Labels: climate change, environmental, global warming, humor, oil, politics

At work last week, I gave a bunch of exams. Historical Geology took their midterm, and both classes (Historical + Physical) took their lab practical exams. One of the essay questions on the Historical Geology midterm was about evolution. I specifically asked "what is the logic behind and evidence for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection?" And while some of the responses I got where excellent (and some were lousy), a large number used the phrase "survival of the fittest," which I never use when explaining evolution. My reasoning for avoiding it is that is an oversimiplification, and not a full explanation. It's almost always more complicated than that.

Curious about whether it was explicitly used in the textbook, I skimmed through the chapter dealing with evolution, and found one instance where it said "... surival of the more fit." But that's not what the students were saying, and tellingly, the ones who used it were not using the phrase as part of a larger, lucid explanation of natural selection's workings. It was more of a placeholder for an actual explanation.

I think where they're getting it is pre-existing ideas about evolution, unrelated to the content I provide in this course of study. It's a phrase, a simplistic platitude, that's already in their heads when they sign up for my course, and I'm failing them by failing to discover it and then debunk it when we cover that topic.

I followed up a bit on that and did a count. 12 students did not use the phrase "survival of the fittest" in their essays, with an average score of 3.29 out of 5 possible points. Eight students did use the phrase in their essays, with an average score of 2.75 out of 5 possible. This is interesting to me: those students that used the cliche' "survival of the fittest" did WORSE than the students who didn't use it. There were four tests that scored a perfect 5/5, and none of them used "survival of the fittest." Of the four students who scored 4/5 (the next highest score), three didn't use the phrase, and one did. Interesting, eh?

I think this is exactly what the PBS program A Private Universe and ensuing series Minds of Our Own were getting at. (I blogged about them here.) It's all about identifying students' misconceptions, and then working to disassemble those misconceptions, and show students how the misconceptions are wrong or incomplete, and THEN building up new knowledge. This "survival of the fittest" business has convinced me it's very important to probe for students' pre-existing ideas before I teach a lesson.

Thoughts?

Labels: evolution, teaching

Yesterday, I pulled up the Venetian blinds in my office window at NOVA, and this is what I saw:


Naturally, I had to take a photograph. It's puuurty.

While I had the camera out, I figured I'd shoot a few photos of the rest of my office, since it's full of all sorts of interesting clutter. Rather than explaining what all the doodads are in these photos, I figured it would be more fun to just post them and see if you can identify them all:















Have fun!

Labels: fossils, igneous, maps, metamorphism, minerals, nova, plants, sediment

Beautiful. Hat tip to Unexpected Entropy.

Labels: blogs, volcano

Driving back from the GSW fall field trip this past weekend, I took this photo out of my car window. Considering the vehicle was in motion, I'm pleased with the decent quality of the photo:


This house clearly shows graded bedding! There are many ways to get graded bedding showing a fining-upwards sequence of deposition, but my favorite is deposition by turbidity currents, dense sediment-water flows that drop the heaviest stuff (usually the biggest particles) first. Then as the water calms, progressively finer and finer particles settle out of the turbid water.

I was predisposed to look for graded bedding in buildings, because one of my students/ colleagues/ friends, Dr. John Weidner, took this photo earlier in the year and shared it with me:

This would be a case of inverted graded bedding, a coarsening-upwards sequence. Did this house prograde out into a basin like a delta? Or was it deposited by a turbidity current and then later tectonically overturned?

Labels: humor, primary structures, sediment

Chuck Bailey of William and Mary has started a geo-blog. Check it out at:
http://www.wm.edu/blogs/wmblogs/chuckbailey/index.php

Labels: blogs, geology, virginia

Hilarious! Nothing to do with geology, but when a cute dog dresses up for Halloween as the three-headed Cerberus, I must pass it on:

Click on the photo to go to the Washington Post's "Day in Photos" page, from whence it came.

Labels: humor, mammals

Today, I'm honored to present my first NOVA Geoblog guest post. After listening to my talk "Rise of the Geoblogosphere" at the Geological Society of Washington in September, E-an Zen (former president of the Geological Society of America, member of the National Academy of Sciences) approached me with some concerns about the nature of blogs as a vehicle for communicating science. I encouraged him to put his thoughts together, and that I would publish the resulting manuscript here as a guest post. Collaborating with Allison "Pete" Palmer, Dr. Zen provided me yesterday with the post you find below. Enjoy reading it, and please enter your comments below. --CB

WHAT IS "THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD"?
DISTINGUISHING VALID SCIENCE FROM PSEUDO-SCIENCE

E-an Zen and Allison R. Palmer
October 25, 2008

Debates about the nature of science and of science education are being actively carried out in our society, apparently reflecting a real need for improved understanding of what is at stake. On one side of the conversation are those who consider that science and "scientific research" represent efforts to rationally comprehend the physical aspects of the universe; in this process of understanding, the supernatural can play no part. Many advocates of this "rational" perspective consider their efforts to transcend cultural and institutional boundaries of human institutions.

