NOVA student Eileen Lodovichetti, and an ensuing discussion of feeder dikes and supercontinent breakup.

Here's a shot of the upper reaches of Old Rag, showing the characteristic spheroidal weathering of the Old Rag Granite and the relative lack of trees on top:

photo by Eileen Lodovichetti

...And here's a shot that Eileen took which shows the interior of one of the weathered-out feeder dikes we had to hike through on our way to the summit. You can actually see the classic geoprofessorial arm-waving caught in blurry motion!

photo by Eileen Lodovichetti

This is one of the coolest things about hiking Old Rag: after scrambling up on top of spheroidally-weathered granite domes, you drop into these tabular "hallways." The astute observer will note that the floor is made of a fine-grained, dark-green-colored rock, quite distinct from the light-colored, coarse-grained granite that makes up most of the mountain. These are dikes of metamorphosed basalt that intruded the granite during the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia in the Neoproterozoic era of geologic time.

Here's one of my former Field Studies in Geology students, Mike Nelson, pointing out a similar dike along Skyline Drive, in the main part of the park:


Basically, the story goes like this: Around 1.2 to 1.0 Ga, continental fragments amalgamated into a supercontinent called Rodinia. In Virginia, this is recorded in the rocks of the Blue Ridge province, where the basement consists of granitoids (granites and related rocks) and metamorphosed granitoids (gneisses, mylonites). Among the youngest of these is the Old Rag Granite, which intruded the Pedlar Formation granite gness around 1.0 Ga.

Later, Rodinia broke apart, resulting in an extensional tectonic regime and mafic volcanism. Fractures opened up in the Old Rag Granite and funneled mafic magma towards the surface. Massive eruptions of basalt blanketed the landscape. The resulting layers of basaltic lava are known as the Catoctin Formation. At Old Rag Mountain, we can see some of the plumbing that led to these flood basalt eruptions: these are feeder dikes, because they "fed" the eruption above them.

Because the dikes (which were metamorphosed to greenstone during ~300 Ma Appalachian mountain-building) weather more rapidly than the Old Rag Granite, they are typically recessed into the landscape. That's what makes the "hallways" in the photograph above. Here's two more images, showing these weathered-out feeder dikes:



Check out how there's moderately-developed columnar jointing extending across the dike. These columns form perpendicular to the cooling front, and the dikes would have lost their heat out the sides. In horizontal lava flows, the heat is lost from the top and bottom surfaces, so you get vertical columns. Here, a vertical dike produces horizontally-oriented columns. Hikers appreciate these "steps" as they squeeze through the dikes on their way up the mountain.

Here's a map of part of Shenandoah National Park:


Please ignore the "hover" instructions at the lower right. I've reproduced the "hoverable" image below. Key: the orange is the Pedlar Formation. The pink is the Old Rag Granite, and the green is the Catoctin Formation. Feeder dikes of the Catoctin are shown as green lines.

Now, let's take away the map, and just preserve the orientation of the feeder dikes. This will tell us the overall tectonic stretching direction:
Various plate reconstructions show either Amazonia or the Congo craton offboard of Virginia at the time Rodinia broke apart and the Iapetus Ocean began seafloor spreading. I've illustrated it here as the Congo, but that might be wrong.

So: the hike up Old Rag is great exercise, and offers scenic views, but for those willing to consider the rocks and how they got there, it's an insightful view into the tectonic past.

Lastly, here's a lovely, well-developed weathering rind on the Catoctin meta-basalt (greenstone). When the dark green rock adjusts to the conditions at the Earth's surface, it breaks down, resulting in the tan/"buff" color on the outside. You're watching the rock "rot" from the outside surface, working its way inward:


More on the geology of Shenandoah National Park can be seen at this page on my website.

Labels: appalachians, basalt, blue ridge, field trips, metamorphism, mountains, national parks, nova, plate tectonics, shenandoah, structure, weathering

Last weekend, I took a group of students, mostly from NOVA but also 3 from GMU, up to hike Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park.

Here's a Google Map showing the terrain (and trails, which is a cool new addition to the already cool Google Maps):


The crew discusses debris flow deposits in the forest on the way up the mountain:

photograph by Charlie Corrick

The first spot where we get a nice view out over the valleys below:

photograph by Charlie Corrick

Spheroidal weathering in Catoctin Formation greenstone:

photograph by Jared Fortner

Spheroidal weathering in granite (the Old Rag Granite, 1.0 Ga):

photograph by Charlie Corrick


photograph by Charlie Corrick

Student Jared atop a spheroidally-weathered boulder of the Old Rag Granite:

photograph by me

Grain-size differences in the Old Rag Granite (balanced atop my leg):

photograph by me

Non-foliated Old Rag Granite (showing lovely "blue quartz"):

photograph by me

And the foliated version of the Old Rag Granite:

photograph by me

Labels: appalachians, basalt, blue ridge, field trips, geology, granite, igneous, mountains, national parks, nova, structure, weathering

This fall, Professor of English Joyce Brotton and I will be offering a new linked pair of Honors courses: Her English 244, Survey of English Literature II, will be paired with my Geology 106, Historical Geology. Enrollment is for Honors students or by permission of the instructors only. Both classes will meet in CS 219 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dr. Brotton will teach from 11:30am-12:45pm, then we'll have a lunch break for 45 minutes. At 1:30pm, I'll pick up with lecture until 2:45pm, and on Wednesdays, we will follow that with lab.

