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January 23, 2020
Discount inverted basin models: You get what you pay for (mostly)
A basic Google search of “inversion geology” will produce a tremendous number of results, including conceptual illustrations, analog model results, and actual cross sections generated from subsurface imaging and drilling exploration.
January 13, 2020
An abandoned river valley and the “true depth” of Appalachia’s deepest river gorge
This post centers around an oddly meandering, dry valley 800 ft above the northwest wall of the gorge. It’s not much to look at in Google Earth imagery alone, but with enhanced maps and some understanding of how river gorges spread through topography, it gives great context for different ways of thinking about gorge development.
January 6, 2020
Surface uplift and deep fault structure in sandbox models
A particularly interesting method of attempting to understanding deep fault geometry is using patterns of surface landscape evolution to identify the moving zone of uplift above a deep fault ramp. A useful analogy for this concept is to visualize sliding a spatula underneath a cooking egg.
December 19, 2019
Spreading volcano follow-up: Cross sections showing normal faults and thrust faults
Geo Models: The GIF shows the results of about 15 minutes of deformation with fresh sealant straight out of the tube. The summit of the cone collapses into a graben, and the flanks of the cone spread outward, creating compression that generates thrust faults and folds.
December 4, 2019
There are tension gashes in my yogurt (but I ate it anyway)
As a student, I thought the gash patterns were great, but I always struggled to understand their relationship to shear zone orientation in the context of the stress field…This is where the yogurt comes into play. Some very nice en echelon tension gash sets appeared in my Greek yogurt a few weeks ago when I squeezed the plastic container.
November 19, 2019
A different take on the model volcano, the “most cliché science experiment” you can do (at least that’s what the internet says)
While eruptive demonstrations will always be cool, I think the gravity-driven structural evolution of large volcanoes is equally interesting and consequential and subject to illustration with models.
October 30, 2019
“Oreo cookie” stratigraphy and the geologic setting of the Frog Legs Gorge
While the “frog legs gorge” post was supposed to be a bit funny, the real purpose of it was to link outcrop patterns with geologic structure. This follow-up post tries to put the frog legs’ underlying structure into a broader context within the Appalachian Valley and Ridge…
October 22, 2019
Google Earth and a simple model explain a weird pattern seen in LiDAR hillshade
Is this a bizarre and gigantic fossil discovery? An unsolved mystery akin to the face on Mars? Unfortunately, this is just another set of compressional folds within the Appalachian Valley and Ridge, but they do stand out in the hillshade due to their interesting topographic pattern.
October 17, 2019
Simulating varying rock strength to create an interesting model anticline
From The Geo Model: Modeling the Aguaragüe Anticline, a structure in the sub-Andes fold-thrust belt in northwest Argentina.
October 11, 2019
Searching for the deepest gorge in the Appalachian Mountains
The question of the deepest gorge east of the Mississippi River came from a reader of the “biggest mountains” post. I think it’s a really good question because it addresses another landscape superlative (deepest, tallest, oldest, etc.) that is claimed by several locations in the Appalachians.
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