There are others in our society, however, who point out that there are different ways of "knowing", and question whether the "rational" approach is adequate as a way to comprehend the universe. Particularly active against this "rational" model are some who consider the world we live in, and the life forms it carries, as creations of a transcendental being (some people of Abrahamic faiths might identify this being as the personal God). Among these advocates are some who deny the fundamental proposition that scientific investigation must exclude the "supernatural" because the latter is beyond rational and observation-based understanding. They point out that this exclusion is based on a particular model of knowing, and they challenge its validity in a real, rather than a model, world. Some Christians who belong to this group regard the Bible as literally inerrant and in situations of conflict the Bible trumps science-based inferences; others avoid the explicit invocation of a Christian God, yet claim that the world's life forms include products of direct and specific creative intervention of a super being (see Miller, 2008 for a thorough and informative exploration of this issue).

These apparently incompatible perspectives have generated passionate public concern because the public policy derivatives of the discussion include science education in public schools. Some who accept a role for the supernatural also promote the concepts of Young Earth Creationism and of Intelligent Design. Thus we must ask: under what circumstances could these be regarded as valid alternatives to observation-based science, acceptable not only for discussion among intellectually mature citizens, but suitable for pre-college science education? The debates, unfortunately, have devolved into legal contests resulting in judicial rulings which can make it difficult to carry out rational debate of the merits of the issues. Any educational value in a classroom setting with well-informed teachers is thereby forfeited.

The advent of the blogosphere has changed the landscape of this discourse: advocates on both sides can now broadcast, with limitless distribution, their arguments in cyberspace as "information" with neither peer review nor intellectual constraint. Blogs can be accessed directly by school-age readers, and the legal barriers about what may be taught in science classrooms cannot be enforced. There is no institution for prior review or vetting of mis-information about science by school boards, teachers, or parents.

How should the community deal with this challenge? Can we establish some consensus about what should be off-limits in blogs directed to school-age students, while keeping due respect for the sanctity of diversity of views about our world and its origins? How could we ensure that the students will be able to use the blogosphere for better understanding of the "scientific method of inquiry"?

We claim that "academic freedom" is not an adequate excuse for free-wheeling teaching in a science class. In a science class, the first order of business should not be to pass down masses of data and "facts", but to tell the students what doing or thinking about science amounts to. The core of scientific inquiry is its open-ended nature: We let the evidence lead us to the appropriate inferences, rather than use science as a tool to justify a predetermined conclusion. Scientific investigation never ends, because the answer to one question invariably leads to the next, deeper question of "why", "how", "when", or "where".

Let us describe our notion of the "scientific method" of inquiry, even as we recognize that this is not the only method for asking questions about our universe. We can do no better than quote Karl Popper. In his essay "Science: conjectures and refutations" (1963, p. 47-48 in the 2002 reprinted edition), Popper made the following (excerpted) sequential points:

"(1) It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every
theory - if we look for confirmations. (2) Confirmations should count only
if they are the result of risky predictions ... (3) Every "good" scientific
theory is a prohibition: it prohibits certain things to happen ... (4) A theory
that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.
Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a
vice. (5) Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or
to refute it. ... (6) Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the
result of a genuine [italics his] test of the theory; and this means that it can
be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory."

Popper concluded that "One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability*, or refutability, or testability."

* Popper used "falsify", "refute", and "test" as interchangeable synonyms. This is unfortunate because in common parlance "falsify" means to commit a fraud, to cheat, or to alter the record deliberately for nefarious purposes. The word "to falsify" should be avoided in the discussion of the scientific method (unless we want to say "to cheat"); instead, use either "refute" or "invalidate."

Popper went on to this bold, but important conclusion (2002, p. 61):

"This was a theory of trial and error - of conjectures and refutations... I
thought ... that scientific theories were not the digest of observations, but
that they were inventions - conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be
eliminated if they clashed with observations; with observations which were
rarely accidental but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of
testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation."

It goes without saying that the initial conjecture must be triggered by some observations; It is not something pulled out of thin air.

The stories of Creation, in the version advanced by the Young Earth Creationists, or even by those who advocate Intelligent Design for the "irreducibly complex" apparatus of life organisms (see Dembski, 1999; Behe, 2008) are, by contrast, show-stoppers, because there is no way to apply to supernatural processes the method of scientific testing.

The process of invalidation, or refutation, of a scientific conjecture is a public process; it is open to everybody. The process includes peer review, formal or informal, of the reasoning as well as the conclusions. The scientific explanations, "theories" if you will, are forever on probation. There are varying degrees of certainty, but that certainty is never absolute and the most venerable hypothesis or theory may be demolished by a single "decisive refutation." The process of inquiry represented by invalidation never ends; Doing science requires a deep sense of humility and readiness to admit mistakes.

