28 January 2011
Friday fold: Mavericks
Posted by Callan Bentley
On Monday, a post at Geology in Motion about an injured surfer alerted me to a beautiful bathymetric expression of today’s folds offshore of California’s primo surfing locale, a break called Mavericks.
According to the source website, the sinuous ridges we see in the offshore bathymetry are Pliocene sedimentary strata. Movement along the San Gregorio Fault folded and uplifted these strata. Apparently, this submarine configuration is instrumental in producing the notoriously big waves at Mavericks.
You can also see these folds in Google Maps, though that application’s hokey shoreline “wave effect” obscures the best expression of the contorted strata.
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.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Am Geophysical Union and sciseekfeed, Chris Rowan. Chris Rowan said: Friday fold: Mavericks http://bit.ly/faOUE6 […]
There is a shoreline example of these gorgeous folds of the Purisima Formation a bit farther south at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, Princeton, CA: locally known as the “Bathtub Syncline”. Easy to visit at low tide:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=The+Strand,+Moss+Beach,+CA&aq=0&sll=37.526303,-122.515819&sspn=0.010653,0.022638&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=The+Strand,+Moss+Beach,+San+Mateo,+California+94038&ll=37.526418,-122.517332&spn=0.002663,0.005659&t=h&z=18
Just catching up on blog-reading – for anyone interested, there are some details on these great folds on my post:
http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/03/californias-underwater-terrain-sandstones-folds-and-a-very-active-fault.html
Awesome — I had forgotten you had written that. Thanks for the link and the reminder — much more substantive than this one!
🙂