The Equinox of the Fall

I haven't been blogging much lately. It's probably not hard to guess why: I've been working harder than at any time aside from those crazy first semesters back in 1988 and 1989. From the sudden transition in less than a week back in the spring semester, intense training throughout the summer, and the onset of a new fall semester completely online pretty much explains the lack of leisure time for writing. But I was out yesterday evening on one of the myriad east-west roads that cross our valley, and I realized it was only one more day before the equinox. I stopped and photographed the setting of the sun.

We were in a similar situation six months ago, and I posted The First Day of an Uncertain Spring: This Too Shall Pass. I wrote at the time "Spring was always seen as a time of renewal when the cold winter is ending and the green shoots of new life are coming from the ground. Of course we know that it is a different situation as the world faces an invisible foe that brings sickness and death, and it's been many decades that we've needed to make sacrifices to fight it."

What a different and unpredictable time this turned out to be. Last March around 35,000 Americans had contracted the disease, and around 500 people had died. The death toll today is more than 200,000 Americans, and nearly a million around the world. 31 million have caught the disease, and around 23 million have recovered, but for many there will be health challenges for the the rest of their lives. The saddest part of this tragedy is that we could have prevented many tens of thousands of these deaths had there been a quick and orderly national response to the pandemic. This did not happen, and instead there were good responses in some states, and criminally negligent responses in others. As one state would seem to gain control, others lost control. We reached a peak and started to decline, but then it started to rise again. It's plateaued in the last few weeks, but there is no continued decline.

Who knew that an entire subset of the population would actively fight the restrictions needed to defeat the virus and prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans? I understand the impatience and frustration of wearing a mask in public places and maintaining distance and not gathering in crowds. But to subvert these easy guidelines and to even deny that the disease exists? I cannot even begin to comprehend this mindset, the one that would sacrifice not only strangers, but one's own family members and friends.

In this national tragedy, I've lost two treasured people, my grandmother and my sister-in-law (not to covid, not that it matters). I had to watch one funeral over a phone, and the memorial service on zoom. It is hard beyond words to have to say good-bye in this way. I loved them both so much. This is the real tragedy. We can't come together and hold each other in the way that humans need to in times of great loss. We need to fight this thing with a united front and put it away for good. We need to do it together.

The sun set in a pall of smoke from the hundreds of fires blazing in California right now. We've lost so much, not just from a pandemic, but from changes in our climate that were predicted three decades ago, and are manifesting themselves on an accelerated time scale. Six months ago I wrote "this too shall pass", but some things will not pass without being inalterably changed. The changes are permanent and we have to prepare.

The sense of loss in my family this week has been sharp and painful, but it was compounded by the loss of some of my treasured places to the fires that have destroyed so much already.

So I mark the passage of another equinox. This moment of the year has had a magic quality for humans for thousands of years, for better or worse. Spring has been the time of birth and hope, and the fall is the time of death and consuming darkness. I can only repeat my words from six months ago: 

"Whatever takes place in the coming weeks and months, please be kind to one another. Look out for your neighbor, and remember that whatever you have, someone else has far less. Be generous as you are able, and remember that with all things, this too shall pass."

 

Why Geology is Important; Why Education is Important...The Sendai Earthquake in perspective

We learn about geology for many reasons. If you have ever visited this blog before, you know we learn geology because it is just plain fascinating. But sometimes we learn geology because lives are at stake...

It has been a week that will long seared into our collective memories as we watched a tragedy unfold in real time in Sendai, Japan. An earthquake of magnitude 8.9-9.0 struck about 80 miles offshore, with a horrific tsunami that did incalculable damage along the coast of the island. It then spread throughout the Pacific Basin, and the effects of the quake became worldwide in scope. Whether one realizes it or not, every human being on the planet was touched by the shaking. Not in some metaphysical new-age sense, but literally. The waves were detectable for hours on seismometers worldwide, meaning we were all rising and falling whether we were aware of it or not. We were all part of this story.

Many will watch an event like this unfold and try to find some meaning. In one sense, there was no meaning; this was something the Earth does. Subduction zones have been active on this planet for billions of years, and will continue to be active for billions more. The oceanic lithosphere shifted a few tens of feet deeper into the mantle, where it will eventually be melted or distorted beyond recognition. The materials disappearing from the surface today will eventually reappear, as part of a volcanic eruption, or as a fault sliver along some plate boundary in some future era. Events like this are common beyond measure; the Earth has experienced millions upon millions of huge earthquakes like this one, and though life is extinguished in some areas, life in general goes on. This quake meant nothing in the long run.

On the other hand, there was much about this tragedy that has meaning. With our brief life spans measured in decades, we will rarely experience such events in our personal lives. I could never wish such tragedy on anyone, but we also learn that living on this planet means that we are sometimes exposed to extreme deadly events. If not an earthquake, then a volcanic eruption. If not an eruption, a deadly flood. If not a flood, then a searing heat wave, or freezing blizzard. No one is totally safe or immune from these events, and most of the time we are not really aware that they can happen to us at all. They come as a total surprise.

In earlier centuries, such events elicited cosmic and supernatural explanations. It was the capricious nature of the gods that caused these terrible punishments. These people must have done something wrong to deserve such horrific retribution. If we couldn't think of an explanation, we made one up. I would love to say we have somehow moved on from this kind of thinking, but charlatans like Pat Robertson and others remind us constantly that ignorance and hate are alive and well in our society and across the world.

Why is geology important? Geology provides us with a new mythology of the world, one that based on a better understanding of the processes of our planet. We don't just see an earthquake happen on the surface and jump to the conclusion that the giant turtle that underlies our bit of land has taken a few steps. Instead we explored new pathways to knowledge that revealed that the earth itself is releasing energy to space, and that one of the ways that this happens is through the movement of lithospheric plates. Do we know the absolute truth? No, we don't. That's why we seek to learn more. We can now predict where earthquakes are likely to happen, but we cannot tell when, at least not well enough to save lives and property. If we are to live at the limits of sustainability on this planet, we need to know all we can about it.

Why is education important? Everyone has a right to know what geologic hazards may affect their lives. It should be a fundamental human right. It's not, but we can make the effort to make sure that people know what can happen, and help them to prepare for it. I live on a plate boundary, and a major earthquake is likely to strike close to my home. But I know from personal observation that people in California are shockingly unprepared for a major seismic event. Few have an emergency kit in their home, or a plan for what to do in the event of a major quake. Few people know the location of the legendary San Andreas fault, and even fewer can name any of the dozens of other active faults that exist in our state. We see the unfolding disaster of self-destructing nuclear power stations in Japan, and are mostly unaware that we have nuclear power plants along the California coast (there were even plans to build a nuclear plant directly on the San Andreas fault at Bodega Bay in the 1960s). We can't make people learn these things, but we've got to try, and we have to give our teachers and educators and media specialists adequate tools to do so. Recession or not, cutting back on education at all levels is a foolish idea.