Those of us who subscribe to the Popperian method of scientific inquiry, however, could and should do a lot better when we communicate with our friends who admit a role for supernaturalism in science. We suggest that in debating this issue, we should:

1. Show respect for those who disagree. Do not condescend: many of those who disagree are highly trained, very bright people. Our differences are one of philosophy, not intelligence!
2. Seek to build dialogues that could enhance mutual understanding and mutual trust. That need includes a shared awareness of "trojan horses" that could sneak into a conversation. We need to be not just open, but honorable; We must understand that others may distrust us as much as we do them, often, alas, for good reasons!
3. Be careful in the use of words. Words may have connotation that are objectionable to others, or that can confuse an issue through misunderstanding. We already mentioned "falsify" as an example. "Theory" is another one; Even "creation" has conflicted meanings. Each of us can think of additional examples. Let our discussions not run aground on such silly shoals!
4. Emphasize that in teaching about science, the exploration of the METHOD OF SCIENCE is more important than the recitations of theories and facts. We should describe stories of both successful and failed "rational" ideas (for instance, the displacement of Newton's physics of the universe by Einstein's; Popper's essay contains a nice discussion). We should also analyse the "supernatural" perspectives to test for ways they either conform to, or fail to meet the demanding criteria of Popper. Remember that the Popper method is ideologically impartial. Philip Johnson, the intellectual guru behind Intelligent Design, used Popper's approach to challenge the logical underpinnings of Darwinian evolution (see Johnson, 1991, p. 145-148, for a lucid summary of Popper's thesis). The question is not whether Johnson is entitled to challenge Darwinian evolution as valid science. Of course he is. The issue is, was the challenge launched within the bounds of Popper's criteria for valid science, and did Johnson come up with valid refutation?

References

Behe, M.J., 2008, The edge of evolution: the search for the limits of Darwinism: New York, Free Press, 320 p.

Dembski, W.A., 1999, Intelligent Design - the bridge between science and theology: Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 312 p.

Johnson, P.E., 1991, Darwin on trial: Washington, DC, Regnery Gateway, 195 p.

Miller, K.R., 2008, Only a theory - evolution and the battle for America's soul: New York, NY: Viking, 244 p.

Popper, Karl, 1963, Science: conjectures and refutations, p. 43-86 in Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge (reprinted edition of 2002), 582 p.

Labels: blogs, evolution, pseudoscience

Tom Bain's Earth Insight Cache -- check out the post on carbonate "cannonball" concretions in the Ohio Shale! Very impressive... looking forward to future posts.

EDIT: The URL is http://earthinsightcache.blogspot.com/

Labels: blogs, concretions, geology

Starting this month and going into January, Arlington County, Virginia is hosting a series of free workshops designed to help citizens make more environmentally-sustainable choices in their homes and workplaces.


For more information, click here.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova, virginia

Here's some recent sunset photos. Sunsets are one of my favorite natural phenomena. I love how beautiful they are.

One from my apartment window, with the National Cathedral to the right:


One from my car, driving back from a friend's farm a couple weeks ago (pear-gathering expedition):


Video from the same post-pear-pre-prandial peregrination:

Labels: dc, sun, travel

Yesterday was the Geological Society of Washington's fall field trip. A group of about twenty of us went down to George Washington Birthplace National Monument, a stretch of land in the Virginia Coastal Plain, about an hour east of Fredericksburg. The trip was lead by Wayne Newell of the USGS in Reston and Rijk Morawe of the National Park Service.

Here's a map of the Monument, adjacent to a small bay formed as the valley of Popes Creek flooded with post-glacial sea-level rise (essentially the story of the entire Chesapeake Bay in miniature):


Wayne and Rijk are studying the coastal processes here in an attempt to use the Popes Creek as an analogue for Chesapeake Bay processes in general. One of the reasons they really like it is because unlike other small bays in the area, it has a spit (almost a baymouth bar) protecting it from the ravages of the tidewater Potomac (which it flows into). Here's the spit heading southeast across the mouth of Popes Creek Bay:


This rotted old wooden seawall was erected along the coast in the 1960s. This is on the Potomac, just upstream from the Popes Creek Bay. Effectively, this seawall serves as a "before" line, a marker which conveys the shoreline's former position. You can see how much erosion has taken place since then:


I'm less interested in these coastal dynamics, though, than I am in the bedrock geology. There were some bluffs along the river which exposed the Miocene Calvert Formation (clay-rich lower unit) topped by a foot-thick diamictite unit, and then well-rounded river gravels on top of that:


Here's Merily (sp?) from AGI checking out the sequence of strata:


My favorite part of the trip was looking at the variety of cobbles on the beach. These cobbles are derived from all of the mid-Atlantic's physiographic provinces within the Potomac River's watershed (Valley & Ridge, Blue Ridge, Culpeper Basin, Piedmont, Coastal Plain). All those physiographic provinces have been weathered to produce the sediment that the Coastal Plain is made of. In spite of their diminutive size, they give insights into the geologic history of Virginia over the past billion years. So if you're familiar with Virginia geology, you will see some familiar rocks here.

