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The Geological Newsletter -1- January/February 2010

The Geological Newsletter “News of the Geological Society of the Oregon Country”

Volume 76, Number 1

January/February 2010

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207 www.gsoc.org 2009-2010 Administration: President: Carol Hasenberg [email protected] Vice-President: Larry Purchase – 360/254-5635 [email protected] Secretary Beverly Vogt – 503/292-6939 [email protected] Treasurer Richard Bartels − 503/292-6939 [email protected] Directors: Jan Kem (1 year) – 503/246-2275 Dave Olcott (2 years) – 503/695-5219 Anne O’Neill (3 years) - 503/477-7827

Past Presidents: Clay Kelleher – 503/775-6263 Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Newsletter Editor and Calendar: Carol Hasenberg [email protected] Website: Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Business Manager: Jan Kem − 503/246-2275 [email protected] Assistant Business Manager: Rosemary Kenney – 503/892-6514 VISITORS WELCOME AT ALL MEETINGS

CALENDAR February Activities Friday evening talk, February 12, 2010, at 8 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Dr. Paul Hammond of Portland State University will present “Mapping Columbia River Basalt lava flows in central Washington: What it tells us about tectonic plate activity.” Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:30 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts.

Future Activities GSOC Seventy Fifth Annual Banquet, Sunday, March 21, 2010, 1:00 p.m. at the Monarch Hotel in Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker Dr. Robert J. Carson of Whitman College will present “Where the Great River Bends: A natural and human history of the Columbia at Wallula,” based upon his recent book of the same title. See page 9 of this newsletter for the registration form. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar. UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS This year’s FOSSILFEST 2010 at Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitor Center in Newport , Oregon, will be held on February 13, 2010, from 9 am until 4 pm. Bill Orr and Ellen Morris Bishop are the scheduled speakers. You may bring your fossils in to have them identified. If you are interested in joining informally arranged activities with other Society members, check in


with those staffing the informational table for GSOC. Activities may include meals at local retaurants, walks on the beach to look for fossils, or other side trips and gatherings. Attendees should make their own arrangements for overnight lodging on Saturday if they desire to stay for the entire weekend. Recommendations of lodging may be found on our website (www.gsoc.org) in a link to this event. Call Janet Rasmussen at 541/753-0774 for more information about GSOC participation. Concordia University Portland will host the 2010 Oregon Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting on Saturday, February 27, 2010 (8 AM - 3 PM). Registration deadline is February 12. For more information and registration form visit the website at http://www.oas.pdx.edu/. The 2010 Seismological Society of America Meeting will be held in Portland, Oregon.: More than 500 seismologists from around the world will convene at the Seismological Society of America (SSA) annual conference on April 21 – 23. SSA is an international scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and its applications in understanding and mitigating earthquake hazards and in imaging the structure of the earth. The searchable database of meeting abstracts will be available in February. For a complete description of special sessions, visit http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2010/specialsessions.php. SSA will also convene a town hall meeting about earthquake preparedness for Portland residents on April 21. For more information, please visit the SSA meeting home page: http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2010/index.php. Portland State University Geology Department Geology Winter Colloquium 2010, Cramer Hall S17, 3:30-4:30 p.m.. All are invited to attend! For information contact: Scott Burns, 503, 725-3389, [email protected], or refer to the department website: http://geology.pdx.edu/node/3 • Jan 27 On the Leading Edge, Early Pacific

Northwest Exploration and the Roots of American Fluvialism, Jim O’Connor, USGS

• Feb 3 Stories in Stone, Travels through Urban Geology, David Williams, writer

• Feb 10 Understanding debris flows: you know it don't come easy, Dick Iverson, USGS

• Feb 17 Klamath Water, Application of groundwater models to Klamath River Basin, Marshall Gannett, USGS

• Feb 24 Old Glaciers, Late Pleistocene Chronology of Alpine Glaciation for the western US, Shaun Marcott, OSU

• Mar 3 When the Sandy River bed was 20 m higher:, Extreme sediment loading during Mount Hood's last eruption, Tom Pierson, USGS.

• Mar 10 Ooze or Explode?, Geochemical control on Mount Hood’s plumbing and eruptive behavior, Alison Koleszar, OSU

Oregon State University Department of Geosciences 2010 Winter Seminar Series, Thursdays, 4:00 pm, 108 Wilkinson Hall, unless otherwise noted. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.geo.oregonstate.edu/events/SeminarSeries/Seminar_Current.htm • February 4 Jeff Shaman, Oceanic and Atmospheric

Sciences, Oregon State University Absolute Humidity and the Seasonality of Influenza

• February 11 John Dilles, Dept. of Geosciences, Oregon State University So We Want Hybrid Fuel-Efficient Cars and Solar Panels. What will be our real mineral and energy footprint?

• February 18 Dan Gavin, Dept. of Geography, University of Oregon Climate-Driven Variation in Fire Occurrence and Severity Over the Past 2000 Years in the Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon: Implication for current fire regimes

• February 25 Cathy Busby, Geological Sciences, UC, Santa Barbara The Birth of the Sierra Nevada Microplate

• March 4 Pat Corcoran, Oregon Sea Grant and , Dept. of Geosciences, Oregon State University Coastal Storms and Hazards: Research and Engagement in North Coast Communities

• March 11 Jack Barth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Hypoxia off the Coast of Oregon and its Relation to Climate Change

University of Oregon Department of Geological Sciences, Winter 2010 Weekly Seminar Series, Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall. Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at 3:30 p.m.. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/news/about • January 27 - Eldon M. Gath (Earth Consultants

International) , Tectonic Geomorphic and Paleoseismic Investigations for the Panama Canal Expansion Project


• February 3 - John Vidale (University of Washington), Episodic Tremor and Slip, the curious third wheel of fault motion

• February 10 - Dr. William C. Hammond (University of Nevada, Reno), What GPS studies tell us about deformation in the interior Western US

• February 17 - Mark Hemphill-Haley (Humboldt State University), Neotectonic Studies, North and South Islands, New Zealand or Why Sabbaticals are Good for the Soul

• February 24 - Cathy Busby (University of California Santa Barbara), Birth of the Sierra Nevada Microplate

• March 3 - Robert Yeats (Oregon State University), Slip rate budget across orogenic belts: Northern Pakistan case history

• March 10 - John W. Valley (University of Wisconsin), Zircon from Hell

BOARD MEETING NOTES January 9, 2010 Board and GSOC members present included Carol Hasenberg, Larry Purchase, Beverly Vogt, Richard Bartels, Jan Kem, Dave Olcott, Anne O’Neill, Clay Kelleher, Janet Rasmussen, Doug Rasmussen, Paul Edison-Lahm, Tara Schofstall, Rosemary Kenney, Rik Smoody, and John Newhouse. The agenda and the minutes of the November 14, 2009, Board meeting were approved. The Treasurer’s report was discussed. We ended with $2000 more than last year at the end of the year, partially because we received a bequeathal of $1000 from Bob Richmond’s estate. The Treasurer’s report was approved. To facilitate transfer of duties from outgoing officers and chairs to new officers and chairs, Carol asked all relevant people to create and bring to the next meeting a formal description of his/her duties, a list of all GSOC property in his/her possession, and a supplemental list of all contacts and other specific information that would be useful to the new officer. The formal description of duties and list of GSOC property in your possession should be posted on the GSOC bulletin board. The supplemental list should not be a public document, but hard copies of it, the position description, and list of GSOC

properties in your possession should be brought to the next meeting. In addition to officers, people who need to prepare such information are Business Manager, Internet Publicity Chair, Archivist, Field Committee Chair, Host Committee Chairs, Newsletter Editor, Property Chair, and Librarian. The incoming President, Larry Purchase, will work on filling the vacant chair positions. Bev is to send digital copies of the bylaws to all board members by email. It was decided that because of the success of the December meeting/party, we will do the same thing next December, except the whole event, including light dinner buffet, review of field trips, and social time with music will be at the Simon Benson House. We need to encourage donations to cover the cost of reserving the house. From now on, the Newsletter will be bimonthly, with the calendar sent out in intervening months. Carol wants anyone with suggestions for changes in format to send them to her as soon as possible. The Banquet is March 21. Arrangements are being made to have two of Bob Carson’s books for sale at the banquet. The banquet flier will be available in the next Newsletter. Banquet arrangements were discussed. The Board voted to authorize Tara to set up the online store for sales of GSOC memorabilia and to purchase example products to show at the sales table to encourage people to buy such items online. Special service awards to some of the members were discussed. Field trips were discussed. Larry’s President’s Trip is scheduled for June 18-22, with camping at Delintment Lake. Larry will check on possibility of reserving a group camp site and will provide a field trip guide. Clay will work on a Bull Run trip for July10 or 17, Dave and Larry will have their overnight field and camping trip in August. Ken Cameron will have his geology/hiking trip to Ramona Falls in September. Bev will talk with Joe Conrad to see if he will lead another building stones trip. Fossil Fest is Feb. 13. Our plans are informal, and people will stay as long as they like. Larry will organize and set up GSOC table. Bev and Bart will bring the laminated Oregon geologic map, banner,


brochures, and applications. Clearing house for plans and information will be at the GSOC table. Janet will send information about the Fossil Fest to Carol for the Newsletter as soon as possible. Jan, Anne, and Dave reported on their research for purchasing a digital projector in time for the annual banquet. The Board gave Dave authority to purchase the Hitachi CP-X3010 LCD digital projector. Thanks were given to the committee for doing such complicated research. Carol reminded the board that they were authorized to purchase a reduced price new GSA field trip guide for the GSOC library. A committee of Larry, Clay, Paul, and Rosemary were appointed to research what to do when we need a larger meeting room and how we can recover the cost of such a larger space. One suggestion is to ask for a donation of $1 or $2 dollars for such good programs. Board members are reminded of the Oregon Academy of Science meeting , Feb. 27, at Concordia University in northeast Portland. We also want to thank Rosemary again for hosting our Board meetings and supplying us with food and drinks!! The next meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., Saturday, March 20, 2010, at Rosemary’s house. Meeting adjourned. Respectfully submitted, Beverly Vogt, Secretary Donations for GSOC Annual Banquet Rosemary Kenney will be accepting donations of books, maps and other geology/natural history related items for the sale at the upcoming Annual Banquet. Rosemary asks that you do NOT donate the following: • NO rocks • NO textbooks older than 5 years For more information call Rosemary at 503/892-6514.

Costa Rica’s Tectonic Setting Synopsis of the January 8, 2010, lecture by Dr. Martin Streck, Department of Geology, Portland State University by Carol Hasenberg Dr. Martin Streck, who has led field trips to Costa Rica five times, specializes in Igneous Petrology and Volcanology at Portland State University. Streck started the presentation about Costa Rica by describing the physical provinces of the Central American country. Costa Rica contains several mountain ranges that run more or less parallel to its Pacific (southern) shore, the Cordilleras Guanacaste, Tilarán, Central, and Talamanca from west to east. These mountains get ever higher from west to east, which was discussed later in the lecture. Two of the highest peaks in Costa Rica are Irazú in the Cordillera Central and Cerro Chirripó (the highest at 3820 m.) in the Cordillera Talamanca. The Central Valley, containing eighty percent of the population of the country, lies adjacent and south and west of the backbone of the country. The Nicoya peninsula is located on the Pacific shore to the west of the Central Valley. The Caribbean lowlands on the northern shore are moist and tropical. The tectonic setting which has produced this dramatic landscape is very complex. There are two key features to the tectonic setting. One of these is the fact that two remnants of the ancient Farallon plate, which has by now been largely subducted below the North American plate, are key players in the tectonic activity. The Cocos plate, one of these remnants, lies off the coast of Mexico and Central America and is traveling northeast with a relative motion of about 80 mm per year. The other remnant, the Nazca plate, is subducting into South America with an eastern motion. The Galapagos hot spot is the other key feature of the tectonic setting. This hot plume is located at the boundary between the Cocos and Nazca plates and has sent volumes of material both towards Central America and South America on these plates. According to the formation model described by Streck, the Galapagos hot spot was instrumental in


creating a new tectonic plate sandwiched between the North American and South American plates. This became the Caribbean plate that we see today. It began as a massive basaltic outpouring which occurred in the initial phase of eruptions from the hot spot, about 90 million years ago. Geologists infer this by the fact that the basement basaltic rock found all over the Caribbean plate is about the same age and composition. The Caribbean plate was carried north and east from the hot spot location and developed its current size and boundaries over time. Meanwhile the hot spot eruptions continued but on a lesser scale. We can see the result by studying a map of the ocean floor, which shows ridges of volcanoes that emanate both northeast and east from the Galapagos Islands. Today the land bridge of Central America that stretches between the large American continents is at the southwestern edge of the Caribbean plate, and is a volcanic arc. The Cocos plate subducts below the Caribbean plate on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Along with the Cocos plate has ridden the trail of the volcanic ridge from the Galapagos. Streck believes that this ridge is in the process of plugging the current subduction trench where it intersects the Costa Rican coast near the Cordillera Talamanca. This is borne out by the fact that the Talamanca volcanoes are currently not very active, whereas the other volcanoes in Costa Rica are very active. Eventually the subduction zone will migrate to a new location in response to this impediment. A further complexity to this tectonic geometry is the Panamanian microplate, which is located on the southwestern edge of the Caribbean plate. It contains the southeastern third of Costa Rica and Panama. With all these plate boundaries intersecting near or through the country, Costa Rica is a very geologically hazardous land. Streck showed an elevation chart of Central American volcanoes from Guatemala to Costa Rica (west to east)which showed their base heights as well as their peak heights. At either end of the chart were taller peaks but also higher base elevations. In Costa Rica the volcanoes on the west side of the country have bases close to sea level and peak heights of about 2000 m. On the eastern side in the

Cordillera Talamanca the base heights are about 2000m. with a peak height just below 4000 m. This also demonstrates the effect of the Galapagos volcanic ridge upon the geography of the country. In addition to easily seen effects of the hot spot, it is also possible to distinguish characteristic magma trace element proportions for different volcanic ranges in Central America. Streck showed some example charts showing Barium/Lanthanum ratios from Guatemala to Costa Rica, with the central zone in Nicaragua having a much higher ratio than that of the earth’s mantle. The big picture inferred by this research is that in the central zone more recycled crust material is entering into the magmas. With all this geologic complexity and hazard, Central American countries should provide very fertile research areas for geologists like Dr. Streck for years to come. They would also be very fascinating places to visit. References and Additional Reading CentralAmerica.com site provided me with descriptions and spellings of the provinces of Costa Rica: http://centralamerica.com/cr/moon/moland.htm Wikipedia has good references on the Caribbean plate and other tectonic topics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Plate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates Rutgers University has a lot of information about Central America and field trips which they have done: http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~carr/index.html USGS page “Poster of the Seismicity of the Caribbean Plate and Vicinity” has nice downloadable maps of the area http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/regions/caribbean.php At the time of this writing, the January 12, 2010, magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, has just occurred. This is a Caribbean plate seismic


event. Please refer to the USGS website and humanitarian organizations for more information: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php Types of Volcanic Eruptions Editor’s note: The following definitions are from the USGS web page, http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/volc/eruptions.html, maintained by John Watson and was last modified 2/5/97. Geologists have names which describe the manner or pattern in which volcanoes erupt. These types of eruptions have historic precedents and most, but not all, of the names refer to the precedents. You can also link to the USGS web page and view the pictures that accompany the descriptions. “In a Strombolian-type eruption observed during the 1965 activity of Irazú Volcano in Costa Rica, huge clots of molten lava burst from the summit crater to form luminous arcs through the sky. Collecting on the flanks of the cone, lava clots combined to stream down the slopes in fiery rivulets.” “In contrast, the eruptive activity of Parícutin Volcano in 1947 demonstrated a "Vulcanian"-type eruption, in which a dense cloud of ash-laden gas explodes from the crater and rises high above the peak. Steaming ash forms a whitish cloud near the upper level of the cone.” “In a "Vesuvian" eruption, as typified by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy in A.D. 79, great quantities of ash-laden gas are violently discharged to form cauliflower-shaped cloud high above the volcano.” “In a "Peléan" or "Nuée Ardente (glowing cloud) eruption, such as occurred on the Mayon Volcano in the Philippines in 1968, a large quantity of gas, dust, ash, and incandescent lava fragments are blown out of a central crater, fall back, and form tongue-like, glowing avalanches that move downslope at velocities as great as 100 miles per

hour. Such eruptive activity can cause great destruction and loss of life if it occurs in populated areas, as demonstrated by the devastation of St. Pierre during the 1902 eruption of Mont Pelée on Martinique, Lesser Antilles.” “"Hawaiian" eruptions may occur along fissures or fractures that serve as linear vents, such as during the eruption of Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii in 1950; or they may occur at a central vent such as during the 1959 eruption in Kilauea Iki Crater of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. In fissure-type eruptions, molten, incandescent lava spurts from a fissure on the volcano's rift zone and feeds lava streams that flow downslope. In central-vent eruptions, a fountain of fiery lava spurts to a height of several hundred feet or more. Such lava may collect in old pit craters to form lava lakes, or form cones, or feed radiating flows.” “"Phreatic" (or steam-blast) eruptions are driven by explosive expanding steam resulting from cold ground or surface water coming into contact with hot rock or magma. The distinguishing feature of phreatic explosions is that they only blast out fragments of preexisting solid rock from the volcanic conduit; no new magma is erupted. Phreatic activity is generally weak, but can be quite violent in some cases, such as the 1965 eruption of Taal Volcano, Philippines, and the 1975-76 activity at La Soufrière, Guadeloupe (Lesser Antilles).” “The most powerful eruptions are called "plinian" and involve the explosive ejection of relatively viscous lava. Large plinian eruptions--such as during 18 May 1980 at Mount St. Helens or, more recently, during 15 June 1991 at Pinatubo in the Philippines--can send ash and volcanic gas tens of miles into the air. The resulting ash fallout can affect large areas hundreds of miles downwind. Fast-moving deadly pyroclastic flows ("nuées ardentes") are also commonly associated with plinian eruptions.”


THE GEOLOGICAL NEWSLETTER INDEX

Volume 75, 2009 compiled by Carol Hasenberg

January····················no.1 ··············· pages 1-7 February··················2 ···························· 7-14 March······················3 ·························· 15-21 April························4 ·························· 22-28 May·························5 ·························· 29-35 June·························6 ·························· 36-42

July ·························no.7············ pages 43-49 August·····················8··························· 50-56 September ···············9··························· 57-63 October ···················10························· 64-67 November ···············11························· 68-72 December················12························· 73-78

ARTICLES and REPORTS·············································································································································· Page A New Perspective on Oregon Fossils, Synopsis of the May 9, 2009, lecture by Dr. Willliam Orr of OSU, by Carol

Hasenberg ····························································································································································· 38 A Tale of Two Calderas, Synopsis of the February 13, 2009, lecture by Mark Ferns and Jason McClaughry of DOGAMI,

by Carol Hasenberg ··············································································································································· 17 Catclysms on the Columbia, Synopsis of the November 13, 2009, lecture by Dr. Scott Burns of PSU, by Evelyn Pratt · 75 Caving in Oregon, Synopsis of the September 17, 2009, Lecture by Patty and Roger Silver of the Oregon Grotto of the

National Speleological Society, by Carol Hasenberg ··························································································· 65 Checklist for Geosearching the Web, by Tara Schoffstall ································································································· 11 Excursions into Zeolite Country, Synopsis of the October 9, 2009, lecture by Rudy Tschernich of the Rice Museum, by

Carol Hasenberg ···················································································································································· 69 Is It a Meteorite (or a Meteor-Wrong)?, by Carol Hasenberg ···························································································· 19 Meteorites on the Road, Synopsis of the June 12, 2009, lecture by Dick Pugh of the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory, by

Evelyn Pratt ··························································································································································· 46 Oregon Aggregate Mine Permitting: Working Towards Economic and Ecologic Harmony, Synopsis of the December 12,

2008, lecture by Ben Mundie of DOGAMI, by Carol Hasenberg ·········································································· 3 The Cascadian Graben, by Janet Rasmussen ····················································································································· 45 The Effects of the Ice Age Floods on the Portland Region, Synopsis of the April 10, 2009, lecture by Rick Thompson and

Sylvia Thompson, by Carol Hasenberg ················································································································· 31 The Wabar Meteor Crater Expedition and the Looming Threat of Impact Events, Synopsis of the March 8, 2009, lecture

by Jeff Wynn, Chief Scientist for Volcano Hazards at USGS CVO, by Carol Hasenberg ··································· 26 Wave Energy: The Wave of the Future? Synopsis of the January 9, 2009, lecture by Justin Klure of Pacific Energy

Ventures, LLC, by Carol Hasenberg ······················································································································· 9 What's a Nannofossil?, by Carol Hasenberg ······················································································································ 40 AUTHORS Hasenberg, Carol:

Oregon Aggregate Mine Permitting: Working Towards Economic and Ecologic Harmony, Synopsis of the December 12, 2008, lecture by Ben Mundie of DOGAMI························································································ 3 Wave Energy: The Wave of the Future? Synopsis of the January 9, 2009, lecture by Justin Klure of Pacific Energy Ventures, LLC ··············································································································································· 9 A Tale of Two Calderas, Synopsis of the February 13, 2009, lecture by Mark Ferns and Jason McClaughry of DOGAMI ································································································································································· 17 Is It a Meteorite (or a Meteor-Wrong)? ··················································································································· 19 "Dream Bigger Dreams," Synopsis of GSOC President Hasenberg's inaugural address, March 8, 2009 ··············· 24 The Wabar Meteor Crater Expedition and the Looming Threat of Impact Events, Synopsis of the March 8, 2009, lecture by Jeff Wynn, Chief Scientist for Volcano Hazards at USGS CVO···························································· 26 The Effects of the Ice Age Floods on the Portland Region, Synopsis of the April 10, 2009, lecture by Rick Thompson and Sylvia Thompson ···························································································································· 31 A New Perspective on Oregon Fossils, Synopsis of the May 9, 2009, lecture by Dr. Willliam Orr of OSU·········· 38


What's a Nannofossil?·············································································································································· 40 A Trip to the Dalles, Synopsis of the June 2009 Waste, Wind, and Water Field Trip ············································ 51 A Trip to the Dalles, cont.········································································································································ 58 SOTA Revisited, 2009 President's Field Trip Synopsis ·························································································· 60 Caving in Oregon, Synopsis of the September 17, 2009, Lecture by Patty and Roger Silver of the Oregon Grotto of the National Speleological Society ······················································································································ 65 Excursions into Zeolite Country, Synopsis of the October 9, 2009, lecture by Rudy Tschernich of the Rice Museum ································································································································································ 69

Pratt, Evelyn: Meteorites on the Road, Synopsis of the June 12, 2009, lecture by Dick Pugh of the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory································································································································································ 46 Catclysms on the Columbia, Synopsis of the November 13, 2009, lecture by Dr. Scott Burns of PSU·················· 75

Rasmussen, Janet: The Cascadian Graben ············································································································································· 45

Schoffstall, Tara: Checklist for Geosearching the Web ······················································································································· 11

FIELD TRIPS A Trip to the Dalles, cont., by Carol Hasenberg··················································································································· 58 A Trip to the Dalles, Synopsis of the June 2009 Waste, Wind, and Water Field Trip, by Carol Hasenberg························ 51 SOTA Revisited, 2009 President's Field Trip Synopsis, by Carol Hasenberg······································································ 60 SOCIETY BUSINESS "Dream Bigger Dreams," Synopsis of GSOC President Hasenberg's inaugural address, March 8, 2009, by Carol Hasenberg ············································································································································································· 24 Board Meeting Notes: April 10, 2009, by Beverly Vogt ······································································································ 32 Board Meeting Notes: December 13, 2008, by Beverly Vogt ································································································ 4 Board Meeting Notes: February 13, 2009, by Beverly Vogt ································································································ 16 Board Meeting Notes: June 6, 2009, by Beverly Vogt ········································································································· 47 Board Meeting Notes: November 14, 2009, by Beverly Vogt······························································································ 74 Generous Bequest to GSOC···················································································································································· 9 GSOC Society Dues Payment Schedule Changes ·················································································································· 2 MEMORIALS Deceased GSOC Member [Marilyn Lum] Led Quiet but Interesting Life ········································································· 48 In Memoriam - Ewart Baldwin ··········································································································································· 40 In Memoriam - Terry Norman Toedtemeier and Robert Ernest Richmond·········································································· 2 Long-Time GSOC Member Don Barr Dies ························································································································ 66 MISCELLANEOUS Volcanic News from Alaska ················································································································································· 33


• Geological Society of the Oregon Country Seventy Fifth Annual Banquet

Speaker

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country will be having its 75th Annual Banquet on Sunday March 21, 2010. Speaker Dr. Robert J. Carson of Whitman College will present “Where the Great River Bends: A natural and human history of the Columbia at Wallula,” based upon his recent book of the same title. Dr. Carson will discuss the geology, natural history, and human history of the Wallula area, with emphasis on the geology. There will be copies of the new book and his book Hiking Guide to Washington Geology (Keokee Books, 2009) available for purchase at the event.

Where and When

Location of the banquet will be at Monarch Hotel, 12566 SE 93rd Ave., Clackamas, Oregon near I-205 and Clackamas Town Center (http://www.monarchhotel.cc/). There is ample free parking. Doors to the banquet room open at 12:30 p.m. Dinner at 1:00 p.m. Program and speaker will begin at 2:15 p.m.

Menu

• Slow Roasted Pot Roast (accompanied by roasted garlic mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables) • Chicken Piccata (grilled breast of chicken, finished with a light lemon-caper sauce accompanied by rice

pilaf and seasonal vegetables) • Pasta Primavera (linguine and fresh vegetables tossed in Alfredo sauce and topped with parmesan cheese) All entrees include garden salad with ranch dressing, rolls with butter, chef’s dessert and coffee, tea, decaf or iced tea. __________________________________________________________________________________________ GSOC 75th ANNUAL BANQUET RESERVATION FORM – clip at line and mail.

________ Number of tickets at $23.50 each (includes gratuity). Please indicate entrée choice. Names of persons attending and meal choices:

___________________________________Meal choice (circle one) Pot Roast Pasta Chicken



___________________________________Meal choice (circle one) Pot Roast Pasta Chicken __________Amount enclosed. Reservations must be received by Monday, March 15, 2010. Please mail reservations and checks to GSOC, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907


Geological Society of the Oregon Country Activities: ANNUAL EVENTS: President’s Field Trip—Summer or Fall; Banquet—March; Annual Business Meeting—

February. FIELD TRIPS: About 4 per year. Fees: see field trip announcements on the calendar next page. GSOC LIBRARY: Rm. 69, Cramer Hall, Portland State University. Open 7:30 p.m. prior to meetings. PROGRAMS: Second Friday evening most months, 8:00 p.m., Rm. S17, Cramer Hall, PSU, SW Broadway at

SW Mill St., Portland, Oregon. MEMBERSHIP: Per year from January 1: Individual--$25, Family--$35, Junior (under 18)/Student--$15.

Membership applications are available on the website www.gsoc.org. PUBLICATIONS: THE GEOLOGICAL NEWSLETTER (ISSN 0270 5451), published monthly and

mailed to each member. Subscriptions available to libraries and organizations only at $20.00 per year. Single Copies are available at $2.00 each. Order from: Geological Society of the Oregon Country, P.O. Box 907, Portland, Oregon 97207

TRIP LOGS: Write to the same address for names and price list.

APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF THE OREGON COUNTRY

Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________

Children under age 18______________________________________________________________________

Address __________________________________________ City _____________ State ___ Zip________-______

Phone (_____)_____-__________ Email address____________________________________________________

Geologic Interests and Hobbies_____________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Please indicate Membership type and include check for appropriate amount:

Individual $25.00 ___________ Family $35.00 _____________ Student $15.00 _____________

Make Check Payable to: The Geological Society of the Oregon Country PO Box 907 Portland, OR 97207-0907

The Geological Newsletter -11- March/April 2010


Volume 76, Number 2 March/April 2010

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907 www.gsoc.org 2010 - 2011 Administration: President: Larry Purchase – 360/254-5635 [email protected] Vice-President: Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019 [email protected] Secretary Beverly Vogt – 503/292-6939 [email protected] Treasurer Richard Bartels − 503/292-6939 [email protected] Directors: Dave Olcott (1 year) – 503/695-5219 Anne O’Neill (2 years) - 503/477-7827 Paul Edison-Lahm (3 years) – 971/404-6064 [email protected]

Past Presidents: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Newsletter Editor and Calendar: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Website: Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Business Manager: Jan Kem − 503/246-2275 [email protected] Assistant Business Manager: Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

VISITORS WELCOME AT ALL MEETINGS

CALENDAR

April Activities

Friday evening talk, April 9, 2010, at 8 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Thomas C. Pierson of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington will present “When the Bed of the Sandy River was 20m Higher,” a look at dramatic channel aggradation of the lower Sandy River that resulted from a dome-building eruption (AD 1780-1793) during the most recent volcanic activity at Mount Hood.

Dr. Pierson has worked for the CVO since 1980 and also is an Adjunct Professor at also Adjunct Professor with the Dept. of Geology at Portland State University and a licensed geologist in the State of Washington. His work focuses on volcano hazards involving the mobilization and rapid movement of rock debris and water down the

flanks of volcanoes—lahars, debris avalanches, and floods.

Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:30 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation.

Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts.

Future Activities

Friday evening talk, May 14, 2010, at 8 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker William E. Scott f the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington will present “Re-evaluation of the Magnitude of the Great A.D.1835 Eruption of Cosiguina Volcano, Nicaragua.”


The eruption of Cosiguina Volcano, Nicaragua, in 1835 was described by witnesses in truly catastrophic terms. The research community that assesses atmospheric impacts of eruptions through study of ice cores has long searched for signs of the eruption, but found little convincing evidence. Two brief field investigations of Cosiguina during the past few decades have shown that the eruption was more modest than related by eyewitnesses, but that a repeat would nonetheless have substantial consequences for the region. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar. ?? Question to the GSOC Membership ?? Should we hold the Friday night meetings at 7:30 p.m. rather than 8:00 p.m.? Please send your feedback to President Larry Purchase, in person at the April meeting, or phone 360/254-5635 or email [email protected].

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR -- “Why didn’t I get a newsletter or calendar last month?” I have heard many members ask me this past month. I should have sent out a calendar or newsletter but as there was no news, well, I just didn’t do it. I apologize. Also, this is the March/April edition of the newsletter, even though you won’t receive it until the beginning of April. Next month we will issue the May/June issue and will be back to being caught up. You can expect to receive a newsletter from now on and a calendar in the off-months from now on. We also may include field trip flyers on the off-months, so remember to check! UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS The 2010 Seismological Society of America Meeting will be held in Portland, Oregon.: More than 500 seismologists from around the world will convene at the Seismological Society of America (SSA) annual conference on April 21 – 23. SSA is an international scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and its applications in understanding and mitigating earthquake hazards and in imaging the structure of the earth. The searchable database of meeting abstracts will be available in February. For a complete description of special sessions, visit http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2010/specialsessions.php. SSA will also convene a town hall meeting about

earthquake preparedness for Portland residents on April 21. For more information, please visit the SSA meeting home page: http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2010/index.php.

BOARD MEETING NOTES March 20, 2010 The meeting was called to order by President Larry Purchase at home of Rosemary Kenney. Board and GSOC members present included Larry Purchase, Rik Smoody, Beverly Vogt, Richard Bartels, Dave Olcott, Anne O’Neill, Janet Rasmussen, Paul Edison-Lahm, Jan Kem, Tara Schoffstall, Rosemary Kenney, Dawn Juliano, and Carol Hasenberg. The agenda, the minutes of the January 10, 2009, Board meeting, the election, the annual GSOC business meeting and the Treasurer’s report were approved. Larry appointed Janet to be Sgt.-at-Arms to keep the meeting on track. As part of the transfer of duties from outgoing officers and chairs to new officers and chairs, Larry dispersed keys and other GSOC equipment to the appropriate officers and committee chairs. .The formal description of duties and list of GSOC property should be posted on gsoc2.proboards.com. In addition to officers, people who need to prepare such information are Business Manager, Internet Publicity Chair, Historian, Archivist, Field Committee Chair, Host Committee Chairs, Newsletter Editor, Property Chair, and Librarian. Larry Purchase has filled most of the vacant chair positions. The upcoming speaker schedule was discussed, Tom Pierson from CVO will speak on April 9, Willie Scott of CVO will speak on May 14. Carol presented the schedule for the Newsletter, with deadlines as follows: March/April deadline on March 20, May/June deadline on April 20, July/August deadline on June 20, September /October deadline on August 20, and November/December deadline on October 20. Bev asked that people announce via email when they post something important on Proboards. People who


have not yet put their position descriptions on Proboard are encouraged to do so.

The committee for website and internet issues consists of Rik, Tara, Carol, and Janet. They will contact each other via cyberspace and work at blinding speed to bring GSOC and the rest of us into the 21st Century. People doing anything related to PR are to mention that we have a twitter account at www.twitter.com/geosocietyor. Tara also gave me this URL: www.printfection.com/gsoc, for purchasing shirts and mugs with GSOC called out. At the next Board meeting Tara will report the recommendations of the 4-member Website and Internet Committee, regarding passwords and security issues, for discussion and decision. The above committee will also work on preparing a presence on Facebook (check your email for updates from Rik). Also, any clarifications or corrections on material in this paragraph should go to the committee listed above and then to the secretary. Carol asked for comments from Board members on her newly designed GSOC website.

The 2010 field trip schedule was presented: • June 26, Bull Run trip, Clay, Bev, and Bart

leading• July 17-18-19-20 (tentative date); Larry’s

President’s Trip, possibly reserving a groupcamp site at Delintment Lake, and preparinga field trip guide, with Larry as leader andwith help from Bev and Bart

• August 21 and 22 (tentative date), Dave andLarry will have their overnight field andcamping trip in Phillipi Canyon in theColumbia River Gorge

• September at an as yet unknown date, KenCameron will have his geology/hiking trip toRamona Falls

Janet suggested that next year we schedule a field trip to study tidal pools between March and September at a low tide time. The summer picnic was also discussed.

At the next Board meeting, the committee of Larry, Clay, Paul, and Rosemary will discuss the need for a larger meeting room and how we can recover the cost of such a larger space. Rosemary asked if we

could discuss changing the regular Friday night meeting time to 7:30 p.m. at the next Board meeting.

