You are browsing the archive for January 2013 - Mountain Beltway.
31 January 2013
Passage Creek in flood
After a night of torrential rain, Callan wakes to find his sole (vehicular) route to the outside world under several feet of flood water.
Industrious iridescent blue wasps
A friend of the family sent me these photos from coastal Ecuador, where these fast-working wasps rapidly constructed a nest. Photo #1 is from Tuesday morning, and photo #2 is on the afternoon of the same day!
30 January 2013
Sand avalanche animated GIF
Some of the dynamics of small-scale mass wasting in granular materials are captured in this animated GIF from sand dunes in Death Valley.
29 January 2013
Trona Pinnacles, California
South of Searles Lake is a distinctive landform: the Trona Pinnacles. This multi-image photomosaic is too small for GigaPan, but I’ve made a medium-sized version of it that can be hosted here. You’re going to have to click through to see it large, though. Click to enlarge These are tufa towers (like we saw at Mono Lake), all in a cluster. If you view it from above, you can see …
28 January 2013
Asbestiform ice
I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before, but I thought this was a particularly impressive example, found in my back yard over the weekend. Pipkrakes (ice “fibers”) with iron oxides and oak leaves, Fort Valley, Virginia, January 2013. Dana saw some in Seattle, too.
25 January 2013
Friday fold: Gansbaai
A small mountain inland of Gansbaai, South Africa (where one goes to cage-dive with great white sharks) shows some of the folding characteristic of the Cape Fold Belt. Let’s zoom in… A few bedding traces annotated, to ease your armchair fold-viewing experience. I think this is my final photo from South Africa… Wow. Only took me 1.05 years to get them all up on this blog. Next up: polishing off …
24 January 2013
Faults
These are exposed on the road leading in to Death Valley from the Panamint Valley to the west. That’s all I’ve got time for today, folks – gotta get to work.
23 January 2013
Western Inyo gravel strata
This image is from the canyon in which route 168 ascends the Inyo Range from Big Pine, California. View is to the south/southwest. Those are gravel layers that dip gently westward. I think they’re associated with the underlying Waucobi Lake Beds, which are Plio-Pleistocene in age. The lake beds are made of finer stuff, but I think these gravels could be alluvial fan/delta complexes that prograded out into the lake. …
22 January 2013
Fold mystery – UPDATED
What can you tell me about this new fold sample I recently acquired? Width of sample is 12.5 cm. The face you’re looking at was cut but not polished. Here’s a close up: With layering annotated, to highlight the disharmonic nature of these folds: Anyone have any guesses what’s going on here? ——————– UPDATE —————— Simon Wellings guessed it – this is a lasagna! I changed the color in Photoshop …
21 January 2013
Monday macrobug: ladybug infestation
October 2012 was a bumper month for macrobugs here at Bentley Farm. But… none more so than the ladybugs: One of the downsides to living way out in the sticks is that we have to deal with a lot of insects. Mostly, I relish this interaction, as the “Monday Macrobug” series attests. But the gnats, the ticks, the black widow spiders – they’re collectively a bit of a bummer. Add …
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.