For instance, there were a lot of these Skolithos-bearing quartzite cobbles. These are pieces of the Antietam Formation, a meta-quartz-sandstone that crops out in the Blue Ridge province, many many miles upstream:


Skolithos is the name given to vertically-oriented cylindrical burrow trace fossils, which start showing up in the Cambrian period of geologic time, indicating the evolution of vascularized bodies among animals. They are usually interpreted as worm burrows. This cobble shows several different diameters of Skolithos tubes:


Here's a cobble of another distinctive Blue Ridge rock. This amygdular meta-basalt is a piece of the Catoctin Formation, a sequence of (mainly) mafic lava flows that erupted as the supercontinent Rodinia was breaking up in the Neoproterozoic era of geologic time. The white spots you see are amygdules: vesicles that have been filled in by mineral deposits. When lava erupts, it degasses. If the lava cools into extrusive igneous rock before the bubbles have a chance to pop, little round holes are preserved in the rock, like Swiss cheese. We call these "vesicles." When vesicles get filled in with deposits of minerals (from groundwater passing through the rock), they are called "amygdules," from the Latin for "almond," which I guess they resemble in an ellipsoidal sort of way:

(I showcased a very similar cobble here in March of this year.) Like the Antietam Formation cobbles, this Catoctin Formation cobble originated in the Blue Ridge province, and has tumbled dozens of miles downstream to end up out here on the Coastal Plain.

Here's one from even further away! This is a cobble of flint from one of the limestone units out in the Shenandoah Valley, the easternmost valley of the Valley & Ridge province. (I've previously posted on those rocks, too.) While the limestone which originally hosted this flint nodule has weathered away, the flint is microcrystalline silica: very hard, very chemically stable. It's a common cobble to find surviving out here in the Coastal Plain:

We also found some rocks that are distinctive occupants of the Culpeper Basin, a Triassic-Jurassic rift valley upstream. Here's a chunk of the Manassas Sandstone Formation, another rock that has been previously mentioned on this blog:


The rock I spend most of my time thinking about is the metagraywacke of the Mather Gorge Formation. (For one mention on NOVA Geoblog, click here.) Here's a piece of it that looks identical to the rocks you'll see near Chain Bridge, DC, or along the Billy Goat Trail (Potomac, Maryland):

This rock was metamorphosed ~460 million years ago, in the late Ordovician, although the original sediments are older than that: perhaps Cambrian or late Neoproterozoic in depositional age. This sample even had a little bit of hydrothermal quartz stuck to it, a common feature of Piedmont metamorphics...

Having covered clasts derived from the Valley and Ridge province, the Blue Ridge province, the Culpeper Basin sub-province, and the Piedmont province, there's nothing left in the Potomac River watershed except for the Coastal Plain itself. And sure enough, we saw Coastal Plain clasts too. Here's a chunk of the Calvert Formation that GSW Field Trip Chair Bill Burton found: He cracked it open and found a shark tooth fossil inside:

This is the first time I've ever seen a tooth preserved as a carbon film. Except it wasn't really just a film, it was more a three-dimensional external mold with a carbon film, and little nuggets of carbonaceous material rattling around inside. Shark's teeth are pretty common in Miocene deposits on the Coastal Plain, including C. megalodon teeth, but this style of preservation was pretty novel for me. If you're into fossil collecting, don't go to George Washington Birthplace National Monument, because collecting isn't allowed there. However, nearby Westmoreland State Park offers legal fossil collecting opportunities. It's about ten minutes further south.

I'd like to thank the field trip leaders and Bill Burton for organizing the trip. I enjoyed the excursion!

Labels: coastal plain, field trips, flint, fossils, gsw, rivers, sediment, virginia

Much of the geoblogosphere has been posting about trees over the past couple of days.

I'll just make a brief contribution here, showcasing some of the incredible fall foliage seen down near Konnarock, Virginia, while my students and I were down at the Virginia Geological Field Conference a few weeks back:

Labels: plants, virginia

Labels: maryland, meetings

We've got a couple of part-time positions opening up in my division here on campus...

Lab Assistant
Trainer & Instructor I, Math, Science & Engineering (Position BIU)

Starting salary rate $15.60/hour, no benefits. Up to 30 hours per week.