Newly appointed GSOC jobs are Property Custodian, Bart, with Jan as list maintenance person; Librarian, Diana Gordon; Archivist, Carol; Historian, Rosemary; Assistant Business Manager, Anne. Anyone having GSOC equipment should give Jan a list of what he/she has so Jan can make a comprehensive list of GSOC equipment and its location. Bev and Bart are given authority to donate old equipment we will never use again to Goodwill and report any such donations to the GSOC Board.

Tara has been working getting samples of products that can be ordered online to generate funding for the society, and the samples will be displayed at the banquet and future meeting to generate online purchases. Thanks to Tara for her hard work on this project. Anyone with other ideas for products should contact Tara.

Bev and Bart have purchased at a reduced price the recent GSA field trip guide and will see that it is placed in the GSOC library. Two rare and possibly valuable books were discovered in the GSOC library discard pile (1896 Glacial Lake Agassiz report and a Bretz book on the Missoula floods), and Jan and Bev will look at getting appraisals for these. The book on romance of mining will be sold at a silent auction at the banquet.

Special thanks to Don Haines of DOGAMI’s Nature of the Northwest for material donated to GSOC for sale at the banquet.

The next meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., Saturday, May 15, 2010, at Rosemary’s house.

Beverly Vogt, Secretary


IN MEMORIAM Irv Ewen, 1964 GSOC president, dies Irv Ewen passed away on Thursday, March 4, 2010 after a long illness. Born October 12, 1932, Irv received a Bachelor’s Degree in Geology from Oregon State University, and for his first job worked as a field assistant for Andy Corcoran, a former State Geologist and GSOC President, at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. Irv then worked as a planner for Multnomah County for 35 years, was a volunteer with the Portland Opera, and was also active in many other organizations, including GSOC, Portland Historical Rail Society, Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, Northwest Senior Theater, and Portland Gay Men’s Chorus. He was a well known free-lance photographer, leaving a collection of over 50,000 photographs of architecture, weddings, social and community events, concerts, theater, opera, as well as views of the Columbia River Gorge, which he loved. Irv is survived by Marlo James Dean, his life partner of 14 years.

GSOC in the 21ST Century by Tara Schoffstall GSOC now Twitters! Follow us @GeoSocietyOR for all the latest info. Sign up and add the above address as a friend to your twitter feed or preview the feed at http://twitter.com/GeoSocietyOR. Members might also be interested in following these sites as well as our own: Geology.com (@GeologyDotCom); Geology News (@GeologyNews); GSA (@geosociety); Earthquake and Tsunami (@EQTW); Scientific American (@sciam); OMSI (@OMSI); Get Geology Jobs (@GetGeologyJobs); NASA (@NASA); AAPG (@AAPG); National Geographic (@NatGeoSociety); Meteorite Men (@MeteoriteMen); Smithsonian's Museum of

Natural History (@NMNH); Discovery News (@Discovery); and many more! See our Twitter page for everyone we're following for a more complete list. GSOC Products are 4 sale! GSOC has a page on the printfection.com site for products such as t-shirts, cups, mouse pads, etc. with designs including the GSOC logo, humorous designs, and MORE! Help raise funds for the club and have great GSOC products for yourself or for gifts! http://www.printfection.com/gsoc GSOC is now on Facebook! Dear Tara and members,

“I hauled off and created a Facebook account for GeoSociety Oregon (as if a person, born in 1935) whose email address is: [email protected].

“If you want to sign on, invite GSOC to be your friend on Facebook. For assistance, contact me [Rik Smoody] for more info.” -Rik Smoody

WELCOME NEW MEMBERS FOR 2010! Dave Aeder Sheila Alfsen James Argentina Joseph Cohen Sally Visher Patrick Farrell Christopher Hunter Karl Karlgaard Michael Klaas William N.Orr Elizabeth Smith Jean Spangler Kristine Quintana GEOLOGICAL MAPPING AND STRUCTURE IN SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON Synopsis of the February 12, 2010, lecture by Dr. Paul Hammond, Department of Geology, Portland State University by Carol Hasenberg Paul Hammond’s talk discussed how his Portland State University team’s recent stratigraphic mapping work for the US Forest Service


demonstrates regional deformation caused by motion of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates. The area in question lies between Chinook Pass and Yakima in the White Pass area southeast of Mt. Rainier in Washington. Stratigraphic mapping is a forensic science in which geologists use different sorts of evidence to determine the extent of geological layers – formations, units, and individual flows - which have a common origin and age. The eastern section of the study area is overlain by the westernmost layers of Columbia River Basalt. Hammond described some of the complexity in sorting out the various individual flows of the Columbia River Basalt units in the area. Features of individual flows include lobate margins, vesicular boundaries, and thin out into scoria. Individual flows can also be distinguished on the basis of chemical trace element analysis. This analysis work is done by the Washington State University GeoAnalytical Laboratory which has a world-renown reputation for consistent results. Hammond’s team mapped the Columbia River Basalt strata in the region, as well as older formations below. Three volcanic units were of particular interest: the Tieton, Edgar Rock, and Fifes Peak volcanoes volcanics occurred in the early Miocene, approximately 22-26 million years ago. These volcanoes were early arc volcanoes in the region. By mapping these and the Columbia River basalts they were able to determine the amount of folding and faulting in the area. A series of folds with an east to west axis are evident between the Columbia River Gorge to the south and continue north through the Yakima Valley and are known as the Yakima Folds to geologists. Since these folds occur in strata that was flat 16 million years ago, their existence tells structural geologists what sort of forces have been acting on the continent since then. In addition to the east-west oriented Yakima Folds, the area also contains folds and faults running nearly right angles to these, and a notable example of these is the Cleman Mountain anticline ridge. All these fold structures are expressions of the reaction of the earth’s crust to the forces created by the movement

of tectonic plates and underlying mantle. The Yakima Fold belt is one of the few places in the world where anticlines (fold humps) are non-eroded ridges. The tectonic environment for the region is the boundary between the North American Plate and the oceanic plates to the west, including the Pacific Plate and Juan de Fuca Plate. GPS technology has been able to confirm the movement of the tectonic plates, as well as evidence collected on the earth’s surface. The movement of the oceanic plates is such that they push the North American plate boundary north. Also, the thickness of the North American plate varies from about 60 km in the northeast corner of Washington to 30 km further west and south. The result is that the thinner, weaker crust in this area is folded northward and also tends to rotate and shear around the obstruction to the north and east. This explains the presence of both the Yakima Folds and northwest/southeast trending faulting. References And Additional Reading: The Evergreen State College, “Field Trip Guide: Geology and Art Cascade Mountains & Columbia Plateau,” Fall 2004: http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/geologyandart/Central%20WA%20Field%20Trip%20Guide.pdf Newell P. Campbell and Daryl Gusey, “Geology of the Naches Ranger District, Wenatchee National Forest, Kittitas and Yakima Counties, Washington,” Washington DNR Open File Report 92-3, March 1992: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/Publications/ger_ofr92-3_naches_text.pdf (key) http://www.dnr.wa.gov/Publications/ger_ofr92-3_naches_pl1_63k.pdf (map, 85MB) This map is well out-of-date and incomplete. Thomas R. Watters, “Periodically spaced anticlines of the Columbia Plateau,” Geological Society of America Special Paper 239, 1989: http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/10088/2656/1/198910.pdf Reference should be made to Special Paper


239, which contains a wealth of information on the basalts and Columbia Plateau. The Wallula Gap 17Ma to Now Synopsis of the March 21, 2010, annual banquet address by Dr. Robert J. Carson, professor of Geology and Environmental Studies, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington by Carol Hasenberg The speaker for the 75th Annual Banquet of the Geological Society of the Oregon Country was Dr. Robert J. Carson, a geologist well known to all of his Portland colleagues. In his address, Carson discussed material used in his recently co-authored book, Where the Great River Bends: A natural and human history of the Columbia at Wallula (Keokee Books, 2008). As he took the podium, Carson recognized several of his colleagues in the audience: Bill Orr from the University of Oregon, Paul Hammond, whose son was the first graduate of Whitman’s geological degree program, and Scott Burns of Portland State University. Carson then dedicated his talk to Ewart and Margie Baldwin. Ewart Baldwin helped to establish the geology program at Whitman College during the 1980-81 academic year. Carson remembered Baldwin fondly by quoting his three favorite sayings that Baldwin used during the field trips he led: He would bellow to the bus driver to put the “pedal to the metal” to get to the next stop and then shout “Stop the machine!” when they arrived. He would never let the bus driver backtrack by hollering “Never Deadhead!,” a trucking term used to admonish drivers to never take the truck back empty. Carson began his discussion of the geological history of the Wallula Gap by showing the GSOC audience the first image recorded (by hand drawing) of the area from Paul Kane on the 1843 Fremont Expedition. The picture highlighted the Twin Sisters, a basalt chimney that served as a rock climbing mecca from the 1920’s until 2001 when rock climbing was banned.

The Wallula Gap is in the easternmost section of the Columbia Gorge. To the north of the Gap, the Columbia River is joined by the Snake River and the Yakima River, and so all three of these river basins are emptied through the gap. The McNary Dam, completed in 1953, is located south of the Gap and impounds the present reservoir Lake Wallula in the Gap. Carson speculated on what geological formation might underlie the Columbia River Basalt (CRB) in the Wallula Gap area: it could be Tertiary sediment, terrane rocks or granite, similar to that found in the nearby Wallowa Mountains. The outpourings of the Columbia River Basalt greatly affected the history of the Wallula Gap, because the courses of the rivers in the area were greatly affected by the floods of the molten rock. During the greatest flood basalt events, the course of the Columbia River was pushed to the extreme north and west sector of the basin, and the Columbia River left the basin far to the west of the Gap. With the subsequent warping and folding of the terrain, the Columbia and Yakima Rivers passed through the Gap at about some time before 5 million years ago. Meanwhile, the ancestral Clearwater and Salmon Rivers changed their courses from a more northern outlet into the Columbia basin to Wallula Gap earlier than the Columbia River itself. After the basalt floods, the river systems continued to evolve and erode the basalts into the Columbia River basin we see today. The most dramatic changes to the look of the basin occurred during the Pleistocene, when the Cordilleran glacier covered the northwestern part of the continent and ice and water were more abundant and destructive than they are today. Most of us know that Glacial Lake Missoula flooded the Columbia River basin many times between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago.. It is less well known that Glacial Lake Bonneville was also drained through this outlet about 16,000 years ago. Carson illustrated the concept of the Glacial Lake Missoula ice dam created by the Pend Orielle lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet using a smaller modern day analogy which he recently photographed on a field trip. The photos were of the Perito Moreno


Glacier in Patagonia, which also bisects L-shaped Lago Argentina and creates up to 30 meters of elevation difference in the levels of the two arms of the lake. During the Ice Age Floods the Wallula Gap played a significant role in the draining of the Columbia basin. A “hydraulic dam” was formed at the Gap due to the fact that there was about twice as much flow as could fit through the gap. Next Carson discussed the after-effects of the Ice Age Floods that can be seen in the Gap today. These include erosional features, such as scablands, and depositional features, including eddy bars in side canyons at elevations up to 900 feet . The talus piles we see at the bases of features like Twin Sisters and the sand dunes in Juniper Canyon have been accumulating since the floodwaters receded. Dr. Carson saved about ten minutes at the end of his lecture to discuss the biological diversity and modern history of the Wallula Gap. Co-author Mike Denny wrote the chapter of the book which deals with biology. Denny discusses some of the nuts and bolts of how the ecosystem works in addition to describing the biological diversity. His work is illustrated with outstanding wildlife photography. Next Carson showed pictures of the Gap during the Oregon Country era. Fort Walla Walla and the town of Wallula were shown in their heydays from sketches, paintings, and photographs. Some more recent photos of a frozen Columbia River in 1916 and 1929 suggest the magnitude of climate change which we are experiencing. Next came photos of the 1948 flood on the Columbia River, which flooded agricultural fields along the river. Those same fields were flooded for good in 1953 after the construction of the McNary Dam. The old town of Wallula was covered by the floodwaters and the town cemetery was moved above the flood line. After his very interesting lecture, Carson signed copies of the two titles he brought for purchase at

the event, printed by Keokee Books of Sand Point, Idaho. Where the Great River Bends is a particularly lavish printing with full color illustrations throughout Thanks again to Dr. Carson for making GSOC’s 75th Anniversary so special! References and Additional Reading: Carson, R.J., ed., 2008, Where the Great River Bends: The Columbia at Wallula, Sandpoint, Idaho, Keokee Co. Publishing, Inc. Keokee Books’ description of the book can be found at: http://www.keokeebooks.com/greatriverbends.html Carson, Bob, and Scott Babcock, 2009, Hiking Guide to Washington Geology, Sandpoint, Idaho, Keokee Books, 272 p. USGS CVO website Descriptions: Glaciations, Ice Sheets, and Glacial Lakes Lake Bonneville and the Bonneville Flood Lake Missoula and the Missoula Floods: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Glaciers/IceSheets/framework.html Glacial Lake Missoula and the Missoula Floods http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Glaciers/IceSheets/description_lake_missoula.html Lake Bonneville and the Bonneville Flood: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Glaciers/IceSheets/description_lake_bonneville.html US Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District, “McNary Master Plan: A Plan for Development and Management of the Natural and Manmade Resources of Lake Wallula.”: http://www.nww.usace.army.mil/planning/ER/mcnary/default.htm Wikipedia: The Perito Moreno Glacier page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perito_Moreno_Glacier Twin Sisters Final Report (report on prohibition of rock climbing), December 1, 2001: http://www.whitman.edu/environmental_studies/internships/reports/Stinson.htm









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The Geological Newsletter -19- May/June 2010


Volume 76, Number 3

May/June 2010


Past Presidents: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Newsletter Editor and Calendar: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Website: Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Business Manager: Jan Kem − 503/246-2275 [email protected] Assistant Business Manager: Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827 VISITORS WELCOME AT ALL MEETINGS

CALENDAR May/June Activities Friday evening talk, May 14, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker William E. Scott of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington will present “Re-evaluation of the Magnitude of the Great A.D.1835 Eruption of Cosigüina Volcano, Nicaragua.” The eruption of Cosigüina Volcano, Nicaragua, in 1835 was described by witnesses in truly catastrophic terms. The research community that assesses atmospheric impacts of eruptions through study of ice cores has long searched for signs of the eruption, but found little convincing evidence. Two brief field investigations of Cosigüina during the past few decades have shown that the eruption was more modest than related by

eyewitnesses, but that a repeat would nonetheless have substantial consequences for the region. Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. GSOC Seminar, Wednesday, May 19th @ 8pm, Room 69, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University “Get Online or Left Behind: Keeping up with Geology News in the 21st Century” With all the geologic events going on, it's not the TV you should be watching - it's the internet. Want to get the news before the news does? Or just want to find out more details on the events already out there? Tara Schoffstall will offer an overview of using Google and Twitter for geology research, events, and on the spot updates. Learn how to use the internet to find information, such as online seismograms, volcanocams, tsunami models, first hand accounts from the scene of the events in real time - plus much, much more! All ages welcome.


Friday evening talk, June 11, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Don J. Pettit, Senior Emergency Response Planner, Emergency Response Program, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Stay tuned to the website or the June calendar for more info. Field Trip to Bull Run Watershed Saturday, June 26, 2010 - GSOC member Clay Kelleher is arranging a one day trip to Bull Run Watershed. This restricted area provides the water supply for Portland, Oregon. See the Field Trip Reviews on our website (www.gsoc.org) for photos and text about the last GSOC trip to Bull Run, which was very popular and well-attended. For more information or to register for the trip, refer to the registration form on page 25 of this newsletter or available from the GSOC website. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts. Future Activities President’s Field Trip July 17-20, 2010 Fri-Tues - GSOC President Larry Purchase is arranging the President's Field Trip for mid-July in Eastern Oregon. This will be a camping trip, as motels are over an hour's drive away. We hope to camp at Delintment Lake in the Ochoco Mountains. We will visit the oldest rocks in Oregon near the town of Suplee, and also have an opportunity to dig for ammonite fossils at a private ranch. Watch this space for more details on schedule and cost as they become available. The trip registration form will be included with the June issue of The Geological Calendar. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Field Trip, August 21st, 2010: “In the Path of Catastrophic Floods; Bars, Scablands, and

Cataracts.” Led by GSOC Director Dave Olcott, this full day trip leaving from Lewis and Clark State Park will focus on catastrophic flood features, both ‘recent’ and “ancient”. Specifically, the trip will examine sites from The Dalles, through 15 Mile Creek Valley and eastward to Phillipi Canyon. Several sites that J Harlan Bretz documented in his 1928 publication, “ Bars of Channeled Scabland” will be visited. Transportation will be by car caravan/car pool with participants making their own arrangements. In an attempt to reduce the number of cars, car pooling is encouraged (Dave will assist in coordinating this endeavor). The trip registration form will be in the July/August issue of The Geological Newsletter and participation will be limited to the first 25 members and their guests who have paid for the trip. For more information contact Dave Olcott ([email protected]) or (503) 695-5219). NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar. GSOC Meetings Start at 7:30 Now! At the April Friday night meeting, GSOC members decided to hold the Friday night meetings at 7:30 p.m. rather than 8:00 p.m. We will start this policy in May 2010, so remember to come earlier! UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Portland State University Geology Department Geology Spring Colloquium 2010, Cramer Hall S17, 3:30-4:30 p.m.. All are invited to attend! For information contact: Martin Streck, 503-725-3379, [email protected], or refer to the department website: http://geology.pdx.edu/files/u5/Seminar_Spring_10_100330v2_0.pdf • April 28, 2010 “The Dynamics of the Mount Etna

plumbing system.”, Wendy Bohrson, Central Washington University

• May 5, 2010 “The Not-So-Great 1835 eruption of Volcán Cosigüina,, Nicaragua – Reconciling eyewitness accounts and the geologic record.”, Willie Scott, Cascades Volcano Observatory

• May 12, 2010 “The petrology of ongoing eruptions at Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii: Summit and rift zone


perspectives on the dynamic balance between magma recharge, storage and eruption during shield building.”, Carl Thornber, Cascades Volcano Observatory

• May 26, 2010 “Mount St. Helens: The legacy of the 1980 unrest and eruption.”, Cynthia Gardner, Cascades Volcano Observatory

Oregon State University Department of Geosciences 2010 Spring Seminar Series, Thursdays, 4:00 pm, Gilfillan Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.geo.oregonstate.edu/Seminars • May 06, 2010 Nadine Barlow, Department of

Physics, Northern Arizona University, “Planetary Potholes--Impact Cratering on Earth and throughout the Solar Systems,” Gilfillan Auditorium

• May 13, 2010 Kelly Falkner, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, “Ocean-ice Sheet Interactions in Petermann Fjord, Northern Greenland”, Gilfillan Auditorium

• May 20, 2010 Cynthia Gardner, Cascade Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, WA Mt. St. Helens, “30 Years On: The Legacy of the 1980 Unrest and Eruption”, Gilfillan Auditorium

• May 27, 2010 Patricia Gregg, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, topic TBD, Gilfillan Auditorium

• Jun 03, 2010 Sherry Cady, Department of Geology, Portland State University, “Biogeochemical Interactions between Microorganisms and the Environment”, Gilfillan Auditorium

University of Oregon Department of Geological Sciences, Spring 2010 Weekly Seminar Series, Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall. Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at 3:30 p.m.. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/news/about • April 28 - Gordon Grant (USFS), topic TBA • May 5 - Kurt Cuffey (UC Berkeley), topic TBA • May 12 - Jim O'Connor (USGS), topic TBA • May 19 - Darryl Granger (Purdue University), topic

TBA • May 26 - Noah Finnegan (UC Santa Cruz), “Do

bedrock rivers record climate change?” • June 2 - Oliver Chadwick (UC Santa Barbara), topic

TBA Mt. St. Helens Institute Field Seminars

Since 2000, their field seminars have helped educate hundreds of people about the wild wonders of Mount St. Helens. They’ve taken people exploring on the Pumice Plain, led them to the volcano’s summit, showed them the stars, and shared with them the history of the eruption and how it changed the land. Their seminars, taught by highly experienced, passionate instructors, are open to all ages. Youths under 14 must be accompanied by an adult. For the current schedule see the website: mshinstitute.org/index.php/programs/field_seminars OMSI Science Pub Portland There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission Theater in Northwest. Learn about cutting-edge topics in science and technology from leading researchers and scientists, all while enjoying food and drinks. Experience an informal atmosphere where you can interact with experts and where there are no silly questions. No scientific background is required; just bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for food, drinks, and knowledge! http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland • “Searching for Other Earths,” Monday, May 10,

Ruslan Belikov, PhD, an astrophysicist at the NASA Ames Research Center, Bagdad Theater (note: one week later than usual!)

• “What's Eating You: People and Parasites,” Tuesday, May 25, Eugene H. Kaplan, PhD, Axinn Distinguished Professor of Conservation and Ecology, at Hofstra University, Mission Theater

• “The Cheese Stands Alone: The Science Behind Oregon’s Acclaimed Artisan Cheeses,” Monday, June 7, Lisbeth Goddik, PhD, associate professor of Food Science and Technology at Oregon State University and an extension dairy processing specialist, at the Bagdad Theater

GSOC in the 21ST Century by Tara Schoffstall GSOC now Twitters! Follow us @GeoSocietyOR for all the latest info. Sign up and add the above address as a friend to your twitter feed or preview the feed at http://twitter.com/GeoSocietyOR. GSOC Products are 4 sale! GSOC has a page on the printfection.com site for products such as t-shirts, cups, mouse pads, etc.


with designs including the GSOC logo, humorous designs, and MORE! Help raise funds for the club and have great GSOC products for yourself or for gifts! http://www.printfection.com/gsoc GSOC is now on Facebook! Dear Tara and members,

“I hauled off and created a Facebook account for GeoSociety Oregon (as if a person, born in 1935) whose email address is: [email protected].

“If you want to sign on, invite GeoSocietyOR to be your friend on Facebook. For assistance, contact me [Rik Smoody] for more info.” -Rik Smoody Editor’s Note: Note correction in bold to the facebook friend search word from the last newsletter. I was not able to find our facebook page by searching with “GSOC”. NEW LOOK TO THE GSOC WEBSITE Check out the new look to our website! Our new site features a home page with upcoming events listed, a calendar page which combines meeting and field trip calendars, a GSOC history section, newsletter archives, membership info, contacts, AND MORE! Our site URL is www.gsoc.org. Future website projects will include slideshow effects, updating old field trip reviews to fit the new format, expanding the archives sections and adding new events! Keep abreast of all the action by visiting our site regularly!

IN MEMORIAM Longtime member and Past President Esther Kennedy dies Esther was born in French Gulch, California, on July 17, 1912, and died in Portland, Oregon, on March 29, 2010. She was an avid amateur botanist, birder and geologist, and enjoyed sharing her knowledge with

others on hikes, walks, and field trips. She was president of the Native Plant Society, Oregon Agate and Mineral Society and Geological Society of the Oregon Country. She and husband Bill joined GSOC in 1975, and she served as president in 1998. In addition to her presidency, she served as librarian, on various committees, and was Chairman of the Banquet Committee for several years. She not only organized the banquets but supervised the making of the place cards. Because of her artistic talent, one year she hand-painted all of the banquet place cards! Each place card was a different scene from the President's Field Trip. Her President's Field trip was "Puget Lowlands to Cascade Highlands,” with the assistance of John Whitmer. We learned about Puget Sound and the North Cascades, including Anacortes, Concrete and Washington Pass. She was always gracious, cooperative and available when anyone help with any thing. She is survived by her daughters, Helen Sinclair of Portland, Barbara Kennedy of Crooked River Ranch and Kathryn Persing of Redmond, son Bernie Abrahams of Wetmore, Colorado, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Rosemary Kenney, GSOC Historian Aggradation from Mt. Hood Volcanic Eruptions in the Sandy River Synopsis of the April 9, 2010, lecture by Dr. Thomas Pierson, Supervisory Hydrologist, USGS CVO Laboratory, Vancouver, Washington by Carol Hasenberg Last month, Dr. Pierson lectured the GSOC crowd on the process of river aggradation as a result of a volcanic eruption. According to Wikipedia, aggradation is “the increase in land elevation due to the deposition of sediment” where the sediment “can be caused by changes in climate, land use, and geologic activity, such as volcanic eruption, earthquakes, and faulting.” Specifically, Dr. Pierson


discussed aggradation of the Sandy River due to the deposition of sediment in its upper reach from volcanic eruptions of Mt. Hood. Aggradation is a volcanic hazard which occurs in rivers downstream from volcanic eruptions. Aggradation from a volcanic eruption is a process that occurs on a timescale of months, years, and decades after the eruption of a volcano and so is a less obvious volcanic hazard than explosive blasts, pyroclastic flows, and lahars (debris flows and hyperconcentrated flows). Nevertheless, aggradation occurs in river plains tens of kilometers from the volcanic source and so can affect the usability of the land in the affected river valley. The study of the aggradation in the Sandy River Valley by the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory began in the early 1980’s with studies by Ken Cameron and Pat Pringle, when funding became available shortly after the eruption of Mt St. Helens. Pierson has continued this work, which involves studying sediment produced by at least two eruptive periods of Mt. Hood , the Timberline eruptive period (approximately AD 300-AD 600) and the Old Maid eruptive period, which started in 1780 with a dome building eruption that ended in 1793. The studies have involved determining the volume of sediment produced by the eruptions, and determining when the sediments were washed downstream, and their maximum downstream impacts - i.e., height and width of the sediment-laden stream bed and the extent of the sediments in the delta at the mouth of the river. The Old Maid and Timberline dome-building eruptions occurred high on the southwest flank of Mt. Hood and so produced a debris fan on that side of the mountain. Erosion of that fan (plus direct transformation of pyroclastic flows mixing with snow) produced lahars that traveled down the river. Lahars flowed down the Sandy , Zigzag, and White rivers during the eruptions; a few reached the Columbia River. The classic example of a lahar which Pierson mentioned was the mudflow that occurred on the North Fork of the Toutle River after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. A large lahar from the Old Maid eruption traveled far down the Sandy River, leaving a deposit in its upper reach, including

the Old Maid Flat area. This and other volcanic sediment deposits became the source material for the aggradation that occurred downstream in subsequent years. When the Old Maid eruption took place, the Sandy River riverbed was 3-4 meters lower than it is today. It was lined by terraces that had formed as a result of the Timberline eruption more than a millennium earlier. The terraces were covered with trees and forest duff. The large Old Maid lahar, which occurred in late 1781 or early 1782 covered some of the terraces and killed many of the trees in its path. Today the lahar layer is characteristically denser than the sediment in the terraces above and covered by a layer of clay. Tree wells and snags can be seen in this layer in Old Maid Flat today. As time went on the sediment in the upper reach of the river was washed downstream and covered the stream banks and previous terraces in the lower “depositional reach” of the river. The Lewis and Clark expedition passed through the area in 1805-1806 when the aggradation process was in full swing. They recorded that the Sandy River was choked with sediment and was nowhere more than 4 inches deep and much wider than it is today. They referred to it as the “ Quicksand River.” A large tongue of debris stuck out into the Columbia River at the Sandy River Delta. This account and observations of recent volcanic eruptions such as Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Pinatubo have illustrated the aggradation process to researchers. At its peak in months and years subsequent to a volcanic event (depending on rainfall amount and intensity), streambeds can rise tens of meters above their previous levels, burying forests, dwellings, or even towns located near their banks. They overflow their old banks and take on the characteristics of a braided stream channel. The stream path loops back and forth across the channel depositing and re-depositing the sediment. By the late 19th century the Sandy River had cut back down through the sediment, leaving terraces on its banks as the remnant of the eruption and aggradation process. The researchers have found the timelines for this process largely by tree ring dating techniques, or dendrochronology. They were


able to pinpoint the eruptive years through a combination of dendrochronology and chemical analysis of the tree rings by Paul Sheppard of the University of Arizona. They were able to date the terrace formation by dating the oldest trees growing on them. The highest terraces had the oldest tree dates of 1793. Lower terraces were dated 1835 and 1858. The riverbed reached its present elevation before 1911. Many of the samples analyzed by Pierson in the terrace study were taken at Oxbow Park and Dabney Park along the Sandy River. Pierson recommended that those interested in seeing uncovered snags and cross sections of the terrace should visit the shores of the Sandy River very soon after flood events. The lecture’s publicity poster photo was taken after the big flood in 2006 in Oxbow Park. Pierson also showed the GSOC audience photos he had taken of the lahar layers with the sediment above. The clayey layer above the lahar was clearly visible. The sediment cross sections also show the characteristic signs of a braided stream channel, including horizontal layering, lenses of gravel, and cross bedding where dune features occur in the terraces. Pierson also recommended looking in the middle of the Sandy River during periods of low flow (i.e., late summer) for snags from the Timberline eruption just out from Group Camp #2 in Oxbow Park. When showing the audience a slide of the Mt. Hood Volcanic Hazard Map, Pierson noted that aggradation hazards have not been shown for the Sandy River. Although aggradation is not a hazard that occurs so quickly that you have to “run for it,” Pierson noted that it would impact the usability of the land along the river. A member of the audience asked Pierson whether the Bull Run water pipes crossing the Sandy could be damaged by aggradation and Pierson replied that they could. The long term solution contemplated to minimize the hazard would be to bury the pipes under the river. References and Additional Reading USGS CVO Website – “Mount Hood, Oregon, Eruptive History”:

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Hood/EruptiveHistory/framework.html USGS CVO Website – “Volcano Hazards in the Mount Hood Region, Oregon,” includes volcanic hazard map of Mt. Hood in *.pdf format: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Hood/Hazards/OFR97-89/framework.html Geological Society of the Oregon Country website, “The Buried Forests of Mt. Hood” field trip review, July 11, 1998, with leader Ken Cameron shows pictures of tree snags and tree wells in Old Maid Flat: http://www.gsoc.org/fieldtrip_old/july98.html Ken Cameron’s upcoming GSOC field trip scheduled for September 2010 will also visit some of the sediment deposits from the Old Maid Eruption. Cameron, Kenneth A., and Pringle, Patrick T., "Prehistoric Buried Forests of Mount Hood", Oregon Geology, Volume 53, Number 2, March 1991, pp. 34-43, available from the DOGAMI website at www.oregongeology.com/pubs/og/OGv53n02.pdf. Carol Hasenberg, “Buried and Submerged Forests of the Pacific Northwest, synopsis of the GSOC May 13, 2005, Friday night meeting with guest speaker Pat Pringle, geologist, Washington Dept of Natural Resources,” The Geological Newsletter, Volume 71, Number 6, June 2005. This article discusses dendrochronology as explained by Pat Pringle. Wikipedia Website – “Aggradation”, part of WikiProject Geology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggradation The Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/dendrochronology.html “The Columbia River: A Photographic Journey” – Sandy River, Oregon website : http://www.columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/sandy_river.html


Geological Society Of The Oregon Country Bull Run Watershed – Geology, Hydrology, and Engineering – June 26, 2010

Departure/return point: parking lot section A-8 of Fred Meyer “Hollywood West” store, 3030 NE Weidler St. Fred Meyer allows all-day parking for people taking this trip. Tri-Met has Saturday service on lines #73 and #77 along Broadway, #9 six blocks away on 24th Ave, and many others at Hollywood Transit Center, about ½ mile away. Times: Check-in Saturday 7:45-8:30 am, leave 8:30 am, return about 4:00 pm. Fee: $15, paid in advance (see below) includes trip handouts and bus transportation. GSOC Membership: may be purchased simultaneously, see www.GSOC.org for rates. Transportation: Mini-coach supplied by Water Bureau, limited to 26 passengers, no standees, no private autos. Leaders: Briggy Thomas Portland Water Bureau Natural Resources Educator/Field Biologist, Beverly Vogt GSOC secretary (geology MS thesis in watershed), Clay Kelleher GSOC administrative leader. Itinerary: Introductions, field trip guide, and lecture en route. The bus will enter the watershed from the east gate (Lolo Pass) and proceed westward, stops to be determined at points of interest for geology, hydrology, and watershed management. All stops at or near roadside. Breaks: periodic rest stops, and bus has a rest room. Lunch break: In watershed, bring your own sack lunches and beverages. Ice chests provided. Weather: Watch forecasts and dress appropriately. Even fair afternoons may begin in the Cascades with a morning chill. If rain is predicted in Portland, expect even heavier in the watershed. That’s why it’s there! Registration: Mail completed form below with payment to GSOC, Bull Run Field Trip, PO Box 907, Portland OR 97207. Include name and address, and telephone(s) and/or e-mail addresses in case we need to contact you. Make checks payable to GSOC. Space limited, first come first served! Full payment required to hold reservation. A waiting list will be built in the order received, fully refunded if we can’t fit you in. Information: Clay Kelleher, e-mail [email protected], or home evenings and weekends phone 503-775-6263. Cancellations: Trip will occur regardless of weather. You may contact Clay to cancel your reservation as late as Friday June 25 at 6:00 pm and get full refund. People on waiting list will be notified in order. All participants must be GSOC members or their guests. Minor participants under 18 years of age are required to have permission in writing from a parent or legal guardian; and minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult GSOC member designated by their parent or legal guardian. Letter of permission must be attached to this registration form. Participants must fill out and sign a liability/medical waiver at the meeting point before proceeding on the trip. Minor participants will need the signature of a parent or legal guardian to participate. __________________________________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION FORM FOR BULL RUN FIELD TRIP 2010 June 26, 2010 NOTE: Fill out one registration form for each participant.

Participant name__________________________________________________________minor? ____________________

If participant is not a GSOC member, name GSOC sponsor__________________________________________________

If participant is a minor, name designated GSOC accompanier _______________________________________________

Address of participant _______________________________________________________________________________

City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- _______________

Phone (_____)______-__________Email address _________________________________________________________

Fee: $15. Send this form and payment to: GSOC, Bull Run Field Trip, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, must arrive by Thursday June 24, 2010.









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The Geological Newsletter -27- July/August 2010


Volume 76, Number 4

July/August 2010



CALENDAR July/August Activities Friday evening talk, July 9, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Joe Levy, Polar Regions postdoctoral researcher at Portland State University Department of Geology, will present “Walking to Mars: What Antarctic Permafrost Suggests About Martian Geology, Climate, and Habitability”. The talk is focused on how climate conditions on Earth and Mars produce characteristic "equilibrium landforms"--features of the permafrost landscape that can be used to infer temperature and moisture conditions over time. The talk deals with a number of permafrost landforms from the coldest desert on Earth (and just a typically cold desert on Mars!).

Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts. President’s Field Trip July 16-20, 2010 Fri-Tues - GSOC President Larry Purchase will lead the President's Field Trip in Eastern Oregon. This will be primarily a camping trip, as motels are over an hour's drive away. We plan to camp at Delintment Lake U.S. Forest Service Campground in Ochoco National Forest. http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/malheur/recreation/camp/delintment.shtml We will visit the oldest rocks in Oregon near the town of Suplee, and also have an opportunity to dig for ammonite fossils at a private ranch. The trip registration


form was included with the June issue of The Geological Calendar, and is also available on the GSOC website http://www.gsoc.org/Preztrip%202010.pdf. Detailed information about the President’s Field Trip: Trip participation policies: People wanting to participate in this trip need to send in their registrations by July 4. All participants must preregister and must be GSOC members or their guests. People who are not preregistered will not be allowed to take part in this trip. Participants must also fill out and sign a liability waiver upon arrival at Delintment Lake Campground. Minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult GSOC member parent, designated person, or legal guardian. Minor participants who are with someone other than their parents need the written permission of the parent or legal guardian. Fee and camping/lodging: Fee of $40 includes trip reading packet and guest speakers. Fee for a minor accompanied by GSOC parent or guardian is $10. All other costs are responsibility of participants. The U.S. Forest Service camping fee of $10/night/campsite ($5/night for Golden Age Passports) at Delintment Lake Campground will be the responsibility of the participants. Fee for additional cars at a campsite is $3/car. Water from a pump is available at the campground. No showers are available. Meal arrangements and costs will be the responsibility of the participants. Transportation will be by car or carpool, with participants making their own arrangements (call Larry, Bev, or Bart [see phone numbers below] if you need help arranging carpooling). Participants wishing to lodge indoors will need to make their own motel arrangements in Burns or the John Day area. Route to Delintment Lake Campground: Take State Highway 380 from Prineville through Post to Paulina. From Paulina, take Paulina-Suplee Road (Highway 112) to the site of Suplee. From there, take Highway 318 (south), which becomes Highway 69 at the Crook/Grant county line. Continue on Highway 69 to the Forest Service boundary, where it becomes F.S. Road 41. Stay on F.S. Road 41 at any junction and follow signs to Delintment Lake. At the campground sign, turn left into the campground. Itinerary: Join GSOC President Larry Purchase, with field trip leaders Dr. Ellen Bishop, well known Oregon geologist and author of many books on geology including In Search of Ancient Oregon and Hiking Oregon’s Geology, and GSOC members Beverly Vogt and Richard Bartels, retired geologists who have led

several other GSOC fieldtrips. We will see the oldest rock in Oregon (Devonian monolith, age of 400 mya), collect ammonites from near our campground and other collecting sites, and learn about some of Oregon’s most complicated and interesting geology. • Day 1, Friday, July 16, travel from Portland and set

up camp at Delintment Lake, where around 2 p.m., we can start collecting Bajocian-age (between 169 to 176 mya) ammonite fossils. If you arrive after 2 p.m., look on campground bulletin board for information on where you can find us.

• Day 2, Saturday, July 17, Dr. Ellen Bishop will present the geology and geologic history of the area. Days 1, 2, and 3 will be in Ochoco National Forest and surroundings.

• Day 3, Sunday, July 18, we will collect fossils with Larry Purchase and North American Research Group (NARG) fossil collectors. We will see the site where the Jurassic crocodile-like reptile fossil called Thalattosuchia (150 to 200 mya) and listed by the National Geographic as the second “Top” fossil find of the Year 2007 was found.

• Day 4, Monday, July 19, Richard Bartels and Beverly Vogt will lead a trip on F.S. Road 6370 in Malheur National Forest illustrating a geologic cross section through the Izee terrane.

• Day 5, Tuesday, July 20, travel home, with optional stops at Thomas Condon Paleontological Center, John Day Fossil Beds, and other local points of interest.

Note: This trip is the 75th anniversary of GSOC’s first President’s Field Trip, which was to Delintment Lake and Robertson’s and Weberg’s ranches to look at Bajocian (169 to 176 mya) ammonites and the geology of the Suplee and Izee areas. For this trip you need better, more detailed maps than just highway maps. We suggest you get the two relevant Forest Service maps: (1) Ochoco National Forest and Crooked River National Grassland map; and (2) Malheur National Forest map. Gasoline: At Delintment Lake, the closest gasoline is at Burns (45 miles away) or John Day (60 miles away). Be sure you fill up at Prineville and maybe top it off at Paulina if gas is available there. Bring the following equipment for camping and for fossil collecting: • Appropriate clothing and footwear—weather may be

hot, cold, wet, muddy and/or windy. • Camping gear.


• Water, sunscreen, sunglasses, hat, and mosquito repellant.

• Fossil collecting equipment: Safety glasses, gloves, rock hammer, chisels, thin chisels for splitting layers, putty knife (5 inches), painter’s tool, edger blade, (worst case a screw driver), picks, sledge hammer, pry bars, small soft brush, large potato brush (or large soft-bristled paint brush), small shovel, hand lens, marking or duct tape, marking pen, aluminum foil (to wrap delicate fossils), storage trays, news paper, crazy glue and Vinac glue (NARG will have the glue you need). You probably don’t need all of this but mainly the essentials to extract fossils from rock and carry them safely home. Contact Larry Purchase (see above) with any questions about fossil collecting equipment.

Questions? Contact leader GSOC President Larry Purchase (360-254-5635, [email protected]) or Beverly Vogt/Richard Bartels (503-292-6939, [email protected], [email protected]). NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25/individual, $35/family. GSOC Annual Picnic Saturday, August 14, 2010 This year’s GSOC Annual Picnic will be held in conjunction with the Fifth Annual Northwest Fossil Fest, sponsored jointly by the North America Research Group (NARG) and the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals, located at 26385 Groveland Drive, Hillsboro, OR 97124, just north of US Highway 26. Take exit 61, turn right off the exit, and take the first road to the left (west), which is Groveland Drive. Admission to the Rice Museum will be free, compliments of NARG, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Fossil Fest starts at 10 a.m., but the GSOC picnic lunch, which will be on the grounds of the Rice Museum, will be served at noon. The GSOC picnic is open to GSOC members and their guests only. As no picnic tables are available at the museum, members are urged to bring portable tables and chairs. GSOC will supply paper plates, napkins, paper cups, utensils, and serving tables. There will be no personal grilling this year, but NARG is selling hamburgers, hot dogs, soda, and water for a nominal price. You may bring your own beverages but no alcoholic drinks because they are not permitted on Museum property. Although the hot dogs or hamburgers may be purchased

from NARG, we ask that you bring side dishes, salads, or desserts, based on the first letter of your last name as follows: • A through L bring a side dish or salad. • M through Z bring a dessert. This year’s Fossil Fest theme is “Paleobotany, Fossil Plants of the Ancient Northwest.” Bring your children and grandchildren, as there will be free games and a fossil hunt. Paleobotanist Dr. Bill Rember, U of Idaho, has been invited to speak on Clarkia flora. There will also be fossil displays, and the Rice Museum and its gift shop will be open. If you bring fossils, experts will be available to identify and explain them for you. If you have any questions, contact GSOC President Larry Purchase (360-254-5635, [email protected] ) or Beverly Vogt (503-292-6939, [email protected] ). Philippi Canyon Field Trip Field Trip, August 21st, 2010: “In the Path of Catastrophic Floods; Bars, Scablands, and Cataracts.” Led by GSOC Director Dave Olcott, this full day trip leaving from Lewis and Clark State Park will focus on catastrophic flood features, both ‘recent’ and “ancient”. Specifically, the trip will examine sites from The Dalles, through 15 Mile Creek Valley and eastward to Phillipi Canyon. Several sites that J Harlan Bretz documented in his 1928 publication “Bars of Channeled Scabland” will be visited. See the trip registration form on page 33 of this newsletter for details. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25/individual, $35/family. Future Activities Field Trip, September 18, 2010 GSOC member and popular field trip leader Ken Cameron will lead a one day hike to Ramona Falls on Mt. Hood, with geological interpretation along the way. The field trip involves hiking the 7-mile-long loop trail that goes up Old Maid's flat along the Sandy River near the town of Zigzag. Along the way Ken will point out lahar and pyroclastic flow deposits, tree wells, and andesite flows. Participants will meet and register at the Hoodland Plaza at Welches on Highway 26 on the way to Mt Hood. The meeting place (on your right, heading east) has a


Thriftway grocery store and a 76 gas station. Car pooling will be arranged there for the short drive to the trailhead. Trailhead parking permits are required. The trail is rocky and gently uphill for the first half. Wear shoes suitable for hiking and carry food and water for the day. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25/individual, $35/family. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar, including information on the August and September GSOC field trips. UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Mt. St. Helens Institute Field Seminars Since 2000, their field seminars have helped educate hundreds of people about the wild wonders of Mount St. Helens. They’ve taken people exploring on the Pumice Plain, led them to the volcano’s summit, showed them the stars, and shared with them the history of the eruption and how it changed the land. Their seminars, taught by highly experienced, passionate instructors, are open to all ages. Youths under 14 must be accompanied by an adult. For the current schedule see the website: mshinstitute.org/index.php/programs/field_seminars OMSI Science Pub Portland There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission Theater in Northwest. Learn about cutting-edge topics in science and technology from leading researchers and scientists, all while enjoying food and drinks. Experience an informal atmosphere where you can interact with experts and where there are no silly questions. No scientific background is required; just bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for food, drinks, and knowledge! http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland • “Seeing Things in a New Light: Infrared Imaging,”

Tuesday, July 20, at the Mission Theater. Join us to see the world in a “new light.” John Lester Miller (a.k.a. Dr. Strangephoton) will give an energetic presentation on the history, phenomenology, and applications of infrared imaging.

• “Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void,” Thursday, August 12 at the Bagdad Theater (note the different day of the week!). Space

is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human.

• “Great Balls of Fire: Meteorites,” Tuesday, August 17 at the Mission Theater. Dick Pugh, field scientist at the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University will present.

• “Dangerous Liaisons: Sexual Selection and Sexual Conflict,” Tuesday, September 21 at the Mission Theater. Reproduction is an essential part of all life, yet the existence of males and females leads to a real-life battle of the sexes that shapes the biology of most organisms. Speaker Patrick Phillips, PhD, is a professor of biology and director of the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oregon. He is an expert on the genetics of complex traits, such as aging, behavior, development, and reproduction.

• “Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods,” Monday, October 11 at the Bagdad Theater (one week later than usual). One of the greatest sets of geological events to ever have occurred in North America was the Missoula Floods. Occurring as many as 40 times during the last ice age, the floods were caused by waters released from ancient Lake Missoula that scoured the Columbia River basin, carved out the Columbia River Gorge, and swept across at least 16,000 square miles of the Pacific Northwest. This Science Pub will focus on the incredible story of discovery and development of the idea of the floods by J Harlen Bretz and will discuss the effect of the floods on the landscape of the Willamette Valley and the area around us. Speaker Scott Burns, PhD, is a professor of geology and past Chair of the Department of Geology at Portland State University where he has been for nearly 20 years. Scott specializes in environmental and engineering geology, geomorphology, soils, and Quaternary geology.


Chile’s Recent Earthquake has Lessons that We Can Learn Synopsis of the June 11, 2010, lecture by Yumei Wang, P.E., Geohazards Team Leader, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), ASCE TCLEE Investigation Team, Oregon Earthquake Commission (OSSPAC), and Allison Pyrch, G.E., P.E., Senior Engineer, Shannon and Wilson, Inc., Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants by Carol Hasenberg Last month’s Friday night lecture featured two speakers that are on the TCLEE (call it TEEK-lee) earthquake damage reconnaissance team sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The team travelled to Chile this year to view and report on the damage to ports, transportation systems, electrical power systems, and other lifelines as a result of the February 27, 2010 magnitude 8.8 earthquake there. Chile, a country with a healthy economy and geography somewhat similar to that of western Oregon, was hit by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake which occurred in the subduction zone adjacent to its coastline on February 27. After the main shock of the earthquake, approximately 130 magnitude 6.0 or greater aftershocks occurred. A magnitude 6.9 crustal earthquake followed the main shock by two weeks and was believed to be a reaction to the main shock. A devastating tsunami followed the main shock, with heights from 4 to 12 meters in Chile. Despite the destructive power of this earthquake, the country fared relatively well. There was extensive damage, but several factors contributed to the moderation of the destruction and the ability of the country to recover quickly. First, Chile has experienced 76 magnitude 7.0 and larger earthquakes since 1900, including the magnitude 9.5 Valdivia earthquake in 1960, the most powerful quake ever recorded. As a consequence, they have had earthquake provisions in their building codes for a long time.

Secondly, the time of day was fortuitous. The earthquake occurred at night, so there were no children in the 4,000 damaged schools. Families were together during the quake. Also, the tide was low during the tsunami, which reduced its height somewhat. Thirdly, the earthquake occurred in summer, so the weather had been dry and relatively few landslides were triggered. Despite these strokes of luck, damages did occur. Over 300,000 homes were damaged. Nearly five hundred people lost their lives, although these mostly occurred as a result of the tsunami. In some areas there was as little as 10 minutes of warning, even though people knew what to do. Because many vital lifelines must either cross water or lie adjacent to it in regions of poor soil, there were damages to the systems that the TCLEE team investigated. Because a subduction zone earthquake creates subsidence or uplift in different land masses, ports can be left high and dry or flooded. The presentation included a slide of a port whose water had drained away. Other ports had damaged seawalls and soil cracking and mass movement due to liquefaction, a common failure of wet, grainy, loosely-packed alluvial or coastal soils. The TCLEE team visited a coastal town, Dichato, which was virtually destroyed by a 12 meter tsunami. Bridges were collapsed all over the country, but there again Chile was lucky because the main transportation arteries could remain open. The country’s main freeway was built in two stages so all river crossings had two distinct bridges. Usually one or the other of these were able to be used soon after the quake. Electrical power systems did well in general. Most power was running within 24 hours after the quake. Fuel was more of a problem. Two major refineries had to be shut down, and fuel is now being imported by ship. In spite of all the difficulties they’ve had due to the earthquake, the Chilean economy is still functioning and the country is rebounding from its seismic event. The point of the talk was to contrast the damage in Chile to what is expected during a Cascadia


Subduction Zone earthquake in Oregon. We expect a magnitude 8.5 to 9.0 quake with a tsunami. We have rivers and coastlines with poor soils. Our infrastructure is weaker than that in Chile. We haven’t had dozens of major earthquakes to eradicate weak structures from the Oregon building inventory. We expect thousands of people to die in our big earthquake, not hundreds. One vulnerable area discussed by the speakers was bridges. Our bridge systems are deteriorating under the gravity loads we are subjecting them to, and most haven’t been designed to current seismic standards. We have done some piecemeal upgrades to some of the bridges (the Marquam superstructure for example) but our transportation networks have not been upgraded to the point where they will be operational after such a quake. We have 900 deficient bridges and at the current rate of rehabilitation it will take more than 200 years to fix them. The I-5 corridor and the coast highway will not be up and running after our earthquake. Another problem area is fuel. Our fuel depot is located across from Swan Island in northwest Portland. The tanks are on poor soils which can liquefy during an earthquake. There will be tanks destroyed and hazardous, flammable fuel spilled. The examples presented by the TCLEE team painted a bleak picture for the aftermath of our earthquake in Oregon. We will either have to deal

with a massive loss of life and a devastated economy, or take steps now to improve our lot. References and Additional Reading (En Español) Servici'o sismologico Universidad de Chile. Listado de Terremotos Históricos (Chile) http://ssn.dgf.uchile.cl/home/terrem.html List of earthquakes in Chile from Wikipedia has links to the earthquake pages and many references http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Chile In pursuing a more earthquake-prepared society here in Oregon, you may want to ask your governmental agencies and political candidates the following questions: • How can we prepare our emergency facilities,

such as emergency control centers, fire stations, and hospitals, to be operational after the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake?

• How can we improve our school buildings to protect our children during the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake?

• How can we prepare our transportation, electrical, and other vital lifeline systems to protect our public health and facilitate economic recovery after the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake?


Geological Society Of The Oregon Country Philippi Canyon – Bars, Scablands, And Cataracts – August 21, 2010

Itinerary: GSOC Director Dave Olcott will focus on catastrophic flood features, both ‘recent’ and “ancient”. Specifically, the trip will examine sites from The Dalles, through 15 Mile Creek Valley and eastward to Phillipi Canyon. Several sites that J Harlan Bretz documented in his 1928 publication “Bars of Channeled Scabland” will be visited.

Access on private land will provide special viewing at several sites. The trip will be culminated by a 3 mile (round trip) hike (easy but rocky in places) that will provide superb views of flood features in the Philippi Canyon Divide Crossing and the John Day River Canyon. Since we will be traveling through some significant historical sites, we will be joined by a local historian who will provide some connections with the local geology. Check-In: Check-in Saturday at Lewis and Clark State Park (Exit 18, east side of Sandy River off of I – 84) at 7:30 am; leaving by 8:00 am. Fee: $20, plus GSOC membership fee if you are not already a member or guest of a member. GSOC Membership: may be purchased simultaneously, see form at end of newsletter or www.gsoc.org for rates. Transportation: Transportation will be by car caravan/car pool with participants making their own arrangements. Participants are encouraged to arrange carpools in advance of the trip, as pullout space will be limited. (Dave will assist in coordinating this endeavor). Food: Participants are to bring plenty of water, snacks and a bag lunch. Weather: Dress appropriately for wet, windy and/or hot weather, and hiking. Bring a walking stick if you use one, a hat, sunscreen and sunglasses. Hiking boots are recommended. Registration: Mail completed form below with payment to GSOC, Philippi Canyon Field Trip, PO Box 907, Portland OR 97207. Include name and address, and telephone number(s) and/or e-mail addresses in case we need to contact you. Make checks payable to GSOC. Participation will be limited to the first 25 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip! Full payment is required to hold reservation. Additional Information: Dave Olcott [email protected] or (503) 695 – 5219. All participants must be GSOC members or their guests. Minor participants under 18 years of age are required to have permission in writing from a parent or legal guardian; and minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult GSOC member designated by their parent or legal guardian. Letter of permission must be attached to this registration form. Participants must fill out and sign a liability/medical waiver at the meeting point before proceeding on the trip. Minor participants will need the signature of a parent or legal guardian to participate. __________________________________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION FORM FOR PHILIPPI CANYON FIELD TRIP 2010 August 21, 2010 NOTE: Fill out one registration form for each participant.

Participant name________________________________________________________minor? Yes or No If participant is not a GSOC member, name GSOC sponsor__________________________________________________

If participant is a minor, name designated GSOC accompanier _______________________________________________

Address of participant _______________________________________________________________________________

City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- _______________

Phone (_____)______-__________Cell Phone (_____)______-__________Email address _________________

Fee: $20. Send this form and payment to: GSOC, Philippi Canyon Field Trip, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, must arrive by August 14, 2010.









Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




The Geological Newsletter -35- September/October 2010


Volume 76, Number 5

September/October 2010



CALENDAR September/October Activities Wednesday evening talk, September 29, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., in Room 69, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Dr. Ken Severin, Director of the Advanced Instrumentation Laboratory at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks (www.uaf.edu/ail), will present “A Tiny View Of The Biggest State.” Dr. Severin will present some amazing photos taken in the lab with electron microscopes plus other cool findings from his research laboratory. Please refer to the website for possible updates on the location of this lecture. What do you do when someone brings you a sample and says "Analyze this"? Dr. Severin comments, “We want to get more information from materials, but frequently don't know exactly what information we want, or the techniques that

are available to get the information. In this lecture, I will try to unravel some of the alphabet soup (LA-ICP-MS*, XRD*, XRF*, XRM*, FTIR*, EPMA*, ESEM*) of analytical techniques often used in the geological sciences with a description of what goes on in the instrument, examples of the kind of data the instrument gives, and some of the inherent limitations of the techniques.” • * LA-ICP-MS = laser ablation inductively coupled

plasma mass spectrometry, XRD = X-ray diffraction, XRF = X-ray fluorescence, XRM = X-ray microscopy, FTIR = Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, EPMA = Electron probe micro analysis, ESEM = Environmental scanning electron microscopy

Ken Severin started out studying modern foraminifera and became interested in growth of these intricate microorganisms. That led to a career involving the micro-elemental analysis of fish otoliths, and oversight of a multi-instrument lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where everything from gold nuggets to


Egyptian teeth to volcanic materials to snow are examined with a variety of techniques. Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. Friday evening talk, October 8, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Don J. Pettit, Senior Emergency Response Planner, Emergency Response Program, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, will present “the Oregon Incident Response Information System.” Do you know what hazardous materials are used, stored, or transported through Oregon? --The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has created a tool aimed at providing key geographic information needed to guide response efforts to emergency personnel – the Oregon Incident Response Information System (OR-IRIS). Affectionately nicknamed the Oregon Map of Everything, OR-IRIS uses GIS data useful to understanding the natural, physical and jurisdictional setting of a hazardous release so that a safe, appropriate and efficient response can be conducted. OR-IRIS consists of self-contained pre-packaged GIS data in a format that allows for exploration and analysis by those without advanced GIS (computer mapping) skills. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. and Wednesday nights after 7 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts. Ramona Falls Field Trip September 18, 2010 GSOC member and popular field trip leader Ken Cameron will lead a one day hike to Ramona Falls on Mt. Hood, with geological interpretation along the way. The field trip involves hiking the 7-mile-long loop trail that goes up Old Maid's flat along the Sandy River near the town of Zigzag. Along the way Ken will point out lahar and pyroclastic flow deposits, tree wells, and andesite flows. Participants will meet at 8:30 a.m. and register at the Hoodland Plaza at Welches on Highway 26 on the way to Mt Hood. The meeting place (on your right, heading

east) has a Thriftway grocery store and a 76 gas station. Car pooling will be arranged there for the short drive to the trailhead. The car caravan will leave the Hoodland parking lot for the trailhead at 9:00 sharp. There will be a $5 fee per head for this trip. Trailhead parking permits are required for the cars in the caravan. The trail is rocky and gently uphill for the first half. Wear shoes suitable for hiking and carry food and water for the day. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25/individual, $35/family. Future Activities Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar, including information on the upcoming meetings and September GSOC field trip. UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Portland State University Geology Department Geology Fall Colloquium 2010, Cramer Hall S17, 3:30-4:30 p.m.. All are invited to attend! For information contact: Martin Streck, 503/725-3379,[email protected], or refer to the department website: http://geology.pdx.edu/ As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not been announced but do check the department website near the end of September for the upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations also as they may have changed. Oregon State University Department of Geosciences 2010 Fall Seminar Series, Thursdays, 4:00 pm, Gilfillan Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.geo.oregonstate.edu/Seminars As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not been announced but do check the department website near the end of September for the upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations also as they may have changed. University of Oregon Department of Geological Sciences, Fall 2010 Weekly Seminar Series, Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall.


Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at 3:30 p.m.. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/news/about As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not been announced but do check the department website near the end of September for the upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations also as they may have changed. OMSI Science Pub Portland There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission Theater in Northwest. Learn about cutting-edge topics in science and technology from leading researchers and scientists, all while enjoying food and drinks. Experience an informal atmosphere where you can interact with experts and where there are no silly questions. No scientific background is required; just bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for food, drinks, and knowledge! http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland • “Dangerous Liaisons: Sexual Selection and Sexual

Conflict,” Tuesday, September 21 at the Mission Theater. Reproduction is an essential part of all life, yet the existence of males and females leads to a real-life battle of the sexes that shapes the biology of most organisms. Speaker Patrick Phillips, PhD, is a professor of biology and director of the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oregon. He is an expert on the genetics of complex traits, such as aging, behavior, development, and reproduction.

• “Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods,” Monday, October 11 at the Bagdad Theater (one week later than usual). One of the greatest sets of geological events to ever have occurred in North America was the Missoula Floods. Occurring as many as 40 times during the last ice age, the floods were caused by waters released from ancient Lake Missoula that scoured the Columbia River basin, carved out the Columbia River Gorge, and swept across at least 16,000 square miles of the Pacific Northwest. This Science Pub will focus on the incredible story of discovery and development of the idea of the floods by J Harlen Bretz and will discuss the effect of the floods on the landscape of the Willamette Valley and the area around us. Speaker Scott Burns, PhD, is a professor of geology and past Chair of the Department of Geology at Portland State University where he has been for nearly 20

years. Scott specializes in environmental and engineering geology, geomorphology, soils, and Quaternary geology.

2010 PRESIDENT’S FIELD TRIP RECAP by Carol Hasenberg, Larry Purchase, and Beverly Vogt This year’s GSOC President’s Field Trip took place in the rolling hills and Ponderosa Pine forests of the southeastern section of the Ochoco National forest. The group camped in the beautiful forest surrounding Delintment Lake, where the stars were beautiful and the lake water cool. The days were a bit hot but GSOC’ers didn’t mind because their eyes were shining with the prospect of finding a beautiful fossil to link them with the past history of the area. As President Larry Purchase put it, “this trip is about the fossils as well as the underlying geology from which they came. We, however, mainly came to find fossils”. This area of ancient island arc terranes crashed into the westernmost edge of the continent since the Jurassic age. What makes it even more confusing is that two island arcs collided before striking the continent. The rocks at the trip stops were from the Grindstone and Izee terranes. The oldest rocks exposed in Oregon, visited by GSOC on Saturday, July 17, are from a Middle Devonian (400 mya) section of coral reef which became included in a subduction zone that became the Songbird Formation of the Grindstone Terrane. This limestone monolith has fossils that include corals, sea jellies, and algae (Grypophyllum, Helioliter, Cnidaria, and Stromatoporoids). In addition to this truly ancient rock, stops were also made at two locations within the Izee Terrane, in rocks of Jurassic age. On Saturday GSOC also visited the Four-Corners Site at the junction of US Forest Service roads #41 & 43, which has Bajochian fossil ammonites that are 169 to 176 million years old. This was the site that is “guaranteed” to yield fossil ammonites, although the fossils are fragile and must be handled carefully.


On Sunday, July 18, the group visited another Jurassic site from the Snowshoe Formation of the Izee Terrane. This site, located on the same private ranch as the Devonian monolith, yielded the Thalattosuchian crocodile that was recently excavated by the North American Research Group (NARG). The site also has numerous fossils of ammonites and other denizens of shallow Asian coastal waters, which took a 100 million year ride and ended up on the shores of Oregon. In terms of finding fossils the group did well. The Devonian monolith had at its base numerous small rocks which had weathered off the parent rock and contained the ancient fossils. The Four-Corners site yielded many small ammonites. The crocodile site unveiled many ammonites, including sections of some big ones, and also bivalves (clams). The group was disappointed that slated speaker Dr. Ellen Bishop was not able to make the trip due to a serious illness in her family. However, Eastern Oregon University geologist, Dr. Jay Van Tassell, gave an excellent lecture and helped the group ID fossils. One of our newest group members had an amazing camera that could take really close up pictures of the fossils. Keep a lookout on our website (www.gsoc.org) for some of these photos. On Monday, July 19, Richard Bartels and Beverly Vogt led a one-day excursion along Malheur National Forest Service Road 6370 highlighting the

Izee terrane, a continuous sequence of Lower Triassic through Upper Jurassic sedimentary rocks, including a major early Jurassic unconformity. The importance of these Izee rocks is that they record the history of the movements of various “exotic” terranes of the Blue Mountains Province (Wallowa, Olds Ferry, and Baker terranes) as they were assembled into their present configuration. LeMaskin and Dorsey’s model (2007) for the assembly of the Blue Mountain Province was presented. Their supporting field evidence visible along Road 6370 included sediment source area and environment of deposition for each unit, east-directed thrust faulting from the basement (the Baker Terrane), and the resultant effect of this thrust faulting (submarine landsliding). The day ended with GSOCer’s collecting marine fossils of the Suplee Formation located directly above the angular unconformity.

GSOC PICNIC RECAP by Richard Bartels Bev Vogt and I left at 2 pm and from my count we had 41 members attend the GSOC picnic held this year at the Rice Museum. Janet Rasmussen took a photo of the GSOC ex-presidents that attended. They included Rosemary Kenney (1989), Evelyn Pratt (1992), Clay Kelleher (1995), Richard Bartels (1996), Beverly Vogt (1998), and Carol Hasenberg (1999). The others were from another century.









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The Geological Newsletter -40- November/December 2010


Volume 76, Number 6

November/December 2010



CALENDAR November/December Activities Friday evening talk, November 12, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Rachel Pirot, Geologist, Shannon & Wilson, Inc., and recent M.S. recipient at Portland State University Department of Geology, will present “Source Area Characteristics of Debris Flows on Mt. Hood.” In November 2006, a massive storm triggered debris flows on all sides of Mount Hood, Oregon. In her master’s thesis survey of these drainages, Ms. Pirot characterized the source areas physically and morphologically to assess factors controlling debris flow initiation. Of the eleven drainages surveyed, seven experienced debris flows. Although findings indicate that all major drainages on Mount Hood are capable of

producing debris flows, drainages with certain characteristics were the most susceptible. Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. GSOC Seminar, Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 8 p.m., Room 69, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University “PowerPoint Basics” - A short introduction to PowerPoint and/or OpenOffice.org to help in create slide shows or presentations of their geology information and resources. Included will be how to insert pictures, text, and presentation styles. All ages welcome. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. and Wednesday nights after 7 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts.


GSOC Annual Christmas Party Friday evening talk, December 10, 2010, at 6:30 p.m., will once again be the GSOC Annual Christmas Party and field trip slideshow. Attendance will be limited to GSOC members and their guests. Speakers for this year’s gala event will include: • President Larry Purchase – “The 2010 President’s

Field Trip to Delintment Lake, July 16-20”

• Director Dave Olcott – “In the Path of Catastrophic Floods; Bars, Scablands, and Cataracts, August 21st, 2010”

• Secretary Beverly Vogt – “Bull Run Watershed, June 26, 2010”

• Member and outstanding GSOC field trip leader Ken Cameron – “Ramona Falls Field Trip, September 18, 2010”

The party will be held at the Simon Benson House on the Portland State University campus. Donations to help cover the venue rental are being accepted by GSOC Treasurer Richard Bartels. Food and other contributions to the event are being coordinated by GSOC Director Anne O’Neill. If you are planning to attend, the basic scheme for food and volunteer contributions is the following: • Last name A-J: Savory, tangy, or salty snacks/hors

d’oeuvres

• Last name K-O: Beverages or setup items – call Anne O’Neill for itemized list

• Last name P-Z: Sweets

If you’re bringing food, bring enough for 10 servings as a rule of thumb. If you’re helping to set up, come at 6:00 p.m. The party will officially start at 6:30, and the slide shows will begin at 7:30 p.m. There will be food, beverages, and live music at the party. If you would like to come but are not yet a member of GSOC, you may join now and receive membership benefits throughout 2011. Future Activities Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar, including information on the upcoming meetings and the GSOC 76th Annual Banquet in March.

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Portland State University Dept. of Geology & School of the Environment, Fall Colloquium 2010, Cramer Hall 271, 3:30-4:30 p.m.. All are invited to attend! For information contact: Scott Burns, 503/725-3389, [email protected], or refer to the department website: http://geology.pdx.edu/ For Fall 2010 the theme for the seminars is: “Applied Environmental Geology” • Oct. 27, 2010, “Wine Soils of the Willamette

Valley,” Andy Gallagher, Red Hills Soil Mappings, LLC, Corvallis

• Nov. 3, 2010, “Over the River and Through the Woods: Balancing New Infrastructure & Environmental Protection,” Kent Snyder, Normandeau Associates, Vancouver

• Nov. 10, 2010 “Water Planning in Phoenix: Managing Risk in the Face of Uncertainty,” Patricia Gober, Dept. of Geography, Arizona State University, (Past President of AAG)

• Nov. 17, 2010 “A Highway no Longer Runs Through it: Restoring Streams for ODOT,” Anne MacDonald, Geoengineers, Tigard

• Nov. 24, 2010 “Basic Geology is Still Important in Cleaning Environmental Sites – Two Case Histories in the Portland Area,” Mavis Kent, Plateau Geoscience LLC, Vancouver (Recently retired from Oregon DEQ)

• Dec. 1, 2010 “Environmental Cleanup of a Major Truck Stop, Portland, Oregon,” Robert Miller, Robert Miller Consulting, West Linn, Oregon

Oregon State University Department of Geosciences 2010 Fall Seminar Series, Thursdays from 4:00-5:00 pm in 108 Wilkinson Hall, unless otherwise noted. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.geo.oregonstate.edu/ • 10/28/2010 - David John, USGS, Menlo Park,

California, “Prolonged Eocene Magmatism and Assembly of the Caetano Caldera, Cortez Area, Nevada: Inferences from SHRIMP U-Pb Dating”

• 11/4/2010 - Liz Johnson, James Madison University, Virginia, “The Effect of Cation Substitution of Hydrogen Solubility in Rutile”


• 11/11/2010 - The George Moore Lecture - Gilfillan Auditorium, Steve Squyres, Cornell University, “Science Results from the Mars Exploration Rover Project”

• 11/18/2010 - Adam Kent, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, “De-convoluting the Mess that Picrites May Appear to Be”

• Monday, 11/22/2010, Noon-1:00 in 1003 Kelley Engineering Center - Kirk Nordstrom, USGS, Menlo Park, CA, “Yellowstone's Contaminated Waters-Transport of As, F, H2S, and Hg from Thermal Waters to Rivers and the Air”

• 12/2/2010 - Jim Peters, United Western Exploration LLC, Denver, Colorado, “Modern Petroleum Exploration: Targeting, Data Needs and Application of 3-D Seismic Software”

In addition to the Fall Seminar Series, OSU will also have the 2010 Thomas Condon Lecture: November 10, 2010 7:00-9:30 p.m. at LaSells Stewart Center. Speaker Dr. Steve Squyres, Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University and principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, will present “Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet.” There will be refreshments at 7:00 p.m., with the lecture starting at 7:30. University of Oregon Department of Geological Sciences, Fall 2010 Weekly Seminar Series, Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall. Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at 3:30 p.m. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/news/about • October 27 - Ray Wells (USGS), “Origin and

emplacement of Siletzia, a Paleogene accreted oceanic plateau in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska”

• November 3 - Liz Johnson (James Madison Univ), “What can OH in rutile tell us about oxidation conditions in the crust and mantle?”

