Atop Mauna Kea

New Shenandoah map gets place of honor
I hung up my new copy of the Geological Map of Shenandoah National Park Region, Virginia in my office, using neodymium magnets (the best!) to "pin" it to a metal shelf. Gosh, it's beautiful.

Billy Goats' Portrait
A couple of shots of the Thursday Physical Geology lab section, out hiking on the Billy Goat Trail:A great group of students.... Photos courtesy of Judi Scharfman.

Mapping opportunity in Yellowstone NP
Got this yesterday via the NAGT newsletter:REU Project in Yellowstone National ParkGreetings from Montana! We would appreciate your help in advertising to your students an NSF/GEO site project we will be running this summer on Evolution of the Precambrian Rocks of Yellowstone National Park (Dave Mogk, Paul Mueller, Darrell Henry, and Dave Foster PIs). Please visit the project website for further details: https://webmail-1.nvcc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://serc.carleton.edu/ This project will be a comprehensive research experience that will include:

Two different ways of getting round grains
On my Historical Geology field trip to the Massanutten Synclinorium, we observed oolites (ooids) in Cambrian-aged limestones deposited in the Sauk Sea. Like these:Now the students have submitted their papers on that field trip. Grading the papers, I realized that some of my students were confusing how ~spherical oolites form (through chemical deposition on moving grains) with the perhaps more intuitive process by which clast

Meanders and petroglyphs
A couple of other cool stuff, not directly related to the theme of the GSA Field Forum, that we saw at the site of the tafoni and the metates:First, some petroglyphs. These are carved into the clay/oxide/biofilm layer known as "desert varnish," revealing the pink Bishop Tuff beneath: