You've Read About Them: How About Seeing Them in Person? California's Volcanoes Field Studies, Sept. 22-26, 2016

Mt. Shasta, the second tallest and most voluminous volcano in the Cascades

I write so much about my travels around the American West and elsewhere, and some might wonder where I find the time. Well...I tend to have a group of students with me. Geology, perhaps more than any other science, is best learned in the field, and our school recognizes the importance of field experiences.

Lava Beds National Monument

The community college system in California is of course one of the best alternatives for beginning a college education, a gateway to transferring into universities, but we also recognize lifelong learning as a part of our mission. Education doesn't just end with a degree. Professionals in one career can benefit from courses in related disciplines as a way of improving their job performance, or advancing up the pay scale. And all citizens can benefit from becoming better informed on the political issues of the day, such as climate change, or energy development (pulling some examples from geology).

Medicine Lake, glacio-volcanic lake occupying a large caldera.

With this in mind, I wanted to let my Modesto-based readers know about some great field studies trips coming up this fall. On September 22-26, I'll be teaching Geology 185, the Geology of California's Volcanoes. We'll be exploring Mt. Shasta, Lava Beds National Monument, Medicine Lake Highland, and Lassen Volcanic National Park, as well as Castle Crags and McArthur-Burney Falls State Parks. We will be camping at Woodson Bridge State Park the first night, spend two nights at Lava Beds National Monument, and the last night at McArthur-Burney Falls State Park. There will be hiking and caving opportunities, and some simply incredible scenery among some of the youngest volcanic features in the western United States.

Jot Dean Ice Cave. The ice persists in the cave year-round.

If this sounds intriguing, you can find more information at http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/Cascades_field_studies.html. California residents pay the normal tuition rate (2 semester units), but the rate is higher for out of state participants. The $90 fee for the course covers the van transportation and fees at the various parks and campgrounds. The students provide their own food (we'll have stoves and fuel). For my local readers, we'll have an organizational meeting on Thursday, September 8 in the Science Community Center at Modesto Junior College, room 326, at 5:30 PM. Contact me if you have questions.

Lassen Peak and Manzanita Lake. Lassen erupted in 1914-15, while Manzanita Lake formed behind a debris avalanche about 300 years ago.

This isn't our only field studies opportunity! Watch for other announcements soon.

The Other California: A Chance to See a Unique Piece of our State, our local Galapagos Island

Santa Cruz Island in Southern California. Here is your chance to explore this dynamic and unique ecosystem! Source National Park Service

I work with some pretty incredible people. Modesto may be not be the most exciting place to live, a Central Valley town with a depressed economy and limited opportunities, but the professors and teachers I work with are fighting to provide our students a chance to reach their dreams (and even to give them an idea of what to dream about). Many of our faculty are doing world class research, and we have nationally known poets and writers. They could live anywhere, but they've chosen to live here and work to build their community

It's also important to know that despite our limited resources, our administration recognizes the value of field experience not just in geology, but also biology, archaeology, and anthropology. Students who have pursued their education at our school have had opportunities to explore far-flung parts of our world, including Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Baja California, and all eleven western states. It is a challenge to put such trips together, and they can be expensive, but the experience and knowledge gained is priceless.

Which brings us to today's topic. Early on in my blogging career (in the Pre-Pleistocene year of 2008), I had a regular feature called the "Other California" which describes those parts of our fair state that don't always show up on the postcards and travel brochures, but which display incredible geology and natural history. Our state is rich with landscapes and species that are found nowhere else. And so today I want to let you know about a marvelous opportunity to see one of our most unique landscapes, the Channel Islands.

The Channel Islands are the oceanic extension of the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Structually, they've had a strange history that includes being a part of the Earth's crust that has rotated more than 90 degrees from their original orientation. They have been compressed and faulted, and isolated from the mainland for several million years. That means that fauna and flora have been isolated as well, and they have undergone selective pressure in order to survive. There are more endemic species here than anywhere else in the state. There is a species of bird, the Island Scrub Jay, that is found nowhere else, as well as a canine, the Santa Cruz Island Fox. As recently as 10,000 years ago there was a race of Pygmy Mammoths who survived on the islands for some time after their relatives had died out on the mainland. And...humans lived with and occasionally hunted them! The islands have a rich archaeological heritage of the Chumash people that goes back thousands of years. 

