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Traipsing across the Piedmont: A Day Trip thru Geology and History
The W&M Geology Departmental Spring field trip left the Atlantic Coastal Plain last Sunday morning for a quick dash westward into the Piedmont: a day trip with equal measures of geology and history in the mix. As is our tradition, W&M undergraduates conducting research in a particular area lead the trip which is open to…
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Jamestown and Geodiscovery
Jamestown Island is a low patch of ground in southeastern Virginia that’s witnessed its share of American history. Settler colonists arrived from England in 1607 and sited their fort/town on the island ~40 miles (65 km) upstream from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a foundational location in the American origin narrative – for…
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Aground on the Hampton Bar with the Sea Making a Fair Breach
200 years ago this month, in early April 1823, a ship foundered and sunk onto a shallow sand bar in Hampton Roads, Virginia. On April 5th its loss was reported in the Baltimore Patriot & Mercantile Advertizer which noted that a schooner “laden with stone” went aground on the Hampton Bar “with the sea making…
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William & Mary Returns to Oman
In January 2020, I co-led the William & Mary study abroad program to Oman (commonly known as Rock Music Oman). As we returned home from that program, little did we know that we were weeks away from a pandemic that would shutter the world and effectively limit global travel for over two years. It’s January…
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Crabtree Falls and Landscape Disequilibrium in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains
Back in October, early on a Saturday morning my Earth’s Surface Processes students loaded into vans and we headed west to the Blue Ridge Mountains for our weekend class field trip. All total, there were 52 of us on the field trip in six vans – we were rolling deep. Our first stop was at…
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Going with the Flow: Geology’s Fall Departmental Field Trip 2022
Last weekend the Geology Department set forth on our Fall departmental trip for a geological field trip down the James River in canoes. The late summer weather was glorious, and the James River’s flow was just right– not too high and not too low. On Friday evening, our crew of 22 camped along the James…
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Bringing Back the Grenville! Preserving Virginia’s Geoheritage
Virginia has a rich geological heritage that stretches back well over a billion years to an era of geologic time known as the Mesoproterozoic. Rocks formed during the Mesoproterozoic are exposed primarily in the Blue Ridge Mountains and its foothills, as well as in curious inliers such as the Goochland domes and in the Sauratown…
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A Highland Fling (Part 2): Learning from LiDAR
The Field Methods class finished our late Winter/early Spring fieldwork at William & Mary’s Highland in March. Over the course of four field excursions, we put in ~530 people hours at Highland – learning to do science in the field and ultimately collecting data on vegetation, soils, water, and rocks (of course). Since Spring Break,…
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The Return of a Tradition – The Earth Structure & Dynamics Class Field Trip
An important tradition in my academic life is the Earth Structure & Dynamics class field trip. This weekend trip takes William & Mary students across the Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountains to examine the geology underfoot in the Appalachians and, along the way, practice doing geology in the field. I’ve been running this trip for…
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A Highland Fling (Part 1)
The new semester at William & Mary is well underway and after this weekend, we’re off and running with the Field Methods in the Earth & Environmental Sciences course. In contrast to previous years, this edition of Field Methods is focused on only one location – William & Mary’s Highland, once the home and estate…
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Williamsburg’s Grand Canyon: A Modern Marvel Created by Mismanaged Stormwater
Many William & Mary students and some long-time residents describe Williamsburg’s landscape as flat, swampy, and even boring. Indeed, parts of this landscape are flat, and the bottomlands may be swamps (a forested landscape with standing water). But, for those suggesting that the local terrain is all together boring, I suggest a visit to Williamsburg’s…
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Celebrating People-Miles
Earlier this month, on a research trip to central Virginia, the Geology department’s venerable 12-passenger van rolled on beyond 100,000 miles- that’s a milestone worth celebrating. The department acquired this GMC Savana 3500 in the late winter of 2006, and 15 years later it’s got the scars worthy of a long and prosperous career. Yet,…
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Game of Boxes
Last week, with a team of undergraduate research students we commenced a Game of Boxes in the wilds of central Virginia. The Game of Boxes is a difficult game, as in a normal year summer field work is a ‘For the Bold’ kind of endeavor. In 2020, with our COVID-19 safety protocols, the challenge was…
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After the Surge: A Day on the North Anna River
The river was still falling at midnight, yet I went to bed confident that the North Anna River would be on the rise by morning. At 7 a.m., the U.S. Geological Survey gage at Hart’s Corner dutifully showed that the North Anna had risen by nearly 50 cm (20”) during the past six hours. The…
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Twenty for 2020
The starkness of the past two months has provided ample time to reflect on what makes the academic enterprise at William & Mary special and what’s been lost during this crisis. I’d like to finish the academic year with a photo essay that illustrates the spirit of our community and the wonder of research discoveries.…
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Geological Field Tripping in Cyberspace
Early April is the time when my Earth Structure & Dynamics class ventures to the Appalachians for a weekend of learning and intellectual companionship. I’ve reported on these academic adventures in this blog many times1. Over the course of two days we roll across Virginia, from the Shenandoah Valley to the Blue Ridge and out…
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When the Research Road Turns Rough
COVID-19 has shuttered the academic world. At William & Mary, teaching goes on as technology enables us to connect in new ways with our students. But online learning is a poor substitute for what happens in the classroom, lab and field. We’ll manage, and my faculty colleagues are focused making things right for students during…
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Williamsburg’s Colonial Climate: What Can Be Learned from Thomas Jefferson’s Data?
The coronavirus pandemic has turned the modern world on its head, and for the remainder of the 2020 spring semester William & Mary will teach its courses from a distance. This won’t be easy, and the instruction is not going to equal the in-class or the in-lab experience that would normally take place. As I…