My former Honors student Laura graduated from NOVA a year ago and transferred to the University of Virginia. But during her second semester at UVA, she joined the SEA Semester program, and sailed around the world.

During Honors presentations this year, current Honors student Kristen (and friend of Laura's) brought in a gift from Laura: a collection of rocks and photos from Namibia, one of their ports of call on the trip.

With Laura's permission, I'm sharing some of the photos here today.

The scene in the Namib Desert:




Note the black stripe on the crest of the hill in this shot:


It appears to be a dike of basalt/dolerite/mafic rock:



Boulders of the mafic rock go tumbling down a ravine:


The SEA Semester group's campsite:




Laura pulls a folded & boudinaged granite dike out of her hat:


Closer shot of the geology:






The rock cross-cut by the granite dike. Namibian dollar for scale; same size as American quarter:




Little tafoni hole:


Bigger tafoni holes:


Medium-sized collection of tafoni holes:


While I'm sharing other people's Namibia photos, go check out the collection from Greg Willis, a blog reader who attended the GSW spring field trip on Sunday.

Thanks, Laura, for the rocks and for the photos!

Labels: africa, geology, granite, namibia, nova

Following on yesterday's Namibiferific post, I'd also like to share this image:

Labels: africa, meteors, namibia, travel

Today's NASA Earth Observatory image of the day is of a place that is near and dear to my heart, the Etosha Pan of Namibia:



In late 1996, my father and I took a trip to Namibia to study termite mound gas exchange as part of an Earthwatch expedition, and afterwards we rented a car and went off on a little safari. Up in Etosha National Park, the wildlife was pretty amazing. Here's a leopard that crossed the road in front of us, immediately followed by a second leopard:



An oryx (or gemsbok):


...And an elephant, drinking from one of the watering holes that fringe the main salt flats:


Namibia has been getting a lot of water lately, as evidenced in compare/contrast images like these, also from NASA's Earth Observatory:

June 2007:


Last week:


And that brings us back to the first image:


In this picture, you can see a new package of river water coming south into the Etosha Pan from the Oshigambo River of Angola. This is "fresh" water, but it has a dissolved load of sediments in it. As the water hits the hot, baking expanse of the Etosha Pan, it evaporates, but the dissolved ions within don't have that option. So they become more and more concentrated, and settle out in a chemical precipitate. This is where all the salt comes from: even freshwater is a little bit salty, and when you evaporate it repeatedly in an enclosed drainage basin, evaporite minerals accumulate there.

Labels: africa, critters, floods, mammals, namibia, national parks, salt, travel