Seers and psychics have always sought to see the future. They have used tea leaves or chicken entrails, and consumed hallucinatory drugs to achieve visions. Earth scientists use seismometers and supercomputers to model future activity along fault zones (and consume lots of coffee). They also make predictions in many other fields, including climatology, hydrology, and volcanology. Our society is living, as I said before, at the very limits of sustainability. We need to know when the quakes will happen. But even more importantly, we need to use the tools at our disposal to understand the changes that are happening in our climate. We need to fully understand the behaviour of ocean currents and cycles. We need to have a clear understanding of how much coal, gas and oil is left, and how the continued use of these fuel sources affects the climate. Recession or not, cutting back on basic research is a foolish idea.

Why the flower at the beginning of this post? I wasn't sure at first. I was in the field yesterday with my students, looking at California's Mother Lode. It's early for wildflowers, but a few were visible here and there. This was a beautiful Indian Paintbrush that seemed to be glowing in the sunlight. It occurred to me that the best flower displays in the Sierra foothills actually take place in the aftermath of forest fires. A disaster wipes out the old trees and tangled underbrush, but life springs back, and sometimes there is beauty. I guess I am hoping that some good can come of this disaster; that we might make some smart choices about where to go from here...

POSTSCRIPT: After posting this, it occurred to me that I forget to mention one more atrocity: media coverage. The cable and network news have abrogated their responsibility to produce responsible journalistic coverage in favor of spectacle and high ratings. They long ago let go their science advisors, and their news readers (and that's all they are anymore) have little or no education in the earth sciences. They have very little knowledge or expertise in geology, seismology, or climatology, and they continually make the same factual mistakes every time there is a new earthquake or other natural disaster. FOX, MSNBC, and CNN: your science coverage is an embarrassment to journalism.

The Worst Natural Disaster in U.S. History: It wasn't last week, and it won't be this week either

Source: National Weather Service

I was doing a quick search for information on the United State's worst ever natural disaster, and found almost immediately that today is the anniversary of that event. That might sound a bit strange, since the media is describing the devastation of Hurricane Harvey as the worst U.S. disaster ever, and the possibility that Hurricane Irma could surpass it in a few days. And to be sure, these are horrible events, and before I started writing this post I made a number of donations to relief organizations in the south Texas region (I recommend charitynavigator.org to guide your choices). But we can have a strange measure of "worst": we tend to think of monetary damages. And by that measure, the 2017 hurricane season is practically apocalyptic, and one of the hurricanes hasn't even hit U.S. soil yet (islands in the Caribbean have been devastated). But there is of course the other measure of disaster: lives lost. Lives have been lost, and every life lost is a tragedy, but these hurricanes are far from the worst in American history.

Galveston, 1900. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is high on the list, despite having taken place in the modern era with a population given advance warning (botched evacuation efforts and the unexpected failure of poorly reinforced levees led to the increased flooding that killed 1,836 people). But wasn't the worst. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 is an obvious candidate, and indeed more than 3,000 people were killed in that tragedy. But was number two. What event was the worst?

You know, the year of 1900, children,
Many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go
Now Galveston had a seawall
To keep the water down,
And a high tide from the ocean
Spread the water all over the town.

In 1900, weather forecasting was a science hampered by a lack of data. Entire hurricanes could remain undetected in the Atlantic, and limited telegraph networks meant that storms that made landfall might still not be publicized. That was the situation in the days leading up to Sept. 8 of that year. The storm had been reported by weather watchers in Cuba, and the Weather Bureau office in Washington sent storm warnings to coastal areas in Louisiana and Texas. Few heeded the warnings. Storms had come and gone in Galveston over the years without serious damage, so why would this one be any different?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

Galveston was a town of 36,000 people. It was an economic powerhouse, situated on an excellent natural harbor. But geologically, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The town was built on a barrier island, a long sand island that paralleled the Texas coastline. Such islands are unstable locations for human development due to the lack of solid foundations for buildings, and the low elevation. The island sat no more than 8 feet above sea level, and despite the song lyrics above, there was no seawall.

You know the trumpets give them warning
You'd better leave this place
Now, no one thought of leaving
'til death stared them in the face
And the trains they all were loaded
The people were all leaving town
The trestle gave way to the water
And the trains they went on down.

Winds, as we have been learning these last few weeks, are not the worst aspect of hurricanes. The winds can certainly produce extensive damage, but nothing quite compares to the storm surge of a major hurricane. The extreme low pressure at the eye of the hurricane acts to raise sea level, and as the storm makes landfall, the seawater surges inland. The storm surge of the Galveston hurricane was 15 feet, more than enough to sweep over the entire island, and too deep to stand in. Many people trying to swim were crushed by debris from the 3,600 buildings that had been demolished. Bridges and trestles that would have allowed people to escape the island were washed away. They were trapped.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

Rain it was a-falling
thunder began to roll
Lightning flashed like hellfire
The wind began to blow
Death, the cruel master
When the wind began to blow
Rode in on a team of horses
I cried, "Death, won't you let me go"

We can never know just how many people died that night. 6,000 is the low estimate. 12,000 is the high-end guess. There were too many corpses for burial, so an attempt was made to dispose of them at sea. Many floated back and accumulated on the beaches. Eventually funeral pyres were constructed, and the bodies were burned. I can hardly comprehend the horror, although ghastly pictures from the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia provided a stark example. And as we all know, pictures cannot convey the sound and odor of death.

Hey, now trees fell on the island
And the houses give away
Some they strained and drowned
Some died in most every way
And the sea began to rolling
And the ships they could not stand
And I heard a captain crying
"God save a drowning man."

This photo was labeled "Seeking valuables in the wreckage". What would they call it in the present day? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

This weekend our country faces what might be the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Many people will die (indeed several dozen already have in the Caribbean), and the property damage will be devastating. It will be a tragedy for all in the path. But imagine how different it would be were it not for the climate scientists who labor to understand the formation and pathways of hurricanes and other violent storms. Imagine not knowing the end of your world is just over the horizon, only hours away, coming with no warning. Tens of thousands of people will owe their lives to the work done by these scientists.

