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Geography 393

Geology 393

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GEOLOGY 393 WE OBJECTIVES

For Geology 393 you are to devise a detailed workplan (see Itinerary and Costs for base), and place sufficient reference diagrams and documentation forms into your field book, enabling you to record the appropriate type, quantity, and utility of formation and fossil data at all sites. Please develop proficiency with instrumentation and relevant samples  (in Science D328) BEFORE you venture into the field.

ALL data (GPS measurements, photographs, literature, etc.) are joint property of all trip participants, and you will share it without reservation with all other 393 students and faculty on this excursion.  Upon our return, there will be an electronic public folder holding such information for all participants at \\GeoDept1\Classes\Geo393\.  Use these materials to develop your technical report and poster for presentation.

WE ASSIGNMENTS: This is a writing emphasis (WE) course, but with rather different assignments than in conventional classroom courses. My principal objectives for iterative field writing are:

• PLANNING: logistics, itinerary, budget, and contingencies workplan. Audience: project reviewer; draft: F14DEC07; final: F21DEC07

• IMPLEMENTATION: documentation log sufficient that another person, without contact with the author, could accurately reconstruct/replicate all field activities at any time in the future. Additionally, real-time evaluation (and adjustment as necessary) of accomplished tasks, with written declaration of immediate intentions, is necessary in progress reports. Audience: field supervisor; progress reports: S05JAN, T08JAN, F11JAN, Su13JAN; log: W16JAN (return F18JAN)

• ANALYSIS: compilation, reflection, interpretation, evaluation, and communication of excursion findings in either a technical report and a collaborative poster exhibit. Audience: professional public; draft: F18JAN; final: F25JAN

The Park Service needs volunteers to assist them in a variety of necessary projects that funding cuts prevent the Big Bend staff from accomplishing.  Your field notes and reports will go to the Park officials in February to provide such service assistance.

Prior geology students have been able to successfully discern the sedimentary and igneous formations of Mariscal Mountain (2000) quite well.  Nearby Talley Mountain (2004), however, was anomalous, even though the Maxwell geology map shows it as just another igneous formation.  Apparently, something in its composition caused its reflectance to differ from the igneous rock of Mariscal. Similarly, Dominguez Mountain (2005) was an igneous formation that differed from both Mariscal and Talley.

Later, students performed a brief geologic survey of the Park's westernmost extremity, at Mesa de Anguila (2006). Then students focused substantial upon the fossil deposits in the Cretaceous formations in eastern Big Bend's Cuesta Carlota (2007), and began tracing the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary marking the end of the dinosaurs.

Your task will be to visit, identifying fossils or making other geological observations, to map the relatively new (~1980) Rosillo Flats addition. Ross Maxwell's geology map of the 1960s did not include this then-private land. You in 2008 will begin mapping Rosillo geologic formation contacts, further trace the K-T boundary, and seek Park boundary monuments.