You are browsing the archive for December 2010 - Mountain Beltway.
31 December 2010
Friday fold: French Broad basement
The Friday fold visits the French Broad Massif of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge province.
30 December 2010
A whopper of a mystery rock from the Golden State
When I was out in California in October 2009, about the same time that Garry Hayes passed me on the highway heading up to Yosemite while I was headed down towards the Modesto Airport, I pulled over to check out some rock exposures on the side of the road. This was near the Don Pedro Reservoir (right about here). While standing there, my attention was caught by a strange looking …
29 December 2010
GoSF9: Pleistocene dunes
The penultimate episode of Callan’s more-than-a-week-long series on the geology of the San Francisco region: today we briefly visit the sand dunes that covered San Francisco Peninsula during the Pleistocene.
28 December 2010
GoSF8: Fractures
The 8th edition of the ongoing “Geology of San Francisco” series examines brittle fractures and the chemistry they host along their planar surfaces.
25 December 2010
GoSF7: Serpentinite and mélange
Merry Christmas! Along with the red cherts of last Tuesday, enjoy today’s green rocks — serpentinite and serpentinite mélange of Marshall Beach, west of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
24 December 2010
GoSF6: Graywacke turbidites
The geological tour of San Francisco continues with an examination of the graywacke deposits of the
Friday fold: Mars Hill terrane
Today’s Friday Fold comes to us via Pete Berquist of Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia. Check it out: Pete explains what’s going on here: I cannot provide an exact location but this is within the Mars Hill Terrane (MHT), which is an distinctive swath of Mesoproterzoic basement extending ~50 km x 100 km within the North Carolina Blue Ridge. It may be analogous with the Stage Road Gneiss …
23 December 2010
GoSF5: (Wildlife interlude)
“GoSF” = Geology of San Francisco As I am sure you are aware, I’m taking this week to write up the three field trips I took last week to examine the geology of San Francisco and neighboring areas. My plan is to cover: Introduction and overview Seafloor basalt Deep sea chert Kirby Cove, Marin Headlands (wildlife interlude) today Graywacke turbidites Serpentinite and mélange Fractures and the chemistry along them Pleistocene …
22 December 2010
GoSF4: Kirby Cove
Part 4 of the ongoing series examining the geology of the San Francisco area. In today’s post, Callan visits Kirby Cove in the Marin Headlands, where intensely deformed chert can be found on one end of the cove, pillow basalts on the other, and an “artificial dune” in the middle.
21 December 2010
Travels of 2010
I’ve been asked to put up a post detailing travels from the year now concluding. You got it! The first day of January dawned for me in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had just gotten done with one of the best trips I’ve ever taken, to Patagonia in December 2009. The capital of Argentina was a stop-over for a few days on the route back north to DC. On New Year’s …
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.