You have a chance to explore Santa Cruz Island with an archaeologist, Professor Susan Kerr, and a biologist, Professor Teri Curtis through the auspices of Modesto Junior College. The class is Archaeological and Biological Field Studies of the Channel Islands (Anthropology 155 and Biology 155 for a total of 2 semester units) and it will take place on August 7-12 on Santa Cruz Island. Cost includes registration fees for the class and $480 for housing, transportation, meals and activities, including kayaking and hiking. There is an information meeting on May 19th for those of you who live in the Modesto region, at 6 PM in Science Community Center room 212 on the west campus of MJC. If you can't make it to the meeting, contact Susan Kerr (kerrs -at- yosemite.edu) or Teri Curtis (curtist -at- yosemite.edu). I hope you can join them!

Cartoons Come to Life: The Value of Field Studies at Red Rock Canyon

I spend a lot of time in classrooms drawing cartoons. Lots of them, diagrammatically representing folds, faults and stratigraphy, trying to communicate to my students how these structures tell the story of the Earth. The problem for many of my students is that these are just cartoons. Cartoons on Saturday mornings (do ANY of you remember when that was the only time one got to watch cartoons?) do represent life in a way, but only if you have a real life to compare them to. And that's the problem for many students these days. They have no real-life experiences in the outdoors with which to compare these drawings.

And thus, the value of a field studies course. There is nothing quite like having the privilege of standing beneath a cliff, enjoying and appreciating the scenery, yes, but also being able to understand the story it tells. Our trip to Death Valley a few weeks ago included a fossil hunt at the first stop, but our second was a site where basic principles of geology stand out in stark relief, without a need for a chalkboard cartoon (I forgot the chalkboard this trip anyway). We had arrived at Red Rock Canyon State Park in the Mojave Desert. Just stepping out of the vehicles presented us a cliff face that was a physical representation of the diagram at the top of the post, a series of brightly colored layers of sand, siltstone and volcanic tuff transected by a fault.

The order of the layering provides a fine example of "superposition", the principle that layered rocks are stacked oldest to youngest, unless they have been overturned. This is one of the earliest principles of geology, described originally by Nicolas Steno in the 1600s. Looking east along the cliff we could also see the physical manifestation of another Steno principle, that of original horizontality. Most sedimentary environments produce horizontal strata (think floodplains or lakes, or shallow seas). If layers are tilted, some kind of force has acted on them, and being here in southern California, faults might be at fault.

A discussion of these basic principles was followed by a short "mapping" project. We weren't quite to the proficiency of working with maps, but the students set out to propose how they would organize the layers into formations and members that could be used to tell a logical story as to how these rocks could have come to have the structure and appearance they have today.

Red Rock Canyon does have a fascinating story as it turns out. The red and brown layers, called the Dove Springs Formation, record deposition of silt and sand in river floodplains and ephemeral lakes between 12.5 to 7.5 million years ago. The semiarid savanna environment supported a diverse ecosystem that included extinct elephants (gomphotherium), ancestral rhinos, three-toed horses, giraffe-like camels, saber-toothed cats, and bone-crushing ancestors to the bears and dogs. There are also numerous smaller fossils like ancestral skunks, alligator lizards, and shrews, with a total plant and animal species count of more than one hundred. The ecosystem suffered the occasional catastrophe as it was buried by volcanic ash. Basaltic lava flowed across the region.

One of the student's discoveries was a somewhat less visible fault that shifted the layers. It was a great introduction into the mind of field geologists, seeing the world the way earth scientists do. It was an interesting spot, but there were many more to come on the road ahead.

Speaking of roads and cartoons come to life...here's the Roadrunner (pic is actually from Joshua Tree National Park)....

...and Wiley E. Coyote. Despite living in the most desolate driest place in North America, it looks like this one has actually caught a few roadrunners! Seriously, this coyote lives only a few miles from Badwater, the hottest and lowest part of Death Valley.