• November 10 - Jesse Lawrence (Stanford Univ), “Seismic tomography beneath the Western US: Interpreting red and blue as geophysical processes”

• November 17 - Pascal Audet (UC Berkeley), “The seismic signature of water in the forearc of Cascadia”

• November 24 - No Seminar- Thanksgiving Week

• December 1 - Eric Dunham (Stanford Univ), “Earthquake Rupture Dynamics: Weakening Mechanisms, Nonplanarity, and Stress Levels on Faults”

USGS Fall 2010 Seminar Series Schedule - Oregon Water Science Center Brown Bag Seminars (http://or.water.usgs.gov/brownbag/) are held on Tuesdays from noon to 1 pm. unless noted otherwise. The seminars are informal and are open to the public. Bring your lunch. The USGS Oregon Water Science Center office is located in Portland at 2130 SW 5th Ave. Directions to the USGS office are posted at http://or.water.usgs.gov/location.html. • Tuesday, October 26, “Groundwater Resources of

the Yakima River Basin,” Matt Ely, Hydrologist, USGS Washington Water Science Center Tacoma, WA

• Tuesday, November 2, “Measuring Stream Metabolism with a Tracer: Resazurin as a "Smart" Tracer for Metabolic Activity,” Roy Haggerty, Professor, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

• Tuesday, November 9, “Occurrence, Fate, and Effects of Current-Use Pesticides in the Aquatic Environment,” Kathy Kuivila, Research Hydrologist, USGS California Water Science Center, Sacramento, CA

• Tuesday, November 16, “Basin-Wide Distributed Modeling of Hydrologic Responses to Irrigation, Management in the Wood River Basin, Klamath County, OR,” Joshua Owens, Master of Science student, Water Resources Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

• Week of November 22 - no seminar scheduled

• Tuesday, November 30, “Use of Continuous Monitors and Autosamplers to Predict Unmeasured Water-Quality Constituents in Tributaries of the Tualatin River,” Chauncey Anderson, Hydrologist, USGS Oregon Water Science Center, Portland, OR

• Tuesday, December 7, “The Wallula CRBG Carbon Sequestration Pilot,” Charlotte Sullivan, Senior Research Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA

• Tuesday, December 14, “The Role of Zooplankton Grazing on Noxious Cyanobacteria Blooms in,


Vancouver Lake, WA,” Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Earth & Environmental Science, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA

OMSI Science Pub Portland There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission Theater in Northwest. Learn about cutting-edge topics in science and technology from leading researchers and scientists, all while enjoying food and drinks. Experience an informal atmosphere where you can interact with experts and where there are no silly questions. No scientific background is required; just bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for food, drinks, and knowledge! http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland • “What Technology Wants,” Monday, November 1 at

the Bagdad Theater, with speaker Kevin Kelly, a founding editor of Wired who provides a refreshing view of technology as a living force in the world

• “I Dig Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology,” Tuesday, November 16 at the Mission Theater, with speaker Dr. Veronica “Nici” Vance, state forensic anthropologist at the Oregon State Police Portland Metro Forensic Lab

• There will be no Science Pub meetings scheduled for December

GSOC Membership List GSOC members wishing to obtain a membership list call or email Secretary Beverly Vogt, and she will mail you one.

BOARD MEETING NOTES October 9, 2010 The meeting was called to order by President Larry Purchase at the home of Rosemary Kenney. Board and GSOC members present included Larry Purchase, Rik Smoody, Beverly Vogt, Richard ‘Bart’ Bartels, Dave Olcott, Janet Rasmussen, Paul Edison-Lahm, Jan Kem, Carol Hasenberg, Tara Schoffstall, Anne O’Neill, Rosemary Kenney, Doug Rasmussen, and Dawn Juliano. The meeting agenda and minutes of the August 14, 2010 meeting were approved.

Treasurer's report was given by Bart and approved. Bart also gave the financial report of the 2010 field trips. Rik told the board that the Friday night speaker for November will be Rachel Pirot. The December Christmas party will again feature brief presentations by this year’s field trip leaders: Larry, Bev and Bart, Dave, and Ken Cameron. Annual Banquet speakers are still being investigated. Jim Jackson will be speaking at the PSU Weekend Geology Seminar on Thursday, 10/21/10 at 5:30 in S17. Larry’s motion to donate Dr. Orr’s book on Oregon Fossils to last month’s speaker Ken Severn was approved. Larry has already purchased the book for $24.95. Carol suggested that a Powerpoint training might be helpful to future presenters. Tara volunteered to teach this as a Wednesday night seminar. Bev and Bart proposed that they give a rock identification class. This was enthusiastically approved. Christmas Party report was given by Anne. The Benson House has again been reserved and the party will be open to membership only. Anne circulated a sign up sheet for food, drink, and other items (A-J tangy/salty, K-O beverage set-up, P-Z sweets). Members will be needed to assist with set up at 5:30 p.m. Nominating committee report was given by Larry and Rik. Positions for vice president and 3-year director will need to be filled. Rik is compiling a list of potential nominees and will contact them before bringing the nominations back before the nominating committee. Report of Website and Internet committee was presented by Tara, Carol, Rik, and Janet. The committee has been exploring whether an electronic discussion board is needed to provide a platform for a more open discussion than can be afforded by the website; however the committee has not reached a consensus on what the platform should be. After discussion was opened to the floor, the issue was referred back to committee. The committee’s Revised Website Policy Table was amended to require that any political information on the website come before the board rather than just the webmaster. With this amendment, the website policy was approved. March Annual Banquet planning was discussed. Bart will make arrangements to book the Monarch hotel again. Janet will do the programs and place cards. Larry


took down a list of volunteers. Carol suggested having an ammonite glue party for the place cards. Larry and Carol gave an update on Carol's finding of a reptile fossil on the President’s Field Trip. A party may return to survey and secure the site in mid-October. Larry announced the upcoming annual Newport Fossil Fest with a tentative date of Feb. 12-13. Old and New Business: • Paul is interested in organizing a downtown Portland

geology tour. • Bev will distribute the membership list via email. • Jan and Tara brought the spiffy new GSOC mugs

which are now for sale for $10. • Rosemary reminded field trip leaders that two copies

of field trip guides are needed for the archives. The next meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., December 11th, 2010, at Rosemary’s house. Paul Edison-Lahm, Director (3 year)

WHAT IT IS! Synopsis of the September 29, 2010, lecture by Dr. Ken Severin, Director of the Advanced Instrumentation Laboratory (AIL) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) by Carol S. Hasenberg Dr. Ken Severin kicked off the fall series of GSOC lectures with his presentation about the Advanced Instrumentation Laboratory this past September 29th. He explained what the laboratory equipment is, how it works, and what applications are made of it to the benefit of the state of Alaska. Dr. Severin’s original specialty was studying foraminifera, but his interests shifted towards a broader spectrum of study and eventually led to the position he holds today. The Advanced Instrumentation Laboratory holds several instruments that examine the shape or structure of tiny samples, or perform analyses to discover their constituent elements. They’re all known by acronyms, so Severin’s lecture commenced with a discussion of the “alphabet soup” of names. He began with his favorite

instrument, the electron microprobe (EPMA or EMPA), which is used to determine the chemical composition of small solid samples in situ. This instrument works somewhat like the light microscope most high school biology students are familiar with. The beam of light passing through the sample in the light microscope is replaced by a concentrated beam of electrons focused down onto a small site on the sample. The instrument primarily records electrons and x-rays that are reflected or emitted upwards around the sample site. See Figure 1 (page 46) for a diagram of the beam and its products. This instrument is the primary tool used in the analysis of fish otoliths, which is one of the most important uses of the AIL. Studying otoliths, which are the fish inner ear bones that do not resorb like most bones, is of enormous importance to Alaska’s fishing industry, because many conclusions can be drawn about the age of the fish, their growth, and their environment during different life stages. Severin illustrated this by showing the GSOC audience an enlarged cross section of an otolith with growth bands analogous to tree rings. In one study of the habits of Alaskan whitefish, Severin analyzed samples of the cross sections of whitefish otoliths for strontium composition. Strontium levels have been shown to be high in otolithic bone grown in a salty oceanic environment and are low in bone grown in fresh water habitats such as river estuaries. From his strontium mapping Severin was able to demonstrate that the Alaskan whitefish have the unusual lifestyle of going from fresh to saline environments several times during their lifetimes. Another fish that has been studied using EPMA analysis is the Orange roughy. In this case the electron microprobe was used to determine the ages of the large specimens of this fish which were being caught and marketed. This is important as the recovery rate of fish stocks is highly dependent upon their rate of growth. Otolithic age analysis showed that the age of marketable roughy was 100-150 years! Unsurprisingly, stocks of this fish have crashed due to overfishing by deep-sea trawlers. The electron microprobe studies have been put to use in developing an inexpensive marking scheme


for fish from hatcheries in Alaska. Marking is an important part of determining proportions of wild and hatchery fish. The marking techniques which have been used are attaching little wires in the noses of the juvenile fish (for millions of fish!) and thermally marking the juvenile fish by growing them in heated tanks of water. Since thousands of gallons of potentially environmentally destructive fuel must be used to heat the tanks, the famous Copper River hatchery has opted to mark their fish by manipulating the tank’s salinity. They know that hatchery fish can be identified by the pattern of strontium bands on their otoliths. The electron microprobe is not the only instrument used in the study of fish otoliths. The x-ray diffractometer (XRD) has been used to analyze polymorphic forms of calcium carbonate of which the otoliths are composed. It was noticed that certain otoliths had relatively smoothly banded “normal” areas, and other areas that were wavy and bumpy in character. Something had caused the bone to grow in this fashion. Both portions had a similar chemistry so the XRD was used to determine the crystal forms of each portion. This analysis showed that the normal bone areas were composed of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate, and the unusual areas were composed of vaterite, a form of calcium carbonate which is not commonly found in rocks. Subsequent studies have shown that the vaterite otolithic areas are common in hatchery fish and fish living in disturbed environments. The other big user of the AIL is the USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory. The electron microprobe is useful to these scientists in determining the mineral composition of samples from the eruption of Mt. Redoubt and other Alaskan volcanoes. The information obtained from the raw data is what elements exist in what amounts at any given sample site. This data is mapped for a number of constituent elements of the sample, and the proportions of the various elements infer the mineral composition of each of the crystal grains. Up to 10 elements can be analyzed at once on this instrument.

The inductively coupled mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) analyzes samples for their elemental signatures like the electron microprobe, but there are significant differences in the way they work, the sample types and the results they achieve. The ICP-MS is primarily designed to analyze liquids, but can also analyze vapors produced from solids with a laser attachment. This laser vaporizes a trench in the object to be analyzed that is much bigger than that made by the electron microprobe. The sample is heated to a very high temperature which dries and then atomizes and ionizes its matter. Individual ions can be counted as they pass through the analyzer. Therefore it is highly sensitive and can detect material in parts per billion or even parts per trillion. Another of the instruments in the lab is the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), which scans the secondary electron emissions from the electron beam to produce an image of the physical shape of a specimen. The softer specimens that would deform in a vacuum must be dried and coated with gold prior to scanning. Severin showed the GSOC audience a number of SEM images, which included grains of food, insect parts, fossil teeth. He also showed the audience several images taken of atmospheric ice crystals in a study that demonstrates how “sun dog” effects occur in Alaskan skies in the winter, and a picture of the sun with 2 rings and other wispy reflections which had quite an elaborate geometry. Such effects commonly occur in the cold Alaskan skies. The ice samples had to be prepared for viewing by immersion in liquid nitrogen. Dr. Severin also named several other pieces of equipment used less frequently in his laboratory and discussed some of them briefly. In addition to the paid research work done by the laboratory, he teaches classes on using the equipment to UAF students. He prefers that researchers wanting AIL data design and conduct their own experiments, since they have a deeper understanding of their particular topic of study. All in all this window to the tiny world can have a big benefit on the biggest state. REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL READING


Advanced Instrumentation Laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks discusses the instruments and has some really cool images from projects: www.uaf.edu/ail Integrating Research and Education Project - This project is being developed as part of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) Community Services Center, with funding from the National Science Foundation. Participating institutions include Montana State University and Carleton College:

Geochemical Instrumentation and Analysis page has a good discussion of the several pieces of equipment discussed in this article: http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/geochemsheets/index.html

Wikipedia pages that were helpful in writing this article: Orange roughy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_roughy

Calcium carbonate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/ Several scientific papers available online also were about topics discussed in this article: • W. Jansen and M. Slaughter, “Elemental

mapping of minerals by electron microprobe,” American Mineralogist, Volume 67, pages 521-533, 1982.

• Giuseppe Falini, Simona Fermani, Silvia Vanzo, Marin Miletic, and Giulia Zaffino, “Influence on the Formation of Aragonite or Vaterite by Otolith Macromolecules,” European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, 2005, 162-167.

• B. M. Jessop1, J. C. Shiao, Y. Iizuka, W. N. Tzeng, “Prevalence and intensity of occurrence of vaterite inclusions in aragonite otoliths of American eels Anguilla rostrata,” Aquatic Biology, Vol. 2: 171–178, 2008.

Beam of Electrons

Electrons that go through the sample

Secondary electrons – define shape

X-rays

Heat Affected sample size – 1 µm

Backscatter

Figure 1. Diagram of an Electron Beam and Its Effects on a Sample









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Volume 77, Number 1




CALENDAR January/February Activities Friday evening talk, January 14, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Joseph Cohen, amateur geologist and intellectual-property lawyer at Stoel Rives LLP, in Portland, Oregon, will present “Searles Lake, California – A Mineralogical Gem”. Searles Lake is a dry lake in southeastern California. It contains some unusual collectible minerals, and is an important source of evaporite minerals for industrial use. This talk will cover (a) the geologic and human history of Searles Lake, (b) the Searles Lake minerals, and (c) a short Searles Lake field trip in October for the Searles Lake Gem & Mineral Society "Gem-O-Rama".

Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. Ammonite place card assembly party for the upcoming GSOC Annual Banquet is scheduled for 10 a.m. on January 15. Bev Vogt will email location and directions to members of the GSOC Board of Directors. Please contact her (preferably by email) if you are interested in attending. Friday evening talk, February 18, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University: Speaker Daina Hardisty, Geology Instructor, Mt. Hood Community College, will present a lecture on groundwater. Note that the date has been changed from the usual second Friday of the month due to a conflict with the Fossil Fest in Newport. Please check the website and the February calendar on updates to the date, topic, and other information about this talk.


Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. and Wednesday nights after 7 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Sts. Future Activities The Seventy-sixth Annual GSOC Banquet is coming up on Sunday, March 13, 2011, at the Monarch Hotel in Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker Jay Van Tassel of Eastern Oregon University will present "Bulldozer Paleontology: New Ice Age Fossils from the Grande Ronde Valley, NE Oregon." The registration flyer for the event will be sent with the February edition of the The Geological Calendar. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar, including information on the upcoming meetings and the GSOC 76th Annual Banquet in March. UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Fossil Fest, tentatively scheduled for February 12, 2001, Hatfield Marine Science Center, Newport, Oregon. Speakers will discuss Oregon’s geology and Oregon fossils. Several GSOC members are attending this because it is so interesting. Check the GSOC website or February calendar for more information. Portland State University Geology Department Geology Winter Colloquium 2011, Cramer Hall S17, 3:30-4:30 p.m.. All are invited to attend! For information contact: Scott Burns, 503/725-3389, [email protected], or refer to the department website: http://geology.pdx.edu/ As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not been announced but do check the department website near the beginning of January for the upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations also as they may have changed. Oregon State University Department of Geosciences 2011 Winter Seminar Series, Thursdays, 4:00 pm, Gilfillan Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.geo.oregonstate.edu/Seminars

As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not been announced but do check the department website near the beginning of January for the upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations also as they may have changed. University of Oregon Department of Geological Sciences, Winter 2011 Weekly Seminar Series, Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall. Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at 3:30 p.m.. Refer to department website for more information: http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/news/about As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not been announced but do check the department website near the beginning of January for the upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations also as they may have changed. USGS Winter 2011 Seminar Series Schedule - Oregon Water Science Center Brown Bag Seminars (http://or.water.usgs.gov/brownbag/) are held on Tuesdays from noon to 1 pm. unless noted otherwise. The seminars are informal and are open to the public. Bring your lunch. The USGS Oregon Water Science Center office is located in Portland at 2130 SW 5th Ave. Directions to the USGS office are posted at http://or.water.usgs.gov/location.html. • January 11, “Our Vanishing Glaciers: 100 Years of

Glacier Retreat in the Three Sisters Area, Central Oregon Cascade Range”, Jim O'Connor, Research Hydrologist, USGS Oregon Water Science Center

• January 18, “Climate Change Impacts on Snow, Glaciers and Water Resources in the Pacific Northwest”, Anne Nolin, Associate Professor, Dept. of Geosiences, Oregon State University

• January 25, “Donner and Blitzen River: Streamflow and Physical Habitat”, Tim Hardin, Instream Flow Specialist, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

• February 1, “Estimates of Coastal Freshwater Runoff: How to Get Them and What To Do With Them”, Dave Hill, Associate Professor, School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Oregon State University

• February 8, “Do We Really Understand How Evaporation Works? The Effect of Soil Salinity”, Maria Dragila, Associate Professor, Dept. of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University


• February 15, “Computer-Based Model Calibration R&D at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center”, Brian Skahill, Research Hydraulic Engineer, Watershed Systems Group, Hydrologic Systems Branch, US Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center

• February 22, “Reconnaissance Investigation of Emerging Contaminants in Wastewater-Treatment-Plant Effluent and Stormwater Runoff in the Columbia River Basin”, Jennifer Morace, Hydrologist, USGS Oregon Water Science Center

• Friday, March 4, Noon to 1 pm, “The Pursuit of Uncertainty in Hydrologic Climate Change Impact Assessment: Improved Characterization, Quantification and Communication”, Hamid Moradkhani, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University

• March 8, “Geologic, Hydrogeochemical, and Water-Level Evidence for Hydrologic Compartmentalization in the Columbia River Basalt Aquifer System in the Columbia Basin GWMA”, Kevin Lindsey, Senior Hydrogeologist, GSI Water Solutions, Inc., Kennewick, Washington

• March 15, “Using Turbidity Monitoring and LiDAR-Derived Imagery to Investigate Sources of Suspended Sediment in the Little North Santiam River Basin, Oregon, Winter 2009-2010”, Steve Sobieszczyk, Student Hydrologist, USGS Oregon Water Science Center

OMSI Science Pub Portland There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission Theater in Northwest. Learn about cutting-edge topics in science and technology from leading researchers and scientists, all while enjoying food and drinks. Experience an informal atmosphere where you can interact with experts and where there are no silly questions. No scientific background is required; just bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for food, drinks, and knowledge! http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland • “How to Repair a Damaged Brain: From Lumps of

Sugar to Spheres of Stem Cells”, Monday, January 3, 2011, at the Bagdad Theater (note earlier date!). Larry Sherman, PhD, is a senior scientist at the OHSU Brain Institute. Dr. Sherman presented at two Science Pubs in 2009 on Music to Your Brain, and in 2010 as part of Brain Chemistry for Lovers.

We are thrilled to have him back to present on yet another brain-related topic!

• “Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula

Floods”, Tuesday, January 18, 2011, at the Mission Theater. Scott Burns, PhD, is a professor of geology and past chair of the Department of Geology at Portland State University where he has been for nearly 20 years. Scott specializes in environmental and engineering geology, geomorphology, soils, and Quaternary geology. This is a repeat of the Science Pub held at the Bagdad Theater on October 11, 2010.

• “Promiscuous DNA: The Invasion, Spread, and

Impact of Mobile Genes”, Tuesday, February 15, 2011, at the Mission Theater. Sarah Schaack, PhD, is a post-doctoral fellow in the biology department at Lewis & Clark College.

GSOC Membership List GSOC members wishing to obtain a membership list call or email Secretary Beverly Vogt, and she will mail you one.

Nominating Committee Results

The following slate of officers has been selected by

this year’s nominating committee: President ........................................Rik Smoody Vice President............................. Jane Walpole Secretary ............................ Paul Edison-Lahm Treasurer ................................ Richard Bartels Director, 3 years .........................Julia Lanning Director, 2 years .........................Dawn Juliano Director, 1 year............................Anne O’Neill

Nominations will be closed for this year’s slate of officers after the January meeting of the society. The slate of officers will be voted on and approved at the February monthly meeting. The Nominating Committee members were Rik Smoody, Paul Edison-Lahm, Dawn Juliano, and Larry Purchase. Our thanks to the selected members and members of the Nominating Committee!


WELCOME NEW MEMBERS FOR 2011! Whoa -- we’ve gotten a lot of new members this past year! You guys are awesome! Elizabeth Brown Gary Cheel Martin Eversaul Richard Heinzkill David Keyes Al LePage Sandra Lilligren Rafael Maymi Debbie Maymi Virginia Ohler Doug Ohler Nancy Overpeck Liz Paulus Terry Tolan Jane Walpole

BOARD MEETING NOTES December 11, 2010 The meeting was called to order by President Larry Purchase at the home of Rosemary Kenney. Board and GSOC members present included Larry Purchase, Rik Smoody, Beverly Vogt, Richard Bartels, Janet Rasmussen, Anne O’Neill, Rosemary Kenney, Doug Rasmussen, Julia Lanning, and Antonella Mancini. Richard Bartels gave the Treasurer’s report. The Treasurer’s report was approved. Rik Smoody discussed upcoming Friday night speakers. Joe Cohen will talk about Searles Lake, CA, at the January meeting; and Daina Hardisty’s topic at the February meeting will be groundwater. Larry Purchase discussed possible speakers for the March 13th Annual Banquet., with Jay Van Tassel as his first possibility. Rik Smoody said the theme of the President’s Field Trip will be Aggradation, focusing on the area in Washington between the Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier. Because the Fossil Fest will be held again this year the day after the February Friday evening GSOC meeting, it was decided by majority vote that Rik will see if the speaker can come on a different Friday and if so will have the February Friday night meeting moved to that date (he also needs to verify that the meeting room will be available on the different date). The Board also decided that this year we will not have a table at the Fossil Fest and

instead put some of our updated brochures on the NARG table, if possible. The report of the Nominating Committee was approved. The proposed slate of officers for next year are President, Rik Smoody; Vice President, Jane Walpole; Secretary, Paul Edison-Lahm; Treasurer, Richard Bartels; Director (1st year), Julia Lanning; Director (2nd year), Dawn Juliano; Director (3rd year), Anne O’Neill. The Christmas Party held at the Simon Benson House on Dec. 10 was discussed. Thanks to Anne O’Neill and all of the Board and other attending GSOC members, the party was a great success, with at least 45 people attending. The music was wonderful, people were having such a good time they had to be told the party was over, and the cleanup was thorough and efficient. It was decided that food arrangements next year need to be different, with fewer sweets and more cheeses, meat, salads, sandwiches, etc. We will use nametags next year, and Janet volunteered to make reusable nametags that can be hung around our necks. Antonella discussed sales items. It was decided that items should be produced and purchased locally if possible. Board members are asked to submit ideas to Antonella about designs and what kinds of items would be good to sell by the end of the year, and she will work with other members to have some things for sale at the banquet in March. Field trips were discussed. We want to evaluate the effectiveness of our field trip program, so next year, the field trip chair is asked to submit a report to the board after the field season and an end-of-year field trip summary for the January newsletter, telling number of people participating, money taken in and money spent, participants’ comments on the trips, how many were turned away because there were too many attending, etc. Potential trips for next two years include Fossil Fest (Feb.), Portland Building Stone (Clay and Paul, April), possible flower trip to Ramona Falls (Ken Cameron in May), President’s Field Trip to Washington State with Rik (sometime in summer), possible trip with Ken Cameron to augite crystals in the Tillamook Highlands (late summer), coastal tide pools and geomorphology


with Janet (this year or next year), Wallowa Lake with Janet (2012), Walla Walla Pleistocene geology with Dave (2012 possibly). NARG field trips will be listed in GSOC Newsletter when possible. Miscellaneous: An ammonite place card assembly party is scheduled for 10 a.m. Jan. 15. Bev will email location and directions. The rock identification class has yet to be worked out. Details will be announced ASAP. It will be followed by a field trip with Larry to quarry to see what we have learned. The next meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., February 19, at Larry’s house. If there are any changes to the time or place, Bev will notify by email. She will also send out directions to meeting place with agenda by email. Respectfully submitted, Beverly Vogt, Secretary

NEW BOOK CORNER Stores in Stone, by David B. Williams, 2009, Walker Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 260 p., hardcover. Review by Dr. Paul Hammond: This is a great book. Very well written and most interesting. I strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in geology and building stones. The author describes individual stones by chapter: • The brownstone (sandstone) of New York City

and New England, called the Portland Formation, about 220 to 195 Ma, late Jurassic-earliest Jurassic, geologic information, p. 8-9;

• The dark-colored, alkali-rich Quincy granite, about 450 Ma, late Ordovician, of the Boston area, geologic information, p. 38-40;

• The granite boulders in conglomerate derived from the Salinia terrane, 80 Ma to 3 billion years old, near Carmel, California, which Robinson Jeffers used in his construction of Tor House and Hawk Tower, geologic information, p. 62-65;

• Morton gneiss, of Morton, Minnesota, 3.5 billion years old, of Archean and Hadean age

(pre-Cambrian), geologic information, p. 70-71, 76-84;

• Coquina, a rock composed of sea shells, used in the early America construction of the (fort) Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida, derived from the Anastasia Formation, 100,000 years old, geologic information, p. 102-105;

• Salem limestone, Bloomington, Indiana, 330 Ma, during the Mississippian Period, geologic information, p. 115-120;

• Petrified wood, age unknown, from an area about 25 miles south of Lamar, Colorado, used in the construction of a Lamar gas station, geologic information, p. 141-143;

• Carrara marble, Michelangelo’s favorite rock for sculpturing, 200 Ma, earliest Jurassic, geologic information, p. 162-163, 167-169, 171-173;

• Slate, metamorphosed deep-water mud, eastern USA, 540 to 420 Ma, early Paleozoic, Cambrian to Silurian, geologic information, p. 183-186; and

• Italian travertine, a sedimentary rock rich in calcite and related mineral aragonite, deposited adjacent to hot springs, geologic information, p. 202-204.

In each chapter Williams describes the stone, how it was formed, where it was first noted as a building stone, how it is quarried—in considerable detail the Morton gneiss, Salem limestone, and Carrara marble—or obtained, the history of the quarrying operation, and where the stone is most prominently displayed, in an interesting, amusing way integrating the information, leading from one topic to the next. At the end the book has a good glossary of chiefly geologic terms, p. 227-231, and a lengthy list of notes by chapter, p. 233-250; and an index, p. 251-260. Comments from two reviewers: “This is the best sort of book, one that makes you see the familiar in a strange new light. Now that David Williams has warmed our stone façades with beautifully told stories, never again will I pass a brownstone without looking for telltale flaws or walk the Granite City without thinking of the natural wonders that produced it stony poetry.”—by Jennifer Ackerman.


“By assigning human stories and values to stone in the fascinating book, David B. Williams links the living and nonliving. In the process, our homes and buildings come alive.”—Robert M. Thorson.

Mapping for Disasters Synopsis of the October 8, 2010 GSOC Friday night lecture by Don Pettit, Senior Emergency Response Planner, Emergency Response Program, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality by Carol S. Hasenberg Don Pettit works in a group of seven Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) employees that respond to state of Oregon disasters, and he discussed his work and his group’s mapping projects with GSOC this past October. The group’s primary responsibility in disaster response is to determine what to do with the debris and hazardous material which is generated by the event. Their group partners with many other state agencies, such as Oregon Public Health, Oregon Fire Marshal (OSFM), Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), Oregon State Police (OSP) and Oregon Emergency Management (OEM) and each group is responsible for specific tasks in a state disaster. You might be surprised to learn that Don’s background is in geology and wonder why an agency like DEQ would hire a geologist to lead a team of emergency responders. Pettit thinks that he is perfect for the job, because his training and experience are wide ranging, as a geologist he is used to cobbling together what limited relevant data is available to make a decision on, and most importantly, in an environmental disaster having knowledge of the physical setting is very important to assessing the risk and determining the best course of action. This last point explains why Pettit’s group has embarked on a mapping quest for Oregon emergency managers. In conjunction with their Oregon disaster response partners, the DEQ has been assembling layers of mapped data in order to have the best information about a site as quickly as possible. This project is known as IRIS, and the maps are assembled on a GIS computer mapping

platform. So far the group has assembled 150 mapped sets of data, starting the general mapping data for Oregon that has been available for some time on the state’s Geospatial Data Clearinghouse. This mapping project is a monumental task, as well as being time-sensitive. Map data has been produced in a variety of dates, quality, and scales, and Pettit’s group has the task of determining the most accurate data sets and correcting and updating those they can. The group has outlined the qualities that the emergency map product must have: It should be • Dynamic, so maps can be modified to show

different content at different scales and obtain a readable product

• It must be able to support queries, in other words isolate or highlight data points which have certain attributes or spatial relations

• It must be portable so it can be used on a laptop computer at a disaster site

• It must be simple enough for anyone on the team to be able to use

• It must be able to stand alone, without internet access

• And it must be difficult for a user to “mess with” or “screw up”

Key datasets to the product include maps of water supplies, locations of hazardous materials, and DEQ permitted sites for hazardous materials. The DEQ has been hiring Oregon university geography students to produce some of the needed mapping. Datasets produced this way include a river mile dataset for Oregon rivers and converting navigational charts to GIS format. Pettit showed the GSOC audience some examples of the maps he has in the datasets. It was a real eye opener to see a map of the incidents of leaking home oil tanks in the Portland area. There are also maps for the pipelines carrying hazardous liquids in the area. Moving to the coast, Pettit showed navigational information on Tillamook Bay and a dataset in progress showing potential oil boom sites for oil spill incidents. One of the most interesting and important datasets was a map of the Portland well fields showing well locations and contours of travel times for surface spills to the wells. Another important set of layers shows the jurisdictional


boundaries of various state, federal, and private agencies with contact information so disaster responders can quickly assemble a team of affected parties during an event. Pettit demonstrated the power of having this data by pointing out how easy it is to see on a spatial format where problems are most likely to occur and gaps in the coverage exist. For example, he showed how one responder jurisdictional boundary, which reached from the Oregon coast to the Bend area, was too big to expect reasonable response time. A

map of the hazardous material spills in the last ten years showed a strong correlation to the locations of major highways throughout the state. Looking at the incident statistics it is no surprise that over 60% are petroleum spills on the highways. Although Pettit’s group is small, he thinks they have done a good job in getting needed information assembled and will continue to add to their data sets. Being well informed will help our state efficiently cope with upcoming events.


Volume 76, 2010 compiled by Carol Hasenberg

January/February .......... no.1....... pages 1-10 March/April .................. 2.................... 11-18 May/June ...................... 3.................... 19-26

July/August................... 4 .................... 27-34 September/October ....... 5 .................... 35-39 November/December.... 6 .................... 40-47

ARTICLES and REPORTS·············································································································································· Page Aggradation from Mt. Hood Volcanic Eruptions in the Sandy River: Synopsis of the April 9, 2010, lecture by Dr. Thomas

Pierson, Supervisory Hydrologist, USGS CVO Laboratory, Vancouver, Washington , by Carol Hasenberg ········ 22 Chile's Recent Earthquake has Lessons that We Can Learn: Synopsis of the June 11, 2010, lecture by Yumei Wang, P.E.,

Geohazards Team Leader, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), ASCE TCLEE Investigation Team, Oregon Earthquake Commission (OSSPAC), and Allison Pyrch, G.E., P.E., Senior Engineer, Shannon and Wilson, Inc., Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants, by Carol Hasenberg ···························· 31

Costa Rica’s Tectonic Setting: Synopsis of the January 8, 2010, lecture by Dr. Martin Streck, Department of Geology, Portland State University, by Carol Hasenberg ········································································································· 4

Geological Mapping And Structure In Southeastern Washington: Synopsis of the February 12, 2010, lecture by Dr. Paul Hammond, Department of Geology, Portland State University, by Carol Hasenberg············································· 14

The Wallula Gap 17Ma to Now: Synopsis of the March 21, 2010, annual banquet address by Dr. Robert J. Carson, professor of Geology and Environmental Studies, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, by Carol Hasenberg ································································································································································ 16

Types of Volcanic Eruptions, by Carol Hasenberg················································································································· 6 What It Is! Synopsis of the September 29, 2010, lecture by Dr. Ken Severin, Director of the Advanced Instrumentation

Laboratory (AIL) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), by Carol Hasenberg ··········································· 44

FIELD TRIPS 2010 President's Field Trip Recap, by Carol Hasenberg, Larry Purchase, And Beverly Vogt············································· 37 SOCIETY BUSINESS Board Meeting Notes: January 9, 2010, by Beverly Vogt ······································································································ 3 Board Meeting Notes: March 20, 2010, by Beverly Vogt ···································································································· 12 Board Meeting Notes: October 9, 2010, by Beverly Vogt···································································································· 43 GSOC in the 21ST Century, by Tara Schoffstall ············································································································ 14, 21 GSOC Meetings Start at 7:30 Now!, ···································································································································· 20 GSOC Picnic Recap, by Richard Bartels ······························································································································ 38 New Look to the GSOC Website ·········································································································································· 22 Question to the GSOC Membership ??································································································································· 12


Welcome New Members for 2010!······································································································································· 14 MEMORIALS In Memoriam: Irv Ewen, 1964 GSOC president, dies ········································································································· 14 In Memoriam: Longtime member and Past President Esther Kennedy dies, by Rosemary Kenney ···································· 22 Geological Society of the Oregon Country Activities: ANNUAL EVENTS: President’s Field Trip—Summer or Fall; Banquet—March; Annual Business Meeting—







Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





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Volume 77, Number 2

March/April 2011

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country

P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907

www.gsoc.org

2010 - 2011 Administration:

President:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]

Vice-President:

Jane Walpole – 503/590-7501

[email protected]

Secretary

Paul Edison-Lahm – 971/404-6064

[email protected]

Treasurer

Richard Bartels − 503/292-6939

[email protected]

Directors:

Anne O‘Neill (1 year) - 503/477-7827

[email protected]

Dawn Juliano (2 years) - 503/367-7708

[email protected]

Julia Lanning (3 years) – 503/201-8022

[email protected]

Past Presidents:

Larry Purchase – 360/254-5635

[email protected]

Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249

[email protected]

Newsletter Editor and Calendar:


[email protected]

Website:

Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774

[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem − 503/246-2275

[email protected]

Assistant Business Manager:

Anne O‘Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]

Field Trip Committee Chair

Dave Olcott– 503/695-5219

[email protected]


CALENDAR

March/April Activities

The Seventy-sixth GSOC Annual Banquet will be held

on Sunday, March 13, 2011, at the Monarch Hotel in

Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker Jay Van Tassel of Eastern

Oregon University will present "Bulldozer Paleontology:

New Ice Age Fossils from the Grande Ronde Valley, NE

Oregon." The registration flyer for the event can be

found in the February edition of the The Geological

Calendar or on the website (www.gsoc.org). Deadline

for receipt of registration forms is Monday, March 7,

2011.