Assist in laboratory setups for biology, natural science, and
chemistry. Clean and organize labs. Store equipment, models and supplies as
directed. Perform other tasks as directed. Required: A.S. in chemistry or
biology. Desired: B.S. in biology or chemistry. Previous experience in lab setup
for college labs. Open until filled.

Science Learning Center Coordinator
Trainer Instructor I, Math, Science & Engineering (Position BIV)

Starting salary rate $25/hour, no benefits. Hours as needed, up to 25 hours
per week.

Assist in setting up and coordinating the Science Learning
Center. Provide help with student review, tutoring, and advising outside of
regularly scheduled class and labs. Organize study sessions and open study
hours. Gather needed equipment and supplies; properly store and inventory
these materials. Required: Bachelor's in science or related field required.
Master's degree in science preferred. Desired: experience teaching college
science courses; ability to work well with students, faculty and staff. Open
until filled.

If you're interested in more details, e-mail Mary Vander Maten at mvandermate@nvcc.edu. To be considered for any position, a Virginia State Employment Application must be received in the Human Resources office by 5:00 p.m. on the position closing date. Employment with NOVA is contingent upon the successful completion of a required background check. A Virginia State Employment Application is required to apply for all positions. You may download a Virginia Employment Application from this link (use MS Word 2003; you can then type on the form, and then submit it via preferred method of e-mail attachment).

Labels: nova

Student geobloggers: this has you written all over it! Have fun with that $10,000. Learn some good stuff, and keep on blogging about it.

Labels: blogs, economics

Two of my favorite things to talk about, global warming and the Talking Heads, are combined in this trailer for a new program on PBS:

Hat tip to Babak R. for passing this on to me. I'm a day behind the curve in posting it (the show aired last night), but I'm a day behind in just about everything these days, so I'll post it anyhow.

Labels: climate change, global warming, music, tv

This is pretty good, folks. Frank Capra (director of It's A Wonderful Life and other films) put out a documentary called "Unchained Goddess" for Bell Labs' television program "The Bell Telephone Hour." In this segment, host Frank Baxter (a professor of English, not science, but we'll let that pass, since he's so charming and avuncular) discusses the state of knowledge in the 1950s about global warming:

Hat tip to Andy Revkin of the Times for posting this on his Dot Earth blog today.

Labels: climate change, global warming, movies

My friend Mark Tyra (a College Park geology master, like myself) just alerted me to a cool site which explores the presence of meteorites preserved in Ordovician limestones in Sweden. Check it out!

Labels: limestone, meteors, sweden, websites

I was reminded this morning to update the list of activities for the coming week, including the Billy Goat Trail hike scheduled for Friday:

Wednesday evening: GSW. Free and open to the public.

Thursday: James Ussher's "birthday of the Earth." How will you be celebrating?

Friday afternoon: I'll be leading a public geology hike along the Billy Goat Trail, starting from the Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center (C&O Canal NHP) at 12:30pm, going til 4:30pm or so. Maybe 5pm. Free and open to the public.

Saturday: GSW Fall Field trip: "Tidewater Geomorphology at George Washington's Birthplace National Monument, Westmoreland County, VA." RSVP.

Labels: coastal plain, field trips, gsw, meetings, piedmont

Heh heh heh!

Labels: climate change, global warming, humor

Several years ago, (former) NOVA student Theresa R. put together a nice little webpage with rock and mineral photos. My favorite part is a "gray rock quiz" at the end. Check it out and see how well you do!

Labels: igneous, metamorphism, minerals, nova, sediment, websites

Browsing through the October issue of EARTH magazine, I noticed an advertisement (p. 62) for a service offered by AGI (the nonprofit which publishes EARTH): they maintain an online image bank with 6000 images of earth science stuff. Pretty cool. While the website interface is a bit clunky, there are some real gems there. In the structure category, here's a few that caught my eye (all three by Marli Miller at the University of Oregon):

Labels: art, geology, structure, websites

As has been mentioned elsewhere, Virginia governor Tim Kaine made some big budget cuts last week. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a rule that they must have a balanced budget every year. So with the economy in such shabby shape and Virginia's income predicted to have significant shortfalls, Governor Kaine has decided to trim the Commonwealth's budget. The official revenue projections forecast a shortfall of $973.6 million for fiscal year 2009 and $1.54 billion for fiscal year 2010, or just over $2.5 billion for both years. According to a press release from Richmond, "Governor Kaine will balance the FY 2009 budget through state agency savings and spending reductions of over $348 million and additional steps, including a withdrawal of about $400 million from the Revenue Stabilization Fund."

Two entities in the state government that are getting hit particularly hard by the proposed changes are (1) the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources and (2) higher education.

