You are browsing the archive for May 2010 - Page 2 of 3 - Mountain Beltway.
16 May 2010
Stonefly
This weekend I went camping with my family in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, near Berryville. I poked around with river cobbles and experienced fluvial dynamics firsthand with an inner tube ride down the Shenandoah River, but mainly I turned off the geology part of my brain. Instead, the brain enjoyed idling, and thinking about how to throw a frisbee, and listening to bluegrass music, and eating. The only photos I took …
Macro Damselfly
I realize the geological blogging has been rather light around these parts lately – just one more day of “fluff” posts… Here’s a damselfly, photographed close-up last Thursday along Route 340 south of Elkton, Virginia. There were also some rocks there… more on them tomorrow.
14 May 2010
Gorgeous poison ivy
Spent the day in the field yesterday with Liz Johnson of James Madison University and her fun group of students in a “Geology of Skyline Drive” summer course. More on the geology later… For now, I just wanted to toss a group of photos of poison ivy up here. Look at this beautiful plant! Look, but don’t touch!
13 May 2010
Mount Taranaki
Searching around for the current Where on Google Earth, I found this astonishing place in western New Zealand: That’s Mount Taranaki, and evidently the vegetation change you see in the circular colored shape around the mountain must be due to a protected-area boundary. Check out the radial drainage pattern on that sucker! Check it out yourself here.
11 May 2010
Lola and the maps
My cat Lola has a thing for big sheets of paper, particularly maps. Here she is this morning, “helping” me plan a summer trip to Turkey:
9 May 2010
Bouquet
In honor of Mother’s Day, I offer up an unusual bouquet of flowers… These are not really flowers, of course, but an odd form of lichen that I found in the Crazy Mountains of Montana last summer, growing on a spruce tree. Freaky little things, eh? All shots are with the macro function on: the black circles measure about 0.5cm across. Happy Mother’s Day!
8 May 2010
Hand lens + iPhone → Macrocamera
Ever since I saw this at Microecos and Myrmecos, the staff here at “Mountainecos” have been wanting to try it out. Behold my first three iPhone photos supplemented by a hand lens (Belomo triplet, at a distance of about 1.5 cm from the subjects): That’s a trilobite and a penny, by the way. Try it out; post your results!
7 May 2010
"Climate Change and the Integrity of Science"
The following letter, signed by 255 members of the National Academy of Science, appears in the current issue of the journal Science. I wholeheartedly concur with the content of this letter, and republish it here in the interest of getting its message out to the world. Please take the next four minutes of your life to read it. As a responsible citizen of the planet Earth, I encourage you to …
6 May 2010
"Those aren't pillows!"
In the 1987 comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, John Candy and Steve Martin have a funny experience. It involves a cozy hotel room (one bed only) and the two travelers are huddled up for warmth. As he wakes up, John Candy thinks he is warming his hand “between two pillows.” At hearing this, Steve Martin’s eyes pop wide open, and he yells, “Those aren’t pillows!” They jump up, totally discombobulated. …
4 May 2010
Hackles, ribs, plumes
Today, you get a photo from GMU structure student Nik D. This is a small exposure in the Hampshire Formation (Devonian) on New Route 55 in West Virginia. It shows a fine example of plumose structure with the not-often-seen concentric ribs running perpendicular to the ‘plumes.’ At the edge of the joint, you can see the flaring fringe of hackles. Top edge of a Rite-In-The-Rain field notebook for scale: Where …
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.