Contribute to Geoscience Scholarship Opportunities for Women Undergraduates

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Contribute to Geoscience Scholarship Opportunities for Women Undergraduates

Are you a woman undergraduate geoscience student interested in applying for this year's Pacific NW Chapter Tanaka Scholarship? Or are you personally interested in contributing financially to the scholarship?

For applicants: the due date is December 15. More information can be found on the Association for Women Geoscientists website here.

For potential donors: if you are fortunate enough that you have not been impacted financially by the pandemic, please contribute to our scholarship fund -- even small donations add up! Even though most WA and OR colleges are currently holding virtual classes, the need is as great as ever since most students have lost any part-time jobs they may have had — and their parents may have lost income as well. This year only (because of the CARES Act), even if you don't itemize deductions, you'll be able to deduct up to $300 in charitable contributions on your 2020 income taxes. Since the AWG Foundation is a 501(C)(3) charity, this rule will apply to any donation you make.

Learn more about applying or donating ➡

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DIY Geology Trip to Eastern/Central Washington State

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DIY Geology Trip to Eastern/Central Washington State

by Carol Hasenberg

What do you do when you can’t go on a GSOC field trip?!? Well, my husband John and I have been watching Nick Zentner do his video thing all spring and summer on YouTube, and we really wanted to see some of the features of Washington state that have been highlighted on the series. So, we decided to go ourselves to eastern and central Washington and see some of this geology. This article is an interactive travelogue of that adventure!

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The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley

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The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley

A companion article to Andrew Dunning’s online Meetup talk about Death Valley geology to GSOC on May 16, 2020.

by Carol Hasenberg

Death Valley National Park, the largest in area in the lower 48, boasts the lowest point in North America and the world record hottest temperature. It is also the driest desert in North America, contains relief of over 11,000 feet and exposes a remarkably full geologic history spanning 2.5 billion years (2.5 Ga.). The faults that created it are part of a system that in time may become the plate boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. Significant fossil finds from many different time periods have been made in the park. The combination of all these features make it one of the most geologically valuable sites in North America.

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Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes

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Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes

By Carol Hasenberg

There are many reasons why people might produce a fake fossil, but here are the leading contenders:

  • Fossils can be very valuable items, and if one wants to make some easy money, one can mass produce fossil products for profit, and

  • Wouldn’t it be fun to fool the gullible public into believing in this fake I’ve made!

Dr. Orr had lots of examples of these enterprises that have been done since man first started studying fossils. A spectacularly popular fake of the early Twentieth Century was Piltdown Man, a fake “missing link” fossil made by Charles Dawson in Britain. He combined a human skull with the mandible from an orangutan and this was passed off as real for 40 years, until the advent of Carbon-14 dating exposed it as a fraud.

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GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

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GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

In February and March we all thought that this coronavirus wave would burst over us and be done in a couple of months, and then we’d all go back to normal. Meanwhile GSOC President Sheila Alfsen had been conferring with the March 8 GSOC Annual Banquet speaker David Montgomery, who told her that he had been in and out of the SEATAC airport several times the week preceding the banquet and might have been exposed to the virus. They reluctantly concluded that the banquet needed to be postponed. The decision was accepted by the GSOC Board of Directors and proved to be prophetic. Within hours of the decision the University of Washington closed, and within a week it became clear that to combat this highly contagious virus homes and businesses in the Pacific Northwest were going to have to go into a quasi-quarantine state for awhile. But we still entertained hopes of returning to normal sooner than later. With great reluctance the GSOC board also decided to try meeting via this new meeting platform called Zoom. A couple of the board members had tried it and thought it might be easy enough to try for board meetings, but the consensus was that our membership would not be willing to see an online lecture, and it would be technically difficult. So, we cancelled the lecture for April and crossed our fingers.

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Washington State: Land of Geologic Complexity

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Washington State: Land of Geologic Complexity

Based on the February 14, 2020 lecture by Dr. Marli Miller, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon and her book co-authored with Dr. Darrel Cowan.

