Dendritic Impressions: July 2011

Sunday, July 24, 2011

A not so brief reflection on my Field Class from Fall 2011.

Below is a description of the field areas I visited for my Field Class during the Spring 2011 semester. Before you continue reading, I should warn you that unlike at Field Camp (which I'll cover in a later post) I did not take any pictures for the majority of the field trips. I was more concerned with learning mapping techniques and getting a good grade than documenting our field areas. Thus most of this post will be terribly boring and entirely too text heavy. I'm mainly writing this as a personal review of my progression as a field geologist and to serve as a record of where I've gone in southern NM.

January 15, 2011 Robledo Mountains (First Map and the Final)

This outing was mainly an excuse to get us out into the field and taking attitudes with our Brunton compasses. All of our attitudes were taken off of the Hueco Limestone in a drainage near the gravel mine or in nearby exposures. We then plotted these attitudes on a stereonet and on a field map, then wrote a short report on the lithology and similarity of attitudes in the Hueco. It was a simple outing, but you have to start your field career somewhere...

Spring 2011 Semester: How my Junior year got me 3/4 of the way through undergrad

Junior year is commonly expressed as the most difficult portion of college. The classes are no longer remedial, your teachers have often taught you before and know how to demand the most out of you, and it seems every instructor believes their course is the most important class you are taking at the time.

I cruised through most of my spring semester relatively easily. My course load was initially light because our Field Class did not start in earnest until a month in. With the inclusion of the field class I managed to adjust and keep a steady pace through the majority of the semester which appeared to pass more quickly than most. It wasn't until the last three weeks of the semester that I began to feel the pressures of deadlines and faced the shocking realization that although I had worked steadily and reliably on all of my projects, there was no way I could finish strongly on all of them. I wrote six papers or reports during the last two weeks of the semester, and was remarkably burnt out as I faced the coming three weeks of Field Camp a week after finals. Looking back at the semester, I'm still perplexed how I became so busy during the last month of school but I only had one paper I feel was inferior work and I'm proud to have made it through this semester more than any other.

Tectonic Evolution of North America

This course is intended to be a capstone of sorts, integrating every course before it into a means of understanding how western North America came to be, from the accretion of terranes onto the craton all the way to the most modern expression of faulting in the Basin and Range province and Rio Grande Rift.

Visiting Kilbourne Hole (Geology, Rockhounding, and Geocaching)

I have to admit that I was ashamed of how long it took me to finally drive out and visit the famous Kilbourne Hole. I had heard that the dirt roads were a bit tricky to navigate so I brought along my roommate as a hiking partner and to read the driving directions (the good ol' buddy system).

Fall 2010 Classes: Finally getting to the good stuff!

After two semesters taking "general education" courses: Intro to Geology, Fossils and Evolution of Life class, Mineralogy (with a semester of mineral identification and another for optical interpretation), and a Geochemistry class which was great but more on the theoretical side, I I was plenty ready to begin taking more field and rock based courses. The fall of 2010 semester did not disappoint and certainly validated my choice to major in geology.

Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology

Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology happened to be a reprise of Geochemistry for the first couple weeks, with a solid review of Bowen's reaction series, the layers of the Earth and of the three major plate tectonic margins. I did however begin to better appreciate that tectonic motion is strongly tied to mantle convection and my first introduction to thermodynamics as they apply to earth systems was a refreshing change from the more elementary chemistry and physics explanations I had received in college. Our textbook for the class Principles of Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology 2nd Edition by John D. Winter is really a great reference and was the first geology text I wanted to make sure I kept.

My main take away from the course however was how igneous and metamorphic textures of minerals within a rock aid in determining the petrogenetic history of that rock. Phase and Ternary diagrams were also used to their full effect in this class, and these really helped me to understand the basics of the processes occurring within magma chambers during crystallization, melting, and recharge events. Overall though, it was nice to actually deal with rocks in hand sample (even if we did get a bit sick of basalts) and to use thin sections and to find which skills we acquired in optical mineralogy were most useful was also a thrill.

Mafic enclave within rhyolitic or dacitic rock in Cleophus Canyon, near Ft. Selden, NM. Access is limited since there are petroglyphs within the area as well.

ASU Analytical Trip (August 11, 2010)

So, after returning from my east coast trip I worked for a while under Dr. R until it came time to take another trip to do analytical work on another university's equipment. This time we headed to Arizona State University to use their SIMS - Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry - machine (a CAMECA IMS 6f).

Catching up after a year + of silence

It has been over a year since I've posted on this blog, which can tell you one thing: BUSY YEAR. Seriously, it has been a good kind of busy and somehow never got around to recording any of that hectic goodness so I'm attempting to hit the geologically important points of the past year in a few posts. Specifically I'll try to touch on: