Tag: geology
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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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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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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…
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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…
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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…
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Why William & Mary? People & Places
Why choose to attend William & Mary? I’ll offer up two reasons to attend William & Mary: people & places. The W&M Geology Department provides a prime example of just why William & Mary is special. At William & Mary, the Geology department takes a broad view on the Earth, offering courses that focus on…
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4th Rock from the Sun: Human Exploration of Mars – the Planetary Geology Research Projects 2016
Forty years ago, in the summer of 1976, NASA placed two spacecraft in orbit around Mars and then safely got the Viking 1 and 2 landers to the surface. I was all of 8 years old, but have a distant memory of those the first images from the Martian surface being broadcast over the evening…
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Paddle Trip Report 1 – Through the Foothills
We successfully completed our 8-day paddle trip from the foothills of the Blue Ridge to Williamsburg. It was all the adventure I’d hoped for. In this first of three posts, I report on the highlights, rough spots, and geology along our journey. This was a personal trip completed with my old friends and goodtime buddies,…
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Mystery at Midway Mills
Virginia’s Piedmont is an expansive area of gently rolling terrain whose underlying geology is quite complex. The old metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Piedmont are cut and overlain by a series of basins into which sediment (now sedimentary rocks) accumulated during the Triassic and Jurassic periods (225 to 200 million years ago). These rift…
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The Road to the Moho
I spent last week in the Sultanate of Oman, working with my colleague Professor Anne Rasmussen to setup a William & Mary study abroad program that we’ll run in January 2016. For much of the trip we were based in Muscat, meeting with our Omani colleagues to hammer out program logistics. With each passing day…
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Wadi Bani Ghafir at Sidaq Gorge – Water versus Rock in Oman
In January I had the good fortune of visiting Oman to explore the country’s magnificent geology. November 18th is Oman’s National Day and in this post I’d like to celebrate an Omani drainage basin: Wadi Bani Ghafir is a watershed in the mountainous terrain of northern Oman that heads about ~10 km (6 mi.) south…
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Glimpses of the Past: the Catoctin Formation – Virginia is for Lavas
In 1969 Virginia embraced the travel slogan Virginia is for Lovers and at various times during the last 45 years William & Mary geology students have emblazoned departmental t-shirts with Virginia is for Lavas and turned the iconic heart into a volcano. In that spirit, Geology Fellow Alex Johnson and I wrote a piece on…
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Dispatches from Oman: Ophiolite to Aflaj
The New Year finds me half-a-world away from William & Mary on a research trip to Oman. I am here starting a project focused on Oman’s spectacular geology and also laying the groundwork for a W&M study abroad field program that will focus on Oman’s iconic geology, its desert environment and distinctive culture. This trip…
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Mountain Mayhem
As I’ve noted in these posts before, Geology Departmental field trips are unique as they bring together the W&M geologic community in a way that staying on campus never could. The Fall Field trip took an enthusiastic crew of students and faculty to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a weekend getaway. Our timing was just…
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Dissection of a Mid-term Exam
It’s mid-term exam season at William & Mary. On Friday, October 1st 170 students in my Earth’s Environmental Systems course sat for their first exam. This is an introductory class that enrolls a diverse group of students. Many are there to fulfill a General Education Requirement in the physical sciences, many are fresh men and…