GSOC members were delighted to welcome back Dr. Marli Miller to speak to the society about her latest book, Roadside Geology of Washington Second Edition. Miller co-wrote the book with her former PhD. Thesis advisor, Dr. Darrel Cowan of the University of Washington, whose experience and perspective in understanding the geological framework of the state was invaluable. In her opening remarks, she said that her favorite thing to say about writing these (roadside geology) books is that she learns so much.

In her lecture Miller broke down the geological history of Washington into a series of events, which define the physiographic provinces of the state, because it is the bedrock of a region that influences the outward appearance. The original western boundary, the Laurentian margin, is now on the eastern margin of Washington, and these ancient rocks are highly deformed and metamorphosed to varying degrees. A series of accreted terranes, starting with the Quesnellia terrane accreted in the Jurassic, and the latest Siletzia, which stretches from southern Oregon to southwestern British Columbia, and which accreted 50 million years ago, comprise the basement for the remaining part of the state. Atop and within these lie volcanic and sedimentary bodies that covered or erupted through the basement rocks. Stitching plutons were igneous masses that erupted as a result of terranes accreting to each other or to the continent.

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A Fracking Overview

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A Fracking Overview

Based on the January 10, 2020 GSOC Friday night lecture by Dr. Laird Thompson, Managing Partner of UF3.

Dr. Laird Thompson is an expert on rock fracturing and after working on imaging technology for boreholes in the 1980’s, he was appointed head of Mobil Oil’s fracture technology. He owns his own consulting firm now and is currently partnering on some work which has brought him into Oregon -- where GSOC is fortunate to have him as a speaker. He is the author or coauthor of several reference books which are the standards for the fracking* industry.

*See discussion below about whether it should be spelled “fracking” or “fracing.”

In explaining the rise and importance of fracking, Thompson reviewed the natural, financial and geopolitical history of the oil industry. Oil** is a commodity whose value is shaped by the laws of supply and demand. It is a commodity that is limited in supply. For the most part, it was created from biomass, which on earth is concentrated in the ocean in the form of diatoms, plankton, etc. These little oceanic critters have died by the trillions, and the little drops of oil they used as ballast have turned into oil reserves over millions of years.

Download pdf of Laird Thompson’s January lecture.

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Invitation to AWG Northern California San Andreas Fault Geology Field Trip

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Join the Association for Women Geoscientists for a week-long field study of the remarkable geology along the North Coast of California from San Francisco to Mendocino. We will meet at Union Square in San Francisco on September 10th at 1:00 pm and end with a drop off at the San Francisco International Airport around 2:00pm on September 17th. We will stay four nights at the Marin Headlands Hostel Annex and three nights at the Mendocino College Coastal Field Station in Point Arena. Transportation is by coach and driver.

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“The Times, They are A- Changing”

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Upcoming changes to GSOC organization are being designed to facilitate membership registration and communications and to just “get the jobs done.”

With this edition, GSOC is publishing our last print format newsletter for the foreseeable future. Almost. By now, most of you members have been turning to the GSOC website for your information about what is going on in the club. And that will continue to be the case. For those of you who would like something to download and print, the GSOC board is planning to produce a pdf archive document summarizing the website articles and club activities at the end of each year starting in 2020. Those documents will be available on the website, included in the page with the archived newsletter files.

GSOC is also adopting a new software platform to perform membership registration, renewal and mass email communications starting in 2020. The GSOC Board of Directors will be sending an email to the membership outlining the membership renewal process and will be available to answer questions the members may have regarding the new platform and registration process. It will be important for members to renew their memberships using the process outlined in the email in order to continue to receive society emails and other membership benefits.

Needless to say, all these changes need to also be reflected in the society’s bylaws, and the board is working hard on those changes and is planning to present them to the membership in December 2019, so they can be put to the vote in the society’s annual business meeting in February 2020.