On the Road Again: Into the Valley of Death (and check out a new geology blog)

It's finally dawning on me: I'm hitting the road again. With students! I often imagine while in a classroom of having the walls and doors fading away into an open landscape where the principles I am discussing appear in front of us and around us in perfect clarity. Such is the experience of teaching in the the most geological national park in the world: Death Valley National Park.

We will have four days working our way through two billion years of Earth history, with an opportunity of experiencing a sometimes deadly landscape during the part of the year when it is pleasantly warm instead of killer hot.

There are so many sights in this incredible national park. The Earth's crust has been stretched and broken, exposing much of the upper crust of the western United States.

I've no idea whether I'll be able to post while on the road. Stovepipe Wells has a notoriously undependable web connection, but if I get the chance, I'll drop in and send a few updates

In the meantime, have a delightful holiday weekend. We'll catch you later on! If you want to read some good geology writing while we are gone, may I recommend "Diary of a Geology Student"? My former student Becca has been putting up some excellent material in the last few weeks, especially this post about being a student these days.

Strangers in a Strange Land: Hitting the Road in Death Valley

I was beginning a short web series about the volcanoes of San Francisco, but life briefly intrudes. I haven't been on the open highway for a while, but tomorrow we hit the road, me and a bunch of eager (I think) students. We are headed to the hottest driest place on the continent: Death Valley National Park. Hopefully the dieties will be merciful...

Of course, February is a delightful time to experience the Valley of Death, as temperatures are expected to be in the middle 70s, and night-time lows in the 40s. There were some windstorms earlier this week, but the weather is settling down. We will be camping and net access is...well, what do you expect in the most isolated corner of California? I will post a few updates if possible.

Death Valley National Park preserves one of the most complete geologic histories of any park on the North American continent. The oldest rocks developed possibly in late Archean time, and there is a three mile thick section of Proterozoic sediments, including some of the diamictites that provide possible evidence for the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis. The Paleozoic record includes thousands of feet of sediment representing nearly every period. There are Mesozoic granitic intrusions and sedimentary layers as well. There are Cenozoic sediments and extensive volcanic ash deposits. There are incredibly young volcanic features, including the Ubehebe Craters which made the news in the last few weeks. And the geologic structures! The park is a showplace of well exposed faults and folds, including numerous metamorphic core complexes and the famous turtlebacks. And there are even four species of fish, which evolved from one species in less than 20,000 years. The Devils Hole pupfish is the rarest and most threatened fish species in the country (they all live in a single submerged cavern opening).

And best of all, all of these fascinating features are collected into one of the most strangely scenic deserts to be found anywhere. It's so otherworldly that some areas of the park were used to represent other worlds in the Star Wars movies.

I'm looking forward to the next five days!

The Rigors of the Routine Life II: On Other Hand, Your Brain Will Shrivel Up...

A couple of seemingly unrelated things caught my eye yesterday. First, it is the 30th anniversary of the release of my favorite film of all time: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. The second was an 1888 book on geology and geography (Eclectic Physical Geography by Russell Hinman) that I found in my bookshelves while looking for something else (Thanks Jim, for the gift!). The third thing that caught my eye was the flower display in my yard, which I wrote about in the previous post.

A routine life may be comfortable and predictable, but routine doesn't allow much room for growth and discovery. I have lived in one place for more than twenty years (very routine!), and there are places that I haunt with regularity (also routine), and I will sometimes sit in these restaurants or wander through the aisles of the stores and just listen to the ebb and flow of noise and actions of the staff. They never change; the players change, the owners change, but the essential activity never does. To what purpose? Usually to make money, to take home a paycheck. But through all the transactions, both economic and personal, little is learned, little is discovered, and no one gains anything more than a full stomach or a few bags of groceries (though these are very nice things to have). The workplace has a purpose, but for the most part that purpose has little to do with expanding the minds of those involved. There isn't any room, or desire, for human discovery. In the most cynical sense, we are supposed to stick to our routine, do our jobs, not cause trouble, and buy things.