There will be no Friday night meeting in March due to

the Annual Banquet.

Friday evening talk, April 8, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in Room

S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between

Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University.

Speaker Courtney Cloyd, retired, former Senior

Geologist for Geologic Hazards and Geologic

Resources, US Forest Service, will present ―The

Paleontological Resources Preservation ‗Act‘ and

Amateur Fossil Collecting‖.

The talk will include an overview of how the

Paleontological Resources Preservation subtitle (in the

2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act) will guide

management of fossils on Federal lands, and what it

means for amateur paleontologists and collectors. Cloyd

is a native Oregonian and graduate of the University of

Oregon. He‘s a registered professional geologist in

Oregon and Washington, and recently retired after thirty-

five years as a geologist with the US Forest Service.

Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th

Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal

dinner and conversation.

http://www.gsoc.org/

mailto:[email protected]
















Free parking is available at Portland State University

Friday nights after 5 p.m. and Wednesday nights after 7

p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly

across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking

Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and

Harrison and Hall Sts.

Future Activities

Friday evening talk, May 13, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in

Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave.

(between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State

University. Speaker Charlie Hammond, Senior Associate

at Cornforth Consultants, Inc., with 23 years of

engineering geology experience, will present ―Giant

Paleo-Landslides of the Tyee Formation near Eddyville,

Oregon Coast Range: Complex Geologic History from

LIDAR and Radiocarbon‖.

Giant paleo-landslides have been uncovered at the US

Highway 20 construction project between Corvallis and

Newport, Oregon, in the turbidite beds of the Tyee

Formation. Geotechnical models for landslide

evaluations have been developed based on the LIDAR,

subsurface explorations, construction outcrops, and

radiocarbon testing. The process of predicting the

landslide boundaries (head scarps, toes, lateral and basal

shear zones) for the stability analysis models has

revealed details of their geologic history. The oldest

slides are not readily visible; that is, most of their

geomorphology has been removed or masked by

surficial processes. They appear to have been giant

translational-block slides that are controlled by bedding,

high-angle fault zones and paleo-topography. Erosion

has divided some of the giants into multiple landslides,

and the landforms also reflect multiple episodes of

sliding.

Field Trip to Columbia Basin and Eastern Washington

May 20-22, 2011- GSOC member and Field Trip Chair

Dave Olcott is arranging a three day trip based in

Kennewick, Washington to study Columbia River

Basalts, Ice Age Flood features, and their impact on this

area. Day 1 of the trip will include a car caravan

featuring stops along the Columbia River and in the

Walla Walla Valley. Kevin Lindsey, Senior

Hydrogeologist at GSI Water Solutions, Inc., with the

assistance from members of the Walla Walla Watershed

Alliance, will address surface and groundwater issues in

the above valley. Note that Lindsey will also give a

lecture in the USGS Winter Seminar Series in Portland

on March 8 – see page 13. Days 2 and 3 will be van-

based tours guided by Terry Tolan and Steve Reidel,

both Senior Hydrogeologists at GSI Water Solutions,

Inc., and experts on Columbia River Basalt.

Anticipated fee for the trip will be $65 and will include

the trip packet, van transportation on days 2 and 3 only,

and speaker honoraria. All other expenses and

arrangements will be the responsibility of the

participants. There will be both camping and hotel

options in the area for the participants, and early

reservations for campsites is advised. Since the van spots

will be limited, interested parties are also advised to get

on the participant list soon. A registration form for the

trip will be available in the April edition of The GSOC

Calendar and on the website. If you have questions or

wish to reserve a participant spot at this time email Dave

at [email protected] or call (503) 695 - 5219.

NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a

member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC

at any time, for $25.

Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to

the calendar, including information on the upcoming

meetings and the GSOC 76th Annual Banquet in March.

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES FROM OTHER

ORGANIZATIONS

Portland State University Geology Department

Geology Winter Colloquium 2011, Cramer Hall S17,

3:30-4:30 p.m.. All are invited to attend! For

information contact: Scott Burns, 503/725-3389,

[email protected], or refer to the department website:

http://geology.pdx.edu/

This Winter Term PSU is only offering seminars for the

School for the Environment and for Geospatial

Technology. Please refer to the geology department

website for links to these seminars.

As of this publication, the lecture schedules have not

been announced for the Spring seminars. Do check the

department website near the beginning of April for the

upcoming lectures. Do check the times and locations

also as they may have changed.

Oregon State University Department of Geosciences

2011 Winter Seminar Series, Thursdays, 4:00 pm,

Gilfillan Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Refer to

department website for more information:

http://www.geo.oregonstate.edu/node/524

Seminar topic for Winter 2011 is ―Blast from the Past!‖




http://geology.pdx.edu/



March 3 – Sharon Kelly, HDR Engineering,

―Adventures in Transportation Planning in Portland‖






University of Oregon Department of Geological

Sciences, Winter 2011 Weekly Seminar Series,

Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall.

Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at

3:30 p.m.. Refer to department website for more

information:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/news/about

March 2 - Chris Bell (University of Texas),

―Assumption of a strict modern analog clouds our

understanding of the paleoecology of the

Pleistocene‖

March 9 - John Platt (University of Southern

California), ―Alboran domain collapse and the

Ronda peridotite‖






USGS Winter 2011 Seminar Series Schedule -

Oregon Water Science Center

Brown Bag Seminars

(http://or.water.usgs.gov/brownbag/) are held on

Tuesdays from noon to 1 pm. unless noted otherwise.

The seminars are informal and are open to the public.

Bring your lunch. The USGS Oregon Water Science

Center office is located in Portland at 2130 SW 5th Ave.

Directions to the USGS office are posted at

http://or.water.usgs.gov/location.html.

Friday, March 4, Noon to 1 pm, ―The Pursuit of

Uncertainty in Hydrologic Climate Change Impact

Assessment: Improved Characterization,

Quantification and Communication‖, Hamid

Moradkhani, Assistant Professor, Department of

Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State

University

March 8, ―Geologic, Hydrogeochemical, and Water-

Level Evidence for Hydrologic

Compartmentalization in the Columbia River Basalt

Aquifer System in the Columbia Basin GWMA‖,

Kevin Lindsey, Senior Hydrogeologist, GSI Water

Solutions, Inc., Kennewick, Washington

March 15, ―Preferential Flow and Contaminant

Transport to Public Water Supply Wells: Lessons

from NAWQA TANC‖, Rick Johnson, Professor,

Oregon Health & Science University, Beaverton, OR

OMSI Science Pub Portland

There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at

the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission

Theater in Northwest. Learn about cutting-edge topics in

science and technology from leading researchers and

scientists, all while enjoying food and drinks.

Experience an informal atmosphere where you can

interact with experts and where there are no silly

questions. No scientific background is required; just

bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for

food, drinks, and knowledge!

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 7:00pm, ―Expedition

Titanic 2010: Return to the Deep‖, Portland -

Bagdad Theater, P.H. Nargeolet, director of

Underwater Research for RMS Titanic, Inc., is

widely acknowledged as the leading authority on the

Titanic wreck site.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 7:00pm, ―Friends or

Foes? Facing the Facts about American Crows‖,

Portland - Mission Theater, Dr. David P. Craig,

associate professor and chair of the Department of

Biology at Willamette University.

Monday, April 4, 2011 - 7:00pm, ―Why Everyone

(Else) Is a Hypocrite‖, Portland - Bagdad Theater,

Robert Kurzban, PhD, author of the book Why

Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite, and associate

professor in the Psychology Department at the

University of Pennsylvania. He founded PLEEP, the

Penn Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary

Psychology, in 2003.

Check the OMSI Science Pub website for updates to the

lectures. http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland

GSOC Dues are Past Due

If you haven‘t sent in your GSOC dues please do so

right away! Dues were due on January 1, 2011. If you

joined the society after September 1, you don‘t have to

renew your membership dues until next year. See page

18 for membership dues schedule.


http://or.water.usgs.gov/brownbag/

http://or.water.usgs.gov/location.html

http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland


GSOC members wishing to obtain a membership list call

or email Secretary Beverly Vogt, and she will mail you

one.

New Slate of Officers

The following slate of officers has been approved

by the society at its annual February meeting:

President ........................................Rik Smoody

Vice President ............................. Jane Walpole

Secretary ............................ Paul Edison-Lahm

Treasurer ................................ Richard Bartels

Director, 3 years ......................... Julia Lanning

Director, 2 years ......................... Dawn Juliano

Director, 1 year............................ Anne O’Neill

Welcome new officers!

BOARD MEETING NOTES February 19, 2011

The meeting was called to order by President Larry

Purchase at the home of Wenonah and Larry Purchase.

Board and GSOC members present included Larry

Purchase, Rik Smoody, Beverly Vogt, Richard ‗Bart‘

Bartels, Dave Olcott, Janet Rasmussen, Carol

Hasenberg, Tara Schoffstall, Rosemary Kenney, Doug

Rasmussen, Dawn Juliano, Jane Walpole, Julia Lanning,

Antonella Mancini, and Wenonah Purchase. The minutes

of the December 11, 2010, meeting were approved.

Treasurer's report was given by Bart and was

approved.

Report on future Friday night lectures was given by

Jane Walpole. Charlie Hammond will speak in May, and

Jane is hoping to get Courtney Cloyd from the Forest

Service to speak in April on fossil collecting regulations

on Federal lands. Janet reported on the Fossil Fest at

Newport. It was very successful, with approx. 12 GSOC

members attending.

Plans for the March Annual Banquet were discussed.

Thirty people have already sent in their money. Janet

will prepare a draft of the program and circulate it

among Board members for corrections and suggestions.

Bart will send Janet all the new names he receives. Extra

ammonites can be used for table decorations or

something else if suggested. Rosemary will bring the

collection of old place cards as a display, and Bev and

Bart will make arrangements to pick them up from the

GSOC storeroom at PSU for Rosemary. Jan Kem will

handle the sales table of books, field trip guides, maps,

etc, and donations are requested (no rocks please). Larry

will prepare a display of posters for the Friday night

talks.

Tara and Antonella will research a new local place to

order mugs and T-shirts, and Janet and Carol will act

as consultants on design and plans for the new order.

They are requested to report their findings and

suggestions at the next meeting.

Dave presented his plans, estimated costs, lodging

possibilities, and insurance issues for his May 20-22

field trip to eastern Washington to look at classic

Columbia River Basalt and Missoula Flood localities,

including rental of two vans for days 2 and 3.

Information for the registration form has to be in to

Carol by March 20 for the newsletter, with itinerary

details to her ASAP. Dave estimated costs at $60/person,

but after going over the figures suggested cost be raised

to $65/person. Registration form should include cell

phone numbers for all field trips, and leaders should

prepare a list of participants‘ cell phone numbers for all

participants. Janet is working on her June 17-19 field trip

to the coast, and she is requested to have her details for

the registration form to Carol by April 20, with other

information to Carol ASAP. Rik will have his

President‘s Trip in August and is asked to get his

information to Carol by June 20. Paul Edison-Lahm‘s

Portland building stone trip could be held in the fall—or

in July if he prefers. Clay has offered to work with Paul

if needed. Information about that trip has to be given to

Carol so she can get it into the newsletter at the

appropriate time.

Bart will have his class on rock and mineral

identification in May, probably on a Saturday, at the

Vogt/Bartels‘ house and will announce information

when available. Bart is preparing written material and

will have lots of specimens to study. The class will

probably take most of the day, so we can figure out

lunch arrangements at the house. Because of space

limitations, this first class will be open to Board

members only but may be offered again to other GSOC

members.

Next meeting will be at 10 a.m., April 9th, at Rosemary

Kenney‘s house.

Beverly F. Vogt, GSOC Secretary


Editor’s Note: We’d love to thank Beverly Vogt for all

her hard work as secretary and quite a few other

important contributions to the society. Three cheers Bev!

NEW BOOK CORNER by Dr. Paul Hammond

Brian Switer, writing in the Wall Street Journal, issue

Saturday-Sunday, January 22-23, 2011, section D, page

9, in an article entitled ―Rock Of Ages,‖ reviews a most

intriguing book, The Planet in a Pebble, Oxford, 256

pages, $27.95, by Jan Zalasiewicz, a Welsh geologist.

Author Zalasiewicz describes an ordinary polished

stone, supposedly picked from the Welsh coast, and

describes it in considerable detail—its origin, its mineral

content and composition, and history. The reviewer,

Brian Switer, concludes with the paragraph, ―Although

the records contained within the pebble are often

incomplete and are not always preserved in high fidelity,

they still allow us to feel the rhythms of planetary

change. In some ways the pebble is like one of the new

computer chips, tightly packed with more information

than one could ever surmise from gazing on its smooth

surface.‖

Switer, a research associate at the New Jersey State

Museum is also credited with a fine book, Written in

Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in

Nature.

Searles Lake Story

Synopsis of the January 14, 2011 GSOC Friday night

lecture by Joseph Cohen, GSOC member and

intellectual-property lawyer at Stoel Rives LLP, in

Portland, Oregon

by Carol Hasenberg

To kick off the new year, GSOC traveled south to the

California Basin and Range country listening to the talk

by GSOC member Joseph Cohen. The topic of the

lecture is an important producer of industrial minerals

and geological curiosities, Searles Lake. Located

southwest of Death Valley and south of Mt. Whitney and

Owens Valley, Searles Lake is part of a series of basins

which stair-step their way down from the Sierra Nevada

mountains to the low point in Death Valley. From

highest to lowest the basins are Owens, Indian Wells,

Searles, Panamint, and Death Valley. During the recent

series of Ice Ages beginning about 100,000 years ago,

snowmelt produced a series of lakes in these basins that

occasionally spilt over into the next lower basin. Searles

Basin was the low point for a large lake that included

Indian Wells Basin and itself, and so it collected a large

amount of salts and minerals. Alternating layers of salt

and mud built up on the bottom of the lake during

periods of quiet and overflow. Today the basin is

surface dry but the briny layers under the surface are

mined for a plethora of minerals.

Searles Lake basin is a treasure trove of evaporite

minerals, including trona, borax, halite, hanksite,

sulfohalite, potash, searlesite, calcite, and many more.

Salt-loving extremophilic bacteria live in the brine and

add a beautiful pink color to the halite crystals that form

in the brine. Any water that accumulates in the basin is

very toxic and has a high pH. The concentration of salt

is so intense that it will kill birds that unwittingly land in

it. Trona pinnacles which are tens of feet high created

by precipitation in the lakes history stick up in twisted

shapes that give the landscape an alien quality.

European settlers in the region recognized the economic

potential of the area. In the 1870‘s the Searles Brothers

discovered that mining borax here was more profitable

than mining gold in California. They developed a 20-

mule train system which would carry the borax to the

port of San Pedro. Since this time the Searles Lake area

has been owned and worked by various mining

operations. Today the parent company which owns the

mine is an Indian Corporation. Their borax brand is

called Three Elephant but the origin of the name is

American, not Indian. The name is a play on the idea of

a 20-mule train - three elephants must be so much more

robust than the mules. The mining done today is liquid

extraction – brine rich in minerals is pumped up from the

lower layers and used in the manufacture of products

such as detergents, glass and Pyrex.

Like many other extraction industries, the economic

conditions produced by the borax mining has followed a

boom and bust cycle. In its heyday in the 1950‘s, the

nearby town of Trona was populated by some 6000

people with high employment. Royalties from the mines

made this one of the richest school districts in California.

The high school had 1500 students. Today the

population of the town is 1500 with 100 high school

students.

Geology buffs have a unique opportunity to get up close

and personal with the Searles Lake treasures. Every year

in early October, the lake is opened to rock hounds with

field trips conducted through the Searles Lake Gem &

Mineral Society. This so-named Gem-O-Rama attracts

many people every year and there are several different


flavors of field trips for the mineral buffs. Joseph Cohen

has attended the Gem-O-Rama and showed GSOC

photos from the events and the minerals he collected.

Trips offered include the Mud, Blow Hole, and Pink

Halite (aka Brine Pit ) trips. As their names imply,

participants are likely to get caked by mud and salt. For

the mud trip, backhoes get mud from the lake and spread

it over the ground the day before the trip. Big crystals of

hanksite are collected from the mud by the participants.

Some groups working the mud set up huge troughs of

brine to wash off the mud. The brine is a lot less caustic

than plain water to the crystals.

In the Blow Hole trip, navy demolition experts from the

nearby China Lake Naval Air Station are hired to plant

charges in the ground at 600 ft depths. These produce

geysers of brine which shoot crystals all over the ground

surrounding the blow holes. This trip is popular because

it is a lot less muddy for the participants. The Pink

Halite trip travels to areas where there are pits of brine in

which large clusters of pink halite crystals grow. One

has to get in the brine under the lip of the edge of the pit

to collect the crystals. Oh yes, and the brine really stinks

because the bacteria which color the crystals produce a

sulfurous odor.

These minerals collected at the Gem-O-Rama are

corroded by the humidity in the air so that collectors

need to store them carefully. Cohen sprays salad oil on

most of his, except for the halite which is sensitive to

that. These he keeps in plastic tubs with a desiccant.

Some folks also use mineral oil to preserve their crystals.

EDENTATES IN THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY Synopsis of the February 12, 2011, Fossil Fest lecture,

―Digging up the Kings Valley Groundsloth,‖ by Dr.

William Orr, Professor Emeritus and Curator of the

Condon Collections, Museum of Natural and Cultural

History, University of Oregon

by Carol Hasenberg

It‘s always a treat to attend a lecture by William Orr

because he makes the audience laugh as well as giving

them excellent and interesting information about his

topic. Dr. Orr began his 2011 Fossil Fest lecture by

asking the audience how they found out about the lecture

and Fossil Fest. Many folks raised their hands when he

asked them whether they found out about it on the

internet, or by word of mouth, but then he said that he

found out by ―reading it on the bathroom wall.‖ He then

introduced his co-researcher Mike Full as the real Ice

Age Mammal specialist and said that ―he‘s the one who

should be giving this talk.‖

He then began to discuss his recent involvement in the

excavation of Ice Age ground sloth skeletons in Kings

Valley, Oregon (Benton County). The setting for the

fossilization of these remains is the Willamette Valley,

which is tectonic, not fluvial, in origin. The Willamette

Valley is a broad basin situated between the Coast

Range and Cascade Range of mountains and is gradually

sinking. Someday it will fill with water like the Puget

Sound. It has received a lot of sediment, especially since

the Ice Age Floods from Lake Missoula in Montana

filled the valley on numerous occasions with backwash

from those massive floods. Small offshoot valleys like

Kings Valley served as refuges for large mammals

during this time.

Ground sloths were common animals in the Willamette

valley during the Ice Age and did not die out until

11,000 years ago. They originated in South America

during the Oligocene and spread north 3 million years

ago when a land bridge developed between the two

previously separated continents (i.e., North and South

America). This land bridged caused a great many

mammalian species to intermix between the two

continents. Horses, elephants, dogs, cats, and deer

spread south from North America, while edentates such

as anteaters, sloths and armadillos spread north from

South America.

Orr cited some examples of the North American

mammals which included zebra-like or ass-like horses,

the huge Ice Age bison, mammoths and mastodons,

Smilodon saber-toothed cats, Canis dirus (Dire wolf),

and short-faced bears. Many of these were huge and

dangerous predators unmatched by any we have today.

The north-bound mammals from South America

included the Glyptodon, a huge armadillo that resembled

the dinosaur Ankylosaurus in appearance but not

ancestry, the Giant Anteater, and large ground sloths.

These edentates were all dangerous animals in terms of

human size and strength, but were outmatched by the

North American predators. Despite this disadvantage,

they were able to spread and thrive until the end of the

Ice Age, and may have been pushed into extinction by

the spread of another super predator on the scene, i.e.

human beings.

Getting back to the Kings Valley excavation, Orr

described the excavation site as being an old stock pond

where the land-owner had discovered some bones and


had called in the paleontological experts to sort them

out. The fossils were found in a matrix of black anoxic

mud and the site has to be continuously pumped to keep

out the water. These conditions were pretty good at

keeping vandals off the site, Orr said. The excavation

team worked the site one spot at a time, removing

buckets of sediment and screening them in a water tank.

Using this method nothing larger than ¼‖ in size was

missed. After describing the gooey site conditions Orr

joked that his part of the excavation was to ―set

excavation policy.‖ His wife Elizabeth and youngest

daughter also kept the records for the excavation.

Some examples of some of the items found in the

excavation included teeth, skull parts, larger bones,

finger digits, claws, and dermal ossicles of at least 3

Harlan‘s ground sloths. The teeth of a ground sloth are

hipsodont like those of a horse, cow or deer, and are

characteristic of animals which feed on rough forage.

They are high-crowned and gradually wear down over

the life of the animal. Orr estimates that ground sloths

had a life expectancy of about 10 or 12 years based on

the teeth. Ground sloth teeth are also characteristically

dumbbell-shaped in cross section.

The finger bones found faithfully maintained the

mammalian digit formula of 2-3-3-3-3 digits per finger.

The claws on the front feet were huge and caused the

animal to turn in their front feet as they walked on all

fours. Rear foot bones included knobby heel bones

which aided the animal in rearing up on its hind legs.

The dermal ossicles are a very fascinating characteristic

of ground sloths. Their skin was about 2 inches thick

(they‘ve found preserved pieces of it) and had these little

bones imbedded in it shaped like rough diamonds.

These little bones acted like ―the metal studs in a

motorcycle hoodlum‘s jacket‖ to protect the animal.

Getting back to a more general discussion of ground

sloths, Orr referred to another western species, the

Shasta ground sloth, which was lighter in build than the

Harlan‘s. Back east the largest ground sloth,

Megatherium, was common, and President Thomas

Jefferson was known to have dug up some of their

remains on his property. In fact, he warned Lewis and

Clark to look out for ground sloth and elephants on their

western explorations, as he did not understand that these

animals were extinct. These animals all went extinct

about 11-12 thousand years ago. The large herbivores

preceded the large carnivores into extinction.

In fact, Orr describes the edentates in general as a ―big

collection of losers‖ – primitive herbivores who have a

relatively small niche in modern day fauna. Their

descendants include the armadillo, anteaters, tree sloths,

and a small Asian ground sloth relative called the

pangolin. This animal is distinct in being the only scaled

mammal but unfortunately it has been found to be edible

by humans. The edentates have been eclipsed by more

efficient mammals in the competitive arena of nature.

REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL READING

Fossil Fest 2011 Event Details, OSU Calendar includes a

description of the talk:

http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/event/49143/

University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural

History Condon Collections site:

http://pages.uoregon.edu/mnh/Pages/condon_collections.

html

Wikipedia sites:

The Xenarthra page on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edentates includes

anteaters, sloths, and armadillos.

The ground sloth page on Wikipedia includes info on

Harlan‘s ground sloth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_sloth.

The Harlan‘s Ground Sloth page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramylodon_harlani.

Return to the Ice Age: The La Brea Exploration Guide:

http://www.tarpits.org/education/guide/index.html

IN MEMORIAM PSU Professor Gilbert Thomas Benson

The following is an excerpt of an obituary published in

The Oregonian on February 6, 2011:

―Tom Benson was born in Los Angeles and moved to

Portland as a child. He was the … grandson of Portland

businessman and philanthropist Simon Benson. ... Tom

fondly remembered camping as a Boy Scout in Tryon

Creek State Park, as well as one of his first jobs working

on log rafts for a local tugboat company. After attending

Stanford University, Tom spent several years as a

geologist for Texaco. He then earned a doctorate from

Yale University and began teaching in 1962 at the

University of Oregon. In 1968 he moved to Lake

Oswego and spent the remainder of his career as a

professor of geology at Portland State

http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/event/49143/

http://pages.uoregon.edu/mnh/Pages/condon_collections.html

http://pages.uoregon.edu/mnh/Pages/condon_collections.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edentates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_sloth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramylodon_harlani

http://www.tarpits.org/education/guide/index.html


University…Remembrances may be made to the Oregon

Historical Society or Portland State University.‖

For the full text of the obituary see the Oregonian

website:http://obits.oregonlive.com/obituaries/oregon/ob

ituary.aspx?n=gilbert-thomas-benson&pid=148426885

Geological Society of the Oregon Country Activities:

ANNUAL EVENTS: President‘s Field Trip—Summer or Fall; Banquet—March; Annual Business Meeting—

February.

FIELD TRIPS: About 4 per year. Fees: see field trip announcements on the calendar next page.

GSOC LIBRARY: Rm. 69, Cramer Hall, Portland State University. Open 7:00 p.m. prior to meetings.

PROGRAMS: Second Friday evening most months, 7:30 p.m., Rm. S17, Cramer Hall, PSU, SW Broadway at

SW Mill St., Portland, Oregon.

MEMBERSHIP: Per year from January 1: Individual--$25, Family--$35, Junior (under 18)/Student--$15.

Membership applications are available on the website www.gsoc.org.

PUBLICATIONS: THE GEOLOGICAL NEWSLETTER (ISSN 0270 5451), published monthly and

mailed to each member. Subscriptions available to libraries and organizations only at $20.00 per year.

Single Copies are available at $2.00 each. Order from:

Geological Society of the Oregon Country, P.O. Box 907, Portland, Oregon 97207


APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP

THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF THE OREGON COUNTRY

Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________



Make Check Payable to: The Geological Society of the Oregon Country

PO Box 907

Portland, OR 97207-0907

http://obits.oregonlive.com/obituaries/oregon/obituary.aspx?n=gilbert-thomas-benson&pid=148426885

http://obits.oregonlive.com/obituaries/oregon/obituary.aspx?n=gilbert-thomas-benson&pid=148426885




Volume 77, Number 3

May/June 2011



www.gsoc.org


President:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:

Anne O‘Neill (1 year) - 503/477-7827

[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem − 503/246-2275

[email protected]


Anne O‘Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

May/June Activities




University. Speaker Charlie Hammond, Senior Associate

at Cornforth Consultants, Inc., with 23 years of

engineering geology experience, will present ―The Eldon

Mills Dam Raise‖.

Hammond will discuss the engineering geology

associated with the raised Eldon Mills Dam on the North

Fork of the Trask River between Tillamook and Gaston,

Oregon. He will include a discussion on the seismic

stability of the dam.

Friday evening talk, June 10, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Dr. Scott Burns, Professor,

Department of Geology, Portland State University, will

present ―Geology of the National Parks‖.





Friday nights after 5 p.m. and Wednesday nights after 7

p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly

across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking

Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and

Harrison and Hall Streets.

Field Trip to Columbia Basin and Eastern Washington

May 20-22, 2011- GSOC member and Field Trip Chair

Dave Olcott is arranging a three day trip based in

Kennewick, Washington to study Columbia River

Basalts, Ice Age Flood features, and their impact on this

















area. Day 1 of the trip will include a car caravan

featuring stops along the Columbia River and in the

Walla Walla Valley. Kevin Lindsey, Senior

Hydrogeologist at GSI Water Solutions, Inc., with the

assistance from members of the Walla Walla Watershed

Alliance, will address surface and groundwater issues in

the above valley. Days 2 and 3 will be van-based tours

guided by Terry Tolan and Steve Reidel, both Senior

Hydrogeologists at GSI Water Solutions, Inc., and

experts on Columbia River Basalt.

The fee for the trip is $70 and will include the trip

packet, van transportation on days 2 and 3 only, and

speaker honoraria. All other expenses and arrangements

will be the responsibility of the participants. There is

both camping and hotel options in the area for the

participants. Since the van spots will be limited,

interested parties are also advised to get on the

participant list as soon as possible. A registration form

for the trip was included in the April edition of The

GSOC Calendar and is also available on the GSOC

website. The deadline for the registration form is May

13, 2011. If you have questions or wish to reserve a

participant spot at this time email Dave at

[email protected] or call (503) 695 - 5219.

Participating members should also check with Dave

about the possibility of hiring caterers for their bag

lunches.




Field Trip to the Oregon Coast near Newport, Oregon,

June 17-19, 2011 - GSOC member and Past President

Janet Rasmussen is leading a three-day trip to study

Oregon coastal geology and tidepools near Newport,

Oregon. Trip fee of $25 includes field trip guide,

meeting hall rental, insurance and speaker honoraria. All

other costs and arrangements are the responsibility of the

participants, including transportation, lodging, and

meals. See the flyer attached to this newsletter for the

registration form and itinerary.

Future Activities

There is no Friday evening lecture planned for July

2011. Instead, GSOC is tentatively planning the GSOC

Annual Picnic for July 17, 2011. Details will be

announced in the June calendar and the July/August

issue of The Geological Newsletter.

Reserve the dates for upcoming GSOC summer field

trips! We have two field trips in the planning stages for

August 2011. On Saturday, August 6, 2011, GSOC

members Clay Kelleher and Paul Edison-Lahm are

planning a walking tour of the building stone found in

downtown Portland. The following weekend, August

12-15, GSOC President Rik Smoody is planning the

GSOC President‘s Field Trip, with the theme of

―Examples of Aggradation Processes as a Result of

Eruptions of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier‖. This will

be a car-caravan and camping trip which will include

some stops in Mt. Rainier National Park. Stay tuned to

the GSOC website and the monthly GSOC calendar for

news regarding these trips.


the calendar.


ORGANIZATIONS

USGS Oregon Water Science Center, Spring 2011

Seminar Series presents ―Climate Impacts on

Freshwaters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives‖

The Spring 2011 Seminar Series is a collaboration

between USGS, Portland State University (PSU), and

Oregon State University (OSU), building on the long-

standing Spring Hydrology Seminar Series at OSU.

USGS and PSU are excited to bring this series of

internationally known speakers to Portland! See the

USGS-OWSC website for more information:


The Spring Climate Seminars will be held on Thursdays,

generally from noon to 1 pm on the PSU campus --

Cramer Hall, room 271, although one or two may be

held at the USGS Oregon Water Science Center office. A few extra seminars are being scheduled on Tuesdays

at the USGS office, and will be posted here as part of the

Oregon Water Science Center (ORWSC) seminar series.

Directions to the USGS office are available at

http://or.water.usgs.gov/location.html.

Thursday, May 5, Noon to 1 pm, 271 Cramer Hall,

PSU Climate Series, ―Glacier Change and the Future

of Alpine Water Resources,‖ Andrew Fountain,

Professor of Geography and Geology, Portland State

University, Portland, OR


PSU Climate Series, ―Water Economics and Climate

Change: The California Experience,‖ David

Sunding, Professor, Department of Agricultural &




http://or.water.usgs.gov/location.html


Resource Economics, University of California--

Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Tuesday, May 17, Noon to 1 pm, USGS ORWSC

Series ―The Hebgen Lake Earthquake of August 17,

1959:, An Eyewitness Account,‖ Jack Epstein,

Geologist Emeritus, U.S. Geological Survey,

Reston, VA


PSU Climate Series, ―Water Management,

Knowledge and Adaptation:, Tensions, Legacies and

the Next Best Thing,‖ Maria Carmen Lemos,

Associate Professor, School of Natural Resources

and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann

Arbor, MI


PSU Climate Series, ―A Superensemble of Regional

Climate Model Futures,‖ Philip Mote, Director,

Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and

Oregon Climate Services, College of Ocean and

Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University,

Corvallis, OR

Thursday, June 2, Noon to 1 pm, 271 Cramer Hall,

PSU Climate Series, Dooge Memorial Lecture:,

"How to Solve It", A Tribute to Jim Dooge, a

Pioneer in Water Systems Analysis, Philip O'Kane,

Professor, College of Science, Engineering and Food

Science, Department of Civil and Environmental

Engineering, University College Cork, Ireland

Tuesday, June 14, Noon to 1 pm, USGS ORWSC

Series ―Tree-Ring Records of River Flow and

Channel Dynamics, Jonathan M. Friedman,‖

Research Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey,

Boulder, CO

Oregon State University Department of Geosciences

2011 Spring Seminar Series, Thursdays, 4:00 pm, in

108 Wilkinson Hall (unless noted below). Refer to

department website for more information:


May 5, 2011, Hollis M. Dole Lecture in

Environmental Geology, Gilfillan Auditorium, Paul

Hoffman, Harvard University (emeritus) and

University of Victoria, ―The Diluvian glacial

controversy at the inception of climate dynamics and

geodynamics‖

May 6, 12:00 noon, Burt 193, Paul Hoffman,

Harvard University (emeritus) and University of

Victoria, ―New records of strange oceans during and

after Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth‖

May 12,, Carrie Whitehall, Central Washington

University, ―The role of the Santa Marta-

Bucaramanga fault system in the tectonic evolution

of the Maracaibo microplate, northern South

America‖

May 19, Ellen Morris Bishop, Columbia Gorge

Community College, ―Building a stairway in the

Ivory Tower: Engaging the public with science‖

May 26, Jonathan Fink, Portland State University,

Life after Geology: ―Simulating lave flows, cities

and academic organizations‖

June 2, Steve Giovannoni, Microbiology, OSU,

Marty Fisk, COAS, OSU, ―Microbial life in the

lithosphere‖

University of Oregon Department of Geological

Sciences, Winter 2011 Weekly Seminar Series,

Wednesdays, 4:00 to 5:20 pm in 110 Willamette Hall.

