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7 June 2012
Plane views: Flatlands edition
More photos from the flight from Reno to Minneapolis in March. The photos in today’s post come from the air above the Dakotas and Minnesota. First up: a series showing the intersection of natural patterns (presumably related to ground moraine) and the palimpsest geometric regularity of anthropogenic designs: Are these kettles? A close up look at one frozen lake, gleaming like a jewel in this dun landscape: Next, consider this …
13 May 2012
Virginia’s seven Shenandoahs
The word “Shenandoah” is thought to mean “daughter of the stars,” a lovely turn of phrase even if there’s no evidence for it. The name has been applied to a variety of features in the Commonwealth of Virginia. One is the Shenandoah River, and the valley in which it flows. Here’s a look at the North Fork of the Shenandoah, northwest of Massanutten Mountain: Then there is the political entity …
22 March 2012
Plane views
Here are some photos out the window of my flight home from California the week before last… Snow on the north sides of mountains, but not on the south sides (view is from the south towards the north): Same thing here: And again… And again… it would appear that our route from Reno to Minneapolis had us routed over the northern hemisphere! Variation on the same theme: light-colored sand deposits …
19 February 2012
Plane views
A few scenes out the left side of the airplane from when I flew from El Paso to Houston a week and a half ago… Sand dune field overprinting desert vegetation and human roadways: Outcrop pattern of horizontal strata (tracing out the contours of this hill), and the weird geometry of human road systems: More contour-hugging outcrops of horizontal strata, and a vertical joint set: Same thing: Bajada (apron of …
15 February 2012
Colluvium-choked channel in cross-section
After seeing the contact of the Campus Andesite with Western Interior Seaway sedimentary rocks (Cretaceous in age), we moved a bit on down the line, and saw this disconformable contact between the Cretaceous shales below, and a bouldery sedimentary breccia above. Note the concave-up shape of the contact to the left of Elizabeth Nagy-Shadman (of Pasadena City College, California): that’s probably an old river channel scoured into the shale bedrock, …
25 October 2011
Meanders of the south fork of the Shenandoah River
Some fall photographs from 2007, taken of the south fork of the Shenandoah River, southeast of Massanutten Mountain, in Virginia’s Valley & Ridge province. Photos are by my NOVA colleague, the biologist (and pilot) Mike Peglar: Our leaves are changing color now, and I’d imagine if we were soaring over the Shenandoah Valley this morning, we would see something very similar to these images.
13 October 2011
Superior Craton trip, stop 1
The first stop on our pre-GSA field trip to the subprovince boundaries of the Superior Craton was a place just north of Virginia, Minnesota, where the Mesabi Iron Ranges are mined (same Proterozoic banded iron formations that were portrayed as the backdrop of the mining activity depicted in the film North Country). The pull-off is locally known (to geologists) as “Confusion Hill,” but marked on the roadside sign as the …
16 September 2011
Turbidity in Chesapeake Bay
Hurricane Irene passed this way two weeks ago, and dumped a lot of rain on the mid-Atlantic region and the northeast. As a result, runoff increased, rivers swelled, and sediment was mobilized. Some of that sediment was suspended and transported downstream. On Tuesday, I got this e-mail from my colleague Ken Rasmussen, who took students out on an oceanography field trip to Chesapeake Bay a week after the storm: Was …
27 August 2011
Why those curves, Rock Creek?
On Tuesday morning, before the earthquake hit, I answered an e-mail about DC faults. I get unsolicited e-mails all the time (and occasionally phone calls, too). The contact comes from people who have a geological question, find my blog, and figure that I might be willing to answer it for them, or to direct them to someone more knowledgeable. Sometimes they ask me to identify a rock. I see answering …
10 May 2011
Four new gigapans from the Billy Goat Trail
Yesterday afternoon, I spent some time in the field with a colleague, a student, and a gigapan. I took four gigapan images, which are of varying quality due to the partly cloudy day, but still you ought to find them interesting to explore. You can see any of them full-screen by clicking on the word “GigaPan” in the lower right corner: Antiform in Mather Gorge Formation, C&O Canal: Folds and …
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.