Deducing my first anticline

When I was done with my sophomore year at William & Mary, I embarked on a time-honored tradition among W&M geology majors: the Geology 310 Colorado Plateau field course. Jess alluded to this same course in her Magma Cum Laude contribution to this month’s Accretionary Wedge geology blog “carnival,” too. My version of Geology 310 [...]

Geology of Massanutten Mountain, Virginia

Here’s a new video from Greg Willis, the same guy who brought us a fine video on Piedmont geology. In this new opus (20 minutes), Greg details the geology of the Massanutten Synclinorium (Shenandoah Valley, Massanutten Mountain, and Fort Valley) in western Virginia. WordPress isn’t letting me embed it here, but you should go and [...]

Volcanic features of the Rockies trip

This weekend, I wanted to share some of the best work from this year’s Rockies field course students. Let’s start with a nice video by Marcelo Arispe: I thought this was a really nice job making a video using still images and a voiceover. The only thing I would change would be in the Gallatin [...]

River landscape evolution

I’ve developed a little cartoon diagram to show four stages of river landscape evolution. I use this image in Physical Geology when discussing how running water erodes the land. Check it out: There are two rows, and four columns. The columns are the four stages of river landscape evolution: youth, maturity, old age, and rejuvenation. [...]

Blogspring

World! …I have an announcement! Three of my structural geology students from this past semester are now geoblogging… can’t say I had anything to do with that, but there it is. They are: Joe Maloney at Fossiliferous Weekly Aaron Barth at Got The Time and “AlanP” at Not Necessarily Geology Please check them out, and [...]

Butter Buster animation

A million years ago, I posted about my inaugural attempt to use the Butter Buster to illustrate shear zone deformation to my structural geology students. Today, using the UnFREEz program to make an animated GIF (Thanks, Lockwood!), I give you the Butter Buster animation:

“Geology of Skyline Drive” w/JMU

I mentioned going out in the field last Thursday with Liz Johnson‘s “Geology of Skyline Drive” lab course at James Madison University. We started the trip south of Elkton, Virginia, at an exposure where Liz had the students collect hand samples and sketch their key features. Here’s one that I picked up: Regular readers will [...]

Ball & pillow in cleaved Swift Run Formation?

On my structural geology field trip this past weekend, I made one major modification compared to last year’s iteration. I added a fifth detailed “field study area” at an outcrop of the Swift Run Formation, a Neoproterozoic sedimentary unit that is discontinuous in extent between the underlying Blue Ridge basement complex and overlying Catoctin Formation [...]

The working life

It’s a rough life, working in the places I have to work… here are a few photos from yesterday’s field trip on the Billy Goat Trail with my NOVA Physical Geology students. Photos are courtesy Dr. Meg Coleman, who joined us for the hike. A post-lunch lecture on river incision (note the two prominent bedrock [...]

Here, ptyggie ptyggie ptyggie!

Yesterday, I took my GMU structural geology class to the Billy Goat Trail, my favorite local spot for intriguing geology. Unlike last year, we managed our time well enough that we got to clamber around on the rocks downstream of the amphibolite contact. Here’s Sarah, Lara, Kristen, and Alan, negotiating a steep section: Justin, Joe, [...]