Dr. Brotton and I have collaborated in planning the curriculum, which in the literature half of the class will include readings of Darwin, Lyell, and "A Pair of Blue Eyes" by Thomas Hardy (which features trilobite eyes!). Joyce plans to conclude the literature class with The French Lieutenant's Woman, which attempts to reconcile man's place in a world that science is revealing more and more to be indifferent to man. On the geology end of things, writing the field trip reports will hopefully more of a satisfying practice with an English professor on hand to advise!

Interested NOVA students should contact Dr. Brotton or me for more details.

Labels: nova, teaching

Here's some photos from today's Physical Geology class field trip to the Billy Goat Trail. It actually snowed on us a little bit... cold! My student Luke O'Neil took all of these, hosted on his Facebook page, and this is an experiment to see if I can post Facebook photos on my blog... keeping my fingers crossed...

Migmatite:


Il profesore showing tilted tree trunks (knocked in a downstream direction during floods):


Folded graded bed in metagreywacke:


Students circle around an exotic boulder of the Catoctin Formation greenstone (from the Blue Ridge province); the boulder was transported downstream by the ancestral Potomac River when it was flowing on the Bear Island strath, before incision and abandonment of the former river bottom to become a bedrock terrace:

Labels: field trips, geology, maryland, national parks, nova, piedmont, rivers, teaching

NOVA Assistant Professor of Geology (Loudoun Campus) Will Straight will have his paper, "Bone Lesions in Hadrosaurs: Guided Computed Tomography for Paleohistologic and Stable-Isotopic Analysis," published as the featured article in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Way to go, Will!

Labels: dinosaurs, fossils, isotopes, nova

It's my pleasure to inform you that my colleague Ken Rasmussen won this year's John Moss Award for the teaching of geology, as bestowed by the Eastern Section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. I nominated Ken, and was supported by nearly a dozen supporting letters from his legions of current and former students, many of whom credit him with launching them on a career in geology. Congratulations, Ken! (and keep it up!)

Labels: nova, teaching

Last week, I updated my field trip photo page with a fresh batch of images from last spring's Field Studies in Geology course to the Billy Goat Trail. Here are the new shots:












All photos are by Kevin Mattingly, NOVA photographer.

Labels: field trips, maryland, nova, piedmont, teaching

Yesterday, four Honors students and I went out to West Virginia's route 55 (between Wardensville and Moorefield), to look at some sedimentary strata and associated tectonic structures. Our guide was my friend David Dantzler, an enthusiastic amateur geologist. Here's a map of the terrain we traversed:



As you can see, this is part of the Valley & Ridge province, an area of the country defined by Paleozoic rocks that were folded and thrust-faulted during the Alleghenian phase of Appalachian mountain-building. Recently, a new road has been constructed traversing these valleys and ridges. It's a bit of a boondoggle, a pet project of West Virginia senator Robert Byrd which funneled federal dollars into the Mountain State, ostensibly to make it easier for the chicken farmers of Moorefield to get their birdie bits to market on the east coast.

This image ought to give you a sense of the project's scale (big bridge), and how much use it gets (no one on the bridge):


But the U.S. taxpayer's loss is the geologist's gain... There are some pretty spectacular new exposures of Valley & Ridge rocks along the new route 55. Here's the NOVA van parked at an outcrop of Tuscarora Sandstone that is arched up into a broad anticline. Again, notice how few people are driving on route 55 here:


Ooh, look: heavy traffic!


Contact between the lower Tuscarora Sandstone (a Silurian-aged extremely pure quartz sandstone, variably fused to quartzite), and the overlying (darker-colored) formation, which is either the Rose Hill Formation or the Mackenzie Formation at this location:


We found oodles of cool trace fossils:







But it wasn't just sedimentary layers. There were also some cool tectonic structures, like this joint in the Tuscarora, showing a beautifully developed hackle fringe:



Here's some "pencil cleavage" where fine-grained shale develops cleavage that intersects the planes of fissility, causing it to fracture in long slivers:



I slammed on the brakes for this one: an awesome anticline...


I forced David and the students to act out the orientation of the bedding planes at this anticline:


Honors student Jason points out a small thrust fault in the outcrop above him: You can see the offset in a greenish/gray shale layer:


In case it wasn't obvious above, here's a zoomed-in shot, with the offset layer highlighted (the miracles of Photoshop!) and the fault labeled:


We all had a grand day outside, and the rain held off until our return trip, which was pretty great. Thanks to David for showing us these rocks, and thanks to my students for being smart and inquisitive and into field trips.

Labels: appalachians, devonian, field trips, fossils, mountains, nova, politics, primary structures, sediment, silurian, structure, teaching, valley and ridge, west virginia

It's getting to be springtime... and that means field trips!

My first field trip of the semester is tomorrow: my friend David Dantzler has organized a trip to look at stratigraphy and structure out on a new highway in West Virginia. I'm supplying half a dozen Honors students and a NOVA minivan, but David's handling the content. And of course, I'll be on hand to comment on "teachable moments." Looking forward to it.