(1) As I mentioned earlier in the week, this was an issue of much discussion at the Virginia Geological Field Conference last weekend. I would like to share here an excerpt from an e-mail I got after the conference from Chuck Bailey (W&M), the president of the VGFC:

Unfortunately, with Virginia's looming budget crisis, the State is planning to severely cut if not eliminate the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources (DGMR). Here are some of the planned cuts:

• 9 (out of a staff of 21) will be laid off
• 1 staff member will be transferred to the Division of Oil and Gas
• 4 staff members will be reassigned to support the Abandoned Mine Land project
• DGMR will be left with a staff of 4 on state-funded positions (of which 3 are currently supervisory) and will not, in any substantive way, be able to serve the Commonwealth. Details of the plan are on pages 14-15 of the Governor's budget reduction plan.

We have an obligation to fight these cuts with vigor. DGMR has served the Commonwealth well and needs to be maintained, even through the lean times. For
me it is clear that these cuts are a deliberate action to eliminate DGMR; consider the fact that within the Department of Mines, Minerals & Energy, of which DGMR is one of six divisions, the only layoffs are being incurred by DGMR.

Not only are these cuts are extremely shortsighted, but inherently unfair.
What can be done about this?

The most important decision maker who is likely to consider input from DGMR customers is the Secretary of Commerce and Trade. He needs to know how people use DGMR products/services, especially if they use them to make money or protect people and property, and why DGMR is important to the Commonwealth. Company letterhead is preferable. He is:

Patrick O. Gottschalk
Secretary of Commerce and Trade
P.O. Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218

The Acting Director of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (which includes the DGMR) is:

Benny R. Wampler, Acting Director
Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
P.O. Drawer 900
Big Stone Gap, VA 24219

A letter to the Governor can't hurt either:

Governor Timothy Kaine
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219

People should contact their own Delegates and Senators.

A Virginia Geological Field Conference Yahoo! listserv has been set up to facilitate discussion for those who wish (search "thevgfc"). [Note: I would encourage you to read this discussion, as it points out that the total savings are pretty meager (~$10,000 for the upcoming fiscal year, because of severance pay and what-not) considering the crippling cut in services. -CB]

We need to act quickly and with forceful clarity on this matter.

Thanks,
Chuck Bailey
President, Virginia Geological Field Conference

Please take the time to write a letter to one or more of these officials to let them know what you think of the proposed cuts. Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to Lee Allison, state geologist of Arizona, who posted on this issue earlier today.

(2) The second major area where budget cuts are hurting this blogger is in the 5% cuts to higher education in the Commonwealth. Though I utilize the maps and studies produced by the DGMR, their budget cuts don't effect my paycheck. But when the Virginia Community College System has to slash its budgets by 5%, that does change my bank account balance. NOVA faculty and staff got an e-mail from our president last Thursday (10/9), informing us that though the College would continue to provide its services essentially uninterrupted with a 5% cut, faculty salary increases, scheduled for November, would be "delayed until July of next year." This is a real bummer, though for me personally the bright side of it is that I got my promotion before all this went down, so at least I secured that pay raise before things went sour. Just the same, I'm going to miss the extra cash that was 'promised' on the contract I signed at the beginning of the academic year. With everything getting more expensive, it's a tough on faculty when their salaries don't keep up with inflation.

So it's looking kind of grim in the Commonwealth, folks. While I don't think a letter-writing campaign will effect the higher education cuts much, the DGMR is a small entity that has gotten hit disproportionately hard. If you can write a letter to help save the DGMR, please do. It's an important state agency that does great work. Thanks!

Labels: economics, nova, virginia

Today's science seminar went well. There was a reasonably full house (maybe 150 or 200 people?) and most of them looked reasonably awake all through it. Afterwards, I had some new folks express interest in my Rockies field course for next summer. Additionally, a bunch of the audience stuck around to look at some rock and fossil specimens I had brought along. When I got back to my office, there was a nice note in my in-box from the provost, who had attended and complimented the talk. And then I got a free lunch with three of my colleagues! Chinese food... makes me sleepy, but dang, it was good.

Here's the slideshow I gave, via SlideShare.net (The embedded version below doesn't seem to be working for me, so here's a direct link to the PPT on SlideShare):

Labels: food, fossils, geology, grand canyon, meetings, travel

A reminder to NOVA students, faculty, and interested area geophiles: I'll be giving a talk entitled "Two Months of Rock and Road: A North American geological road trip" today at noon as part of the Science Seminar series. It's in the CE Forum on the Annandale campus. Free and open to the public; light refreshments served.

McCain and Obama having fun: After all the rancor, this makes me happy.

If you're planning on going on the GSW Fall Field trip, let them know ASAP. They need a headcount.

The slate of speakers has been announced for next week's GSW meeting: Leonard Konikow, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston: "Ground-water depletion: National assessment and global implications;" Dionysis Foustoukos, Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory "Energy sources in dark abyssal waters;" and Igor Puchtel, University of Maryland, College Park "Re-Os isotope systematics and HSE abundances of the 3.5 Ga Schapenburg komatiites, South Africa." 8pm next Wednesday at the Cosmos Club. Free and open to the public; refreshing beverages served starting at 7:30pm.