Tea and cookies are served in Cascade 200 beginning at

3:30 p.m.. Refer to department website for more

information:


May 4 - Christine May (James Madison University),

―At the Crossroads of Geomorphology and Ecology:

Insights into River Processes and Salmon Habitat‖

May 11 - Paul Heller (University of Wyoming),

―Tectonic Significance of Cryptic Laramide Gravels

in the Central Rockies, USA‖

May 18 - Andrew Calvert (Volcano Science Center,

USGS Menlo Park), ―A Tale of Two Sisters:

Unraveling the 20,000 year eruptive episode that

built Middle and South Sister‖

May 25 - Ben Crosby (Idaho State University),

―Transient Landscape Adjustment‖

June 1 - Steve Day (San Diego State University),

―Recent Progress in physics-based prediction of

earthquake shaking‖










There are now TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at

the Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission









―The Mystique of Terrior: Geology, Soils, Climate

and Wines in the Northern Willamette Valley,‖

Monday, May 2, 2011 - 7:00pm, Portland - Bagdad

Theater. Scott Burns, PhD, is a professor of geology

and past Chair of the Department of Geology at

Portland State University, where he has been

teaching for nearly 20 years. Scott specializes in

environmental and engineering geology,

geomorphology, soils, and Quaternary geology.

―Seeing Things in a New Light: Infrared Imaging,‖

Monday, June 6, 2011 - 7:00pm , Portland - Bagdad

Theater. Join us to see the world in a ―new light.‖

John Lester Miller (a.k.a. Dr. Strangephoton) will

give an energetic presentation on the history,

phenomenology, and applications of infrared

imaging. John Lester Miller has 30 years of

experience in the design and development of

infrared systems for astronomy, commercial

applications, military, and intelligence. He has

worked at Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories,

Rockwell, NASA‘s Infrared Telescope Facility (on

Mauna Kea), Martin Marietta, and the Research

Triangle Institute and has been with FLIR Systems

(headquartered in Wilsonville) for over 14 years.



BOARD MEETING NOTES April 9, 2011

The meeting was called to order by President

Rik Smoody at the home of Rosemary Kenney. Board

and GSOC members present also included Rosemary,

Jane Walpole, Paul-Edison Lahm, Richard Bartels, Bev

Vogt, Dawn Juliano, Julia Lanning, Larry Purchase,

Carol Hasenberg, and Dave Olcott. The minutes of the

February 18, 2011 annual meeting and the minutes of the

February 19, 2011 board meeting were approved.

Treasurer’s report was presented by Bart. The

treasurer‘s report was approved.

Report on future Friday night lectures was given

by Jane Walpole. Jane still needs suggestions for

speakers for October and November. She has Charlie

Hammond scheduled in May to talk about the Tyee

Formation. Two speakers were suggested to talk about

earthquakes and tsunamis. It was suggested that Scott

Burns address his specialty — national parks —

especially Crater Lake and Mr. Rainer, which could tie-

in to the President‘s Field Trip.

Lecture publicity and poster placement was

discussed. Posters should highlight free parking, free

admission, and that all are invited.

Annual Picnic is tentatively scheduled for

Sunday, July 17th with two possible venues being

checked.

Field Trips Neogene Floods trip, May 20-22: Dave

discussed the itinerary of his upcoming field trip and

asked for input on trip logistics. He suggested

maximizing the ability for participants to observe and

listen in relaxed frame of mind by dividing the two

speakers between the two vans and using a GSI person

as the driver. Also for the sake of efficiency, he

suggested ordering catered sandwiches in advance. Carol

reminded us that the cost of trips should include both

liability insurance and a contingency amount to account

for no-shows. A request was made to have at least ten

extra field trips guides produced in addition to the two

which Rosemary archives.

Central Oregon Coast trip, June 17th-19th. Jane

will email Janet to get info on how planning for this trip

is progressing.

Downtown PDX field trip: Aug 6 at 10:00 a.m.

was chosen as the date and time for Clay and Paul‘s

downtown geology field trip. Paul is interested is

distributing cheap hand lenses to participants, and the

use of a dome magnifier was also suggested. Trip leaders

will need to use the microphone/speaker set-up in order

to be heard. Bev offered to provide liability waivers.

Pre-registration and a nominal fee will be required to cap

attendance and defray the cost of the hand lenses. The

trip registration form will be published in the

July/August edition of The Geological Newsletter.

President’s field trip is scheduled for August

12th through 14

th. Rik is looking for aggradation sites in

the Mt. Rainer area and will be contacting the park

service around Mt. Rainer which has been difficult to

contact during the off-season.

Website/Internet committee: Rik is putting

together a plan to move information to a new platform



that will accommodate a wiki. Bev will be contributing

an inventory of all GSOC materials.

New business: A thank you card was received

from Ken Severin, who appreciated our gift of Dr. Orr‘s

Oregon Fossils.

Sales item: The GSOC mugs are being re-

designed and re-ordered. Antonella and Tara are

researching this, with Janet and Carol also consulting.

Janet‘s birthday was celebrated at Dawn‘s

suggestion by calling Janet‘s voice mail and having all

members present sing ―Happy Birthday!‖

Next board meeting will be at Carol Hasenberg‘s house

on June 11 at 10:00 a.m.

Meeting adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Edison-Lahm,, GSOC Secretary

Paleo-Noir: Bone-Hunting Adventures of a Geology Professor on an Oregon Potato Farm Synopsis of the March12, 2011 GSOC 76th Annual

Banquet lecture by Dr. Jay Van Tassell, Professor

of Geology, College of Arts and Sciences, Eastern

Oregon University, LaGrande, Oregon

by Carol Hasenberg

It isn‘t pretty. It isn‘t the ideal venue for scientific

research. But what does a geology professor do

when he gets a call to see some Ice Age fossils that

have been unearthed by a bulldozer? He‘s talking

about bones. Big bones. Mammoth bones. The

scene of an Ice Age mystery.

Dr. Jay Van Tassell began his lecture to the GSOC

banquet crowd by describing the town of La

Grande, Oregon, and the fossilized remains of Ice

Age animals that have been found there in the past,

including bones and teeth of Columbian Mammoths

(a larger and less hairy cousin of the Wooly

Mammoth) and the skull of a Harlan's Ground

Sloth. The town is sited on an old eroded

Pleistocene alluvial fan in the spectacular Grande

Ronde Valley in northeastern Oregon. During the

most recent Ice Age this part of the country was not

under continental ice sheets. Instead there were

local small ice caps in the nearby Wallowa and

Elkhorn Mountains. The climate was also a bit

cooler and wetter than it is today

These specimens of gigantic Ice Age mammals

have surfaced a number of times in the recent past

to Van Tassell‘s knowledge. There have been two

finds on the Eastern Oregon University campus

itself, in 1939 and 1979, and other finds around the

alluvial fan area. Van Tassell told the crowd that

after one of the fossil finds, a Columbian (not

Wooly!) mammoth tooth, was sent to a laboratory

for carbon dating, the lab ground up the entire tooth

to do the test!

Back to our story of the bones. Van Tassell

received a visit from a student in January 2010 who

showed him a mammoth bone, and said, ―I can‘t tell

you where I found this.‖ Their conversation was

interrupted by a phone call, and the student told Van

Tassell that they had found more bones and he

couldn‘t give Van Tassell the sample. Intrigued but

shut out of the discovery, Van Tassell heard

snippets of the story from a friend of a friend, who

showed him some pictures of two mammoth tusks

and some vertebrae that were found on the site.

Van Tassell decided to look for the site of the

discovery. His plan was to drive out in the Grand

Ronde Valley and look for bulldozers. That

morning the telephone rang and his neighbor asked

him, ―Do you want to go on an adventure?‖ This

was from Jay's neighbor, who is the father of a

contractor who was working on the site. Van

Tassell grabbed his camera and went for a ride to

the site, which was a potato farm in which some site

leveling was underway. The farmer wanted to ‗get

rid of those things‘ and was willing to give them to

the university, but they had to come out that day.

With no time to do a proper excavation, atypical

methods had to be employed to protect and

transport the fragile tusks using materials the

contractor had on hand. The contractor wrapped the

tusks in plastic, coated them with wallboard plaster,

and added reinforcing bars and fiberglass cloth for

strength. Unfortunately due to the air temperature

being 33°F., the fiberglass did not set up. The tusks

were then brought in to the university on the back of

a pickup, and when the fiberglass and plaster were

removed, one of the tusks was pulverized except for


the tip, and about half of the other survived. Van

Tassell joked that he now has a lot of samples for

radiocarbon dating.

A number of other bones were also recovered from

the site by the contractor. Some vertebrae were

found but were clearly too small to be that of a

mammoth. They were identified as being from a

Short-Faced Bear, and the bear‘s tail bones and

right femur were also found. The bone that the

student had brought to Jay's lab turned out to be the

right rear tibia of a mammoth – this one stood about

9-1/2 or 10 feet high at the shoulder. It was

classified as a juvenile from the size and from x-

rays of bones which were made by a veterinarian in

La Grande. It may be from the same animal as the

tusks, which came from a male mammoth about 17-

20 years of age based on the girth of the tusk.

Another bone proved to be the radius/ulna of a very

large male Giant Ice Age Bison. The contractor

also dug adjacent to where the tusks were found

and, instead of a mammoth skull, found the skeleton

of a ground squirrel. These tiny bones are those of

a Columbian Ground Squirrel, which is not found in

the valley in modern times, as it prefers wetter and

colder areas around the margins of the valley and on

the slopes above the valley floor.

The forensic evidence from the site revealed that

these Ice Age mammals may have died in a flood

and were washed into the area approximately

12,700 years ago. This makes it one of the

youngest Ice Age mammoth sites found in the

Pacific Northwest. This is close to the time that the

earliest human artifacts have been found in Oregon.

It is possible that the mammoths survived later in

the Grande Ronde Valley than in other parts of

Oregon because early humans took routes that led

them around the Blue Mountains as they migrated

down from the north. This site will likely play a

part in helping to decipher this mystery and what

this is telling us about the cause of Ice Age

extinctions.

NEW RULES: Putting the Federal Paleontological Resources Preservation Act into Action Synopsis of the April 8, 2011, lecture by Courtney

Cloyd, recently retired, formerly Senior Geologist

for Geologic Hazards and Geologic Resources, U.S.

Forest Service

by Carol Hasenberg

Courtney Cloyd spoke to GSOC last month about

the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act,

which became law in 2009 and governs the

collection of fossils on Federal lands. It is the

culmination of more than 20 years of effort and

advocated by professional paleontologists for the

preservation of the fossil record for public benefit.

The law calls for the management of federal

paleontological resources to be done ―using

scientific principals and expertise‖, and the plans to

inventory, monitor and use the resources must

―emphasize interagency coordination and

collaborative efforts‖. As the former manager of the

Geology and Paleontology program for the Forest

Service, Cloyd was active in the development of

regulations for this law and spoke to our group

about its key points, exceptions and limitations.

Basically, the law gives a definition for

paleontological resources, and states that these

resources may not be collected on Federal lands

without a permit. A paleontological resource can be

a fossilized remain, trace, or imprint of an

organism, except for such materials that have

specifically defined archaeological or cultural

significance which are covered by ARPA (the

Archaeological Resources Protection Act). The law

states particular criteria for the issuance of a

collection permit and requirements for its execution.

And it outlines civil and criminal penalties for

violations of the law, which had been lacking in

some earlier laws relating to fossils. The law further

states that all fossil finds collected under permit on

federal lands are to remain the property of the U.S.

government. This is to ensure that fossils collected

from Federal lands will be available for scientific

research and public education through the museums

or other approved repositories storing them.


An important exception to the law is for casual

collecting, which some of us GSOC‘ers have done.

Casual collecting is only allowed on land

administered by the Bureau of Land Management,

Bureau of Reclamation, or the Forest Service. It is

not allowed on National Park Service lands, where

the collecting or damaging of any geological feature

is strictly prohibited. Casual collecting is limited to

common invertebrate and plant paleontological

resources, so vertebrate fossils are not covered by

this exception. Under the exception, collection must

be for non-commercial personal use, collected in

reasonable amounts, and result in negligible

disturbance of the Earth‘s surface. These concepts

are meant to be further defined in regulations that

will be developed by the Secretary of the land being

administered (Secretary of the Interior for BLM

land and Secretary of Agriculture for the Forest

Service).

Cloyd mentioned that the specific regulations

governing casual collection and other fine points of

the act are in the process of being developed by the

Department of Agriculture for the Forest Service;

the current unofficial target date for publishing draft

regulations is March 31, 2012. They will cover the

definitions of some of the concepts, permitting

procedures, curation of finds, and criminal and civil

penalties.

Non-profit local organizations such as GSOC and

NARG (North American Research Group) can play

a part of the management of paleontological

resources. They are allowed to do the casual

collecting as long as it is for the member‘s personal

use. They also may apply for a permit to excavate a

find following the criteria and requirements of the

law. Also, if members spot a vertebrate or rare

invertebrate or plant fossil, they can report its

existence to the administrating entity. The rule of

thumb ―if it‘s a bone leave it alone‖ applies here.

The Forest Service and BLM welcome questions

and information from local non-profit interest

groups, and hope to develop mutually beneficial

working relationships with them.

The law does not prohibit anyone from writing

about fossil finds. However, Cloyd pointed out that

disclosing the location of important finds may

increase their exposure to the risk of vandalism or

theft, so this must be done with discretion and

caution. In addition to the ARPA exception for

archaeological materials, the law does not apply to

Indian lands, nor does it cover materials governed

by the general mining law, mineral and geothermal

leasing law or mineral materials disposal law. The

law also does not address private or state lands.

One big problem with the management system for

paleontological resources is the availability of

adequate facilities for their curation. Many

museums cannot accept more fossils because they

are full. This will be one of the challenges to

administering this important law.

REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL READING

A copy of the Paleontological Resources

Preservation Act can be obtained from the BLM

website (www.blm.gov) by googling the following

keywords: ―paleontological resources preservation

subtitle D‖ or by clicking this really long link:

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/wo/Pl

anning_and_Renewable_Resources/coop_agencies/

paleontology_library/paleon_legis.Par.45651.File.d

at/PL-111-011-prpa.pdf

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of

2009 contains the Paleontological Resources

Preservation Act and is overviewed on the

Wikipedia website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Public_Land

_Management_Act_of_2009

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/wo/Planning_and_Renewable_Resources/coop_agencies/paleontology_library/paleon_legis.Par.45651.File.dat/PL-111-011-prpa.pdf




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Public_Land_Management_Act_of_2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Public_Land_Management_Act_of_2009




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 77, Number 4

July/August 2011



www.gsoc.org


President:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:

Anne O‘Neill (1 year) - 503/477-7827

[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem − 503/246-2275

[email protected]


Anne O‘Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

July/August Activities

There will not be Friday night talks in July or August for

2011. Have a nice summer and attend one of our field

trips!

GSOC Annual Picnic

The GSOC Annual Picnic will be held on Sunday, July

17, 2011. This year‘s picnic will be a total potluck event

at the picnic area atop Larch Mountain in the Columbia

River Gorge. Bring your own food and beverages and

we will provide the plates and plastic utensils. It also

wouldn‘t hurt to bring your own chairs and perhaps a

card table if you have one, as the available picnic tables

are scattered. The picnic will begin at 12:00 noon and

there will be a brief GSOC board meeting before the

picnic at 11:00 a.m. Plan an hour‘s driving time from

Portland.

For information about the picnic site see the Larch

Mountain picnic area page on the Forest Service

website. You will need a $5 day-use permit or a FS

recreation pass to park there. Day-use permits may not

be available on site according to our information. For

more information on Forest Service recreation passes

(and alternatives) see the FS Region 6 Recreation Passes

& Permits page. To purchase a day-use permit or FS

recreation pass online or through a Forest Service outlet

see Discover Your Northwest Store and Store Locations.

They are also available from some commercial

establishments such as REI and Big Five. They are not

available at the Nature of the Northwest store anymore.

In the event that Larch Mountain remains closed due to

prolonged snowpack we will announce an alternate

location on the GSOC website. However, at this point

the Forest Service believes that the road will be open

before our picnic date. Check to the GSOC website the
















http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gDfxMDT8MwRydLA1cj72BTJw8jAwjQL8h2VAQAzHJMsQ!!/?ss=110622&ttype=recarea&recid=29942&actid=50&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&position=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&navid=110160000000000&pnavid=110000000000000&cid=FSE_003714&pname=Columbia+River+Gorge+National+Scenic+Area+-+Larch+Mountain+Picnic+Area


http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gjAwhwtDDw9_AI8zPwhQoY6BdkOyoCAPkATlA!/?ss=1106&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&cid=null&navid=200100000000000&pnavid=200000000000000&position=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&ttype=main&pname/index.shtml


http://www.discovernw.org/store_recreation-passes_1PASS/

http://www.discovernw.org/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=LOCATIONS



day before the picnic for final confirmation of the

location, or call another member who has done so.

The directions to Larch Mountain on the website are

really lousy, so here are some better directions courtesy

Dave Olcott:

Traveling east on I-84 from the Portland area, take Exit

22 (Corbett). Travel 1.6 miles up Corbett Hill Road to

the intersection with the Historic Columbia River

Highway - turn left onto the old highway. Travel

approximately 2 miles to Larch Mt. Road (go straight).

If you go left at this point you will end up at the Vista

House. Proceed 14 miles up Larch Mt. Road to the upper

parking lot.

For more geology info on Larch Mountain refer to the

USGS and Wikipedia sites. This should be an

outstanding site for a picnic.

Ancient Walls: A Geological Walking Tour of

Downtown Portland

Come see billion-year-old building stones and the fossils

hidden under our feet. Join us Saturday, August 6th at

9:00 a.m. at Pioneer Place Mall in the food court in front

of Paradise Bakery (700 SW 5th Avenue — parking at

4th and Yamhill — accessible by bus and MAX) for a

two-and-a-half-hour outdoor walking tour of downtown

Portland‘s geological mysteries and oddities. Bring good

walking shoes, water, sunscreen and clothing for a cool,

but possibly rapidly warming summer morning. Snacks

are also advisable, although the trip will end at a lunch

stop. Bring your own loupe if you have one. The trip is

open to the public. Children under 12 must be supervised

by their parents. Cost is $5.00. Please RSVP to Clay

Kelleher [email protected] by July 29.

2011 GSOC President’s Field Trip:

“Aggradation near Mt. Rainier”

August 11-14, GSOC President Rik Smoody is planning

the GSOC President‘s Field Trip, with the theme of

aggradation processes near Mt. Rainier. Aggradation is

the process by which streams deposit material. This will

be a car-caravan and camping trip which will include

some stops in Mt. Rainier National Park.

The trip registration form and itinerary are located at the

back of this newsletter. Rik has also put together some

info on camping, lodging, and dining FYI:

Camping & Lodging: Smoody's have reserved site #8 for

August 11, 12, & 13 at Big Creek Campground, a USFS

campground only a couple of miles from the Nisqually

entrance to the park, not even as far as Ashford. It's in a

forest. RV or tent. All spots are within easy walk of each

other. There are picnic tables and fire rings.

Other campgrounds, B&Bs and motels are available in

the area. Without staying in any of them, Rik made note

of several, and later found that Google maps knows of

each one. The Cougar Creek and Ohanapecosh

campgrounds within the Park have smaller spaces and

more restrictions. Trip Advisor site has pages on Mt.

Rainier attractions and lodging. Call Rik or Carol

Hasenberg (503/522-4249) if you have questions about

other camping or lodging.

Some Dining ideas:

Wild Berry Restaurant, just outside the park on the

Leg A (Star Route 706). Sherpa-operated, tasty, $8-

13

Paradise Inn: beautiful setting. Meals upwards of

$20

Several plausible restaurants are in Ashford.

Train car restaurant in Elbe, 8mi W of Ashford.

Venison and other uncommon burgers for $13.

Smaller burger joint across the road from the train

cars. ~$6

Enumclaw has a full selection of fast food and others

for Sunday on the way out


member to attend this GSOC field trip. You may join

GSOC at any time, for $25.

Future Activities

Friday evening talk, September 9, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Douglas W. Larson, limnologist and

writer living in Portland, will present ―Saving Lake

Abert‖.

For more information about Larson‘s life and work on

Lake Abert and other lake ecology studies, see

Oregonlive.com article from February 2011,

Craterlakeinstitute.com, Craterlakeinstitute.com and

Americanscientist.org articles. Also see the December

2007 issue of The Geological Newsletter for ―Doug

Larson Gives GSOC a Tour Of Lake Origins,‖ an article

about a previous lecture to GSOC by Mr. Larson.

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Oregon/BoringLavaField/VisitVolcano/larch_mountain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larch_Mountain_(Multnomah_County,_Oregon)


http://www.reserveamerica.com/camping/map_of_Big_Creek_Wa/r/campgroundMap.do?page=map&search=site&contractCode=NRSO&parkId=74098&topTabIndex=CampingSpot

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g143044-d145643-Reviews-Mount_Rainier-Mount_Rainier_National_Park_Washington.html

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g143044-d145643-Reviews-Mount_Rainier-Mount_Rainier_National_Park_Washington.html

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/02/saving_albert_lake.html

http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/press-room/award-larson-2002.htm

http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/online-library/probing-depths/complete.htm

http://www.americanscientist.org/authors/detail/douglas-larson






Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on

Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on

level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway

and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Streets.


the calendar.


ORGANIZATIONS


There are TWO Science Pubs in Portland -- one at the

Bagdad Theater in Southeast, and one at Mission









The Big Bang and Beyond: A Beginner's Guide to the

Universe

Monday, July 11, 2011 - 7:00pm Portland - Bagdad Theater

What does the Universe look like and what is our place

in it? How is it evolving and what did it look like in the

distant past? What will it be like in the future? Join

Willamette University physics chair and cosmologist Dr.

Rick Watkins in an exploration of the Universe and its

evolution.

Demon Fish: Travels Through the Hidden World of

Sharks

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 7:00pm Portland - Mission Theater

One week later than usual!

with author Juliet Eilperin, the national environmental

reporter for The Washington Post.

Epigenetics: The Merger of Nature and Nurture

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - 7:00pm Portland - Mission Theater

Can your genes learn by experience?

Every cell in your body has the same set of genes, but

those genes do not work in every cell in the same way.

For example, your tongue cells don‘t grow hair and the

cells in your eye don‘t digest food. Your cells are

programmed to modify genes based on their function in

the body, and some of those modifications occur in

response to the environment: genes that cause the

production of pigment in your skin are activated when

your skin is exposed to sunlight, and genes that caused

your fingers and toes to develop before you were born

are inactivated for the rest of your life.

It has been thought that only mutations in the DNA

could be passed on to the next generation and that traits

acquired during a parent‘s life are not passed to their

offspring, e.g. weight lifters don‘t produce babies with

big muscles. However, recent research suggests that

some genetic changes that happen over a lifetime are

heritable. That is, while it may be true that ―you are what

you eat,‖ it may also be true that ―you are what your

mother ate.‖

Epigenetics is the study of genetic changes that are based

on mechanisms other than changes in the underlying

DNA and it is changing the way scientists look at

disease risk and treatment. At this Science Pub, come

find out about new discoveries in genetics and how they

might affect you or your kids.

Lisa Sardinia,PhD, JD, is associate professor of

biology at Pacific University and associate director of

the Pacific Institute for Ethics and Social Policy.



BOARD MEETING NOTES June 11, 2011

The meeting was called to order by President Rik

Smoody at the home of Carol Hasenberg. Board and

GSOC members present also included Jane

Walpole, Paul-Edison Lahm, Richard ‗Bart‘ Bartels,

Bev Vogt, Julia Lanning, Larry Purchase, Carol

Hasenberg, Dave Olcott, and Jan Kem. The minutes

of the April 9, 2011 board meeting and the minutes

of the May 14, 2011 special board meeting were

approved with the following corrections: the annual

picnic will be held in July instead of a regular


http://www.willamette.edu/cla/physics/faculty/watkins/index.php

http://www.willamette.edu/cla/physics/faculty/watkins/index.php

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/45552/demon-fish-by-juliet-eilperin/9780375425127

http://www.pacificu.edu/as/biology/faculty/sardinia.cfm

http://www.pacificu.edu/as/biology/faculty/sardinia.cfm



meeting; and the Downtown PDX field trip will

start at 9:00 am.

Treasurer’s report: Treasurer‘s Report was

approved.

Events Friday night lectures: Jane has arranged to have

Doug Larson speak on ―Saving Lake Abert‖ in

September. Scott Burns will speak in November.

Other speakers with dates yet to be arranged include

Charlene Montierth from Clark College, Richard

Waite from CVO, and Rob McCaffery from PSU. A

larger room may be needed for Drs. Waite and

Burns. Bev suggested bringing the ―chatterbox‖

microphone to address the problem of people in the

back having trouble hearing.

Publicity and poster distribution: Board discussed

more efficient and effective means of publicizing

Friday night lectures.

Field Trips Neogene Floods trip recap: Seven field guides from

the trip remain. Dave‘s proposal to price them at

$35 each was approved (with that price to be

discounted later at the next annual meeting). Dave

will also establish a price for his own guide later.

Central Oregon Coast Trip. Bart reports that this

field trip is full!

Downtown PDX field trip: Field trip price will be $5

per person.

President’s Field Trip. Rik will do a dry run this

weekend and check out campsite availability and

get info to Carol for newsletter. Carol will assist in

looking for group campsites. Speakers may include

Pat Pringle and a geologist from University of

Washington.

Annual Picnic will be held July 17th at noon. Picnic

is potluck, BYOB & BYOM. Julia and Ann will

work to coordinate plates/utensils, etc. Our next

board meeting will be held before the picnic at

11:00 a.m.

Old and New Business Newsletter distribution and membership issues.

Jan‘s suggestion to drop members who haven‘t paid

their dues since 2009 from the mailing list was

approved... Jan will forward the list of the twenty-

two members who haven‘t paid for 2011 to Rik who

will send them nice reminder emails... Friday night

speakers and tour speakers will automatically be

granted a one year membership, so Bart will need to

be provided with the speakers‘ addresses so he can

collect this information. Jan also requests that any

names of prospective members be sent to him, so

that he can send them a free copy of the newsletter.

(This also assists in reaching the 200 piece bulk

mail requirement.)

Website/Internet committee: Rik continues to look

for a wiki server that will have an appropriate

privacy policy so that some information, such as

officer‘s duties and a list of GSOC property, can be

viewed by board members only. Rik has the

password for members who want to post items of

geological interest on the ―GeoSociety Oregon‖

Facebook account. This would also allow any

inappropriate Facebook comments to be monitored

and deleted.

Sales items/mugs: GSOC will be getting some new

mugs ordered soon with the GSOC logo on them.

Next board meeting will be held at the annual

picnic, Sunday July 17th at 11:00 a.m.

Meeting adjourned.


Paul Edison-Lahm,, GSOC Secretary

RAISING A DAM FOR BARNEY

RESERVOIR AND WASHINGTON

COUNTY’S WATER SUPPLY Synopsis of the May 13, 2011, lecture by Charlie

Hammond, geologist, Cornforth Consultants

by Carol S. Hasenberg

Charlie Hammond, son of long-time GSOC member

and PSU professor emeritus, Paul Hammond, is a

respected geologist in his own right, and has been

employed by Cornforth Consultants, a local

geotechnical engineering firm, since the late 1980‘s.

He spoke to GSOC this past May about an

interesting local project he was involved with in the

mid to late 1990‘s – the raising of the Eldon Mills

Dam. This earthen dam impounds water in Barney

Reservoir, which is one of the principal sources of

water for Washington County‘s Joint Water

Commission, which supplies water to the cities of

Forest Grove, Hillsboro, and Beaverton.


The original earthen dam for Barney Reservoir was

built over the summers of 1969 and 1970 and

impounded 4000 acre-feet of water in the high point

of the Coast Range on the North Fork of the Trask

River. It is located several miles west of Hagg Lake

and is a bit off the beaten track, as one must travel

many miles on gravel roads to get there. The

original dam was 72 feet high, had an earth-fill core

with a sand chimney drain to control seepage

through the structure – a sloped sand layer in the

middle of the dam directed water down to the base

and out the bottom. The spillway for this old dam

was a ―glory hole,‖ or long pipe which had a

downstream outlet from the dam (kind of like a

bathtub drain).

The water commission hired Cornforth Consultants

to design a dam capable of impounding 20,000

acre-feet of water. Because of the dam‘s remote

location, material for the new structure had to come

from the surrounding area, and Hammond was

involved in the categorization of the local geologic

layers and the determination of their suitability for

use in the dam construction, and also the problems

that local geology will pose in the design of the

dam. Cornforth also worked with the respected firm

Geomatrix, who did the seismic hazard study for the

dam site.

The local geology contained sedimentary and

volcanic layers from the Eocene, which included the

Yamhill Formation (marine sediments), Siletz River

Volcanics, and Tertiary intrusive dikes and sills.

There were also some Quaternary colluvium and

saprolite. The most promising material for use in

the construction of the dam was the intrusive rock

which could be used to fill the new part of the dam.

The most problematic material was the saprolitic

sandy silt lying typically between 4 to 30 feet

directly under the dam.

The design for the new dam called for its

construction on the downstream side of the old dam

with borrow materials taken from upstream and

downstream of the dam area. The new construction

was designed to be rock fill with a new chimney

drain. The new dam raised the normal water level in

the reservoir 50 feet. The new dam also has a weir-

type spillway

The earthquake design called for the new dam to

withstand accelerations of 0.3g. Laboratory cyclic

testing (shake testing) showed that the saprolitic

layer beneath the dam could theoretically liquefy at

this intensity, so under the new construction the

layer was removed and replaced with rock fill. The

earthquake modeling performed for the new dam

showed that it is stable under the design load when

the reservoir is full. One consequence exists due to

the old dam and its underlying saprolite, when the

reservoir is drawn down there is potential instability

in the area of the old dam on the upstream side of

the new dam. But since the reservoir is lowered this

would not result in an uncontrolled release of water.

Definition

―saprolite – A soft, earthy, typically clay-rich,

thoroughly decomposed rock, formed in place by

chemical weathering of igneous, sedimentary, and

metamorphic rocks. It often forms a layer or cover

as much as 100 m in thickness, esp. in humid and

tropical or subtropical climates; the color is

commonly some shade of red or brown, but it may

be white or gray. Saprolite is characterized by

preservation of structures that were present in the

unweathered rock.‖ – Glossary of Geology, Fifth

Edition, American Geological Institute.

References and Additional Reading:

Cornforth Consultants website:

http://www.cornforthconsultants.com/projects-

earth-dams-barney.htm

Joint Water Commission Home page:

http://www.jwcwater.org/Index.asp?pgid=1

City of Beaverton‘s Drinking Water Supply page:

http://www.beavertonoregon.gov/departments/ecd/u

tilities/drinkingwatersupply.aspx

http://www.cornforthconsultants.com/projects-earth-dams-barney.htm

http://www.cornforthconsultants.com/projects-earth-dams-barney.htm

http://www.jwcwater.org/Index.asp?pgid=1

http://www.beavertonoregon.gov/departments/ecd/utilities/drinkingwatersupply.aspx

http://www.beavertonoregon.gov/departments/ecd/utilities/drinkingwatersupply.aspx


Cascadia Subduction Zone is

Giving Us the “Slow Slip”

Synopsis of the June 10, 2011, lecture by Evelyn

Roeloffs, Research Geophysicist for the USGS

Earthquake Science Center in Vancouver,

Washington


Things have come a long way since the 1980‘s with

earthquake research in the Northwest. Back then,

plate tectonics was a relatively new geologic

discipline, and scientists mostly relied on the

historical record to determine the seismicity of a

region. Oregon was thought to be a region of little

seismic hazard.

Earthquake scientist Evelyn Roeloffs began her

lecture to a packed Cramer Hall S17 last month

with a quote from former State Geologist, founder

of PSU Geology Department and GSOC Past

President John Eliot Allen in 1983, who had stated

that ―We in the Northwest may have to live with

volcanic eruptions but we hope that the (U.S.

Geological) Survey's vulnerability map is correct

and that we will not also have to look forward to

large earthquakes as well.‖

As we all know now, the hopes of Dr. Allen were

not realized. Some excellent work done by a

number of researchers, most notably by Brian

Atwater, showed that Oregon, Washington, British

Columbia, and the northern part of California are

periodically affected by megathrust earthquakes

along the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ). The

terror caused by these enormous earthquakes has

been brought home to us in the last decade by

modern media coverage of three such quakes that

struck Indonesia in 2004, Chile in 2010, and Japan

in 2011.

These events have caused more research efforts to

be made in the Pacific northwest, and new types of

instrumentation has facilitated this research. A

number of scientists including OSU‘s Chris

Goldfinger and CWU's Tim Melbourne began to

use Global Positioning System (GPS) data to

monitor motion on the North American Plate in

order to study the subduction zone. North of the

border, Roy Hyndman and Kelin Wang of the

Geological Survey of Canada were conducting

studies of the overriding plate in order to determine

the extent of the ―locked zone,‖ which would be the

area of the plate boundary to rupture in a

megathrust event. Their colleague Herb Dragert

installed a network of continuous GPS stations to

monitor crustal deformation.

An interesting phenomenon was observed when

Dragert carefully analyzed his GPS data. The

overriding North American plate, which was

steadily being pushed east with the converging Juan

de Fuca/Explorer/Gorda Plate system, would

periodically reverse motion and move to the west

over a period of several days. These slip events, on

the order of a few millimeters, occurred about every

14 months. Not only that, but low frequency

tremors were found to coincide with these slip

events. Dragert was convinced that these slip events

were really important in the study of subduction

plate movement, and continued to do studies of

them. The events have now been studied for about

one and a half decades, primarily in the Pacific

northwest and Japan where instrumentation arrays

are more robust.

The slow slips observed in the CSZ were found to

occur in a region east of what was believed to be the

locked zone, and at depths of between 30 and 40 km

of depth, the bottom of which coincides with the

Moho boundary for the North American continent.

The slow slip periods, referred to as ETS or

―Episodic Tremor and Slip‖ by Dragert, are so

named because tremors always accompany the slip.

ETS events do not usually occur on the entire CSZ

at the same time. There are three distinct regions,

denoted from north to south as the Wrangellia,

Siletzia, and Klamath Zones. Average times

between ETS events are 14 months in Wrangellia,

22 months in Siletzia, and 8 months in Klamath.

