Keck Presentations at AGU

Dec 7, 2018 | News | 0 comments

Keck Geology Presentations at GSA 2018

Oct 28, 2018 | News | 0 comments

Nevada Project Fall Update

Sep 29, 2018 | News | 0 comments

Team Dirt in the field.

Submitted by Colin Robins (Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges)

Team Dirt had an intense but wonderful summer getting started on their paleoenvironmental analysis of unique calcic and petrocalcic horizons in southern Nevada. Ethan Conley, Kurt Crandall, India Futterman, and Penelope Vorster worked with Colin Robins to measure sections, describe soil profiles, and collect soil and sediment samples from the 4 to 5 million-year-old soil geomorphic surface of Mormon Mesa and Flat Top Mesa, Nevada. Despite the 110-degree late-June desert heat and two rattlesnake encounters (one sidewinder and one Mojave green), the team collected over 150 samples and discovered two important new exposures. The new soil-stratigraphic sections will yield new resolution on Mormon Mesa’s geomorphic responses to climate shifts and tectonic events from the Pliocene to the Holocene. While most of Mormon Mesa shares one complex, composite soil profile, the two previously undiscovered sites at Flat Top Mesa exhibit younger, inset soil profiles developed within infilled arroyos that are now juxtaposed immediately adjacent to the older sequence. These younger profiles contain distinct micromorphological features and, critically for paleoclimate analyses, may have experienced fewer episodes of pedogenic carbonate dissolution and reprecipitation.

Having worked frenetically but carefully in Claremont to sort, crush, repackage, section, and ship samples back to their home institutions at Beloit, Mount Holyoke, Pitzer, and Vassar Colleges, the team is now beginning laboratory analyses including soil micromorphology and mineralogy, bulk geochemistry, and stable isotope geochemistry. The team will present preliminary data from these analyses as a joint poster at this year’s annual Geological Society of America Meetings in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Wyoming Project Fall Update

Sep 25, 2018 | News | 0 comments

Wyoming project students geared up for a day in the field.

Submitted by Brady Foreman (Western Washington University)

Ellen Currano (University of Wyoming), Marieke Dechesne (USGS), Regan Dunn (Field Museum), Brady Foreman (Western Washington University), and six undergraduates performed four weeks of field and laboratory research in southeastern Wyoming examining vegetation and fluvial responses to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a major global warming event that occurred 56 million years ago. The research team measured numerous stratigraphic sections through fluvial, deltaic, and lacustrine sediments outside the tiny town of Hanna, Wyoming, and discovered and excavated fossil leaf sites. Students obtained over 500 geochemical samples at the field sites and processed them at the University of Wyoming. These data will help test hypotheses regarding the ancient global carbon cycle. Students also determined the ancient flow directions and conditions of the river and deltas from over 60 paleocurrent measurements, and obtained 30 sandstone samples for determining sediment source areas. The students also learned a new proxy methodology for estimating vegetation structure and density across ancient landscapes. They applied this technique to over 30 distinct stratigraphic levels spanning the PETM, and developed their own projects assessing the spatial variability of vegetation across the paleo-landscapes.

Glacier National Park Project Fall Update

Sep 18, 2018 | News | 0 comments

Glacier project students and Amy Myrbo analyzing cores in the LacCore lab.

Submitted by Kelly MacGregor (Macalester College)

Kelly MacGregor (Macalester College) and Amy Myrbo (LacCore, University of Minnesota) and eight Gateway students collected water and sediment transport measurements as well as lake core samples in the Many Glacier region of Glacier National Park, Montana in summer 2018.  We spent two weeks in the field collecting data and sampling, and another two weeks at the LacCore laboratory conducting core descriptions and analysis.  Students determined that Fishercap Lake was shallow (~1 m deep), and is unlikely to be a significant sediment trap in the valley system.  They discovered a layer of gravel below ~50 cm of fine-grained sediment that may represent a period of lake dessication or possibly a major flooding event; radiocarbon dating (ongoing) will help constrain the timing of this event.  In addition, Swiftcurrent Lake cores sampled three volcanic ash units from the western U.S., including the Mazama ash (Crater Lake, OR; 7.6 ka) and the Mt. St. Helens J ash (~13.7 ka). Coring along a transect across an inlet delta in Swiftcurrent shows increasing deposition rates with distance from the inlet stream.The students presented their work to Park Rangers, and talked daily with Park visitors during the project.  They will be presenting the results of their research at two posters at the Geological Society of America meeting in November 2018.