One of the shocking lines in the movie "The Truman Show" was a teacher telling a young Truman "Oh, you're too late! There's nothing left to explore!" in response to his desire to travel the world like Magellan. In so many ways, society seems to be telling us all the same thing. When the budget axe falls, science and the arts in schools disappear in favor of more math and English multiple-choice standardized test-teaching courses. Libraries close, science divisions in state and national government disappear. Television and other media no longer have full time science editors, apart from weather readers. I might be overstating this, given the success of the Discovery Channel and others, but really, don't they go the mostly for spectacle? As a society, we are losing the sense of a need for discovery, and we are not providing outlets for it, especially among our children. There is nothing, we are told, in actions if not words, left to explore...(a tweet making the rounds notes that "if you watch NASA backwards, it's about a space agency that has no spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on moon.").

In classes, we teach what others have discovered and our students sit passively, learning facts but not the excitement of the human journey. In a geologic sense, many of the places in my country and state have been explored, but...not by my students. And that is what all my disparate threads are all about: the need to get students into the field. No textbook, no blog (including this one), and no virtual field guide can ever replace the adventure of placing your hands on the rocks of a fresh lava flow or the ancient crust, or a dinosaur fossil in situ, or a crystal gleaming in a cavity one has just opened up with a chisel. A personal discovery is just as significant, just as important, as all the discoveries made by the Magellans, Newtons and Einsteins of the world, because in that personal life it will never be forgotten, and it will enrich that life in a way that rote learning cannot.

"Raiders" was a great Saturday movie serial, a white knuckle adventure that was never meant to be a career documentary on being an archaeologist or geologist. Yet, scattered here and there in the plot were tidbits of truth. The most important lesson was that no discovery comes without education and preparation. Discovery is hard work sometimes. Indiana Jones may have been a tomb raider of the worst kind, but he knew where to look because he was educated. Discoveries can't happen without planning and informed intuition.

The textbook in physical geography was a revelation simply because it revealed how little we as a species knew only a century ago. There were 70 known elements, there were only stars in the universe, not galaxies, the sun shone because of condensation of gases and impacts by meteorites, the Antarctic was possibly some islands, and no reason at all was known for the occurrence of earthquakes and volcanoes. There was gravity, but there was also a luminiferous ether, and no such thing as radiation. The racism in the final chapter is shocking. But, for all of its shortcomings (in hindsight), there was also an expectation that the unknown would be discovered in the future. I don't get that feeling so much from textbooks today. There are huge mysteries still to be solved, and our kids need to know this.

So, despite budget disasters and cuts in education, the chance for rain and snow (in June!), and high gas prices, we are going to hit the road for two weeks, and our students are going to discover...something. I will try to keep you posted whenever possible.

The pictures bookending today's post are the settings for two of the most famous scenes from the Indiana Jones movies. Who can identify the locations and the two scenes?

See Glacier Before the Glaciers are Gone; See Yellowstone Before the Supervolcano Blows: Take a Geology Field Course This Summer

There was a time when the our national parks seemed like unchangeable icons and symbols. They were protected from development, they were reservoirs of intact ecosystems and clean water and air, and a family might have told stories of camping in the olden days of the 30's and 40's, and until recently one could reasonably expect to have a similar experience in the current era. Times are changing, however. Glaciers are disappearing from Glacier National Park, forests and wildlife are transforming in parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite as the climate warms, and some parks are becoming isolated islands in seas of urban development. Views in parks like Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Sequoia are increasingly obscured by air pollution. Our orphaned parks, the state parks, are being being closed for lack of funding. Others face privatization. It's a shame that the best idea our country ever had is being in some ways abandoned. I would love to think that we are coming up with better ways of caring for our national and state treasures, but I am not optimistic. When budget cuts come, the parks get cut first.
I guess this is an odd way to extend an invitation! But if you live in the Modesto region (or are willing to make some major travel arrangements), we would like to invite you to travel with us on an exploration of some of our country's most precious places: the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rocky Mountains. I'm working with our anthropology professor to offer a dyad class on the archaeology and geology of nine national parks and monuments (Lava Beds, Crater Lake, Newberry Crater, Mt. Rainier, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Great Basin, Yosemite) as well as a multitude of state parks and other sites. And you can get three units of semester credit doing something interesting!
That's not to say there will be no work...you have to learn stuff, and demonstrate it too us! And it is a camping excursion, with all the possibilities of rain, snow, sun, wind and critters. On the other hand, there will be plenty of opportunities to hike, to see starlight skies and wonderful sunsets, and to have a multitude of unforgettable and unique experiences. If you are interested, see the press release below for more information. We are having an informational meeting on Monday if you live nearby. We can provide info by e-mail if you can't come to the meeting.

