Twenty for 2020

A beautifully memorable sunset on December 31st, 2019 at Ras al Had, Oman on the eastern tip of Arabia. Who knew what the new year would bring?

Enormous limestone blocks in the Sidaq Gorge, Oman. We hiked into this dramatic gorge on the first day of our Rock Music Oman 2020 program with 24 William & Mary students.

Grace Westcott, Tim Terlizzi, and Natalie Rowland (from left to right) investigate the mystery of sands on the dunes in the Wahiba Sands, Oman.

Professor Anne Rasmussen discusses the crescent of learning with a backdrop of garishly folded Hawasina Group sedimentary rocks, Oman.

Emily Hinshaw, Evan Laughlin, and Ella Kasten (from left to right) survey the scene from atop the ramparts at the Mutrah Fort, Oman. Note the jagged hills in the background underlain by peridotite, rocks that once were located in the Earth’s mantle.

At the end of the last traverse for my old boots. These boots first came with me to Oman in December 2013 and have been my trusted field partner for years. Yet, the ophiolite took its toll and the boots were no longer repairable. I’ve written blog posts about field pants and canoes to celebrate their worthiness, perhaps these boots deserve a eulogy as well.

An eager cadre of geology students on the first day of the Spring semester in Earth Structure & Dynamics.

A January sunrise at the start of the Spring semester from the Sunken Garden (view to the east).

A panoramic view of the Geology Department community meeting in full swing. It’s a tradition that we start each semester with a gathering to outline the semester ahead and get reacquainted. Geology technician Bianca Boggs anchors the left flank, while Professor Nick Balascio looks askance on the right.

The Gladstone Gladiators on the chilly morning snapping a selfie before heading off for field research in the Piedmont. The Gladiators are among the most epic group of students researchers I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

William & Mary geologists Sam Belding and Evan Laughlin with their cooperative canine field partner. Note the outcrop of well-bedded quartzite from the Evington Group, layering dips moderately towards the southeast.

This might not look like much, but this scene, on a steep wooded hillside near Bent Creek, Virginia is one of the most insightful outcrops in the Piedmont. Evan Laughlin and I discovered this outcrop on a traverse during Gladiator weekend. On the annotated version (below) notice the geological contact (red and white line) that separates the muscovite schist from the underlying granitic gneiss. That contact is a fault, and a major tectonic boundary. In the Virginia Piedmont, it’s rare to observe contacts because bedrock exposures are typically covered by soil and vegetation.

Annotated image provides some clarity.

Students in my 2020 Weather, Climate, and Change course waiting for the sun to emerge from behind clouds during an activity in the Sunken Garden.

Hours after a February snow, melting is well underway in the Sunken Garden (view to the west). Why is the slope on the northern side of the Sunken Garden free of snow?

Geowallies on the Spring 2020 departmental field trip at a large outcrop of diabase near Norwood, Virginia.

Lee DePue (left) and Danni Riggs (right) discuss a pegmatite dike exposed in the riprap (placed blocks of rock used to armor shorelines) along the York River.

The Monday afternoon Earth Structure & Dynamics lab class attempts to locate the British troops on the Yorktown Battlefield. This is an annual field trip for my Earth Structure & Dynamics class.

The Tuesday afternoon Earth Structure & Dynamics lab sets to work making measurements along the York River on a dreary day.

Professor Nick Balascio with a sediment core that we just extracted from the bottom of Jolly Pond. Mud in the tube contains a record of environmental change in this watershed over the past 200 hundred years.

The new normal. A Geology faculty meeting via Zoom.

Screenshot of the 2020 William & Mary geology graduates (most of them) from our online and in real-time virtual graduation hosted on Zoom. It was exciting but bittersweet. It was surreal but affirming.