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12 October 2012
Friday fold: a dome in plane view
The Friday fold is a structural dome in Wyoming, as seen out an airplane window.
4 July 2012
Plane views: Powder River Basin and Black Hills
Happy fourth of July! Here’s two scenes that are emblematic of America, as seen from my airplane window last March flying from Reno to Minneapolis. Here’s the scene in the central Powder River Basin of eastern Wyoming: If you zoom in, you’ll see what caught my eye – regular rectangular excavations into the surface. These are strip mining operations for coal laid down in the Paleogene period of geologic time. …
25 June 2012
Leopard rock
Callan shares some photos of “leopard rock” (porphyritic mafic dikes) seen along the Beartooth Highway, northeast of Yellowstone National Park.
22 June 2012
Friday fold: an asymmetric anticline from Wyoming
Another landform seen out the window of that very productive photo-flight last March: That’s a breached plunging anticline – doubtless a Laramide structure. This was over Wyoming; I think here. Looking north-ish, along the axis of the fold: Note that the lengths of section line A and B are not equal: this anticline is asymmetric. The facing direction of the hogbacks on the left (west) indicate it’s not overturned, but …
21 June 2012
Plane views: “Is that the Tetons?”
Another batch of out-the-airplane window photos from March, on my flight from Reno, NV, to Minneapolis, MN. I looked out the window and saw a form that seemed familiar…. A slightly higher-contrast exposure: I was focused on that asymmetric mountain range in the distance. Is that the Tetons? And Jackson Hole to their east? I think it is! Zooming completely in with the pixelated “digital zoom” on the camera… Sure …
20 June 2012
Pebble Creek memories
This summer is the first summer in half a decade that I won’t be spending time camping at Pebble Creek campground, in the Lamar Valley of northeastern Yellowstone (“America’s Serengeti”). While I’m very excited to be nesting and exploring my new home in the Fort Valley, it does make me a bit wistful to think I won’t be waking up to see this lovely sight this year: That’s morning light …
31 May 2012
Plane views: Wyoming
I wanted to pick up where I left off months ago with some airplane photos as I was flying back from my California field class (over spring break). All views are to the north (out the left side of the airplane as we flew from Reno to Minneapolis). We crossed from northern Nevada into Wyoming, and started encountering Laramide uplifts. Here is a look at bedding dipping off to the …
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 …
6 March 2012
Plane views
Some views from the airplane, over southern Wyoming (first two photos) and north-central Nevada (last four), last Saturday morning… A canyon: …and zooming in to the middle area of the previous photo: Strata upwarped into a structural dome (that has been “planed off” to be topographically horizontal, revealing a bull’s-eye-shaped outcrop pattern, then differentially weathered and highlighted by snow: Salt flat (playa lake + playa) in the Basin & Range …
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.