Other trips upcoming this semester: Billy Goat Trail (x4!), Massanutten Mountain, Old Rag Mountain, Washington DC walking tour, and a weekend-long structural geology trip to the Blue Ridge and Valley & Ridge provinces. I love field trips; really they were the aspect of majoring in geology that appealed to me the most - the fascination with Earth processes took longer to develop.

See you in the field!

Labels: blue ridge, field trips, maryland, nova, piedmont, teaching, valley and ridge, virginia, west virginia

From NASA's Earth Observatory:

Labels: nova, snow

Sam Love, one of the original national staff members of the first Earth Day, will speak on April 22 on the impact of changing our environmental culture. The event will be at 12:30 p.m. in the CE Forum on the Annandale Campus. Free & open to the public.

In his Earth Day 2009 presentation, Love will review some of the early fantasies based on cheap abundant energy. He then lays out some operating rules for a sustainable future and why there is reason for hope.

More information on p. 11 of last week's Intercom.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova

In Environmental Geology lab last week, we were playing with dirt... and sand... and gravel... and other granular materials, piling them up to see the angle of repose.

One of my students, Kristen P., brought in little "Monopoly" houses so that her experiments carried a bit more significance...




I thought this was very clever -- it made you "care" more about the angle of repose when someone's "home" was at stake... Good work Kristen!

Labels: humor, mass wasting, nova, teaching

Even if you don't have iTunes, the NOVA-Annandale Science Seminar series will be televised...

Check at our new webpage: http://www.nvcc.edu/annandale/scienceseminar/

Specific video: Dick Pellerin on math's many uses; Me on my western roadtrip.

Labels: geology, meetings, nova, science and society, travel

Enjoy!

Labels: meetings, nova, tech

Just got a batch of images from the NOVA photographer, Kevin Mattingly. I particularly like this image of last spring's Field Studies class at the Billy Goat Trail:

Here, we're overlooking the upstream end of Mather Gorge, checking out some ~360 Ma lamprophyre dikes exposed there -- but offset on either side of the river!

Labels: devonian, field trips, national parks, nova, piedmont, teaching

Science Seminar: The Tropical Reefs of Roatan

Friday February 20, 2009
CE Forum 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm

Jill Caporale, NOVA Faculty
Dianne Heath & Robert Schreiner, NOVA Students

Join Professor Jill Caporale and her students Dianne Heath and Robert Schreiner as they discuss the reefs, dolphins and mangroves of Roatan, Honduras. Jill Caporale believes that getting students out in the field is the best way to for students to learn and rekindle their "natural sense of wonder."

Jill Caporale has taught Biology and Natural Science at Northern Virginia Community College as an adjunct and full-time faculty since 1988. She has taken students to the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Reefs of Honduras. This year she will be returning with students to investigate the tropical waters off the coast of Roatan, Honduras. So, if you have ever wanted to snorkel coral reefs and swim with dolphins come listen to their talk, or better yet, sign up to go this summer.

Sponsored by the Lyceum and the Math, Science Engineering Division

Labels: meetings, nova, reefs

For those of you who missed it, here's video of Mike Tidwell's talk at NOVA last Thursday.

Labels: action, climate change, global warming, maryland, nova, podcasts and vodcasts, politics, virginia

Because he's coming to campus tomorrow (Thursday), last weekend I watched Mike Tidwell's movie We are all Smith Islanders. It's a 35-minute long documentary about how climate change is effecting the states of Maryland and Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Though it is a political document (and not a scientific documentary), I think it's a worthwhile enterprise because it connects the global to the local. We hear a lot about climate change, but when someone actually walks through Ocean City, Maryland, pointing out what three feet of sea level rise would look like, it fosters a connection based on shared landmarks.

Thanks to archive.org, you can actually watch the movie in low resolution on the Internet. Google video also keeps a copy available.

Or, if you'd prefer it in higher resolution (on DVD), you can find it at the NOVA library.

Labels: action, climate change, dc, global warming, maryland, movies, nova, politics, virginia

As promised, here's some details for the event I mentioned the other day:

2:15- 4:45 Lisa Williams: Various displays of models, samples, artifacts, posters.
2:15 - 2:25 Bill Stanclift: Piano
2:25 -2:30 Reva Savkar : welcome and introduction of first speaker
2:30 - 2:45 Ralph Eckerlin: "Review of Darwin's life and accomplishments"
2:50- 3:10 Tom Macke: "Lincoln"
3:15 - 3:30 Karla Henthorn: "Common Misconceptions About Darwin"
3:35- 3:50 Jill Caporale: "The poetry in Darwin"
3:55 - 4:05 Nan Peck: "fun Lincoln-Darwin game"
4:10- 4:25 Bill Gorham: "Thomas Henry Huxley: Bulldog"
4:30 - 4:45 Callan Bentley: "Charles Darwin, Geologist"

200th Birth Anniversary of Lincoln and Darwin Celebration: The event will be held in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Forum on the Annandale campus of NOVA, Feb 12, 2009, starting at 2:15pm.

Labels: evolution, history, meetings, nova

My clever & creative colleague Reva Savkar (chemistry) is putting together a celebration of the 200th birthday of two important individuals in the history of the world: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born on February 12, 1809. The event will be held in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Forum on the Annandale campus, starting at 2:15pm.

The details are still being organized, but the event will feature short talks, music, and activities both from NOVA faculty and outside guests. Confirmed so far are: Bill Stanclift, Reva Savkar, Ralph Eckerlin, Tom Macke, Karla Henthorn, Jill Caporale, Nan Peck, and Bill Gorham.