The events in the northern region have been well-

studied by Dragert and other researchers. In the US

the PBO, or Plate Boundary Observatory funded by

the National Science Foundation, provides

instruments installed and operated by the non-profit


group UNAVCO to study Cascadia, including the

first borehole strainmeters in Oregon, Washington,

and on Vancouver Island. The strainmeters are

about 10 feet long and are cemented into the

bottoms of boreholes 500-800 feet deep to isolate

them from surface ―noise‖. The tremor and borehole

strainmeter data imply that Wrangellia slip events

tend to start south and propagate north (Puget sound

to Vancouver island), but sometimes start in the

middle and propagate north and south. Different

analyes of daily GPS positions show slow slips

going into the locked zone or staying east of the

locked zone. Tremors are centered in regions

immediately adjacent to regions of slip, so that there

seems to be a relationship between the tremors and

propagation of the slip.

These slip events have also been observed in

subduction zones in Japan and other areas. They

are particularly prevalent where younger crust

subducts beneath a continent, and there is variation

of the timing and tremors accompanying the

slippage. The physical processes which govern the

slippage and tremors vary by rates of convergence,

metamorphic processes of the crustal composition,

amounts and types of fluids from these processes,

plate boundary geometry and other parameters.

Studying the phenomena is also difficult because

very sensitive (and generally expensive) arrays of

instrumentation are required. GPS sensors can just

barely register the movements, but more sensitive

borehole strainmeters are expensive and their data is

harder to interpret So far the instrumentation has

also been limited to land-based sensors but some

oceanic sensors are planned.

Of course the most important question about slow

slip events is, how are they related to megathrust

earthquakes? It is clear that slip events, which over

the course of their movement, generate slippage

equivalent to that of a M6+ earthquake, are a

mechanism by which a lot of the strain in the plate

boundary zone is released. However, they also are

believed to load the locked zone with additional

strain. Earthquake scientists are working on lab and

computer models of the subduction processes by

which they can simulate plate convergence and

generate data that agrees with observed phenomena.

Detailed information about these slip events

continue to give researchers food for thought about

the physical mechanisms that characterize

subduction zone movement, and perhaps someday,

of providing means of predicting or warning

populations of megathrust events. Roeloffs's

research at USGS is focused on improving methods

for interpreting borehole strainmeter data.

Definition

Moho – Short for Mohorovicic discontinuity. The

Moho boundary is defined by the depth at which

seismic P-waves abruptly change velocity from

about 7 km/s above the zone to about 8 km/s below

the zone. It represents either a compositional change

or a phase change in the rock structure due to the

heat and pressure conditions at this depth. The

depth of the Moho is about 5-10 km below the

oceanic crust and about 40-70 km below the

continental crust. – adapted from the Glossary of

Geology, Fifth Edition, American Geological

Institute.

References and Additional Reading:

Joan Gomberg and the Cascadia 2007 and Beyond

Working Group, ―Slow-slip phenomena in Cascadia

from 2007 and beyond: A review,‖ GSA Bulletin;

July/August 2010; v. 122; no. 7/8; p. 963–978; doi:

10.1130/B30287.1; 10 figures, Published online

March 29, 2010; doi:10.1130/B30287.1. This article

summarizes the state of knowledge on slow slip

phenomena.

The Plate Boundary Observatory page on the

UNAVCO website is loaded with information about

this important research endeavor. There is also the

new PBO website. All PBO data are freely available

and their use by students and the public is

encouraged.

Herb Dragert‘s Page for the Geological Survey of

Canada has a list of his important papers about ETS

and related studies.

Quote from John Eliot Allen can be found on Beth

Casper, ―Danger lurks below in Oregon (Cascadia

Subduction Zone)‖ Statesman Journal, September

15, 2005 and is published on the freerepublic.com

website.

http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/~gomberg/Papers/GombergetalGSABull10.pdf

http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/~gomberg/Papers/GombergetalGSABull10.pdf

http://pboweb.unavco.org/

http://pbo.unavco.org/

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/dir/index_e.php?id=5726

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1485599/posts




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 77, Number 5




www.gsoc.org


President:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:

Anne O’Neill (1 year) - 503/477-7827

[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem − 503/246-2275

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

September/October

Activities




University. Speaker Douglas W. Larson, limnologist and

writer living in Portland, will present ―Saving Lake

Abert‖.

For more information about Larson’s life and work on





2007 issue of The Geological Newsletter for ―Doug

Larson Gives GSOC a Tour Of Lake Origins,‖ an article

about a previous lecture to GSOC by Mr. Larson.









Friday evening talk, October 14, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Roger Denlinger, USGS Cascades

Volcano Observatory, will present "Catastrophic

inundation and slow drainage: the story of the Missoula

Floods".

Denlinger will present his computer model of the

outburst floods from Pleistocene glacial Lake Missoula,





















and compare the results to field observations of the

actual results of the floods. For a recent article about the

models, see Oregonlive.com.

Future Activities

Friday evening talk, November 11, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Scott Burns, Portland State

University professor of Geology, will present ―Our

National Parks‖.

Friday, December 9, 2011, will be the night of the 3rd

Annual GSOC Christmas Party. The party will be held in

lieu of the December Friday night meeting and

attendance will be limited to GSOC members and their

guests. The location will be at the Simon Benson House

on the Portland State University campus. The program

will include slide shows of this year’s field trips, food

dishes-to-share as provided by the attending members,

and music. Donations to help cover the venue rental are

being accepted by GSOC Treasurer Richard Bartels.

Food and other contributions to the event will be

coordinated by GSOC Director Anne O’Neill.


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES July 17, 2011


Smoody at the home of Dave Olcott who graciously

offered his home when today’s annual picnic was

rained out. Board and GSOC members present also

included Paul-Edison Lahm, Richard Bartels, Bev

Vogt, Julia Lanning, Dawn Juliano, Anne O’Neil,

Larry Purchase, Carol Hasenberg, Janet Rasmussen,

and Jan Kem. The minutes of the June 11, 2011

board meeting were approved.

Treasurer’s report: Bart reported the current

account balances to the board. Report was

approved.

Field Trips

Janet recapped her successful Central Oregon Coast

trip. Paul announced that the planning for

―Downtown Portland Geology‖ walk is coming

along well. He will write a thank you letter to Doug

Magedanz of the Architectural Heritage Center for

the gift of two pieces of Meier & Frank ―Georgian

Room‖ marble and send a link to the ―Virtual Tour‖

for the GSOC website. Rik announced that the

President’s field trip planning is also moving apace.

Rik has booked Pat Pringle for Friday and Chris

Magril for the White River Saturday, but is still

looking for an expert for Sunday. Additional

campground information will be covered in the

newsletter.

Old and New Business

Business manager report: Jan announced that the

projector is now being kept at Bart’s house. Since

Jan is going on vacation, Assistant Business

Manager Ann will do the newsletter for September

and October.

Mugs: Carol reports that the GSOC mugs should

arrive next week. A consensus was not reaching on

mug pricing and that question was tabled.

Website/Internet committee: Rik has found the

answer to the question: where do we keep our

online data (job duties, newsletter copies, inventory

list, membership list, etc.): Google docs. Motion

approved to port these documents to Google docs

and report back to the board at the next meeting.

Board Votes by Email: Paul asked how the

Secretary should record the results of board

decisions made by email. Motion for email voting

protocol approved as follows:

1. The board member who initially called the

board vote by email will record the decision,

the vote tally and the presence of quorum in

an email tagged in the subject line. The

Secretary will then upload this email to

Google docs.

2. At the time of approval of the minutes at the

next board meeting, the Secretary will

present the email record of the vote for

approval as to form only.

Carol will send an email recording the recent vote

on mug design to Paul as an example.

Holiday Party (Ann): Date of party was set for

December 9th

, 2011 at the Simon Benson house:

6:30 p.m.-- Dinner/buffet

7:30 p.m.-- ―Year in Review‖ in back room

8:30 p.m.-- Cookies/dessert.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/geologists_find_a_way_to_simul.html



Donations will be accepted for the room rental.

Musicians are encouraged to volunteer for the

Christmas chamber players. Dress code will be

―dressy.‖

Next Meeting date & time: Saturday, Sept 10th

,

10:00 a.m. at the Smoody residence.

Meeting Adjourned.


Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary

SMUG MUGS

GSOC is proudly selling its new logo mugs. The

mugs feature a GSOC logo on each side of the cup,

plus the statement 'Supporting Geology in the

Pacific Northwest since 1935' and the website

address 'GSOC.org' opposite the handle. Pricing

schedule is $7 each, two for $13 and four for $25.

Contact Richard Bartels or Carol Hasenberg for

more information.

NEWPORT AT MIDSUMMER’S WEEKEND Synopsis of the ―Tidepools, Tsunamis, and

Terraces‖ trip lead by GSOC Past President Janet

Rasmussen, June 17-19, 2011

Guest field trip guides included Alan and Wendy

Niem, George Priest, Karen Driscoll, and Patrick

Breshears

by Carol Hasenberg

Another great trip planned by our wonderful social

organizer Janet Rasmussen. Janet’s gift is that she

includes really fun people-oriented activities In her

trips without neglecting the geology and natural

sciences. We owe several great trips to her

organizational skills.

The trip began at Janet’s house in Corvallis on the

beautiful afternoon of Friday, June 17. There was

some geology there, because Janet had gotten

curious about a big rock in her backyard. Turns out

that this rock is of the same intrusive ―massive

granophyric ferrogabbro‖ material that constitutes

nearby Mary’s Peak, the highest point in the Oregon

Coast Range. The rock is harder than the

surrounding Eocene Siletz River Volcanics, and so

it weathers slower and sticks out.

Onward and upward. Literally, as the GSOC car

caravan ascended into the Coast Range on US 20

traveling from Corvallis to Newport. The route

took the participants through the Siletz River

outcrops and into the arch of the Coast Range,

which is dominated from the Upper

Eocene/Oligocene aged marine sediments of the

Tyee Formation. (Those of you who went on the

2003 GSOC field trip to the southern Oregon Coast

will remember that we passed through the Tyee on

our way down the Umpqua Valley.) At first the

sediments dipped to the east as the group traveled,

but then leveled off and began dipping to the west,

following the arch produced by the compressive

forces in the forearc region of the Cascadia

Subduction Zone.

At one particularly good roadcut exposing layers of

Tyee arkosic sandstone alternating with crumbly

shales and clays the group stopped to observe. The

current explanation for these layers is that the

sandstone layers, which are 3-4 feet in thickness,

are the result of turbidites (underwater landslides)

from sediments coming off the Klamath Mountains,

perhaps set off by earthquakes, and the clayey

layers represent the slow deposition of fines

between the catastrophic events. The clayey layers

can produce some catastrophic events of their own


as landslides plague the highway construction and

maintenance efforts along US 20.

On the way into Newport the group peeled off US

20 at Toledo to take the Yaquina River route into

town. Along this scenic drive the GSOCers passed

the pilings of the abandoned trestle for the old

Yaquina Railroad, which took a lot straighter path

along the river than the road does today. Arriving

along the historic waterfront area in Newport, the

group ascended to Highway 101 and travelled north

to Beverly Beach State Park where Janet had

organized a pot luck dinner in the Group Meeting

Hall.

The dinner featured a grilled salmon caught by

fisherman Dave Logsdon, who was a guest of the

group at the meal. It was quite a feast. The dinner

was preceded by a talk from biologist Karen

Driscoll describing tidepool flora and fauna that the

group would be seeing the following morning in the

Otter Crest marine garden’s tidepools. GSOC

members took in a beautiful walk on Beverly Beach

with the long midsummer light of the evening.

Next morning the group woke up to a steady

drizzle. Donning rain gear and warm clothing, many

of the members got up early to visit the tidepools

with Karen Driscoll. This was one of the lowest

tides of the year and so the group got to see a lot of

good stuff.

Next the group came in from the rain for a

presentation by Oregon State University professor

emeritus Alan Niem, with assistance by his

geologist wife Wendy Niem. Niem explained that

the Oregon coast is so beautiful because the sandy

beaches alternate with these dramatic basalt

headlands. The headlands in the Newport area

include Yaquina Head, Otter Crest, and Cape

Foulweather. Niem first studied these formations

under the tutelage of his old mentor Parke D.

Snavely, Jr.

Snavely was a supporter of the ―two-vent model‖ of

how Miocene basalt was formed on the Oregon

coast. Geologists of that era knew that the

Columbia River flood basalts were spreading in

eastern Oregon and Washington at the same time

and with similar composition to these coastal

headlands, but could not see how they could have

made it overland to the ocean. So the geologists

labeled these basalts as ―Cape Foulweather Basalt‖

and thought that they arrived by travelling up the

Cascadia thrust fault or similar pathway and were

related to, but not the same origin as, the Columbia

River Basalts. This was supported by the fact that

basalt dikes were found that had fed the formations

and so it was thought that these extended to the

melting zone below.

Further studies of the Columbia River Basalt Group

(CRB) were conducted by professor Marvin Beeson

of Portland State University and several of his

highly talented graduate students, including GSOC

Past President Beverly Vogt. Beeson recognized

that CRB traveled down the bed of the ancestral

Columbia River to the coast. He decided that a

―one-vent model‖ was more likely and that the CRB

upon reaching the ocean flowed into the soft muds

on the ocean floor and then spewed forth as dikes

and sills by hydraulic pressure from a pool below

the mud. The ―Cape Foulweather Basalt‖ has been

chemically identified as being part of the Ginkgo

flow of the Frenchman Springs Columbia River

Basalt.

The Niems have been further studying the basalt

headlands and have fleshed in details of Beeson’s

idea. The Ginkgo basalt that comprises Yaquina

Head is the result of the flow filling an underwater

canyon, probably an outlet of the ancestral

Columbia. Where the lava flowed into the water, it

broke into quickly cooled fragments that were later

cemented together to form the breccia that

comprises the base of the headland. Atop the

breccia sit monolithic flows that have either

colonnade or hackly jointing patterns. Between

Otter Crest and Cape Foulweather there are

concentric ring dikes visible in the surf.

Between these headlands are outcrops of the

Miocene-age Astoria Formation and below that the

Nye Mudstone. These are susceptible to erosion

and since the layers dip seaward many landslides

occur. Atop these is an angular unconformity and

horizontal marine terrace layers from the

Pleistocene, about 80,000 years old. Erosion is a


real problem to beach-front property owners in

Newport. Niem took the GSOC field trip out onto

the beach and pointed out all the features in the

Otter Crest area.

After a quick bite the group met former DOGAMI

landslide and tsunami expert George Priest at the

historic Nye Beach turnaround in Newport.

Through a steady drizzle the group huddled below

the remains of Jumpoff Joe, a headland comprised

of the same marine terrace over Astoria over Nye.

This feature has eroded dramatically over the last

hundred years, and has destroyed one condo project

in the recent past. Priest showed the group a

landslide hazard map that DOGAMI produced to

caution the citizens of Newport from getting too

close to the edge of the bluff in their construction

projects. Because it has negatively impacted

property values in structures perched too close, it is

a very sensitive document in the district.

After their all-day drenching, GSOC field trippers

either retired to the nearest restaurant or hotel to

warm up and dry off. Some of the campers had

quite a challenge because their tents were sitting in

puddles when they returned to the campground.

But the ones that stayed coped with the challenges,

and were rewarded with a dry day on Sunday, June

19.

The day began at Yaquina Head. The GSOC group

met at the Cobble Beach marine garden area and

took advantage of the low tide in the mid-morning.

Folks who had been at the previous day’s tidepool

had tidbits of information on what to look for from

Karen Driscoll’s tutelage and showed other

participants. The Gumboot Chiton was a

particularly interesting find, and one specimen ate a

hermit crab while we observed it. Coralline algae

was abundant in both encrusting and branched

forms, as well as green anemone, purple urchins,

and purple star. The author saw a sea pen lying

with the other kelp and whatnot strewn about in the

newly dried beach.

As described by Niem, the headland base was

Ginkgo breccia and this was observed by the

participants. The cobbles which comprised the

beach were weathered out of the breccia and were

extremely rounded and polished from the wave

action. A bit like walking on ball bearings. A large

sea stack of columnar basalt had distinct fan-shaped

jointing patterns. Nesting birds crowded atop it

included cormorants and common murres.

The last activity done on the trip was a tour of the

NOAA research vessel Wecoma stationed in

Newport and the recently opened NOAA

headquarters there. Able Seaman Patrick Breshears

took the GSOCers aboard for the tour, and showed

them the laboratories, research and hoisting

equipment, ship’s engine, decks, quarters, galley

and the control room. Breshears had grown up in

Burns, but took to sea at a young age and loves his

work.

GSOC members had a very memorable trip and

wish to thank Janet and all the other guest speakers

for their time and effort.

Additional Reading:

Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge

http://www.fws.gov/oregoncoast/wildlife/seabird.ht

m#5

http://www.fws.gov/oregoncoast/wildlife/seabird.htm#5

http://www.fws.gov/oregoncoast/wildlife/seabird.htm#5



ANNUAL EVENTS: President’s Field Trip—Summer or Fall; Banquet—March; Annual Business Meeting—

February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 77, Number 6




www.gsoc.org


President:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:

Anne O’Neill (1 year) - 503/477-7827

[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

November/December

Activities

Friday evening talk, November 11, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Scott Burns, Portland State

University professor of Geology, will present “The

Geology of Our National Parks”.

GSOC Annual Christmas Party

GSOC Members and their guests are invited to the

GSOC Annual Christmas Party and field trip slideshow,

Friday December 9th, 2011 at the Simon Benson House

on the Portland State University Campus, 1803 SW Park

Avenue at Montgomery Street corner. Ham will be

served. Members please bring vegetable, side dishes or

desserts for 6 to share. Those interested to bring wine,

soda or table ware please contact Anne O’Neill

(503)200-9308. Donations will be accepted for the room

rental.

Schedule of Christmas Party activities:

6:30 p.m. Dinner buffet

7:30 p.m. Year in Review. This year’s GSOC

field trip leaders will present slide shows of their trips:

Dave Olcott, “Globally Renowned Neogene Floods;

May 20-22”

Past President Janet Rasmussen, “Tidepools,

Tsunamis, and Terraces; June 17-19”

Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm and Past President Clay

Kelleher, “A Geological Walking Tour of

Downtown Portland; August 6”

President Rik Smoody, “Mt. Rainier Aggradation;

August 12-13”

8:30 p.m. Cookies/dessert

















Musicians are encouraged to volunteer for the GSOC

Christmas Chamber Players who play during the party;

contact Dawn Juliano (503)367-7708. Dressy apparel for

the evening is encouraged.

If you would like to come but are not yet a member of

GSOC, you may join now and receive membership

benefits throughout 2011.

Future Activities

Friday evening talk, January 13, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker TBA.


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES September 10, 2011


Smoody at the Smoody residence. Board and GSOC

members present also included Jane Walpole, Paul-

Edison Lahm, Richard Bartels, Dawn Juliano, Anne

O’Neill, Dave Olcott, and Antonella Mancini.

Field Trips and Other Events

Downtown Portland Geology Tour:

Paul thanked all who volunteered to help at the last

minute as the number of tour participants swelled.

The folks at Fossil Cartel are excited to work with

us again on the next walk.

President’s Field Trip:

Rik reported that his trip was blessed with good

weather, excellent speakers and gorgeous views of

Mt. Rainer’s glaciers, dams and aggradation. The

guide used for the trip, Pat Pringle’s Roadside

Geology of Mount Rainer National Park and

Vicinity, is highly recommended for anyone

wanting to take a self-guided tour.

Upcoming Field Trips:

Jane and Janet are looking into a less structured

self-guided trip to the Wallowas for next year. For

her anticipated President’s Field Trip, Jane is

looking into planning a three day event in the

Portland area that would draw in members who

might not otherwise go on the longer overnight field

trips.

Dave is working on a possible “Geology of the

Portland Basin” field trip with Terry Tolan. Bev and

Bart may plan a two-day trip to the Crooked River

calderas.

The board decided on a tentative schedule of next

year’s events:

Jane’s Portland area trip August 2012

Dave’s Portland basin trip September 2012

Paul’s walk for July/August 2012

It was also agreed that Larch Mountain should again

be the site for the annual picnic.

Upcoming Speakers (Jane):

Roger Dellinger will be speaking at the October

lecture on computer models for Iceland and

Missoula floods. Scott Burns will be speaking on

National Parks in November. Speakers for January

and February 2012 remain TBA. Rik is also looking

for a speaker for the annual banquet in March.

Holiday Banquet (Anne): the contract has been

signed with Portland State for use of the Benson

House for the holiday banquet. Dinner will be a

general potluck (rather than arbitrarily assigned by

last name) and served prior to the dessert course.

Anne will bring spiral ham. Musicians interested in

performing should contact Dawn. Donations will be

accepted.


Nominating Committee:

Rik will be appointing the nominating committee

for next year’s officers.

Mug Sales and Inventory:

A mug was presented to the speaker at the Friday

lecture, and a number of mugs were sold to the

audience members.



Newsletter:

The board decided that alternate month mailings

will be eliminated in 2012, reducing to six the

annual number of newsletters.

Website/Internet committee:

Minutes are now available for board members

online. Please contact Paul if you are a GSOC

member and wish to read the unabridged board

meeting minutes.

Next Board Meeting will be Saturday, November

12, 2011, 10:00 a.m. at the Vogt/Bartels’ residence.

Meeting Adjourned.

edited from the meeting minutes provided by GSOC

Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary

SMUG MUGS

GSOC is proudly selling its new logo mugs. The

mugs feature a GSOC logo on each side of the cup,

plus the statement 'Supporting Geology in the

Pacific Northwest since 1935' and the website

address 'GSOC.org' opposite the handle. Pricing

schedule is $7 each, two for $13 and four for $25.

Contact Richard Bartels or Carol Hasenberg for

more information.

OWYHEE CANYON ADVENTURE Synopsis of the October 14, 2011, lecture by

Cynthia Hovind, Geotechnical Engineer, Principal,

Terra Dolce Consultants, Inc.


Earlier in the year professional engineer Cynthia

Hovind got a rare opportunity to visit one of the

most remote, beautiful, and geologically interesting

corners of Oregon when she got invited to join a

rafting expedition down the Owyhee River. Not

only that, but she was hired to explain the geology

to a group of Road Scholars (formerly Elderhostel)

while doing the trip. The trip had only one

drawback and that was that it was cold enough to be

snowing the first day of the trip, then gradually

warmed as the trip progressed.

To do the job of interpreting the geology of the

area, Cynthia turned to Owyhee River basin

geology expert Kyle House, currently of the USGS

office in Flagstaff, Arizona, who has been mapping

some of the geological units in the area since 2007.

Kyle has been overlaying his work onto geologic

maps of the area and was able to give Cynthia the

history of the basin for the last 15 million years.

The Owyhee River is a 350-mile long tributary of

the Snake River and occupies the remote southeast

corner of Oregon. According to Orr and Orr, the

Owyhee uplands has a geology that is unique and

different from that of the adjacent Basin and Range

province to the west. Rather than alternating high

and low blocks resulting from crustal extension, this

highland was formed by volcanic activity beginning

in the Miocene about 15 million years ago.

Geologists have concluded that this activity was

produced by the same hot spot that is now located

beneath Yellowstone National Park.

Three Miocene sources that have been mapped in

the Owyhee uplands include the Mahogany

Mountain Caldera, the Three Fingers Caldera, and

the Saddle Butte Caldera. Both rhyolitic and

basaltic flows came from these sources.

After a period of volcanic quiescence and erosion,

the area was again the scene of much volcanic


activity in the Late Cenozoic, about 1.8 million

years ago. Many Late Cenozoic lavas have been

mapped by House, including the Bogus Rim,

Greeley Bar, Clarks Butte, Saddle Butte, West

Crater, Rocky Butte, and Coffee Pot lavas. These

flows were responsible for repaving the plateau by

producing a capping basalt layer, damming the

Owyhee River in several places forming lakes that

are now breached, and failing the sides of the

canyon in massive landslides.

After the Miocene volcanics and until about 8

million years ago, there were also a number of lakes

in the area created in crustal extension basins in

which a lot of volcanic sediments were deposited.

The many layers of volcanic lava that can be seen in

the sides of the canyon alternate with the massive

lake bed deposits, making the Owyhee canyon one

of the most spectacular and varied geological

wonders of the state.

Floating down the river to enjoy the astonishing

beauty, the Road Scholars group encountered a

number of rapids, hot springs, and old farms which

have been “grandfathered” into the Wild and Scenic

River. The low point of the trip for Hovind was

getting thrown from the raft in the Bulls Eye Rapids

and being rescued about a half of a mile

downstream. Due to its flow characteristics the

river is not runnable in hot weather, so the trip

occurred in the early part of May which is still

pretty cold in that region.

Nevertheless the rafting expedition enjoyed the

variety of sights to be seen along the river. In the

Rhyolite Canyon, twisted and folded rhyolitic flows

formed the canyon walls. The Weeping Wall

featured pillow basalts where the Saddle Butte lava

flowed into a lake. Polished boulders that were

thrown downstream from the lava dam breaches

dotted the riverbanks in places. The canyon had

beautiful colors, and in places where basalt dikes

cut through lakebed sediments the patterns were

dazzling. Hoodoos, pillars, and basalt columns

were found in many areas.

Highlights of the trip were shown to the GSOC

group in a slide show that demonstrated Hovind’s

remarkable photography skill. All in all it is a raft

trip we’re sure she’ll never forget.

Additional Reading:

Cynthia Hovind’s Geotechnical Engineering site:

http://www.terradolceconsultants.com/

Cynthia Hovind’s photography site:

http://www.terradolcephotography.com/

Kyle House’s blog with lots of geologic maps:

http://owyheeflotsam.posterous.com/

Geology of Oregon, 5th ed., by William N. Orr and

Elizabeth L. Orr, Kendall/Hunt Pub. Co., 1999.

Learn More About Oregon’s Geology web page:

http://www.oregon.gov/DOGAMI/learnmore/learn

more.shtml has a map showing the geologic

provinces of Oregon (from Orr and Orr).

Owyhee Wild and Scenic River BLM site:

http://www.blm.gov/or/resources/recreation/site_inf

o.php?siteid=317

OPB recently showed some film footage of Leslie

Gulch and Mahogany Mountain in the airing of

Oregon Field Guide on October 20, 2012, and this

episode is available on the OPB website

(www.opb.org). Ellen Morris Bishop was the field

trip leader on the filmed expedition.

SAVING THE OLD

BRINY

Synopsis of the September 9, 2011, lecture by Dr.

Douglas Larson, limnologist and writer based in

Portland, Oregon by Carol S. Hasenberg

Dr. Larson has made quite a splash in the Pacific

Northwest by studying the history, ecology, and

conservation of lakes in the region. He spoke to

GSOC four years ago about the origins of lakes in

Oregon (see reprinted article below), and mentioned

in passing the work he had been doing at Mt. St.

Helens and Crater Lake. More recently he has been

http://www.terradolceconsultants.com/

http://www.terradolcephotography.com/

http://owyheeflotsam.posterous.com/

http://www.oregon.gov/DOGAMI/learnmore/learnmore.shtml

http://www.oregon.gov/DOGAMI/learnmore/learnmore.shtml

http://www.blm.gov/or/resources/recreation/site_info.php?siteid=317

http://www.blm.gov/or/resources/recreation/site_info.php?siteid=317

http://www.opb.org/


studying Lake Abert, a remnant of the enormous Ice

Age Lake Chewaucan in the basin-and-range

geological province of south-central Oregon.

Larson has taken up the cause of saving Lake Abert,

which has few defenders as it is largely in human

terms a non-resource lake. It is intensely saline,

lacks any shade in the vicinity, has a brutal desert

climate, and the area “teems with rattlesnakes” – an

inhospitable place. Yet, it also teems with migratory

birds which come to nest and feed on brine shrimp

and alkali flies when the salinity of the lake is

optimal for the growth of these organisms. The

problem occurs when the lake’s supply of fresh

water to provide optimal-habitat conditions is

reduced. Maintaining lake elevation between 1,452

and 1,458 feet is essential for optimal salinity.

Larson briefly reviewed the history of Lake Abert

since the arrival of Europeans to the area and their

interaction with the lake. The earliest reference to

the lake was made by Hudson Bay employees who

dubbed it “Salt Lake” in 1832. In the 1840’s,

Captain John Fremont visited the lake as part of his

survey of the Oregon Territory and named it after

his boss, J. J. Abert. Larson noted that Lake Abert is

the only lake whose sketch is shown in the

monumental G. Evelyn Hutchinson’s A Treatise on

Limnology, a 4,000-page bulwark of the profession.

Since that time, there have been a number of ideas

and attempts to develop the lake for human needs: generating electricity by installing a pump-

storage hydro-electric plant mining the lake for salt diverting water for irrigation from the

Chewaucan River which feeds the lake building a dam for irrigation on the Chewaucan

River stocking the lake with fish (which immediately

died) from the Salton Sea

conducting explosions in the lake to see how

seismic waves work (Fortunately, this plan was

not implemented.) harvesting brine shrimp for aquaculture and

tropical fish food, a practice that scientists claim

has no adverse effect on lake biota.

Larson and Dr. Ron Larson of the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service have prepared a paper, titled "Lake

Abert: Salt lake in the high desert," which will be

published in the Winter 2011-2012 issue of

Lakeline magazine, the journal of the North

American Lake Management Society.

In studying the lake’s water budget, Larson utilized

records from the Chewaucan River gauging station

located in Paisley, which has kept records since

1912. Other gauging records from a site in the

marshes closer to the lake were used to compare

how much water has been diverted for irrigation.

Between 1912 and 1991, an average of 105,000

acre-ft of water flowed past Paisley per year but

only about an average of 62,000 acre-ft made it to

the lake. This loss is overwhelmingly due to

irrigation use. Other water sources such as direct

precipitation on the lake account for an additional

8,000 acre-ft per year. The lake loses 40 inches of

water per year to evaporation. There is virtually no

seepage loss due to a deep, mineralized,“hard pan”

layer that seals the basin bottom.

The elevation of the lake has fluctuated

dramatically over the past century. The lowest

recorded elevation was 4246.6 ft. during 1924-

1937, when the lake was dry or nearly dry. By 1958

the lake had swelled to an elevation of 4260.5 ft.

with an area of 64 sq.mi. and a volume of 360,000

acre-ft. In 2009 the lake’s elevation was 4248 ft.,

with a 39 sq. mi. area and a volume of 59,000 acre-

ft. Correspondingly, salinity has fluctuated with the

amount of water available to dilute it. The salinity

has been measured as high as 200 g/L (32g/L is

normal for the ocean). Brine shrimp need a salinity

of 30-80 g/L to thrive.

The input of water to the lake from the Chewaucan

River has declined significantly since the 1950’s,

and Larson hopes that his efforts will help to

convince the public about Lake Abert’s importance.

In 1991, the State of Oregon and the federal

government authorized a private developer to

further impound the Chewaucan River with a higher

earth-filled dam. The dam further depletes flows in

the river, thus jeopardizing lake biota. Larson

believes that the dam should be removed, thus


freeing the river and saving one of the world’s great

saline lakes.

Additional Reading:

For more information about Larson’s life and work on





2007 issue of The Geological Newsletter for “Doug

Larson Gives GSOC a Tour of Lake Origins,” an article

about a previous lecture to GSOC by Dr. Larson.

Oregon Field Guide episode of Lake Abert reviews

Keith Kreuz’s brine shrimp collection and the lake

ecology and conservation: http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1

121

Wikipedia page “G. Evelyn Hutchinson”, the

“father of American limnology”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Evelyn_Hutchinson

Keith Kreuz’s brine shrimp business website:

http://www.oregondesertbrineshrimp.com/ Oregon tui chubs paper: http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/publications/pnw_gtr405/

pnw_gtr405_65.pdf

DOUG LARSON GIVES GSOC

A TOUR OF LAKE ORIGINS Reprinted from The Geological Newsletter, Volume

73, Number 12, December 2007.

"The Origin of Lake

Basins in the Pacific

Northwest" was the

topic of a slide show by

Dr. Doug Larson, an

independent scientist

and writer, presented on

the November 9, 2007, GSOC Friday night meeting.

Editor’s recommendation: Have a copy of the

DeLorme Oregon Atlas & Gazeteer, or similar

publication, on hand when you read this article.

The GSOC Friday night meeting crowd was

entertained last month by Dr. Doug Larson and his

discussion of lake origins in Oregon and

Washington. Dr. Larson studied the recovery and

formation of lakes in Mt. St. Helens National

Monument for the Army Corps of Engineers after

the eruption in 1980. He monitored the evolution of

Spirit Lake during that time as well as the formation

of Coldwater and Castle Lakes. These lakes were

all formed by mudflows from the volcano which

blocked water drainage out of low areas. Spirit

Lake formed 3000 years ago but its latest location

and size are due to the massive 1980 landslide

which triggered the eruption.

After discussing his work at Mt. St. Helens, Dr.

Larson headed south to discuss lake origins in

southern Washington. He mentioned both

Battleground Lake and Vancouver Lake.

Battleground Lake is really unique in origin and

shape – it has “bull’s eye” contours (refer to the

USGS-CVO website for maars and Battleground

Lake). Vancouver Lake, a cutoff channel created

from the Columbia River, received 20 million

dollars to rehabilitate as part of the Clean Water Act

– the largest such grant in the U.S.

Next Dr. Larson took the GSOC audience on a trip

around Oregon, reviewing some origins of major

groups of lakes. On the central Oregon coast near

Florence and Reedsport, the lakes have been formed

by rising sea level and sand dune encroachment.

Because they are impoundment lakes, they have a

characteristic branched shape. Most of the lakes are

in private hands, and show signs of human

interference. Larson showed a slide of Munsel

Lake, which has had some sand infill for home

sites, and also a slide of the ineffectually tiny buffer

zones from clear cuts around Siltcoos Lake, which

is a municipal water supply. Clear Lake, another

such water supply lake south of Reedsport, is

protected much more strictly. Cleawox Lake is also

interesting because there a very large sand dune is

pinching off a region of the lake due to recreational

bathers using it as a slide.

Along the north Oregon coast one finds lakes in

interdunal swales. Examples of this are Coffenbury

Lake and Crabapple Lake at Fort Stevens State





http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1121

http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1121

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Evelyn_Hutchinson

http://www.oregondesertbrineshrimp.com/

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/publications/pnw_gtr405/pnw_gtr405_65.pdf

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/publications/pnw_gtr405/pnw_gtr405_65.pdf

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Maars/description_maars.html


Park. These lakes are long and thin and parallel to

the shoreline. In the Coast Range, Dr. Larson noted

two lakes created by landslides -- Triangle Lake

west of Eugene and Loon Lake east of Reedsport.

