Amphibolite

Here's an Actinolite Schist. It was found in Fouts Springs, CA.    This is the first time I've seen this in the real world!

~3" wide.  It has a mixed frabic.  There's a bit of lichen on it.  I'm fairly certain it has garnets. Other minerals that often exist within this kind of rock are chlorite and pyroxene.  This is probably a low-grade metamorphic rock given its make-up.  Its protolith was likely basic to intermediate igneous rock.  This makes sense given it was found just outside a belt of coast range ophiolite and near a region known for its metavolcanics.  These volcanics are often attributed to ancient seamounts or terranes.

GIS

Looks like this summer I will be helping to finish off a very large data set of geology for USDA Forest Service.  It is even hooked into a relational database.  There is some potential for mapping part of a forest.  But there are two key problems: it's in the Franciscan and I've yet to map anything besides stratigraphic columns.

Owens Lake

Owens Lake is being a pain in my behind.  I wasn't expecting the kinds of research on the lake that I'm finding out about.  Where's the sequence stratigraphy and stratigraphic columns?  It's all chemical!  Core OL-92, etc., exists but researchers only use them for stable isotopes and rock-flour studies.


Update: I found a great paper that includes sequence stratigraphy of trenches at paleoseismic study sites:
Bacon, Steven N., Silvio K. Pezzopane, and Raymond M. Burke. 2003. Paleoseismology on the Owens Valley Fault and Latest Quaternary Stratigraphy in Owens Valley near Lone Pine, eastern California. Unpublished Final Technical Report for the US Geological Survey, National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). Arcata, CA.

Ore Deposits

For entertainment, I have been reading portions of J.M. Guilbert and C.F. Park Jr.'s The Geology of Ore Deposits.

I wanted to read it in order to understand chromite deposits.  In my opinion, my thirst for knowledge on that topic has been sated.  However, now I have found out that it has a few sections devoted towards ores developed by chemical and mechanical sedimentation.  Awesome.

Point Reyes

I will be headed to Point Reyes tomorrow.  There is an incredible assortment of geology there.  I'll be sure to look for as many sedimentary structures as I can find.  I will have my G11, which should allow for some excellent photographic detail.

The annotated Kolob Canyon photo will have to wait a little longer...

In other news, I am taking Basin Analysis this Spring quarter.  In addition to that, I'll be learning about environmental applications in GIS, Non-Renewable Resources (lecture-based inorganic chemistry in disguise), and paleoclimatology.  Should be a very nice multidisciplinary quarter.

Useful Software for Geology Majors

If you're studying geology and are a computer geek, I have some ideas that you may not have thought of. But knowing how resourceful most computer geeks are, I am sure you have found similar things.

Mendeley

Mendeley is not open source, but it does use a few open sourced libraries such as QT.  But that isn't important.  What is important is that it helps you manage journal articles for writing research papers in a very natural way. It automatically extracts metadata from downloaded PDFs and fills in the bibliographic details.  If the software thinks it doesn't have everything, it'll prompt you.  But best of all, it has a built in PDF reader that allows for highlighting and note taking... plus those same PDFs can be uploaded to Mendeley servers for syncing with other computers!  Or, share your bibliography using the Mendeley website.  It can also create a customizable organized directory tree of all the papers you have loaded into it.  I use it to categorize articles, take notes,  and export references to BibTex.  Others may want to use it to cite while you write in documents.  What is key with this software is that it does not get in my way!  With software like this, who needs Dark Age software like EndNote or an amazingly cluttered desktop? For OSX, Windows, and Linux.

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne is open source software written in Python. It is an electronic flash card program that uses an algorithm which prevents wasting time on cards you know. It schedules cards based on a ranking of 0-5. 0 means you drew a complete blank and 5 means you know the answer immediately. What is truly great about Mnemosyne is that it supports LaTeX input and it is crossplatform. This means you can get through your mineral formulas decks on just about any system.

mhchem

Mnemosyne lets you modify the LaTeX preamble. So you can add packages which can make inputing cards much faster. I use the package mhchem. It typesets chemical equations or formulas using input that is very natural for most people familiar with chemistry. It aligns numbers in equations very nicely. Get it and typeset your flashcards using that package. Its documentation is a very easy read.

LaTeXiT

LaTeXiT is for MacOSX. What better way to put your favorite TeX formulas into most any other OSX software. It is really fantastic. Double joy when you find that Grapher that comes with OSX can give LaTeX formatting for formulas that you used to generate graphs! Of course GNUPlot is probably necessary for your research papers. If you have OSX Snow Leopard, follow these instructions to compile GNUPlot.

The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table is a OSX Dashboard widget. It isn't a must have but damn is it convenient to find out very quickly ion charges and atomic mass! Now where is a good isotopes widget? ;-)

PDF-XChange Viewer

PDF-XChange Viewer is for Windows but free. Unlike Adobe Acrobat Reader (for the vast majority of PDFs I have used), but like OSX's Preview, it can do annotations. For slideshow heavy courses where the professor posts before lecture, this is a must have. It also has drawing tools and a highlighter. Be careful though as some PDF readers might get confused with abundant annotations and stack them atop each other and refuse to let you rearrange them.

Inkscape

Inkscape is the de-facto open source software for creating vector-based graphics.  It's for MacOS X, Windows, and Linux.  However, you need the latest XQuartz environment for MacOS X for it to run.  If you need to redraft infinitely scalable sketches from your field book, look no further.  But if you can afford Adobe Illustrated, or your department has it on their lab computers, I suppose you might be better off.  But at least, with this, you can work on diagram-based assignments at home.  Inkscape can also be a terrific way to create forms for use in the field.  It export to PDF.

rsync

On OSX v10.4 and greater, use rsync -aE /Volume/thumbdrive /Users/username/somebackuplocation regularly to backup your thumbdrives without copying data that has not changed. -E might not be useful copying off a FAT32 thumbdrive but it is there in case OSX can actually use those file attribute data on the HFS+ side. Definitely use it if you're backing up to a HFS+ external drive or vice versa. -a is archive mode which sets a bunch of flags that ensures you get a quality backup.  But, timemachine is rather nice, too.  It's really an overglorified, but awesome, rsync :-)

synctoy

Synctoy is software for Windows.  It is an easy to use method to sync files between disks, flash drives, networks, and so on.  If you operate Windows, and maintain files on a fallible flash drive, you better keep backups on your other computers.  Synctoy makes backups faster by only copying files that are new or have been updated.

Zions National Park, Part 1

In June of 2004, I visited Zions National Park in southern Utah.  I took an incredible number of photographs, but at the time I did not know much about geology.  Thus features that now look obvious to me were not features at all.

As I look through my photos, I can spot faint sedimentary structures.  My camera at the time was 3.1 megapixels.  It certainly could not resolve fine details from afar; and that's all I have!

This first image has what appears to be planar laminations at the base of the formation.  I believe that I can discern some cross stratification above that.  If I had more time, I would trace them so that they are evident.  In my original photos they can be seen pretty easily but for personal reasons I prefer not distributing my master copies.

In the second image, I can barely make out more obvious signs of cross stratification at center left by the dark linear feature.  They're dipping to the right, so one might say that water was flowing in that direction.

In the next post, I'll actually annotate the features on a really nice photo!  It is a closer view of photo two on this post.