I'll be presenting a 15-minute talk, starting at 4:30pm entitled "Charles Darwin, Geologist."

The event is free & open to the public. Join us!

Labels: evolution, geology, history, meetings, nova

Yesterday was our first big snowfall (well, "big" by DC standards) of the year. We got around 3 inches total, but then last night that got covered and compacted by a layer of freezing rain. Here's the scene yesterday morning around 8am from my apartment, looking west over Beach Drive, Rock Creek Park, and the National Zoo (movie is 30 seconds long):



The College was open, though, so in we all trooped. Here's the campus as viewed from Little River Turnpike:



And a few shots of the snow-laden campus...




The snow continued into the afternoon, with predictions of freezing rain for the evening. I had my Physical Geology class, but then the word came down from on high* that NOVA would be closing at 2pm. So, no lab, and no Environmental Geology. We all trooped home to our various classes.

* NOVA has put together an impressive new emergency alert system. It automatically sends e-mails, sends text messages to our cell phones, and (as I found out yesterday in the middle of my Physical Geology lecture) causes a window to open up on all campus computers saying "ALERT: The College will be closing today at 2pm due to snow." I was in the middle of a PowerPoint slide showing why weak bonding in mineral crystal lattices cause cleavage, and BAM suddenly there was a flashing alert up on the screen. Instantaneous notification for the entire class. Another one was open on my computer when I got back to my office. Pretty effective, I think.

Labels: dc, nova, snow

It was announced today that Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joseph Biden, is teaching as an adjunct professor of English for two classes this spring semester at NOVA's Alexandria Campus. Dr. Biden has a 28-year career as an educator, having held a 15-year appointment as a professor of English at the Stanton/Wilmington campus of Delaware Technical and Community College where she taught composition and developmental English. She holds a Master's degree in English from Villanova University and a Master's degree in reading from West Chester University. She earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware in 2007.

Welcome, Dr. Biden!

Labels: news, nova, politics

I'm very pleased to announce that my colleague Ralph Eckerlin, professor of biology at NOVA-Annandale, has been selected as a recipient of the 2009 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. The award is the highest honor for faculty bestowed by the Commonwealth.

From the letter the President of Northern Virginia Community College, Bob Templin, just sent out to all the faculty and staff:

Dr. Eckerlin has served with distinction at NOVA since 1971. He has always given primary attention to effective teaching while also maintaining a strong record of research in his specialization of parasitology and making numerous other contributions to his profession. A previous recipient of college awards as the Student Government Association Most Outstanding Faculty and the Alumni Federation Outstanding Faculty Member, Dr. Eckerlin is praised by students and colleagues as an exceptionally dedicated and inspiring teacher. He takes particular pride in serving as advisor to students seeking admission to professional fields in biology and medicine, and in chairing or serving on committees to bring new faculty to the college who will continue the strong institutional tradition of excellence in the instructional program for biology and other sciences. He has sponsored student trips and conducted research in such locations as Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica. Closer to home, he organizes regular trips to expose students to the wonderfully diverse biota of Virginia, whether in Highland County or the Dismal Swamp.

Beyond NOVA, Dr. Eckerlin has been very active in a number of professional societies, to include serving as president of the Tropical Medical Association of Washington, the Helminthological Society of Washington, and the Virginia Association for Biological Education. He also served as editor of the journal Comparative Parasitology as well as being a member of its editorial board since 1984. His numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals have dealt with a diversity of subjects, including mammals, reptiles, beetles, fleas, lice, nematodes, and protozoans.

Dr. Eckerlin is the seventh NOVA faculty member to receive this prestigious award. This is also the fourth year in a row that a NOVA faculty member has been a recipient. [...and the second year in a row just within the Math, Science, and Engineering division at Annandale -- last year, it was Walerian Majewski in physics!] He and eleven other faculty from Virginia colleges and universities will be recognized at special events in the General Assembly and elsewhere in Richmond on February 19.

Please join me in congratulating our colleague Ralph Eckerlin as one of NOVA's and Virginia's very best!

Bob

Congratulations, Ralph!

Labels: arthropods, mammals, nova

Due to a scheduling mishap, this semester I'll be teaching my Environmental Geology lab in the new Science Learning Center in the Schuler Building on NOVA's Annandale campus.

This past Thursday night was our first session in there. Exploring the new facility, I opened up an old-looking refrigerator back in one corner. "What's in here?" I wondered....



Whoa! A bunch of dead birds! These are, no doubt roadkill (or window-kill) samples that are awaiting preparation as 'study skins.' Under professor Walt Bulmer, NOVA has developed a robust collection of study skins to aid in ornithological studies. (I'll have to shoot some photos of those sometime.)

Though I hadn't expected to see a pile of dead birds in the fridge, I soon recovered from the shock. Before converting to geology, I used to study ornithology, and have spent time prepping study skins in the lab at William & Mary (and once, in my dad's basement, with a Sturnus vulgaris that turned out kind of stinky). Returning to my students working on their lab, passing the anatomical models and the physics references, I thought how refreshing it was to be working in a lab utilized by all the sciences.