Politicians and pundits on one side of the aisle in Washington have a shocking lack of respect for climate scientists, and have denigrated their efforts to understand and analyze the changes taking place in our atmosphere due to warming caused by greenhouse gases. With their college degrees in political science or business administration, or in the case of some media personalities, their high school diplomas, a number of people have declared themselves to be experts in climate science, and deny the effects of climate change that are happening around them. Some accuse scientists of being hoaxers. It's ironic that they evacuate when the scientists give a warning about an imminent threat, but ignore the mountain of evidence for long-term changes in the environment that sustains us.

Climate scientists are heroes and they deserve both respect and support. This is not the time that our government should be cutting funding for climate research, but that is what is happening. This must be stopped. Our very lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren depend on it.

The ghosts of Galveston are watching...

Death, your hands are clammy
You got them on my knee
You come and took my mother
Won't you come back after me
And the flood it took my neighbor
Took my brother, too
I thought I heard my father calling
And I watched my mother go.

You know, the year of 1900, children,
Many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go

The song is a folk anthem called Wasn't That a Mighty Storm. Learn more about it here.

Hoping All a Peaceful Christmas and a Better New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! As is my (sometimes neglected) tradition, I offer up a very big Christmas tree, the General Grant Tree in Kings Canyon National Park. The tree is so large (268 feet high, 40 feet across at the base) that it took three pictures for me to capture it.

I don't have a shot of the General Grant all dressed in snow, so here is another Sequoia after a surprise storm during an April trip some years ago.

The tree was declared by Calvin Coolidge in 1926 to be the nation's Christmas Tree. At an early ceremony, park superintendent Colonel John White said ""We are gathered here around a tree that is worthy of representing the spirit of America on Christmas Day. That spirit is best expressed in the plain things of life, the love of the family circle, the simple life of the out-of-doors. The tree is a pillar that is a testimony that things of the spirit transcend those of the flesh." 

Individual trees can live for several thousand years, but the genus has existed since the time of the dinosaurs. They once grew across the northern hemisphere until they were done in by the Ice Ages. They survive today in several dozen groves scattered across the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.

It has really been a tough couple of years with droughts and other natural disasters. I am especially mourning the loss of so many Sequoia trees to wildfires. In the last two years, some 20 percent of all the Sequoia trees on this planet were destroyed. As we celebrate the beauty of these wonderful trees, we must acknowledge our role in their destruction, through climate change and misguided management of the groves. A horrible loss but the trees persist through it all.

It's odd to write of loss and tragedy in a post about a "happy" holiday season, but this holiday season has that sense of gloom and loss as well. I'm seeing people I've not seen in a long time, but we've had to be very careful, and the potential for tragedy continues in the form of a tiny but virulent virus that is surging for a fourth time. There is loss, but there is resilience as well, and that is my hope for all of you that you'll discover joy despite the losses we have all experienced.

I wish a wondrous season to you all!

The Hawai'i That Was: There was a Monster in the Water at Laupahoehoe

There is a small bay a few miles northwest of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawai'i called Laupahoehoe. It's a raw section of the coastline, with waves that crash violently against the ragged exposures of basalt. I stand at the point and imagine the movies I've seen where monsters rise out of the waves. Godzilla would be at home here, and King Kong might wander down from the highlands to look out to sea. There is a monster here, though, and it is very real. It is a killer of the unwary.

Despite the ruggedness of the coastline, residents built a breakwater and boat launch many years ago, and fishing boats plied the waters offshore. A small town was built on the coastal flat, including a  schoolhouse. Accounts describe a pleasant community.

On April 1, 1946, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake struck in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The tremor suddenly moved the sea floor, displacing an immeasurable volume of seawater and setting in motion a powerful tsunami. The wave was as high as one hundred feet along the Alaska shoreline, but few people lived there. It was the energy directed into the Pacific Ocean that became the monster that consumed Laupahoehoe. The waves traveled across the ocean at the speed of a jetliner, reaching the Hawaiian Islands just 5 hours later. The waves would have not been noticed in the open ocean because the wave crests were far apart. It wasn't until they reached the shallow sea floor that the full fury of the wave energy would be demonstrated.

The 1946 tsunami hits Hilo Bay

In most places, the first hint that something was amiss was the withdrawal of the water offshore, as stunned townspeople watched. Fish and eels were left flopping on the exposed rocks. Few people knew what it meant and wandered onto the coastal flat, but a several did understand their peril. They started running or driving up the hill, trying to warn others. The first wave to arrive was not catastrophic, being only a few feet high, but the next wave reached a depth of 35 feet (I say "depth" because the wave arrived more as a surge of water rather than a vertical wall). The wave that hit Hilo down the coast killed more than a hundred people, but what happened at Laupahoehoe felt more tragic, if that is possible.

The 1946 tsunami destroys the downtown area of Hilo

The children of the town were at school on the coastal flat. The wave swept away the school house, killing 20 students and four teachers. Only a few children and one teacher survived. Some survivors floated at sea for more than a day before being rescued. How horrible it is to lose most of the kids in a community...I truly cannot imagine.

In the sad aftermath, the town was moved from the coastal flat to the hills above, and the site was made into a beautiful coastal park that almost belies the horrible tragedy that took place here. But the people of the town won't let their lost ones be forgotten. On the small hill above the bay there is a monument to those who were lost and after 70 years there are still flowers and leis being placed in their memory.

There was one positive change that occurred as a result of this horrible tragedy. It was the lack of warning that led to the deaths of so many, and after 1946 the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was established, providing hours of warning to towns, states, and countries in the path of Pacific Ocean tsunamis. Tens of thousands of lives have no doubt been saved in the decades since. In the Japan earthquake of 2011 the waves that reached Hawai'i could have led to fatalities, but didn't because Hawaiians know what to do when the warnings come.

One can only wish that we had had the foresight to set up a similar system in the Indian Ocean prior to 2004. The magnitude 9.2 Indian Ocean earthquake produced a tsunami that killed 230,000 people.

I Didn't Feel Like Teaching Today...

...but it was the kind of day that demands teaching.

My first day back with classes after the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in Sendai, Japan, and the perfect teachable moment. Only it doesn't feel like a teachable moment. I just felt sorrow. So much is going on, and the situation seems to change hour to hour. First it was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. Those don't happen very often, and that would be enough by itself to toss out the lesson plan of the day and discuss earthquakes and magnitude. But then there was the horrific tsunami that changed everything. 80 miles is a pretty good distance to be from a magnitude 9 quake, and it looks like the structures along Japan's coast weathered the shaking pretty well. But the tsunami raged through and erased towns, wiping them out of existence. Without the tsunami, the quake would have been a footnote. With the tsunami this event became the ultimate human tragedy. Thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless. It's hard to even speak of it, much less try and understand the pain and suffering that is taking place across the sea.