MJC offers new Geology and Archaeology summer field studies class

(Modesto, CA) — Modesto Junior College is offering a unique summer field studies course entitled Geology and Archaeology of the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rocky Mountains held June 15 to June 30, 2011. Anyone interested in enrolling in this special learning opportunity is invited to attend the orientation meeting on Monday, May 23 at 7 p.m. in Science 132 on East Campus.

The course will provide an exploration of Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Grand Tetons and Glacier National Parks, and Mount St. Helens and Lava Beds National Monuments. Participants will also have the chance to visit and discover some less familiar spots that provide evidence of the geological and human history of the region, including Great Basin National Park, Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Fossil Butte National Monument, and Newberry Crater.

The new joint class is being taught by Professor of Anthropology Susan Kerr and Professor of Geology Garry Hayes and students will earn 3 semester units in either Geology 174 or Anthropology 174. A background is not required in either of these subjects. Basic principles will be developed prior to and during the course, and participation will benefit anyone interested in a career in teaching, park management and rangering, or science.

The group will camp in the parks and monuments and the $650 class fee includes all transportation, camping fees, park admission fees, and food. A registration fee of $26 per unit is additional, as are other applicable fees for those not already enrolled as an MJC student. Anyone wishing to register for the class who is not already enrolled as an MJC student must submit an application online at www.mjc.edu.

For additional information email Susan Kerr at kerrs@mjc.edu or Garry Hayes hayesg@mjc.edu or visit http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/ghayes/serv06.htm for a complete itinerary.

Home from the Road: A Tuesday Mystery Photo...

I am back home from a delightful field studies class with fifteen excellent students, having spent four days exploring the eastern Sierra Nevada, the Owens Valley and the White Mountains. It was strange to be so out of touch with cyber-space, but it was also so nice to be away from the normal craziness of school!

Here are two shots from different angles of one of my new discoveries. A brownie point for explaining the origin of these rocks, and a few more for figuring out where they are, and the geological processes that have directly altered the outcrop.

It's not that mysterious. If you think you know where it is, you are probably right!

Losing Field Studies: Budget Crisis Continues in California

The continuing recession (and here in the Central Valley of California it is a depression) and the California state budget crisis is hitting our school hard. Got word today that our summer field studies program, a two-week field studies program that takes our students all over the American west and to international destinations, has been eliminated for 2010 and probably for 2011 as well. It is a truly unfortunate development, because aside from the instructor's salary, the program was funded by the students. It didn't really cost the school much, but the college has decided to focus on the core classes for each discipline, and running the field studies would mean one less math or English class on the schedule.

I'm not complaining exactly, because I still have a job, and a great many people have it far, far worse (although I did lose one teaching job this year already). I am simply saddened that our program is losing one of the best tools we have for training geology and teaching majors the core principles of the geosciences. It's one thing to describle rock types on a chalk board or in a box in the lab, and quite another to pick up rocks and minerals in the context of where they are found in nature. Teachers who have seen the things they talk about, whether volcanoes, faults, fossils, glaciers or whatever, will be better teachers. Geologists without field experiences are at a severe disadvantage in academic and employment settings.

For the time being, some of our more local field studies will go on in the fall and spring semesters, but I fear what is coming in the next year. Even if the economy improves it may be years before the state budget improves to an extent that will help the community college system. That somehow seems wrong, because it is the community colleges that are at the forefront of retraining workers during times of economic upheaval. But we are closing our doors to new students these days.