I guess in retrospect, I should have suspected the fridge's contents when I saw this cartoon taped to the front of the fridge door:

Labels: birdies, humor, nova, teaching

Labels: art, blogs, humor, nova

Here's a copy of my presentation last week at the NOVA "Power Up Your Pedagogy" conference, hosted here at the Annandale campus (sponsored by our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning). Apparently there were some technical snafus for one (both?) of the scheduled playings of the talk, so I wanted to put it online for anyone who missed it. It's 13:40 in length, available as an .avi file. You'll have to download it to your computer, because I can't figure out how to embed it here.

Other talks from the conference are listed (some with video) on the PUP page on the CETL website.

Labels: blogs, conferences, geology, nova, teaching, tech

Following the success of last year's Climate Change Symposium, this year NOVA will host Mike Tidwell, the dynamic director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, for a talk on global warming and what college campuses can do about it. Mr. Tidwell has a reputation as a terrific speaker, so I'm really looking forward to his talk.

He will be speaking at 11am on Thursday, February 5, in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Theater (CE building) on the Annandale campus of Northern Virginia Community College. The event is free and open to the public. I encourage you to attend if you're in town. A booksigning will follow in the Theater lobby.

Labels: climate change, global warming, maryland, meetings, nova

Howdy, howdy. It's the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. It is also the one-year "blogiversary" of your humble NOVA Geoblog. Our first day on the job, we put up three separate posts of the "short and sweet" variety. Since that time, we've put up posts at an average rate of 1.24 per day (454 posts over 365 days). ("We've" also started referring to "ourselves" in the third-person plural, a disturbing development indeed.)

Some of these posts I feel pretty proud of, in terms of the detail they express, the big ideas they examine, or the language I used to write them. Others have just been meeting announcements, job opportunities, or brief mentions of newsworthy items hosted at other sources. Here's a list of 15 of my favorites:

• Geology along Windy Run, Virginia I
• Geology along Windy Run, Virginia II
• Ultramafics in the Piedmont
• Migmatitic
• Virtual Billy Goat Trail trip
• Another field trip transcript
• Shenandoah NP: Corbin Cabin area
• Western conglomerates, Culpeper Basin
• Massanutten Synclinorium field trip
• Perspectives on coastal tectonics
• Horseshoe crabs of Delaware Bay
• My favorite analogies
• Mineral habit and Japanese watermelon
• Rock varieties of Hawai'i
• Atop Mauna Kea

I think there are some trends here: field trip experiences and analogies are my favorites.

It's been a good year. Since I started this blog, I've travelled to Northern Ireland, Buffalo and Niagara Falls in New York, Montana, Kentucky, Wyoming, the Grand Canyon, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Hawai'i, and as of next week I'm off to Ecuador and (knock on wood) the Galapagos. In that year, I've taught hundreds of students in courses ranging from one-credit field studies to four-credit Honors courses. I also took 14 credits of graduate coursework from Montana State, via the computer and in the field in the northern Rockies. At NOVA, I've gotten involved in some good activities, from greening the College to leading caving trips. I've published some articles and some cartoons, and been contracted to do art ranging from squirrel woodcuts to diagrams of coastal processes in the Gulf states. I got promoted; I got some grants; I expanded and maintained my network of geological contacts throughout the mid-Atlantic region and across cyberspace. I volunteered leading geology walks along the Billy Goat Trail and through Washington, DC, and served in various official roles for the Geological Society of Washington.

...All told, it's been a full year.

The blog has been successful. I've been delighted to get so much positive feedback from readers, and glad that the blog could serve as a case study in articles in Geotimes and EARTH. I'm also grateful for the corrections when I screw something up: I appreciate the critique and feedback. The counter I added in mid-spring (I forget exactly when) has tracked almost 50,000 hits. I put Sitemeter on in mid-August, and it's tallied up ~28,000 visits in those four months, with ~42,000 page views. That is kind of a lot, I think.

I'm very pleased to see that I have not been alone in this endeavor. The geoblogosphere has exploded in diversity and population over this same time, and I'm pleased to have been able to document that with the "Rise of the Geoblogosphere" talk at the Geological Society of Washington (and ensuing post) in September. Thanks very much to everyone who participated in the survey.

My hats off to Maria, Ron, and Andrew for paving the way for the rest of us, and to Chuck, Kim, Brian, and Chris for providing such compelling examples to emulate. I've been delighted to explore the world of blogging in a cadre of 'yearlings' that includes luminaries like Dave, Garry, Bryan, ReBecca, Ralph, Jessica, Silver Fox, Dave, Lee, and Julian, among so many others that I wouldn't be able to list them all. (I leave that to Lutz.) I am delighted to see relative newcomers like Ed, Chris, Chuck, Jesse, Michael, David, and (my former/future student) Jay on the scene; I also hope for the new year to bring the resurrection of some old favorites, like Mel, Chris, Jeannette, and Jim. My sincere apologies if I've left your worthy blog off this incomplete list.

Happy solstice, everyone! Here's to another year of discussion and sharing!

Labels: blogs, nova

Christie asks: What are your top ten geological resolutions for the new year?