But then a new threat; the nuclear power stations began failing one after another in a story that is still unfolding. A human-induced tragedy superimposed over a nature event. We've concentrated radioactive substances in order to produce a form of energy, and the engineers have always told us that it can be made safe. Despite Three-Mile Island, despite Chernobyl, despite the other 30 'incidents' in the past 50 years. We've 'learned' from each of the accidents, it is said. They can't happen elsewhere. We have back up systems. We can't give up nuclear energy they say, because it is the bridge to a renewable energy future. Otherwise we'll have to burn more coal, and coal contributes to global warming. In all of the chattering among the talking heads on cable news this weekend, I have heard nothing of the threat of terrorism at nuclear power plants, nor have I heard anyone talk about where the highly radioactive waste is going to go. We've been avoiding the second problem for 50 years now. Will these questions start emerging, or will they disappear once the meltdown is complete, or once they stop the meltdown from occurring.

So the lesson plan for the day is tossed. We talk about the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power plants. Questions, one after another. Some I can answer, some I cannot.

Can we have a magnitude 9 quake in California? Yes and no. The legendary San Andreas fault can produce events in the range of magnitude 8, about 1/30th of the size of the Sendai earthquake. Many other faults in California have produced dozens of quakes in the range of magnitude 6.5-7.5, and some have been very damaging. Magnitude 9? Not exactly. The Cascadia subduction zone lies off the coast of Northern California, and extends across Oregon and Washington. That system produced a magnitude 9 quake in 1700. Studies show such a quake takes place every few hundred years. Such a quake would have devastating consequences in NorCal and the Pacific Northwest.

Are the nuclear power plants going to have a full meltdown? I have no idea. I'm not an expert, and I don't know that the experts even know.

Will we be hit by a dangerous radioactive cloud? I don't think so, the experts say it will dissipate in the atmosphere and fall into the ocean before it gets here. I'm more worried about the people who live in the vicinity of the power plants. If the worst case scenario happens, the land they have lived on all their lives could be declared uninhabitable. Where will they go?

I'm glad the meltdown didn't happen here. How many of you know where your energy comes from? California has two operating nuclear power plants, both on the coast, both near fault systems. Another mothballed power plant sits unused just 80 miles from us, with all the fuel rods on site. The engineers for the plants say they're ready for whatever happens (I bite my tongue to avoid getting political).

Can a tsunami hit us in the Central Valley the way it did in Japan? No, not likely, but we have a different problem: the Sacramento Delta. The three dozen or so islands in the Delta are 'protected' by century-old levees that are prone to failure from causes as simple as excessive muskrat burrowing. The islands have sunk over the last century, and most are now below sea level. A moderate quake on nearby faults could cause widespread failure and flood the islands with seawater. If it were just lost farmlands, we could deal with it. But the intake pumps for the California Water Project are in the midst of the islands and the inundation could cut off the water supply for 20 million people for months, if not years.

What will the "Big One" do to us? It depends which "Big One" you are talking about. A repeat of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco? Or the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake? Or the 1872 Lone Pine quake Or another? All of them were close to magnitude 8, and if they happened again, the results would be profound. And there are dozens of other active fault zones in California. But here in the Central Valley? Harder to say. The 1906 quake was certainly felt in the region, but didn't do much damage in our town. Cities and towns on the west side of the valley will have some serious problems with shaking and liquefaction, but we are on relatively stable sediments.

Where's the best place to live? Kansas or Nebraska I should think. But watch out for tornadoes. Here in California, I would pick the Sierra foothills. Solid bedrock foundations and relatively far removed from the most active fault zones.

I have a question for the class: How many of you have an earthquake emergency kit ready at home (and in the car)? Two or three hands, including my own...

We are not ready...

Do you have questions? Use the comments section to ask and I will answer if I can, or find an answer somewhere.

A Look at Ten Years of Geotripping: That Slope Won't be a Problem, Will it? The Wrightwood Mudflow

I'm continuing my search through the archives of ten years of geoblogging, and posting some of my favorites. I've been at Modesto Junior College for nearly thirty years, but I grew up in Southern California and I've had precious few opportunities to go back to those mountains of my youth, the San Gabriels, the San Bernardinos, and the Transverse Ranges above Santa Barbara.

I ran across a post from 2013 that echoes to a small extent the tragedy that is unfolding this week in Montecito and Santa Barbara. The mountains of Southern California are among the youngest and fastest growing ranges in the world, and there are consequences to the rapid uplift. These mountains are among the steepest in the world. They are also semi-arid, covered by vast expanses of chaparral and open forests subject to periodic wildfires. The combination is sometimes deadly when heavy rains impact on fire-denuded slopes and tragedy ensues. The origins of the recurring mudflows at Wrightwood are slightly different but the dangers are very similar.

This was posted on March 27 2013...

You learn something new everyday. At least I hope you do. I learned something astounding revealed by satellite imagery of the Mojave Desert.

We were headed home a week or two ago, and were taking a "short cut" along the San Andreas fault in Lone Pine Canyon and through the town of Wrightwood. That's right, "through" the town. The village is built on top of the San Andreas! But that's not what I learned. I've known of the close proximity of the fault and the town for years.

It had something to do with the town's other famous natural hazard: the Wrightwood mudflow. There is a slope south of the town heading at an elevation of more than 8,000 feet composed of deeply weathered and crushed Pelona Schist. As can be seen in the picture below, the slope is so steep that trees and shrubs can't gain a roothold, and failures are constant, especially during the spring snowmelt and during heavy rainstorms.
The Pelona schist formed in the accretionary wedge of the subduction zone that lay off the California coast during the Mesozoic Era, and as such may be similar to the Franciscan Complex farther to the north. It is an attractive muscovite mica quartz albite schist in hand samples, but it doesn't do well on steep slopes.

We passed several channels that were clearly designed to send the flows through town without causing further damage.

In May of 1941, just over a million cubic yards of mud and boulders flowed down Heath Canyon and into the town of Wrightwood, damaging and burying a number of structures. No deaths or injuries were reported. The immediate cause was the rapid melting and runoff of the heavy snowpack during a period of unseasonably warm temperatures. Surges of mud continued for a week. Other damaging mudflows occurred in 1969 and 2004.

This basic information was something I was made aware of during my first geology class at Chaffey College many years ago. One thing I didn't know is that the mud passed beyond Wrightwood and continued for 15 miles into the adjacent Mojave Desert. The flow traveled a vertical mile, from 8,000 feet to 3,000 feet.

