You are browsing the archive for August 2013 - Mountain Beltway.
30 August 2013
Friday fold: Archean BIF from Montana
My NOVA colleague Shelley Jaye brought this gorgeous banded iron formation fold back from the Archean of Montana: Gorgeous to think about what this rock represents: (1) an anoxic atmosphere, a world where iron was able to dissolve in seawater; (2) some addition of oxygen, causing the iron to precipitate out as iron oxide minerals, (3) burial to some enormous depth where rocks behave gooey-like, (4) tectonic stresses that caused …
29 August 2013
Guest post: Glaciation in the Tetons
This is the fourth of several guest posts that appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Tony Robinson Old Dominion University [youtube=”www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTWNmUNbBBU”]
28 August 2013
Guest post: The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff in the greater Yellowstone area
This is the third of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Matthew Mann University of Virginia The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff is a 2.1 Ma tuff deposit that is centrally located in Yellowstone (Figure 1), but can be found throughout much of the United States (Figure 2). The …
27 August 2013
Guest post: The Belt Supergroup in Glacier National Park
This is the second of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Cate Pearson University of Virginia A drive along Going-to-the-Sun Road is an amazing experience for many reasons. To any traveller, the stunning vistas and landscapes are breathtaking. To the more geologically inclined, a journey through Glacier …
26 August 2013
Guest Post: Glaciation in Glacier National Park
This is the first of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Madeleine Rushing Northern Virginia Community College Sedimentary deposition typically is seen as horizontal strata, layered one on top of the other with oldest deposits on the bottom, getting progressively younger with each layer. Which makes sense, …
22 August 2013
Natural Bridge, Virginia
Our three-day karst theme wraps up today with a visit to Natural Bridge, Virginia, an impressive sight: I went to Natural Bridge early last week to give a talk to a group of Road Scholars (an Elderhostel-like program) about the Snowball Earth. Part of my compensation for the talk was a night’s lodging at the Natural Bridge hotel, meals, and tickets to the Natural Bridge’s suite of six tourist attractions, …
21 August 2013
A visit to Luray Caverns
To continue with the karst theme I initiated yesterday, let me share a few photos today from a visit last week to Luray Caverns, a large show cave in Page County, Virginia near the town of Luray. This was my first visit to Luray Caverns since I was a child. Probably it had been thirty years since I last trod these limestone halls… It was nice to go back. While …
20 August 2013
A new old sinkhole on Oranda Road
Take a look at this… Doesn’t look like much, does it? But it’s actually the surface expression of a vast, long-lived sinkhole. If you walk over to the hole and look in, you can’t see the bottom. It’s semi-supported by limestone boulders, but between the boulders, the soil and gravel filter down, down, down, like the sands in an hourglass. My friend and neighbor Diane Artz Furlong, who also shared …
19 August 2013
Monday macrobug: Saddleback caterpillars
My neighbor, the artist Diane Artz Furlong, photographed these extraordinary caterpillars in her garden last week. With her permission, I’m reposting the photos here… Diane writes that, Just when I thought I was done with the Japanese beetle onslaught (not!) I find these guys on my rose bush. I would never have found them, though, had I not brushed my hand up against them. They sting! Quite painfully, too. They …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.