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8 August 2023
Three new videos from Montana
I spent several enjoyable weeks in Montana last month, and shot some new video content there for my YouTube channel. Here are three videos that may be of interest to readers of this blog:
7 May 2021
Friday fold: Lynchburg Group
On his way to get his COVID vaccine, Callan visits a new outcrop showing folded and faulted strata of the Neoproterozoic Lynchburg Group.
11 July 2019
A submarine slump complex at Sandy Cove, Newfoundland
Traveling in Newfoundland, Callan visits a seaside outcrop showing a Proterozoic submarine slump complex, overprinted by tectonic cleavage and weathered by the sea.
13 May 2017
Slump palimpsest, Corridor H
There’s a section of my favorite road, the lovely nowhere-to-nowhere Corridor H, that seems to be having some issues with slumping. I noted this in November of 2015, and I return to the topic today. Here’s a look at the slope, with old drainage “French drains” installed, and a fresh scarp transecting it just the same: I see at least three small scarps there. A short distance further to the …
10 September 2016
Peat slide!
Not only does it turn out that peat grows on hill tops, not just valley bottoms, but it can slough off and create “peat slides” too!
21 April 2016
Firsthand reports from Canoa, Ecuador after the quake
Callan’s mother-in-law lives in one of the most strongly-shaken regions of Ecuador. Here, she and her boyfriend recount the experience of the earthquake Saturday night and its aftermath. Includes 8 photos from the scene.
6 January 2016
Slumped boulder on Marshall’s Beach, San Francisco
The week before the AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco experienced heavy rain and strong coastal wave action. These two phenomena liberated a big boulder of serpentinite on Marshall’s Beach. As it moved downhill, it opened up a scarp with views into the colluvial soil horizons.
30 November 2015
Slump in progress on Corridor H
I was out on Corridor H last week, looking at rocks with my Honors student, and on the way back from the field work, I noticed this: Click to enlarge That’s a fresh slump scarp running across a slope that is gradually sliding downhill. (The left half of the image is moving down relative to the right.) To judge from the rip-rap-filled culverts, this slope must have a previously-documented history …
24 December 2014
A rock slide and a protalus rampart (?) on the trail to Helen Lake
A hike to Helen Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, brings your intrepid geoblogger face to face with a fresh landslide and a curious landform parallel to the glacial valley. Is it a pro-talus rampart?
3 July 2014
Bell Canyon’s Permian submarine landslide
What are these Border to Beltway students up to?… Clearly, they are all immersed in their field notebooks, sketching away. This was in March, in west Texas. There must be something worth drawing at this road cut… A clue can be seen on the wall of rock behind them. There, you can find features such as this: And this: And this: Those are outsized clasts of gray limestone in fine-grained …
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.