Crater Lake with GEOL 201 (“Earth’s Internal Heat”)

Posted on by under Class field trips

Amanda Thomas’ geology 201 class recently took a field trip to Crater Lake National Park. They traversed the rim of the Mount Mazama caldera, stopping occasionally to check out pinnacles, mafic intrusions, pre-caldera glacial landscapes, and other features of geologic interest.

Goshen Road Cut with GEOL 318 (“Field Methods”)

Posted on by under Class field trips

The field methods class got its first exposure to notetaking and rock descriptions in the field this week on a field trip to our very own local Goshen road cut. Students described neveral volcanoclastic sedimentary layers, an ashflow tuff, and two intrusive basaltic dikes, with beautiful views of I-5, and only a little rain!

Rio Grande Rift; New Mexico and Colorado (Staples Trip, 2016)

Posted on by under Class field trips, Staples Trip

The department runs major trips every few years to a place in the world where a faculty member has active research, paid for mostly through a dedicated pool called the Staples fund. This year we went to New Mexico and Colorado to learn about Cenozoic volcanism of the Southern Rocky Mountain volcanic center of the ignimbrite flareup. That trip has its own blog with much more information and many pictures of what we learned day by day.

https://blogs.uoregon.edu/staples2016/

Field Camp, 2016

Posted on by under Class field trips, Field camp

We had a great time at field camp this year! The course started out at Four Craters, near Christmas Valley, OR with Thomas Giachetti. Students mapped overlapping lava flows from four cinder cones, and learned to use stereoscopic aerial photography for field studies. From there we moved to Newberry volcano, where we discussed physical volcanology of silicic eruptions.

After Newberry, Sammy Castonguay took the class to Dillon, Montana, for three weeks of structural geology mapping. Students worked with Sammy and Marli Miller to map Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of southwestern Montana. This section included a one day field trip to look at precambrian rocks around the borders of the Wyoming Craton with Sammy, and a three day trip to Glacier National Park with Marli.

From Montana the class returned to Oregon to investigate mafic intrusion dynamics of the Chief Joseph Dike Swarm in and around the Wallowa Mountains of northeastern Oregon with Leif Karlstrom. This section included a three day rafting trip down the Grande Ronde River across the Oregon-Washington border to find, characterize, and map previously unmapped dikes in the area.