Source: http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/mudflows/53SharpRptMud.pdf

The other thing I didn't know is that Wrightwood mudflow has been active for at least five centuries, and that the results of the slide are clearly visible from space! Check out the Google earth image below and note the dark gray alluvial fan just right of center. The gray colored fan is composed of the Pelona schist, which is much darker than the sediments in adjacent fans which contain more granitic rock.

Source: http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2009/06/heath-canyon-landslide.html

The town of Wrightwood is easy to visit. It is just off of Highway 138 west of Cajon Pass on the Angeles Crest Highway. As noted previously, the town sits on the San Andreas fault, so the locality is a good spot to visit and reflect on the many hazards that must be dealt with when one decides to take up residence in the state. For more information on the mudflow, check out this state report: http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/mudflows/79MortonMudRpt.pdf

The Other California is my on again-off again blog series on the geologically interesting places in our fair state that don't show up on the tourist guides.

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Tragedy at Castle Rock Pueblo

Some places truly are haunted...

Located next to a paved highway and agricultural fields, it lies hidden in plain sight, protected by a thick growth of cacti, and buried in the debris of the fallen buildings. 700 years ago, a frightened people constructed the village on a barren stretch of slickrock along McElmo Creek in southwest Colorado. It contained at least 16 kivas, 40 surface rooms, and nine towers and probably housed 75-150 people. They occupied the site for no more than 30 years, and the ending was horrific.

This post is part of a series on the geology of the Colorado Plateau. Although much of my narrative has involved the story in the rocks and events of millions or billions of years ago, there are times when the rocks become part of the human story, and such is the case here. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was established to preserve some 6,000 archaeological sites in southwest Colorado, but geology was instrumental in the development of human societies in the area. The caprock in the area, the Dakota Sandstone, is topped by rich soils that were capable of supporting a rich agricultural base consisting of beans, squash, and corn. At least until drought and environmental degradation caused the crops to fail. And then chaos seems to have taken over the people of the region.

The Castle Rock Pueblo is certainly not a striking visual presence. Your eyes are actually drawn to the natural rock tower and the barren slickrock flats on which the village was constructed. The realization comes slowly that the small stones piled along the margins are not geologically "right", being nearly all of similar size, with none of the characteristic shapes of talus slopes (keep in mind that I am speaking of the eyes of a geologist; I have no doubt a trained archaeologist would see the human origin of the rockpile in a millisecond). Coming closer, one begins to see platforms and walls hidden in the fractures of the sandstone cliff. Finally at the base of the cliff, on hands and knees, one sees the fragments of pottery that show that people once lived here.

The site was excavated in 1990-94 by the researchers at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, and a detailed report has been posted on the web (here). The site was of interest because it had a chance to shed light on the depopulation of the region in the 1280's, given the brief period it was inhabited. Couched in the spare language of the scientific researcher, a sad tale emerges: at least 41 people died a violent death at the time that the village was abandoned. It was not the first time the population was attacked: many of the victims had healed from earlier injuries.

So many stories of human triumph and tragedy have been lost to history, but the horrible end for the inhabitants of the Castle Rock Pueblo was not forgotten. Their story was told by the survivors and has been passed on through the generations to the present day, so that it is one of the very few such ruins with a known oral tradition. The story is one of a siege by foreign invaders, of defending the town for weeks while children and families were evacuated to the south.

Addendum: If you are paying close attention, you may noted that the Castle Rock site is actually built on Navajo Sandstone and Entrada Sandstone. It lies in a deeply cut canyon below the Sand Canyon site of the previous posts and thus is in older rock.

Northern Convergence: Tragedy at Crowsnest Pass

Frank was a coal mining town of around 600 people in 1903. The coal seam ran along the base of Turtle Mountain, so the town was established there as well. The Canadian Pacific Railway also crossed the area on its way to Crowsnest Pass.

The local First Nation people did not like Turtle Mountain. They called it the "Mountain that Moves", and refused to camp in the area. The Europeans had no such worries, and mining of the coal was well underway. In the early morning of April 29, 1903, a shift of 17 miners was working deep underground. For weeks there had been strange things happening in the mine. Timbers holding up the tunnel walls would splinter and break for no apparent reason. Coal would occasional "mine itself", crumbling out of the seams overnight when no one was around. Small earthquakes were occasionally felt underground. The miners knew that the collapse of mine tunnels was an ever-present danger, so they may not have been overly surprised to hear the explosive concussion followed by an ominous silence. They were trapped, no doubt by a cave-in. They began to assess their situation. Soon, water was pouring into the tunnels, making a bad situation even worse.

The normal passage to the surface was blocked, but one of the miners knew that a second coal seam might be close enough to the surface that they could hack their way out. They started digging for all they were worth, gasping in the increasingly toxic air. One by one, the miners gave out. They weren't dead, but they just did not have the energy to pick up their tools. Only three of them were still working when they broke through to the surface. Rocks were still falling from above, so they couldn't yet escape, but they had fresh air, and they quickly cut another opening beneath a protective overhang. After thirteen horrible hours they emerged at the surface to find their experience was only a part of an even larger tragedy. A gigantic avalanche had buried part of their town, killing between 70 and 90 people. The miners had been given up for dead, so their appearance was some small bit of good news in the midst of the horrific event.

It gets to a certain point when driving through the mountain wilds of British Columbia and Alberta that one expects that trees will be growing just about everywhere. The region has plenty of precipitation through the year so things will be green. Approaching Crowsnest Pass during our recent Northern Convergence tour, we were struck by the sudden appearance of an absolutely barren slope. It doesn't take long to realize why, as the highway crossed a huge debris field covered with gigantic boulders. It was the debris avalanche that destroyed so much of Frank back in 1903.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Slide

The slide was truly epic in scale. Totaling 30 million cubic meters (82 million tons), the avalanche was 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) wide, 425 meters (1,394 ft) high and 150 meters (490 ft) deep. It spread laterally over level ground, covering three square kilometers. The rocks had flowed over the surface like a thick liquid at speeds of up to 70 mph (112 km/hr). The entire event was over in less than 2 minutes.

 The slide was probably inevitable. The limestone layers had been folded into a huge anticline (upward pointing fold) with thrust faults at the base, on top of weak Cretaceous sediments. Glaciation had oversteepened the flanks of the mountain. Fissures sliced deep into the rocks allowing water and ice to accumulate, weakening and wedging the rocks apart. The mining at the base of the slope was quite possibly a contributing factor.