As the outgoing newsletter editor, I would like to express my appreciation for the society and for the opportunity I’ve had for writing and editing The Geological Newsletter. Twenty years have flown by so fast!

– Carol Hasenberg

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Floral Notes From the GSOC Wallowa Field Trip

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Floral Notes From the GSOC Wallowa Field Trip

by Teresa Meyer

For those of us who were fortunate enough to participate in the Wallowa GSOC field trip, along with stunning geology we were immersed in an abundance of wildflowers. We were surrounded by an unbelievable variety of wildflowers everywhere we went. At any one time you could stand still and see more than a dozen or more different flowers surrounding you.

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Nick Zentner, Pacific Northwest’s ‘Rock Star’!

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Nick Zentner, Pacific Northwest’s ‘Rock Star’!

This article is going to be a bit of a departure from the typical GSOC Friday night lecture synopsis, because there is an online video version of the “Supervolcanoes” lecture available on Nick Zentner’s web page. However, the GSOC lecture itself was a happening due to the popularity of Zentner’s video productions, and there were some wrinkles in the Supervolcanoes lecture that he did specifically for our group that are worth noting. To begin the lecture, Zentner talked about his inspiration for doing the topic of Supervolcanoes in the Pacific Northwest.

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Tyee Country and Marys Peak Trip

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Tyee Country and Marys Peak Trip

GSOC participants had a great little trip to the Corvallis area in mid-July to observe the geological features of Marys Peak and the Tyee formation along US 20 between Philomath and Newport, Oregon. Sheila Alfsen led the group on Saturday, July 13, on a tour of Marys Peak. Her tour was partially based on the very excellent book by Robert J. Lillie, Oregon’s Island in the Sky: Geology Road Guide to Marys Peak. This book is available online at a very reasonable cost.

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Wallowas Field Trip with Ellen Morris Bishop

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Wallowas Field Trip with Ellen Morris Bishop

I’ll begin this article with a picture of the Buckhorn Overlook taken on May 18, 2019, when Evelyn, Julia and I did the reconnaissance for the Wallowa trip. We were directed up here by guest field trip leader Ellen Morris Bishop as this is the best overlook of the eastern canyons area for observing the ranks upon ranks of Columbia River Basalt flows that override the exotic terrane rocks of Hells Canyon, Imnaha Canyon and the Zumwalt Prairie through which we had travelled to get there. We are actually looking down into Imnaha Canyon here and Hells Canyon is just over on the other side of the last green ridge you can see. The blue ridge beyond is the eastern wall of Hells Canyon.

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The Coaledo Project Revisits the Formation of the South Central Oregon Coast

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The Coaledo Project Revisits the Formation of the South Central Oregon Coast

Synopsis of the GSOC Friday night lecture given on June 8, 2019, with speaker Dr. John Armentrout

Dr. John Armentrout gave a fascinating lecture on his work on the Coaledo project, a multidisciplinary team effort to revisit the geology of Oregon’s Coos Bay area. The study area is covering the Cape Arago peninsula, from the mouth of Coos Bay to Sacchi Beach. The eighteen researchers involved in the project — specialists in geologic structure and stratigraphy, tectonics and paleomagnetics, sedimentology, and paleontology — will be updating tectonic and depositional history of the area to improve understanding at both the local and global levels of interest. 

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GSA Cordillera Conference Recap

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GSA Cordillera Conference Recap

A Big Thank You to all the GSOC Helpers!

GSOC’s contribution to this year’s GSA Cordilleran section meeting was a huge success thanks to the many hands that helped build the booth and manned the booth:

  • Charlie Raymond

  • Marty Muncie

  • Clay Kelleher

  • Cris Morgante

  • Denny Chamberlin

  • Herb Dirksen

  • Maryann Amann

  • Fenella Robinson

And thanks to Paul Edison-Lahm for the beautiful poster and business cards.

Great job you guys!

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