For me, the list would include:

1. visiting the Galapagos Islands
2. visiting the high Andes (Cotopaxi, Chimborazo), Ecuador
3. finding a cool outcrop of graded beds in the Martinsburg Formation (late Ordovician turbidites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) that Rick Diecchio told me about last week
4. "walking on the Moho" in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland (late summer)
5. seeing Snowball rocks and Ediacarans on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland (late summer)
6. visiting Egg Mountain paleontological site, Montana
7. joining my colleague Ken Rasmussen's field trip to the Culpeper Basin, a Triassic rift valley in northern Virginia
8. some cool trip next winter break (2009-10): perhaps Patagonia? Or Antarctica?

I've also got some big teaching resolutions:

1. Running a successful and robust Structural Geology course for George Mason University (spring semester).
2. Running a successful and innovation Environmental Geology course for NOVA (spring semester).
3. Running a successful and safe Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course for NOVA (summer semester).
4. Preparing and running a successful and groundbreaking Honors Historical Geology course linked with English Literature 242 at NOVA, where the English professor and I will bridge the two subjects with readings of Lyell, Darwin, "A Pair of Blue Eyes," and others (fall semester).

On other topics:

1. Finish my M.S.S.E. degree (July)
2. Buy a house
3. Put together a series of geology 'vodcasts' on local geology
4. Write a few freelance articles
5. Publish one cartoon per month in EARTH
6. Prepping (cutting and polishing) a backlog of rock samples from all over the place
7. Successfully moving the geology department into our new building

Labels: canada, ecuador, geology, msse, newfoundland, nova, south america, teaching, travel, valley and ridge, virginia

This just in from the office of Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine:

"In higher education, our October actions reduced schools' 2009 base budgets by 5 to 7%. For 2010, I have increased the reductions to 15% for all schools, except the community colleges and Richard Bland, which will have the reduction level increased to 10%."

Especially in light of what I posted earlier today, this does not bode well.

Full text of the governor's remarks here.

Labels: economics, news, nova, politics, virginia

The current issue of Newsweek features an article that quotes NOVA President Bob Templin on how more students are signing up for classes at community colleges like NOVA, just at the same time the state is cutting our funding.

Labels: news, nova, politics, teaching

It's that time of the semester, when the field trips are over, and the field trip essays start rolling in. These papers I assign are intended to be syntheses of the field trips I take my students on. I want them to interpret the landscape as a geologist would, and support each claim about geologic events in the past with supporting evidence observed or discussed on the trip.

I offer my students the opportunity to submit a rough draft of their field trip paper, and then I give them feedback about both content and formatting/writing style, so they have a chance to revise before submitting a final draft. Each semester, about a quarter of the students avail themselves of this opportunity for feedback before the "real" paper is due. Giving them quality feedback is a time-consuming process, but I feel it's important both to cement geologic concepts in their minds, and to guide them in developing their writing skills.

Accordingly, it's been a slow week for posting on this blog. I've been too busy with work. However, this morning it occurred to me that I could capitalize on my grading efforts by sharing a student essay with you all, edits and all. Why do I think you'll be interested in such a thing? (A) I think it gives some insight into the practice of teaching geology at the introductory college level, and (B) I think this is an excellent rough draft for an essay about Washington, DC's geologic history. The student's name, of course, has been redacted:

Labels: cretaceous, dc, geology, nova, ordovician, teaching

Last week was field trip week for me. I led trips to the Billy Goat Trail on Tuesday and Thursday, and to Washington, DC, on Saturday.

On the Physical Geology field trip to the Billy Goat Trail, we saw rocks like amphibolite, metagraywacke, and migmatite:







Hope and Ana checking out the migmatite:


The group poses with the migmatite, to show how close anatexis is to their hearts...


Jane examines lamprophyre in a weathered-out dike:


Noting the characteristics of metagraywacke:




Traversing 'Pothole Alley'... Joel looks chilly...


Our lunch spot... Alex pretends to dive into the Potomac River...


Traversing 'The Traverse':


On the Historical Geology field trip to DC on Saturday, we were amused to find a jack-o-lantern that had facial hair resembling mine...



But that's not all! We also saw some geology. While you can get a more complete picture at my "DC Rocks" webpage, I'll post a few new photos of new outcrops here...

Here's a nice slab of granite (very angular) set in metagraywacke matrix (metamorphosed accretionary wedge complex)...


Here's two members of the Georgetown Intrusive Suite, showing the (earlier) gabbro stoping xenoliths into the (later) granite:


I love field trips. I love seeing my students light up at being outside, at getting a handle on the stuff we talk about all semester in class. I think field trips are super duper important.

Labels: dc, field trips, granite, igneous, maryland, metamorphism, nova, piedmont, teaching, xenoliths

Yesterday, I pulled up the Venetian blinds in my office window at NOVA, and this is what I saw:


Naturally, I had to take a photograph. It's puuurty.

While I had the camera out, I figured I'd shoot a few photos of the rest of my office, since it's full of all sorts of interesting clutter. Rather than explaining what all the doodads are in these photos, I figured it would be more fun to just post them and see if you can identify them all:















Have fun!

Labels: fossils, igneous, maps, metamorphism, minerals, nova, plants, sediment

Starting this month and going into January, Arlington County, Virginia is hosting a series of free workshops designed to help citizens make more environmentally-sustainable choices in their homes and workplaces.


For more information, click here.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova, virginia

We've got a couple of part-time positions opening up in my division here on campus...

Lab Assistant
Trainer & Instructor I, Math, Science & Engineering (Position BIU)

Starting salary rate $15.60/hour, no benefits. Up to 30 hours per week.