Virginia's a swing state... unbelievable and amazing.

Radioactive granite countertops cartoon caption contest reminder.

JPL has launched a new climate site:

...And congratulations to Walter Alvarez for being awarded the Vetlesen Prize.

That's all I've got. Have a good Friday!

Labels: field trips, gsw, meetings, news, politics, travel

This spring, I mentioned reading Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll's book Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway, and then stopping in and visiting with Kirk in Denver one evening on my summer road trip.

Now, my friend Michelle (who both loaned me the book and introduced me to Kirk) has forwarded me an announcement: Ray and Kirk are coming east!

Labels: dinosaurs, fossils, humor, meetings

At the end of every issue, The New Yorker runs a cartoon caption contest. Readers write in with captions they think would be funny. Here's a cartoon I just drew and submitted for the December issue of EARTH, only to learn that they weren't featuring granite countertops in that issue after all (because they already ran a story on that topic in the current issue.)

So here's my challenge for you: Come up with a caption for this cartoon. I'll post the three captions I came up with after 24 hours or so.

Have fun. The geo-geekier, the better... Here's the cartoon:

Labels: art, contest, granite, humor

On the way back up from the VGFC this weekend, we briefly detoured off the interstate (81) to go up Route 11, and across a singular natural feature in Virginia: Natural Bridge. This is a span of limestone going over a creek (and because it spans a watercourse, it is thus not an arch, but a bridge).

Unfortunately, this is all we saw of it:


The bridge is privately owned, and it's fenced off from view from Route 11, in spite of the fact that the road actually goes over the bridge. So we drove across it, but we couldn't really tell. And we didn't feel like stopping and paying the $$ to get in to see it from underneath.

In spite of that disappointment, what's pretty cool about the area is that it shows up well in this Google Maps "terrain" view:


Kind of wild: a natural bridge that's actually used as a bridge...

Labels: caves, limestone, valley and ridge, virginia

Yesterday, I mentioned that the main point of this weekend's field trip was to attend the Virginia Geological Field Conference in Marion, Virginia.

We arrived on Friday night at Hungry Mother State Park, and got some background information and logistical direction from the trip's leaders and the various officers of the VGFC. We also got some sobering news about how Virginia budget cuts will affect the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources... but more on that tomorrow.

On Saturday morning, we headed out to examine the geology of the Pulaski and Saltville thrust blocks, two of the slices of Paleozoic sediments that got shoved bodily northwestward during the Alleghenian phase of Appalachian mountain-building. The point of the trip was to examine the structure and stratigraphy of these two thrust sheets, in an attempt to compare and contrast them. Both are an example of "thin-skinned" tectonics, where sedimentary strata are deformed (folded/faulted), but they are disconnected from the tougher underlying "basement" rocks (the crystalline rocks of the North American continent beneath). Sliding along a big basal fault called a decollement, these sheets of sedimentary rocks created the northwestern fringe of the Appalachian mountain belt; a zone called the "fold and thrust belt." (This is in contrast to the "thick-skinned" style of deformation exemplified by the Blue Ridge province immediately to the east, in which the basement rock is itself deformed, and shoved up on top of these younger sedimentary strata.)

Here's two of the three field trip leaders: Loren Raymond (holding map) and Bill Whitlock (talking into the microphone), giving us relevant details for our first field stop:


Fred Webb (the third trip leader) used the same technique of large graphics as an aid in explaining the local geology. Here, he explores the geology of Saltville, VA, from a scenic overlook:


Here's Fred and Loren using another visual prop to illuminate the distribution of sediment types (Knox dolomite versus Moshiem limestone) on a farm in the Rich Valley:

Does anyone else out there use large visual aides like these on field trips? I think it's a pretty good idea.

There were a lot of people who attended the conference: over 120! Here's the crowd at the Saltville Overlook stop:


...and the throngs of geologists shutting down traffic on the way to another stop:


...and still more geologists all over the right-of-way at our final stop of the day:

Kudos to the trip organizers for coming up with a coherent way of running the trip with so many participants!