Source http://www.uleth.ca/vft/crowsnest/slidedebate.html

The Frank Slide was the worst mass-wasting disaster in Canadian history. But life went on. The mines were reopened (a horse who worked in the mine was actually found alive after a month underground). The town grew even larger for a few years, but by 1917 the coal mines closed down. Today about 200 people live in the village nearby, and an interpretive center has been constructed that provides information on the extraordinary event.

We headed into nearby Pincher Creek for the night. It was our last night in Canada, but we still had plenty yet to see, on both sides of the border..

Source: http://occ.crescentschool.org/geography/physical/folding/frankslide.html

Time Beyond Imagining: A "Brief" History of the Colorado Plateau

Please forgive me for filling the feeds with such a long post, but I wanted to pull together an annotated list of the blog posts of my just completed journey through the geological history of the Colorado Plateau. It turned into a massive project that lasted more than a year, and included seventy different postings and more than a hundred photos. Don't feel compelled to try reading it, but I hope you enjoy it if you do. If it lacks precise continuity and style, remember that I had no idea how it would end when I started it and I had no editor! I've been taking students on the plateau for twenty years, and it has proven to be one of the best places on the planet to learn earth history.

Time Beyond Imagining, the first post back in June of 2008 introducing the concept that would guide the entire series. I had no idea what I was getting into!

Time Beyond Imagining - An Intro to the Colorado Plateau, a first introduction to the sweep of the landscape that I would be covering through the series.

Time Beyond Imagining - The Oldest Rocks on the Colorado Plateau: The oldest rocks are exposed at only a few places, including deep in the Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 2: A discussion of the 12,000 feet of sediments hidden deep in the depth of the Grand Canyon dated at around 1 billion years

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 3: LIFE!: The first appearance of complex life during the Cambrian Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 4: Something is Missing! Journeying up the walls of Grand Canyon through the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 5: Seeing Red Looking at the Mississippian Redwall Limestone in Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 6: Seeing Red (Really!) We rise up through the walls of the Grand Canyon to the Permian rocks of the Supai Group and Hermit Shale

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 7: Mountains Rise: Permian rocks are exposed throughout the plateau country. We leave the Grand Canyon and explore some of these other places

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Old Salt I was beginning to realize that the project would be longer than I thought. We explore the formation and effects of salt precipitation in Late Paleozoic time

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Sand! A return to the Grand Canyon and the prominent Coconino Sandstone near the rim

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: A Final Transgression Looking at the top two layers in the Grand Canyon and related rocks on other parts of the plateau.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: On to the Grand Staircase An introduction to the Mesozoic history of the plateau country, which lies outside the Grand Canyon. We start exploring the other wonderful parks out there

The Grand Staircase and the Geologic Time Scale A diagram of the Grand Staircase, the younger rocks of the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Into the Triassic An introduction to the widespread Triassic rocks of the Plateau. It would prove to take a number of posts!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? A short departure to discuss the identity of a Triassic fossil from the plateau. A fairly long discussion followed!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? Heck if I actually know! I admit to my ignorance...

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Ash and Wood A study of the paleontology of one of our unusual parks: Petrified Forest in Arizona

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: This Yellow is NOT Mellow The Chinle also contains mineable uranium deposits; I wade into the controversy

Leetso, the Yellow Monster A continuation of the heritage of uranium on the plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: The Real Jurassic Parks The Jurassic rocks of the plateau are responsible for much of the spectacular scenery in the region. This was the introduction

The Colorado Plateau Story: the real Jurassic Parks Follows the story of the Kayenta and Wingate formations, and three unique and little known parks: Capitol Reef National Park, and Colorado and Vermillion Cliffs National Monuments.

The Real Jurassic Parks: Navajo! The Navajo Sandstone forms some of the best photography opportunities: this was a discussion of Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon

Antelope Canyon, A Real Jurassic Park An excuse to show more pictures of Antelope Canyon!

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park First part of look at one of our "crown jewel" national parks

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park, Part 2 A hike to Angels Landing in Zion National Park

The Real Jurassic Parks: Capitol Reef (Oh, and Sheep Blogging) A return to Capitol Reef and an excuse to show off one of my favorite bighorn sheep pictures

The Real Jurassic Parks: The San Rafael Group An introduction to another group of Jurassic formations, including the all-important Entrada Sandstone. A busy semester had begun and posts were becoming sparser at times. I was realizing the project was going to take some time, and I stopped using the word "brief"!

The Real Jurassic Parks: Goblin Valley and the Entrada Sandstone One of Utah's unique and isolated state parks

The Real Jurassic Parks: Kodachrome Basin (and a great resource!) Another fantastic Utah State Park and a link to an e-book on the geology of Utah's parks and monuments

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park An intro to Arches National Park, one of my personal favorites

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park, continued. And an Eminent Threat. After several weeks I got back to work with a continued exploration of Arches, and discussed new threats to parks in the region

The Real Jurassic Parks: Where are the Dinosaurs? A look at wonderful Dinosaur National Monument and a rotten political situation there

The REAL Jurassic Parks were really Cretaceous I thought the Jurassic would provide the most posts in the series, and therefore had no idea how long I would spend in the Cretaceous. This was the introduction

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Cedar Mountain Formation The only dinosaur dig I ever took part in was in an early Cretaceous formation in Montana, but it was related to the Colorado Plateau. This post turned into seven part story on our adventure

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Story of a DinoDig Much of the story was trying to get there in the first place: what is geokarma?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Every Cloud has a Golden Lining We drive through Yellowstone and arrive at the dig site

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig What we were looking for and why it was important. What is a deinonychus?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Dino-Digging Begins This is what grunt work is all about

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig wraps up We started finding bones!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Final Discovery We found a dinosaur that invariably is the last entry in a dinosaur dictionary...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The View is Nice but Access is a Problem... Back on the plateau, we are introduced to the remaining Cretaceous rocks and two archaeological parks, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Walled Cities and Tragedy More on the Canyons of the Ancients and a walled medieval-aged city...in southern Colorado!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Tragedy at Castle Rock Pueblo A haunted place...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Mancos Sea An interesting formation that some geologists curse at...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Green Table An exploration of the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Black Mesa story I wade into the coal mining controversy and get more comments than any other entry in the series

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: A City in the Wilderness Life had become busy and it was a month before I returned to the plateau with a discussion of Chaco Culture National Historical Park

And The Old World Passed Away... The Geologic History of the Colorado Plateau And another month passed! I tried to find the words to describe the profound events at the end of the Cretaceous Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A not-so-brief History of the Colorado Plateau Another long gap, but I was finally talking about the last 65 million years of Colorado Plateau history with an intro to the crustal deformation that was beginning to effect the region

Time Beyond Imagining - Land of Giant Lakes A discussion of the origin of the rocks at Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks National Monument. I thought I was close to the end, but I was still wrong, after a full year!