Assist in laboratory setups for biology, natural science, and
chemistry. Clean and organize labs. Store equipment, models and supplies as
directed. Perform other tasks as directed. Required: A.S. in chemistry or
biology. Desired: B.S. in biology or chemistry. Previous experience in lab setup
for college labs. Open until filled.

Science Learning Center Coordinator
Trainer Instructor I, Math, Science & Engineering (Position BIV)

Starting salary rate $25/hour, no benefits. Hours as needed, up to 25 hours
per week.

Assist in setting up and coordinating the Science Learning
Center. Provide help with student review, tutoring, and advising outside of
regularly scheduled class and labs. Organize study sessions and open study
hours. Gather needed equipment and supplies; properly store and inventory
these materials. Required: Bachelor's in science or related field required.
Master's degree in science preferred. Desired: experience teaching college
science courses; ability to work well with students, faculty and staff. Open
until filled.

If you're interested in more details, e-mail Mary Vander Maten at mvandermate@nvcc.edu. To be considered for any position, a Virginia State Employment Application must be received in the Human Resources office by 5:00 p.m. on the position closing date. Employment with NOVA is contingent upon the successful completion of a required background check. A Virginia State Employment Application is required to apply for all positions. You may download a Virginia Employment Application from this link (use MS Word 2003; you can then type on the form, and then submit it via preferred method of e-mail attachment).

Labels: nova

Several years ago, (former) NOVA student Theresa R. put together a nice little webpage with rock and mineral photos. My favorite part is a "gray rock quiz" at the end. Check it out and see how well you do!

Labels: igneous, metamorphism, minerals, nova, sediment, websites

As has been mentioned elsewhere, Virginia governor Tim Kaine made some big budget cuts last week. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a rule that they must have a balanced budget every year. So with the economy in such shabby shape and Virginia's income predicted to have significant shortfalls, Governor Kaine has decided to trim the Commonwealth's budget. The official revenue projections forecast a shortfall of $973.6 million for fiscal year 2009 and $1.54 billion for fiscal year 2010, or just over $2.5 billion for both years. According to a press release from Richmond, "Governor Kaine will balance the FY 2009 budget through state agency savings and spending reductions of over $348 million and additional steps, including a withdrawal of about $400 million from the Revenue Stabilization Fund."

Two entities in the state government that are getting hit particularly hard by the proposed changes are (1) the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources and (2) higher education.

(1) As I mentioned earlier in the week, this was an issue of much discussion at the Virginia Geological Field Conference last weekend. I would like to share here an excerpt from an e-mail I got after the conference from Chuck Bailey (W&M), the president of the VGFC:

Unfortunately, with Virginia's looming budget crisis, the State is planning to severely cut if not eliminate the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources (DGMR). Here are some of the planned cuts:

• 9 (out of a staff of 21) will be laid off
• 1 staff member will be transferred to the Division of Oil and Gas
• 4 staff members will be reassigned to support the Abandoned Mine Land project
• DGMR will be left with a staff of 4 on state-funded positions (of which 3 are currently supervisory) and will not, in any substantive way, be able to serve the Commonwealth. Details of the plan are on pages 14-15 of the Governor's budget reduction plan.

We have an obligation to fight these cuts with vigor. DGMR has served the Commonwealth well and needs to be maintained, even through the lean times. For
me it is clear that these cuts are a deliberate action to eliminate DGMR; consider the fact that within the Department of Mines, Minerals & Energy, of which DGMR is one of six divisions, the only layoffs are being incurred by DGMR.

Not only are these cuts are extremely shortsighted, but inherently unfair.
What can be done about this?

The most important decision maker who is likely to consider input from DGMR customers is the Secretary of Commerce and Trade. He needs to know how people use DGMR products/services, especially if they use them to make money or protect people and property, and why DGMR is important to the Commonwealth. Company letterhead is preferable. He is:

Patrick O. Gottschalk
Secretary of Commerce and Trade
P.O. Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218

The Acting Director of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (which includes the DGMR) is:

Benny R. Wampler, Acting Director
Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
P.O. Drawer 900
Big Stone Gap, VA 24219

A letter to the Governor can't hurt either:

Governor Timothy Kaine
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219

People should contact their own Delegates and Senators.

A Virginia Geological Field Conference Yahoo! listserv has been set up to facilitate discussion for those who wish (search "thevgfc"). [Note: I would encourage you to read this discussion, as it points out that the total savings are pretty meager (~$10,000 for the upcoming fiscal year, because of severance pay and what-not) considering the crippling cut in services. -CB]

We need to act quickly and with forceful clarity on this matter.

Thanks,
Chuck Bailey
President, Virginia Geological Field Conference

Please take the time to write a letter to one or more of these officials to let them know what you think of the proposed cuts. Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to Lee Allison, state geologist of Arizona, who posted on this issue earlier today.