So why were we there? ...To look at these deformed sedimentary strata, and increase our understanding of the deformation mechanisms that accomodated strain during Appalachian mountain-building. Here's a look at the Max Meadows tectonic breccia, a zone of crumbled rock at the base of the Pulaski Fault:


Just above the breccia, the rock is still pretty deformed. Here's some intense folding and boudinage in dolostone & shale layers:


At another location, Honors student Hope W. shows a fault in the Nolichucky limestone:


In other places, folds were the main variety of strain observed in the rocks. Here, we see this in the Honaker dolomite (with elbow for scale):


Ditto for this exposure of the (Cambrian) Nolichucky limestone (enthusiastic caver for scale):


After a superb lunch put on by a church group, we strolled out in some karstic fields in the Rich Valley. Here, several field trip participants drop down into a sinkhole:


I was interested to see that there were a lot of Mississippian-aged evaporite deposits in this corner of Virginia. Saltville's salt was from the Maccrady Formation, as is this gypsum (note fingernail scratch mark):


Here's the spectacular final outcrop of the day, where we looked at deformation within the Cambrian-aged Nolichucky and Honaker Formations, as well as the Mississippian-aged Maccrady Formation they override at this location on the Saltville Thrust Fault:


Of note to you environmental types out there: Saltville was not only the "salt capital of the Conferderacy," but it was also the site of the very first Superfund site (due to dumping of mercury as a byproduct of soda ash + chlorine production).


And I'll just conclude the photo section of the post with a couple of photos of cool spiders we saw. Each of these arachnids is a good three inches in length (including legs):

I think the upper one is a 'garden spider.' The bottom one is silver! I've never seen a silver spider before...


All in all, it was a good day in the field. We returned pleasantly tired and hungry, and had dinner at the Hungry Mother State Park "The Restaurant". Over food, we discussed the pros and cons of field trips like this, and slept well that night.

I was particularly pleased to meet up with and hang out with folks like Cy Galvin (part of my pre-GSW dinner group), Jon Tso (Radford University), Pete Berquist (Thomas Nelson Community College), Amy Gilmer (Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources), and Chuck Bailey (College of William and Mary). Pete, Amy, Chuck, and I are all W&M geology department alumni. Chuck mentioned the good news that he will soon be joining the geoblogosphere too -- watch this site for an announcement of his (surely to be excellent) geology blog as soon as it goes live.

Labels: conferences, field trips, nova, stratigraphy, structure, valley and ridge, virginia

This weekend, I spent three days on an extended field trip down to southwestern Virginia with NOVA adjunct geology instructor Chris Khourey and four of my Honors students. We left Annandale on Friday morning, and made our first stop at Willis Mountain, Virginia, site of one of the most productive kyanite mines in the world.

Here's a Google Map of the mountain:


The Kyanite Mining Corporation was very gracious in hosting us. I'd particularly like to thank Mike Morris, who took two hours out of his day to show us the site and the mining operation.

Why mine kyanite? It's used as a refractory mineral: that is, one that won't melt under high temperatures. A lot of their kyanite is heated in kilns to produce a second mineral, mullite. The mullite is even more stable than kyanite in high temperature refractory situations. (It won't melt until it hits over 1800 degrees C!) Additionally, they cleverly saw up big blocks into dimensional stone for countertops and the like.

The kyanite mined at Willis Mountain is in a quartzite which also includes a fair amount of pyrite and hematite. We heard about the different procedures used to extract the non-kyanite minerals so that their end product is relatively pure and of constant quality.

Here's Mike showing the overall anticlinal shape of the deposit:

It's a plunging anticline, as you can probably make out from the Google Map terrain view up top.

Some of the dimensional stone, which I think is pretty spectacular:


Close up of the kyanite (light blue, on left) in the dimensional stone.


Nearby Baker Mountain also hosts kyanite deposits, which show a deeper blue color (Mike wasn't sure why, but suggested that chromium may be responsible):


Inside a huge storage building where the mullite (white powder at our feet) is stored:


Atop Willis Mountain itself, showing the weathered kyanite quartzite exposed there:


Honors students ask questions of Mike:


Mike and Chris standing near some fresh boulders of kyanite quartzite:


It wasn't all metamorphism and mining... I also noticed these nice raindrop impressions in a drying mud puddle:


After lunch atop the mountain, we hopped back in the van and hightailed it for southwestern Virginia, on our way to the Virginia Geological Field Conference. More on that tomorrow.

Thanks again to Mike and the good folks at the Kyanite Mining Corporation for hosting our visit!

Labels: conferences, economics, field trips, metamorphism, minerals, nova, piedmont, teaching, virginia

My friend Noah is a photographer on a Fulbright scholarship in Malaysian Borneo. He shared this photo with me yesterday... a spectacular image from the top of Mount Kinabalu (the fourth-tallest mountain in southeast Asia). With his permission, I'm sharing it with you, too:



For more of Noah's photography, check out his website: Hope in Light.

Labels: art, malaysia, mountains

Take this opportunity to view the contestants and then cast your vote for the Freakiest Fish.

And... While we're talking about fish, check this out.

Labels: contest, fish

If you didn't already catch it elsewhere, there's a new fossil from the Chengjiang Fauna that suggests a bunch of arthropods following one another in a line. Matt at the HMNH reports on it here.

Labels: arthropods, blogs, cambrian, fossils

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