Fire Down Below - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau Another month of blogging on other things and I returned to the Cenozoic history of the region with a discussion of the volcanic activity that started to emerge on the plateau, including Shiprock

Fire Down Below II - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau The laccolithic mountains of the plateau country

Fire Down Below III - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau I find I have almost no pictures of Navajo Mountain despite having driven around it dozens of times...

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape Cenozoic events led to a truly scrambled landscape with a mystery-of-the-day

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Unaweep Canyon More mysterious canyons at Unaweep and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Colorado An exploration of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a canyon that shouldn't be there

Time Beyond Imagining - A Really Scrambled Landscape on the Colorado Plateau The opening discussion of one of the great plateau mysteries: why is there a Grand Canyon?

Time Beyond Imagining - Unscrambling History and the Origin of the Grand Canyon The complicated story continues

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau I thought I was almost finished, but found that much happened in the final few million years of the story. This is the story of the San Francisco Peaks Volcanic Field

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Part 2 A look at the volcanoes in the western Grand Canyon and how they formed massive lakes in the Grand Canyon, some 200 miles long!

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Pt. 3 The story of a stupendous rhyolite eruption at the Jemez Caldera in New Mexico

Time Almost Beyond Imagining: Who Do the Magic that Hoodoo? My favorite title for a discussion of a unique park near the Jemez Caldera, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau and Deep Time Although I had reached the last million years of a two billion year history, I felt a need to try and describe the immensity of geologic time, using the ruins of Bandelier National Park and the Jemez Caldera

Time Beyond Imagining - Where did the Ancient Enemy Go? The "disappearance" of the Ancestral Pueblo people is explored at Bandelier National Monument

Time Beyond Imagining: Why Can't We Touch the Venus de Milo? Once again, I thought I was done, but found a series of fascinating (to me) stories about research in the limestone caverns on the plateau. I began with a rant about preserving these wonderful caves that took us to Rome and Paris, of all places

Holy Crap, Batman! The Bat Cave is Full of it! Bat Cave in western Grand Canyon, and bat-sh*t. Lots of it, sort of

Holy Smokes, Batman, that crap is on fire! I was saving my best titles to the last, I guess. A horrific crime against science at Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon

Of Rat Pee and Uranium and Scavengers...The Underground Story of the Ice Ages on the Colorado Plateau What the caves on the plateau tell us, and how.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Final Struggle for Life on the Colorado Plateau I imagine the death of the very last mammoth on the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining: The End of the Story, or the Beginning? In the final post of the series, I discuss the arrival of humans on the plateau, and how humans change the land they occupy. I also tip my hat to Ken Burns and his series on "The National Parks: America's Greatest Idea". The parks are the laboratories in which I and my students study the history of the earth.

So there you go: 71 posts that tell a story encompassing 2 billion years as it is exposed on a very special part of the earth's surface: the Colorado Plateau, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Congratulations if you ever made it through the whole thing. I never realized I was writing the equivalent of an entire book, but it was a story I truly enjoyed telling, and I also deeply appreciated the feedback that many of you provided.

Heading Out to the Back of Beyond on the Colorado Plateau!

Geotripper may go quiet for a week or two, as I will be on the road with twenty of my best students out on the Colorado Plateau, the incredible region surrounding the Four Corners. I've been dreaming of this trip for a year now, as I had to start making group camping reservations last July! It's getting crowded in some of the places like Grand Canyon and Zion, but I've learned over the years that there are some pretty quiet places out there as well. When I started blogging a decade ago, one of my first ideas was a blog series about the places we visit on our field studies journey. I am reposting the introduction both for my students, but for anyone out there who might be traveling in the region and might want to know a little more about the lands they are passing through.

From July 1, 2008:

Please forgive me for filling the feeds with such a long post, but I wanted to pull together an annotated list of the blog posts of my just completed journey through the geological history of the Colorado Plateau. It turned into a massive project that lasted more than a year, and included seventy different postings and more than a hundred photos. Don't feel compelled to try reading it, but I hope you enjoy it if you do. If it lacks precise continuity and style, remember that I had no idea how it would end when I started it and I had no editor! I've been taking students on the plateau for twenty years, and it has proven to be one of the best places on the planet to learn earth history.

Time Beyond Imagining, the first post back in June of 2008 introducing the concept that would guide the entire series. I had no idea what I was getting into!

Time Beyond Imagining - An Intro to the Colorado Plateau, a first introduction to the sweep of the landscape that I would be covering through the series.

Time Beyond Imagining - The Oldest Rocks on the Colorado Plateau: The oldest rocks are exposed at only a few places, including deep in the Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 2: A discussion of the 12,000 feet of sediments hidden deep in the depth of the Grand Canyon dated at around 1 billion years

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 3: LIFE!: The first appearance of complex life during the Cambrian Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 4: Something is Missing! Journeying up the walls of Grand Canyon through the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 5: Seeing Red Looking at the Mississippian Redwall Limestone in Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 6: Seeing Red (Really!) We rise up through the walls of the Grand Canyon to the Permian rocks of the Supai Group and Hermit Shale

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 7: Mountains Rise: Permian rocks are exposed throughout the plateau country. We leave the Grand Canyon and explore some of these other places

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Old Salt I was beginning to realize that the project would be longer than I thought. We explore the formation and effects of salt precipitation in Late Paleozoic time

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Sand! A return to the Grand Canyon and the prominent Coconino Sandstone near the rim

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: A Final Transgression Looking at the top two layers in the Grand Canyon and related rocks on other parts of the plateau.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: On to the Grand Staircase An introduction to the Mesozoic history of the plateau country, which lies outside the Grand Canyon. We start exploring the other wonderful parks out there

The Grand Staircase and the Geologic Time Scale A diagram of the Grand Staircase, the younger rocks of the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Into the Triassic An introduction to the widespread Triassic rocks of the Plateau. It would prove to take a number of posts!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? A short departure to discuss the identity of a Triassic fossil from the plateau. A fairly long discussion followed!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? Heck if I actually know! I admit to my ignorance...

