CHUCK'S ARCHIVED BLOG POSTS

  • Gladiators Rule! The 2020 Spring W&M Geology Departmental Field Trip

    Gladiators Rule! The 2020 Spring W&M Geology Departmental Field Trip

    The Geology department rolled out of Williamsburg last weekend and headed straight to Virginia’s geographic centroid for a wide-ranging field trip. It was the spring semester version of the Geology departmental field trip that’s open to all and free to attend. As always, we were rolling deep with more than 45 of us spread across…

  • A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 4: Spy Rock

    A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 4: Spy Rock

    Once again, the 2019 Geological Field Methods class was on the move this past weekend. We were on a mission to collect a suite of samples for isotopic dating that will help us better understand the geologic history of the ancient rocks that underlie the Blue Ridge. The high point of our day (both literally…

  • A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 3: Going to the South Side

    A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 3: Going to the South Side

    Moby, the American musician with a wide-ranging and stylishly downtempo sound, released an exceptional album entitled Play in 1999. My favorite song is South Side, here’s a short snippet of the lyrics … we ride all day looking out for a sunny day here we are now going to the South Side Two decades later,…

  • A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 2: Flowing Low and Flying High

    A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 2: Flowing Low and Flying High

    Earlier this summer I reported on the Gladstone Gladiators’ ‘games’ on and over the James River, all part of our research campaign to decipher and map the geology in the central Virginia Piedmont. On that trip, we used a drone to acquire aerial imagery of rock structures exposed in the river bottom while we paddled…

  • A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 1: The Rockfish River Watershed

    A Frenzy of Fall Field Trips 1: The Rockfish River Watershed

    Note: this is the first installment in what will be a frenzy of posts about recent fall field trips in the William & Mary Geology department. This semester, one of the courses I’m teaching is Geology 311- Field Methods in the Earth Sciences. As the name implies we venture to the field to collect our…

  • Gladiator Games over the James

    Gladiator Games over the James

    The Gladstone Gladiators have spent the past two months dividing their time between geological field research in central Virginia and lab research in the Geology department at William & Mary. They’ve made great progress, mapping through the summer heat and, in the process, are working out the complex structural architecture of the Piedmont. Our research…

  • The Gladstone Gladiators

    The Gladstone Gladiators

    The summer research season has arrived at William & Mary. This year, I’m starting a new project in central Virginia with a team of undergraduate students. It is truly at the center of Virginia, as our study region includes the geographic center (more precisely, the centroid) of Virginia at 37.5215° N, 78.8537° W. We’re not…

  • Neoacadian Poets in the Blue Ridge

    Neoacadian Poets in the Blue Ridge

    Every spring my Earth Structure & Dynamics class visits the Appalachian Mountains on our weekend field trip. The goals of the trip are twofold: 1) practice doing structural geology in the field, and 2) decipher the geologic history of the Appalachians. It’s easy to achieve the first goal, as over the course of the weekend…

  • On the Road Again

    On the Road Again

    Last week much of the William & Mary Geology department hit the road again en route to the Geological Society of America’s Southeastern Section meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s an annual spring ritual for W&M Geology students as this meeting is well-timed and can be the perfect venue in which to present research to…

  • Geologists Siege Yorktown

    Geologists Siege Yorktown

    Yorktown’s most famous siege took place in 1781, when American and French troops surrounded General Cornwallis and the British forces. Ultimately, the British capitulated and the American Revolution was effectively won at Yorktown – it was a big deal. For more than a decade now, William & Mary geologists have repeatedly sieged Yorktown during the…

  • W&M Geology Celebrates 100 Years of Women

    W&M Geology Celebrates 100 Years of Women

    Homecoming 2018 has come and gone. The Geology Department kicked off the weekend early with a celebration of its own – we invited our alums and friends to campus to highlight the achievements of W&M women geoscientists. Our celebration was a unique part of the year-long series of university-wide events that celebrate 100 Years of…

  • Hurrication at William & Mary: from Gloria to Florence

    Hurrication at William & Mary: from Gloria to Florence

    Last week William & Mary closed up shop and students were sent packing due to the threat from Hurricane Florence. This semester I’m teaching Weather, Climate, & Change (GEOL 100) and the Earth’s Environmental Systems (GEOL 110), in both courses we discuss hurricanes (typically at mid-semester). For obvious reasons, Hurricane Week 2018 came early. On…

  • Up, Up and Away

    Up, Up and Away

    Summer is over. Although the astronomical summer lasts until the autumnal equinox in late September, and the meteorological summer has a few more days left (until the end of August) – summer is over for me. Replaced by the realities of a new academic year. To celebrate summer’s end, I took in one more outdoor…

  • A 10-year Time Series

    A 10-year Time Series

    On August 4th, 2008, I published my first post on William & Mary Blogs, Living the High Life chronicled that summer’s field research with a crew of William & Mary geologists on Utah’s High Plateaus. 10-years have come-and-gone – yikes! My 10th blog post dropped on Charter Day 2009, the 50th rolled out just before…