(2) The second major area where budget cuts are hurting this blogger is in the 5% cuts to higher education in the Commonwealth. Though I utilize the maps and studies produced by the DGMR, their budget cuts don't effect my paycheck. But when the Virginia Community College System has to slash its budgets by 5%, that does change my bank account balance. NOVA faculty and staff got an e-mail from our president last Thursday (10/9), informing us that though the College would continue to provide its services essentially uninterrupted with a 5% cut, faculty salary increases, scheduled for November, would be "delayed until July of next year." This is a real bummer, though for me personally the bright side of it is that I got my promotion before all this went down, so at least I secured that pay raise before things went sour. Just the same, I'm going to miss the extra cash that was 'promised' on the contract I signed at the beginning of the academic year. With everything getting more expensive, it's a tough on faculty when their salaries don't keep up with inflation.

So it's looking kind of grim in the Commonwealth, folks. While I don't think a letter-writing campaign will effect the higher education cuts much, the DGMR is a small entity that has gotten hit disproportionately hard. If you can write a letter to help save the DGMR, please do. It's an important state agency that does great work. Thanks!

Labels: economics, nova, virginia

Yesterday, I mentioned that the main point of this weekend's field trip was to attend the Virginia Geological Field Conference in Marion, Virginia.

We arrived on Friday night at Hungry Mother State Park, and got some background information and logistical direction from the trip's leaders and the various officers of the VGFC. We also got some sobering news about how Virginia budget cuts will affect the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources... but more on that tomorrow.

On Saturday morning, we headed out to examine the geology of the Pulaski and Saltville thrust blocks, two of the slices of Paleozoic sediments that got shoved bodily northwestward during the Alleghenian phase of Appalachian mountain-building. The point of the trip was to examine the structure and stratigraphy of these two thrust sheets, in an attempt to compare and contrast them. Both are an example of "thin-skinned" tectonics, where sedimentary strata are deformed (folded/faulted), but they are disconnected from the tougher underlying "basement" rocks (the crystalline rocks of the North American continent beneath). Sliding along a big basal fault called a decollement, these sheets of sedimentary rocks created the northwestern fringe of the Appalachian mountain belt; a zone called the "fold and thrust belt." (This is in contrast to the "thick-skinned" style of deformation exemplified by the Blue Ridge province immediately to the east, in which the basement rock is itself deformed, and shoved up on top of these younger sedimentary strata.)

Here's two of the three field trip leaders: Loren Raymond (holding map) and Bill Whitlock (talking into the microphone), giving us relevant details for our first field stop:


Fred Webb (the third trip leader) used the same technique of large graphics as an aid in explaining the local geology. Here, he explores the geology of Saltville, VA, from a scenic overlook:


Here's Fred and Loren using another visual prop to illuminate the distribution of sediment types (Knox dolomite versus Moshiem limestone) on a farm in the Rich Valley:

Does anyone else out there use large visual aides like these on field trips? I think it's a pretty good idea.

There were a lot of people who attended the conference: over 120! Here's the crowd at the Saltville Overlook stop:


...and the throngs of geologists shutting down traffic on the way to another stop:


...and still more geologists all over the right-of-way at our final stop of the day:

Kudos to the trip organizers for coming up with a coherent way of running the trip with so many participants!

So why were we there? ...To look at these deformed sedimentary strata, and increase our understanding of the deformation mechanisms that accomodated strain during Appalachian mountain-building. Here's a look at the Max Meadows tectonic breccia, a zone of crumbled rock at the base of the Pulaski Fault:


Just above the breccia, the rock is still pretty deformed. Here's some intense folding and boudinage in dolostone & shale layers:


At another location, Honors student Hope W. shows a fault in the Nolichucky limestone:


In other places, folds were the main variety of strain observed in the rocks. Here, we see this in the Honaker dolomite (with elbow for scale):


Ditto for this exposure of the (Cambrian) Nolichucky limestone (enthusiastic caver for scale):


After a superb lunch put on by a church group, we strolled out in some karstic fields in the Rich Valley. Here, several field trip participants drop down into a sinkhole:


I was interested to see that there were a lot of Mississippian-aged evaporite deposits in this corner of Virginia. Saltville's salt was from the Maccrady Formation, as is this gypsum (note fingernail scratch mark):


Here's the spectacular final outcrop of the day, where we looked at deformation within the Cambrian-aged Nolichucky and Honaker Formations, as well as the Mississippian-aged Maccrady Formation they override at this location on the Saltville Thrust Fault:


Of note to you environmental types out there: Saltville was not only the "salt capital of the Conferderacy," but it was also the site of the very first Superfund site (due to dumping of mercury as a byproduct of soda ash + chlorine production).


And I'll just conclude the photo section of the post with a couple of photos of cool spiders we saw. Each of these arachnids is a good three inches in length (including legs):

I think the upper one is a 'garden spider.' The bottom one is silver! I've never seen a silver spider before...


All in all, it was a good day in the field. We returned pleasantly tired and hungry, and had dinner at the Hungry Mother State Park "The Restaurant". Over food, we discussed the pros and cons of field trips like this, and slept well that night.

I was particularly pleased to meet up with and hang out with folks like Cy Galvin (part of my pre-GSW dinner group), Jon Tso (Radford University), Pete Berquist (Thomas Nelson Community College), Amy Gilmer (Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources), and Chuck Bailey (College of William and Mary). Pete, Amy, Chuck, and I are all W&M geology department alumni. Chuck mentioned the good news that he will soon be joining the geoblogosphere too -- watch this site for an announcement of his (surely to be excellent) geology blog as soon as it goes live.

Labels: arthropods, conferences, field trips, nova, stratigraphy, structure, valley and ridge, virginia