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Ash and Wood A study of the paleontology of one of our unusual parks: Petrified Forest in Arizona

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: This Yellow is NOT Mellow The Chinle also contains mineable uranium deposits; I wade into the controversy

Leetso, the Yellow Monster A continuation of the heritage of uranium on the plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: The Real Jurassic Parks The Jurassic rocks of the plateau are responsible for much of the spectacular scenery in the region. This was the introduction

The Colorado Plateau Story: the real Jurassic Parks Follows the story of the Kayenta and Wingate formations, and three unique and little known parks: Capitol Reef National Park, and Colorado and Vermillion Cliffs National Monuments.

The Real Jurassic Parks: Navajo! The Navajo Sandstone forms some of the best photography opportunities: this was a discussion of Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon

Antelope Canyon, A Real Jurassic Park An excuse to show more pictures of Antelope Canyon!

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park First part of look at one of our "crown jewel" national parks

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park, Part 2 A hike to Angels Landing in Zion National Park

The Real Jurassic Parks: Capitol Reef (Oh, and Sheep Blogging) A return to Capitol Reef and an excuse to show off one of my favorite bighorn sheep pictures

The Real Jurassic Parks: The San Rafael Group An introduction to another group of Jurassic formations, including the all-important Entrada Sandstone. A busy semester had begun and posts were becoming sparser at times. I was realizing the project was going to take some time, and I stopped using the word "brief"!

The Real Jurassic Parks: Goblin Valley and the Entrada Sandstone One of Utah's unique and isolated state parks

The Real Jurassic Parks: Kodachrome Basin (and a great resource!) Another fantastic Utah State Park and a link to an e-book on the geology of Utah's parks and monuments

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park An intro to Arches National Park, one of my personal favorites

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park, continued. And an Eminent Threat. After several weeks I got back to work with a continued exploration of Arches, and discussed new threats to parks in the region

The Real Jurassic Parks: Where are the Dinosaurs? A look at wonderful Dinosaur National Monument and a rotten political situation there

The REAL Jurassic Parks were really Cretaceous I thought the Jurassic would provide the most posts in the series, and therefore had no idea how long I would spend in the Cretaceous. This was the introduction

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Cedar Mountain Formation The only dinosaur dig I ever took part in was in an early Cretaceous formation in Montana, but it was related to the Colorado Plateau. This post turned into seven part story on our adventure

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Story of a DinoDig Much of the story was trying to get there in the first place: what is geokarma?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Every Cloud has a Golden Lining We drive through Yellowstone and arrive at the dig site

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig What we were looking for and why it was important. What is a deinonychus?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Dino-Digging Begins This is what grunt work is all about

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig wraps up We started finding bones!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Final Discovery We found a dinosaur that invariably is the last entry in a dinosaur dictionary...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The View is Nice but Access is a Problem... Back on the plateau, we are introduced to the remaining Cretaceous rocks and two archaeological parks, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Walled Cities and Tragedy More on the Canyons of the Ancients and a walled medieval-aged city...in southern Colorado!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Tragedy at Castle Rock Pueblo A haunted place...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Mancos Sea An interesting formation that some geologists curse at...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Green Table An exploration of the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Black Mesa story I wade into the coal mining controversy and get more comments than any other entry in the series

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: A City in the Wilderness Life had become busy and it was a month before I returned to the plateau with a discussion of Chaco Culture National Historical Park

And The Old World Passed Away... The Geologic History of the Colorado Plateau And another month passed! I tried to find the words to describe the profound events at the end of the Cretaceous Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A not-so-brief History of the Colorado Plateau Another long gap, but I was finally talking about the last 65 million years of Colorado Plateau history with an intro to the crustal deformation that was beginning to effect the region

Time Beyond Imagining - Land of Giant Lakes A discussion of the origin of the rocks at Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks National Monument. I thought I was close to the end, but I was still wrong, after a full year!

Fire Down Below - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau Another month of blogging on other things and I returned to the Cenozoic history of the region with a discussion of the volcanic activity that started to emerge on the plateau, including Shiprock

Fire Down Below II - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau The laccolithic mountains of the plateau country

Fire Down Below III - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau I find I have almost no pictures of Navajo Mountain despite having driven around it dozens of times...

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape Cenozoic events led to a truly scrambled landscape with a mystery-of-the-day

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Unaweep Canyon More mysterious canyons at Unaweep and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Colorado An exploration of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a canyon that shouldn't be there

Time Beyond Imagining - A Really Scrambled Landscape on the Colorado Plateau The opening discussion of one of the great plateau mysteries: why is there a Grand Canyon?

Time Beyond Imagining - Unscrambling History and the Origin of the Grand Canyon The complicated story continues

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau I thought I was almost finished, but found that much happened in the final few million years of the story. This is the story of the San Francisco Peaks Volcanic Field

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Part 2 A look at the volcanoes in the western Grand Canyon and how they formed massive lakes in the Grand Canyon, some 200 miles long!

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Pt. 3 The story of a stupendous rhyolite eruption at the Jemez Caldera in New Mexico

Time Almost Beyond Imagining: Who Do the Magic that Hoodoo? My favorite title for a discussion of a unique park near the Jemez Caldera, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau and Deep Time Although I had reached the last million years of a two billion year history, I felt a need to try and describe the immensity of geologic time, using the ruins of Bandelier National Park and the Jemez Caldera

Time Beyond Imagining - Where did the Ancient Enemy Go? The "disappearance" of the Ancestral Pueblo people is explored at Bandelier National Monument

Time Beyond Imagining: Why Can't We Touch the Venus de Milo? Once again, I thought I was done, but found a series of fascinating (to me) stories about research in the limestone caverns on the plateau. I began with a rant about preserving these wonderful caves that took us to Rome and Paris, of all places

Holy Crap, Batman! The Bat Cave is Full of it! Bat Cave in western Grand Canyon, and bat-sh*t. Lots of it, sort of

Holy Smokes, Batman, that crap is on fire! I was saving my best titles to the last, I guess. A horrific crime against science at Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon

Of Rat Pee and Uranium and Scavengers...The Underground Story of the Ice Ages on the Colorado Plateau What the caves on the plateau tell us, and how.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Final Struggle for Life on the Colorado Plateau I imagine the death of the very last mammoth on the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining: The End of the Story, or the Beginning? In the final post of the series, I discuss the arrival of humans on the plateau, and how humans change the land they occupy. I also tip my hat to Ken Burns and his series on "The National Parks: America's Greatest Idea". The parks are the laboratories in which I and my students study the history of the earth.

So there you go: 71 posts that tell a story encompassing 2 billion years as it is exposed on a very special part of the earth's surface: the Colorado Plateau, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Congratulations if you ever made it through the whole thing. I never realized I was writing the equivalent of an entire book, but it was a story I truly enjoyed telling, and I also deeply appreciated the feedback that many of you provided.