Moving inland, Dr. Larson mentioned a number of

oxbow lakes in the Willamette valley near

Harrisburg, Oregon. These lakes were created by

neck cutoffs and chute cutoffs as the Willamette

River abandoned its curvy path in favor of a more

direct route as it meandered across the flood plain.

Next Dr. Larson described a number of truly

spectacular lakes in or near the Cascade Range of

Oregon. By any standard Crater Lake, in a collapse

caldera with water about 2000 feet deep, is one of

the world’s most spectacular lakes. Larson

compared it to a lake in northern Quebec created by

a meteorite strike, which would be a real “crater”

lake. Newberry Crater is another caldera (not

crater) lake system containing East Lake and

Paulina Lake, separated by a cinder cone. Diamond

Lake between Mt. Bailey and Mt. Thielsen was

formed by lava flows and glacial action. Odell

Lake, a glacial trough, is a very fine kokanee lake.

Waldo Lake, a large lake southeast of Eugene near

Willamette Pass, is very special. Waldo Lake is a

very oligotrophic lake with about 150 foot clarity.

The water chemistry of the lake approximates that

of distilled water. Motorboats have been outlawed

on the lake, which cannot be stocked because there

is no food source for the fish (oligotrophic means

the water has few plant nutrients). The bottom of

lake is covered with moss and liverworts.

Moving to northeast Oregon, Dr. Larson showed in

an airphoto that Wallowa Lake, with its lateral and

end moraines, is a glacial trough. He also described

glacial cirque lakes in the Wallowa Mountains.

Then in a southward move, Larson mentioned

Malheur Lake and Harney Lake, ice age (pluvial)

lakes which emptied into the Snake River during

their heyday. About a dozen small lakes are all that

remains of the pluvial lake in Warner Valley, which

formed in south central Oregon’s basin and range

topography. The region also boasts Lake Abert, a

tilted fault block lake, and Summer Lake, an

evaporation basin.

Near the end of the talk Dr. Larson mentioned

manmade lakes in Oregon, but as he pointed out,

the word “lake” is a misnomer applied to these

reservoirs of water. Now that we have been shown

around the state by Dr. Larson’s lake tour, we

should have a new appreciation for how lakes

originate in our state. We can consider how the

geology of the area affects the creation and shape of

a lake.

Carol Hasenberg

References and Additional Reading

Johnson, Daniel, and others, Atlas of Oregon Lakes,

Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon,

1985, 314 p.




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 78, Number 1




www.gsoc.org


President:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:

Anne O’Neill (1 year) - 503/477-7827

[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

January/February

Activities




University. Speaker Dr. Richard Waitt of the USGS

Cascades Volcano Observatory will present "Dark at

Noon: The 1980 Mt. St. Helens Eruption Through

Eyewitnesses."

Friday evening talk, February 10, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Dr. Jim O'Connor of the USGS

Water Science Center in Portland will present "The

Bridge of the Gods; Folklore, Forests and Floods."

Future Activities

The Seventy-seventh Annual GSOC Banquet will be

Sunday, March 11, 2011, at the Monarch Hotel in

Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker William Orr, Professor

Emeritus and Curator of the Condon Collections,

Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of

Oregon will present "Plowing New Ground in Oregon

Geology".

Dr. William Orr will highlight a few of the many

changes he and his wife Elizabeth chronicle in the

6th edition of Geology of Oregon. With ordinary

on-the-ground field work, several astonishing new

discoveries have been made such as the ORE-IDA

graben in SE Oregon and the Crooked River

Caldera. He will also speak about their significance.

Much of the Tertiary volcanism east of the

Cascades is now regarded to be due to the passage

of the Yellowstone mantle plume beneath Oregon-a

















major departure from earlier models of back-arc-

spreading and Basin and Range extension. Our

understanding of Oregon's tectonic history of major

subduction earthquakes, while not yet crystal clear,

has been greatly advanced in the last decade. The

new emphasis on geologic hazards as well as the

features on some of the geologists who have made

Oregon geology what it is will also be examined.

The registration form for the 77th

GSOC Annual

Banquet is attached to this newsletter. Please

submit your registration by March 5 if you wish to

attend.


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES November 12, 2011


Smoody at the Bartels-Vogt residence. Board and

GSOC members present included Jane Walpole,

Paul Edison-Lahm, Richard Bartels, Dawn Juliano,

Julia Lanning, Larry Purchase, Carol Hasenberg,

Bev Vogt, Jan Kem, Tara Schoffstall, Dave Olcott,

Rosemary Kenney and John Piccininni.

The minutes of the September 10th, 2011 board

meeting and the treasurer’s report were approved.


For her 2012 President’s field trip, Jane is arranging

a bus tour in the Willamette Valley. Other 2012

tentative field trip destinations were discussed. Paul

requested additional guides for next summer’s

downtown geology tour and three members

volunteered at the meeting.

Upcoming Speakers:

Jane is looking for speakers for January and

February 2012. Possible topics include geological

dating, I-5 stabilization, and Iceland. John, our

nominated Vice President for next year, will look

into finding speakers on groundwater flow and

fracking.

Holiday Party and Annual Banquet

The discussion of whether or not to find an alternate

venue for the Christmas Party was tabled until after

the holidays when Anne O’Neill will be present.

The board’s consensus was that the “Christmas

Party” will henceforth be referred to as the “Holiday

Party.”

Bart is making arrangements with the Monarch

Hotel for the March Annual Banquet, with a date

TBA. Rik is arranging the banquet speaker.


Nominating Committee:

The committee nominations are as follows:

President – Jane, Vice-president – John, Secretary

– Paul, Treasurer – Dawn, 2-Year Director – Julia.

Tara threw her hat into the ring for 1-year Director.

Bart will search for a nominee for 3-year Director.

Inventory:

Bev distributed inventory list for review and

requested that any additions to the list be emailed to

her. Rosemary has old field guides she would like to

get rid of. Bart moved to put the guides for free out

at the annual banquet and then allow Rosemary to

recycle any that are not taken. Julie will look into

scanning the guides and report back.

Meeting Minutes:

The board reconsidered our decision at the last

meeting to omit board meeting minutes from the

newsletter and voted to allow Carol to continue her

good work condensing the minutes for the

newsletter.

Adverts for Geology-Related Businesses:

Paul will contact Oregon Dept. of Justice regarding

our non-profit status and use of advertising in our

mailings.

Finances:

Carol raised a concern about how to make GSOC

break even. Fortunately, in reducing the number of

newsletter mailings to 6 per year we think we will

save approximately $400 and put us back in the

black for 2012.



Next Board Meeting will be Saturday, January 14th,

2012, 10:00 a.m. at Rosemary’s house.

edited from the meeting minutes provided by GSOC

Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm

Don’t forget that annual DUES

PAYMENTS are due! Think about all

those great member benefits for a mere annual fee

of $25 for an individual and $35 for a family!

PS – If you joined GSOC in September or later,

your 2012 dues are paid, good deal!!!

Holiday Party Wrap-Up

Yes, another fascinating year was

marked at the 3rd

annual GSOC Holiday Party on

December 9. Delicious food, good fellowship, and

great entertainment was to be had at the Simon

Benson house that night. The highlight of this

year’s party was a song composed and sung by

GSOC member Al LePage concerning the

President’s field trip he attended in 2010:

"Here We Come A Fossiling" Lyrics by AI LePage, Music to the tune of "Here We Come A Wassailing"

Here we come a fossiling, among the rock so pure, Here we find a talus slope, with ammonites galore. CHORUS ...

Rocks and gems come to you, and to you a fossil, too, Join the fun, come on field trips all around the year, come on field trips all around the year.

Here we find the fossil jaw, that Carol had recovered,

that didn’t look like anything, but something big discovered. CHORUS ... Here's a hilly side slope, yes it was quite a walk, Here we find an open pit, where once there was a "croc." CHORUS ... Here we come a lecturing, with Larry and Van Tassell, Here we come a learning, it really was no hassle. CHORUS ... Here's a limestone monolith, our fine state's oldest rock, and here's somebody's car part, yes it was all the talk. CHORUS ... Here's the great Blue Mountains, a series of terranes, Bev & Bart deciphered them, using their great brains. CHORUS ... Here's a camp under the stars, with rock hounds who are dear, with fondness just remember, that trip we took last year. CHORUS ...

Next year Al has a short play he would like GSOC

members to perform. It should be a hoot!

GSOC Treasurer Richard Bartels is still accepting

donations from GSOC members to cover the

society’s expenses for the Christmas party.


Nominating Committee

Results


this year’s nominating committee:

President ..................................... Jane Walpole

Vice President .......................... John Piccininni


Treasurer .................................... Dawn Juliano

Director, 3 years ................... Janet Rasmussen


Director, 1 year....................... Tara Schoffstall

Nominations will be closed for this year’s slate of

officers after the January meeting of the society.

The slate of officers will be voted on and approved

at the February monthly meeting.

The Nominating Committee members were Rik

Smoody, Richard Bartels, and Larry Purchase. Our

thanks to the selected members and members of the

Nominating Committee!

Scott Burns Tells GSOC About

Geology Of Pacific Northwest

National Parks by Beverly Vogt

Friday night, November 11, Scott Burns, PSU

geology professor, spoke to GSOC about the

National Parks of the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Burns,

who each year teaches a PSU geology class about

National Parks, confined his GSOC talk to the

Pacific Northwest parks. He pointed out that most

national parks were established because of their

geology.

The first park he discussed was the one closest to

us—Mount Rainier National Park, established in

1899. Mount Rainier is the highest mountain in the

Cascade Range—the north-south trending volcanic

arc that exists because of melting of part of the

oceanic Juan de Fuca Plate that is being subducted

beneath the continental North American Plate. Less

than a million years old, Mount Rainier at its

current height of 14,411 feet is the highest Cascade

volcano and is thought to have been at one time at

least a thousand feet higher. About 6,000 years ago,

a series of violent eruptions and explosions

culminating in a violent explosion about 5,700 years

ago destroyed the original summit. Blocks of rocks

and ice were thrown great distances from the

summit, glaciers melted, and numerous catastrophic

mudflows roared down the mountain. New glaciers

eventually formed, and about 2,500 years ago,

eruptions of lava flows and ash began to rebuild the

old, heavily damaged summit.

Unlike many of the other Cascade volcanoes, about

90 percent of Mount Rainier’s volcanic products

have been andesitic lava flows. Heavily laden rain

clouds rising from the Pacific routinely drop large

amounts of rain and snow on the mountain, and it is

covered by numerous glaciers, 26 of which have

been named. Glacial activity has deeply eroded the

mountain. The most popular entrance is the

Nisqually entrance, located on the southwest corner

of the park. The park headquarters are located at

Longmire, which was originally settled because of

the hot springs located nearby. The main road

continues past Longmire and eventually reaches the

appropriately named Paradise visitors center, with

numerous trails, a fantastic view of the mountain,

and, in summer, fields of gorgeous wild flowers.

Other specific areas discussed by Dr. Burns

included Stevens Canyon; Longmire Hot Springs;

Sunrise area on the east side; ice caves; summit

crater; Grove of the Patriarchs; Narada Falls; and

Nisqually, Carbon, and Emmons glaciers.

Thousands of years of volcanic activity have

severely altered many of Mount Rainier’s rocks.

Rockfalls, rockslides, avalanches, debris flows,

mudflows, and other mass-wasting processes occur

frequently on its slopes. More than 55 lahars

(enormous mudflows) originating on its steep slopes

and transported by water from its streams and

melting glaciers have traveled great distances down

its valleys and out on the surrounding flat areas.

The longest was the Osceola Mudflow, which about

5,700 years ago traveled down the White River and

continued about 70 miles to the northwest,

eventually reaching Puget Sound. This history of

mudflows has alerted geologists to the danger to


surrounding communities and cities, and much

work has been done to develop warning systems

and emergency evacuation procedures.

Crater Lake National Park, established in 1902,

was the second park Dr. Burns discussed. Crater

Lake lies in the caldera of Mount Mazama, which

collapsed after a series of explosive eruptions

beginning almost 7,000 years ago and culminating

in a final devastating eruption 6,845 years ago. Ash

from that eruption was widely distributed north to

British Columbia and Alberta, south to Nevada, and

east to Montana. The resulting caldera gradually

filled with rainwater, forming Crater Lake, which is

famous for its clarity and deep blue color. The lake

covers about 21 square miles and is over 1,900 feet

deep. Mount Mazama probably started to develop

about 75,000 years ago and is thought at one time to

have reached a height of about 11,000 feet, with a

shape that was broader and less steep than Mount

Rainier. Its composition is primarily dacite and

rhyodacite.

Features discussed by Dr. Burns included the

Pumice Desert on the north side of Mount Mazama;

parasitic Mount Scott (Scott’s favorite); Phantom

Ship and Devils Backbone, which are dikes; Llao

Rock, a lava-filled explosion crater viewed from the

inside; and the Pinnacles, spires of pyroclastic

material cemented by fumarolic cement (similar to

the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Katmai

National Park and Preserve in Alaska).

Lassen Volcanic National Park, established in

1916, was the third park discussed. Lassen Peak, the

10,457-feet-high volcanic peak located at the

southern end of the Cascade Range, is actually a

dacite dome—the largest such dome in the world.

The dome is a sort of parasitic offspring of the large

composite volcano known as Tehama that collapsed

late in the Pleistocene, leaving a caldera more than

two miles wide. About 18,000 years ago, the dome

of Lassen Peak, along with several much smaller

domes (Eagle Peak, Vulcan’s Castle, Mount Helen,

and Bumpass Mountain), began to form on the

flanks of Tehama. Lassen Peak is surrounded by

large quantities of talus formed as the dome pushed

its way to the old surface of Tehama. A summit

crater on Lassen Peak was the source of several

eruptions, including those occurring from 1914 to

1921. Several of these eruptions, which were

observed, described, and photographed, caused

severe problems for nearby residents. The “Great

Eruption” of 1915 produced a mushroom cloud over

the mountain, a glowing avalanche that roared down

the northeast side of the mountain, and a series of

mud and ash flows that swept down the mountain,

leaving a four-mile-long area called today the

“Devastated Area.”

Other features of interest include Chaos Crags,

formed as four dacite domes north of Lassen Peak

about 1,200 years ago; Chaos Jumbles, a rock

avalanche extending from the base of Chaos Crags

and probably triggered by the collapse of one of the

domes about 300 years ago; Lake Manzanita

formed when Manzanita Creek was dammed by the

Chaos Jumbles rock avalanche; and numerous small

lakes including small cirque lakes such as Emerald

Lake and Lake Helen, plus several other lakes such

Summit Lake that were dammed by moraines.

Thermal features associated with the volcanic

activity include Sulfur Works with hot springs and

fumaroles, Little Hot Springs Valley, Bumpass Hell

with boiling springs and bubbling mud pots, and

Devils Kitchen whose hot springs are so acidic that

they have eaten holes and pits into the bedrock.

This park is truly a wonderland of all sorts of

volcanic features—many of which are quite recent.

Moving away from volcanic terranes, Dr. Burns

then discussed Olympic National Park, a classic

example of an accreted terrane. Established in 1938

and located on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington,

Olympic National Park has the highest annual

precipitation in the conterminous United States. It is

characterized by 60 glaciers at higher elevations, a

rain forest on the lower western slopes, and a dry

northeastern area produced by a rain shadow. The

park consists mainly of two groups of rocks—belts

of relatively light-weight sedimentary and low-

grade metamorphic rocks combined with heavier

submarine basalt called the Crescent Formation—

which were scraped off the subducting Juan de Fuca

Plate and pushed onto the Olympic Peninsula.

The park is divided into two sections: the coastal

section, which is a narrow strip extending from the

mouth of the Queets River on the south to Cape


Alava and the Ozette River on the north, and the

inland, much larger portion containing Mount

Olympus and surrounding Olympic Mountains. The

coastal section is characterized by sea stacks,

mélanges, sea arches, various other erosional

features, and beach terraces indicating sea-level

changes. Park headquarters are at Port Angeles just

outside the park, and a visitors center is at

Hurricane Ridge inside the main portion of the park.

Mount Olympus at approximately 7,980 feet is the

highest point in the park, and it and its surrounding

mountains are composed of a chaotic blend of

turbidites, mélanges, and sedimentary and low-

grade metamorphic rocks all folded and faulted

together.

Some of the points of interest mentioned in the talk

are glacially- or landslide-formed Lake Angeles,

Lake Crescent caused by a landslide from Storm

King Mountain, and Lillian Ridge formed from a

mélange.

Dr. Burns then shifted his attention to North

Cascades National Park, established in 1968.

Located also in the state of Washington, North

Cascades National Park consists mainly of four

units of sedimentary, volcanic, granitic, and

metamorphic rocks of varying ages that have been

brought together, often as accreted terranes, by

plate tectonic collisions, subduction, accretion,

uplift, and volcanism. Then they were shaped by

erosion and over 600 glaciers. This is truly a

complicated geologic area, with rocks ranging in

age from the Precambrian Yellow Aster Formation

to Quaternary volcanic extrusive rocks from Mount

Baker and Glacier Peak.

Specific features discussed by Dr. Burns included

the metamorphic Pickett Range, Skagit Gneiss,

Lake Chelan which lies in a deep U-shaped valley,

volcanic Mount Baker, explosively eruptive Glacier

Peak volcano, and the Chilliwack Batholith that lies

between the Shuksan and Ross Lake faults. This is

exciting and complex country, with incredibly

beautiful and mystifying rocks.

Finally, Dr. Burns briefly discussed the Ice Age

Floods National Geologic Trail that was recently

authorized by Congress but not funded. The concept

is that there will be 16 visitor centers extending

from Missoula, Montana, to Ilwaco, Washington.

Dr. Scott Burns as usual crammed a huge amount of

information into a brief lecture. His class covering

all the National Parks would be fascinating, and he

encouraged GSOC members to try it some time.

Earth profiles Pat Pringle by Beverly Vogt

The December 2011 issue of Earth magazine

features a two-page profile of Pat Pringle, one of

our local geologists who has led several GSOC field

trips, including one day of this year’s President’s

Field Trip to Mount Rainier. The magazine is

published by the American Geosciences Institute

(AGI) and presents timely geologic news and

discussions of issues of concern to geologists and

other people interested in geology.

The two-page profile discusses details of Pat’s

professional experience and focuses on his studies

related to tree ring dating. He has in fact established

an undergraduate tree-ring research laboratory at

Centralia College in Centralia, Washington, where

he has been a professor since 2005. Pat’s work with

tree-ring studies (dendrochronology) has apparently

earned him the nickname of “Stumps” to some

USGS geologists. Pat is also familiar to many of us

as the author of two excellent field trip guides—one

to the geology of Mount Saint Helens and the other

to the geology of Mount Rainier.

If you don’t subscribe to this magazine (which

would be a good idea for someone interested in

geology) and want to see a copy, look for it in your

local library or contact me ([email protected]).


Review of The Ocean of Truth, by H.W. Menard (1986) by Beverly Vogt

Bart bought a copy of this wonderful book at the

book sale table at one of the GSOC Annual

Banquets and put it on our bookshelf, where it

languished unknown to me for several years. He

was recently going to lend it to a friend interested in

plate tectonics—but when I saw it on the dining

room table for the first time, I kept it to read myself.

It was absolutely fascinating. Its author, Henry

William “Bill” Menard, pioneer of deep-sea

exploration, active participant in the plate-tectonics

revolution, and master of modern marine

geomorphology, wrote this book because he

believed that “the revolution in the earth sciences

merited a history that had not been written.” He

knew and worked with many of the people involved

in developing this new concept, so he definitely had

the credentials to tell the story of their struggles to

come to terms with the questions of whether or not

continental drift was a possibility, and, if so, how

could it occur, and how could it be proved. His

original plan was to tell the story from 1900 until

1980, but cancer interrupted his plan, and he was

able to cover the story only until the end of the 60s.

In fact, he was working on galleys of this book

when he died in 1986.

Menard starts with the story of the German

meteorologist, astronomer, and explorer Alfred

Wegener, whose trips to Greenland starting in 1906

convinced him that some of the existing continents

had at one time been together and had somehow

mysteriously drifted apart, making him the first to

formally deal with the term and concept of

continental drift. People before him had noticed the

fit between South America and Africa—but

Wegener was the first to put it into the literature.

Eventually scientists came to realize that the

answers to these questions would be found not on

the continents but in the oceans.

Menard describes how earth scientists—especially

geophysicists and oceanographers—who were in

various branches of the service during World War

II, began to travel over the world’s oceans,

collecting data by various methods for various

purposes. The cold war and concerns for national

security, petroleum exploration, and communication

by undersea cables all meant that people were

seeing more and more of the ocean floor and

collecting data by ever-improving equipment and

techniques. Menard tells how they began to notice

things that no one had ever seen before—gigantic

long ridges with high sides and a deep valley in the

middle, flat-topped undersea volcanoes called

“guyots”, long fractures or escarpments like the

Mendocino Fracture Zone, strange magnetic

anomalies, unexplainable variations in amounts and

character of sediments on ocean floors, gravity

anomalies over deep trenches that contained

surprisingly small amounts of sediments—all sorts

of puzzles. More and more funding and ships

loaded with equipment became available, and

scientists put them to good use. Menard describes

the 40s and 50s as the time of data collection and

the 60s as the time of figuring it all out.

Plate tectonics was too big a problem for just one

person to solve, and it took many people to bring

the concept to life. J. Tuzo Wilson, Harry Hess, H.

Benioff, A.M Coode, Allan Cox, R.S. Dietz,

Maurice Ewing, James Gilluly, Warren Hamilton,

Bruce Heezen, Gordon MacDonald, D.H.

Matthews, Bill Menard, Ian McDougal, M.

Talwani, Fred Vine, plus many others I had never

heard of—these were the geologists,

oceanographers, and geophysicists who worked,

argued, traveled on long grueling data-collecting

cruises, cooperated or competed, and shared ideas.

Scientists struggled to develop tools that worked

under terrible conditions, went on long grueling

ocean trips to collect huge amounts of data that had

to be reduced and interpreted, and then argued

almost to the death about such topics as whether the

earth was expanding or contracting, why there were

strike-slip faults such as the San Andreas Fault, why

the long mid-ocean ridges with valleys in the center

circled the globe, why guyots were flat-topped,

what were the long east-west fracture zones on the

Pacific floor, why were symmetrical magnetic

anomalies parallel to mid ocean ridges, etc. Once

the plate tectonic concept took shape, then the

mechanism that made it possible had to be

determined. People argued and took sides, and some


committed themselves to ideas that were dead ends

or just plain wrong.

This book gives the reader an inside view on how

theories or new models in geology (and many other

sciences) are developed. At first the plate tectonics

concept was mostly in the hands of an “old boy”

network of people who went to school or worked

together, lived in the same neighborhood, partied

together, and talked geology nonstop. As important

as the theory of plate tectonics is to us today, early

on only a few geologists knew or cared much about

it. In fact, Menard shows that in 1969, 91 papers

were published on conodonts and only 56 were

published on continental drift. Once the concept

was accepted, however, it was the work of

succeeding geologists to add the details, which they

have been doing since the end of the 60s.

Menard ponders over how new ideas appear, who

gets credit, what kind of person is best suited to

come up with new concepts, what kind of scientific

organizations generate ideas and solutions to

problems most effectively, how publication

generates recognition and spreads new ideas—all

the things he dealt with during these exciting years.

This is the best description of the inner workings of

the scientific competition and cooperation I have

ever read. It certainly equals the excitement of the

story of the discovery of DNA in The Double Helix

by James D. Watson (also a great book).

Menard’s book is well indexed and footnoted and

has a wonderful list of useful references. It also

includes illustrations of original data and

photographs of many well-known people. I

recommend it whole heartedly to anyone who is

interested in the history of plate tectonics. In fact I

got an extra copy of it though amazon.com and am

donating it to the GSOC library so other people can

enjoy it.

The moral of this story is that if you have a geology

book that is interesting, accurate, and not out of

date—and you think someone else would enjoy it as

much as I did this one—donate it to GSOC for the

book sale table at the Annual Banquet.

WELCOME NEW MEMBERS FOR 2012! We’ve gotten a lot of new members this past

year! You guys are awesome!

Mike Bliziotes Iris Walling

Sue Cousineau Mary Ford

Jim Hieman John Hoskins

Marilee Hoskins Wes Kempfer

Mark Landis Cheryl Landis

George Long Dennis McDougall

Virginia Ohler Doug Ohler

Teresa Pett Joshua Pett

John Piccinini Fenella Robinson

Vickie Robinson Garret Romaine

Hank Schottland Elka Schottland

David Terrell Robert Timmer

Theresa Triano Robert Casiano

Kay Wyatt



Volume 77, 2011

compiled by Carol Hasenberg

January/February .......... no.1 ......... pages 1-8

March/April .................. 2 .......................9-18

May/June ...................... 3 .....................19-26

July/August ................... 4 .................... 27-34

September/October ....... 5 .................... 35-40

November/December .... 6 .................... 41-48

ARTICLES and REPORTS······································································································· Page

New Book Corner: Stores in Stone, review by Dr. Paul Hammond ································································· 5

Mapping for Disasters: Synopsis of the October 8, 2010 GSOC Friday night lecture by Don Pettit, Senior Emergency

Response Planner, Emergency Response Program, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, by Carol

Hasenberg························································································································· 6

New Book Corner: The Planet in a Pebble, review by Dr. Paul Hammond ······················································ 15

Searles Lake Story: Synopsis of the January 14, 2011 GSOC Friday night lecture by Joseph Cohen, GSOC member and

intellectual-property lawyer at Stoel Rives LLP, in Portland, Oregon, by Carol Hasenberg ························· 15

Edentates in the Willamette Valley: Synopsis of the February 12, 2011, Fossil Fest lecture, “Digging up the Kings Valley

Groundsloth,” by Dr. William Orr, Professor Emeritus and Curator of the Condon Collections, Museum of

Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, by Carol Hasenberg ············································· 16

Paleo-Noir: Bone-Hunting Adventures of a Geology Professor on an Oregon Potato Farm: Synopsis of the March 12,

2011 GSOC 76th Annual Banquet lecture by Dr. Jay Van Tassell, Professor of Geology, College of Arts and

Sciences, Eastern Oregon University, LaGrande, Oregon, by Carol Hasenberg ······································· 23

New Rules: Putting the Federal Paleontological Resources Preservation Act into Action: Synopsis of the April 8, 2011

GSOC Friday night lecture by Courtney Cloyd, recently retired, formerly Senior Geologist for Geologic Hazards

and Geologic Resources, U.S. Forest Service, by Carol Hasenberg ····················································· 24

Raising a Dam for Barney Reservoir and Washington County’s Water Supply: Synopsis of the May 13, 2011 GSOC

Friday night lecture by Charlie Hammond, geologist, Cornforth Consultants, by Carol Hasenberg ················ 30

Cascadia Subduction Zone is Giving Us the “Slow Slip”: Synopsis of the June 10, 2011 GSOC Friday night lecture by

Evelyn Roeloffs, Research Geophysicist for the USGS Earthquake Science Center in Vancouver, Washington, by

Carol Hasenberg ··············································································································· 32

Newport at Midsummer’s Weekend: Synopsis of the “Tidepools, Tsunamis, and Terraces” trip lead by GSOC Past

President Janet Rasmussen, June 17-19, 2011, by Carol Hasenberg ···················································· 37

Owyhee Canyon Adventure: Synopsis of the October 14, 2011, lecture by Cynthia Hovind, Geotechnical Engineer,

Principal, Terra Dolce Consultants, Inc., by Carol Hasenberg ··························································· 43

Saving The Old Briny: Synopsis of the September 9, 2011, lecture by Dr. Douglas Larson, limnologist and writer based in

Portland, Oregon, by Carol Hasenberg ······················································································ 44

Doug Larson Gives Gsoc A Tour Of Lake Origins: Reprinted from The Geological Newsletter, Volume 73, Number 12,

December 2007 ················································································································ 46

SOCIETY BUSINESS

Board Meeting Notes: December 11, 2010, by Beverly Vogt ······································································· 4

Board Meeting Notes: February 19, 2011, by Beverly Vogt ······································································· 14

Board Meeting Notes: April 9, 2011, by Paul Edison-Lahm ······································································· 22

Board Meeting Notes: June 11, 2011, by Paul Edison-Lahm ······································································ 29

Board Meeting Notes: July 17, 2011, by Paul Edison-Lahm ······································································· 36

Board Meeting Notes: September 10, 2011, by Paul Edison-Lahm ······························································· 42

MEMORIALS

In Memoriam: PSU Professor Gilbert Thomas Benson ············································································ 17




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 78, Number 2

March/April 2012



www.gsoc.org


President:


[email protected]

Vice-President:

John Piccininni – 503/284-9674

[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:

Tara Schoffstall (1 year) – 503/513-6925

[email protected]


[email protected]

Janet Rasmussen (3 years) − 541/753-0774

[email protected]

Past Presidents:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

March/April Activities

The Seventy-seventh Annual GSOC Banquet will be


Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker William Orr, Professor



Oregon will present "Plowing New Ground in Oregon

Geology".

Dr. William Orr will highlight a few of the many

changes he and his wife Elizabeth chronicle in the

6th edition of Geology of Oregon. With ordinary

on-the-ground field work, several astonishing new

discoveries have been made such as the ORE-IDA

graben in SE Oregon and the Crooked River

Caldera. He will also speak about their significance.

Much of the Tertiary volcanism east of the

Cascades is now regarded to be due to the passage

of the Yellowstone mantle plume beneath Oregon-a

major departure from earlier models of back-arc-

spreading and Basin and Range extension. Our

understanding of Oregon's tectonic history of major

subduction earthquakes, while not yet crystal clear,

has been greatly advanced in the last decade. The

new emphasis on geologic hazards as well as the

features on some of the geologists who have made

Oregon geology what it is will also be examined.


GSOC Annual

Banquet was attached to the January/February

newsletter and is also available on the website

www.gsoc.org. Please submit your registration by

March 5 if you wish to attend.

Friday evening talk, April 13, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Sheila Alfsen, MAT, GIT, Oregon

Community College Instructor and Consultant will


















present "Iceland: Geologic Perspectives from the Land

of Fire and Ice."

Sheila Alfsen is a community college instructor and

course developer who teaches both face-to-face and

online courses in geology. In addition, she is working

towards geologic registration in Oregon and has worked

as a consultant for various construction projects in the

western United States. In 2008, Sheila had the

opportunity to travel to Iceland with a geologic tour

sponsored by the Geologic Society of America for

American educators. Sheila’s long-term studies of

Pacific Northwest geology enhanced her understanding

of the features visited on the tour and she will share

some of the geologic perspectives she gained on

continental rifting, volcanism, glaciation and

hydrothermal features and their innovative uses.

Future Activities




University. Speaker TBA.


the calendar.

2012-2013 Board of

Directors

The following slate of officers has been elected by

the membership at the February meeting of the

Society:

President ..................................... Jane Walpole

Vice President .......................... John Piccininni





Director, 1 year....................... Tara Schoffstall

The board also has these automatic members:

Immediate Past President.............Rik Smoody

Previous Past President .......... Larry Purchase

We look forward to your term of service!

BOARD MEETING NOTES January 14, 2011

The GSOC board meeting was called to order by

President Rik Smoody at Rosemary Kenney’s

residence. Board and GSOC members present

included Jane Walpole, Rik Smoody, Beverly Vogt,

Richard Bartels, Dawn Juliano, Larry Purchase, Jan

Kem, Dave Olcott, Janet Rasmussen, Doug

Rasmussen, Anne O’Neill, Rosemary Kenney, and

John Piccininni. The minutes of the November 12th,

2011, board meeting were approved.

Treasurer’s year-end report was approved.


The board is planning the following field trips for

this year:

For her 2012 President’s field trip, Jane is

arranging a trip covering local Portland area

geology, landslides, and terroir. Dates and

details to be announced.

Dave Olcott is responsible for the geology and

stratigraphy of the Portland Basin field trip to be

held probably September 14-16 and tentatively

led by Terry Tolan. It will start with a Friday

evening lecture by Terry, followed by two days

in the field by van.

Bev and Bart will lead an informal trip to see

the Crooked River and Wildcat calderas

possibly on Sept. 29 and 30, depending on

Dave’s trip timing.

Janet is working on an informal summer tide

pool tour plus a coastal canoe/kayak trip and has

scheduled this for June 23, coinciding with

favorable tides.

The timing of the Downtown Building Stones

tour organized by Paul Edison-Lahm will

depend on the other trip schedules, and Paul

needs to have training time for his guides.

Field trip leaders should keep Carol and Janet

informed of confirmed dates, speakers, fees and

other pertinent information for publication to

members.



Upcoming Speakers

John has scheduled GSOC member Sheila Alfsen

for the April program.

He is planning to have Jim Jackson from PSU and

someone from USGS Water Resources speak in

August on how fracking is done. Each speaker will

have a half an hour for his/her presentation plus

time for questions.

Annual Banquet, Annual Picnic, and Holiday Party

The Annual Banquet will be March 11 at the

Monarch Hotel, with Dr. William Orr as speaker.

Assignments were discussed:

Janet - programs

Rik and Rosemary - place cards

Jan and Rosemary - book sales table and will accept

books either before or at the banquet

Larry and Carol Hasenberg – posters

Bart - list of attendees

Clay - master of ceremonies

Jane – presidential inaugural address and discussion

of upcoming field trips

The date for the Annual Picnic will be determined

after the field trip schedule is worked out.

An alternate venue for the Holiday Party was

discussed. The board voted to return to the same

venue. A different arrangement of food and drink

layout and field trip summary presentations should

be considered. Donation amount per members

attending should be recommended to cover the

costs. After this party, consideration should be

given to whether it should be done again—or if we

should do something else to liven up the December

meeting.


The proposed slate of officers was discussed. The

election is scheduled for the February meeting.

Jan discussed the need for 200 addressees to keep

our low mailing rate. Possible recipients were

discussed. Bart warned that if recipients are not at

their address, the mail is returned to GSOC for the

cost of $.46 per return.

Upcoming Events of Interest to Members

The Oregon Academy of Science meets

February 25 (http://www.oas.pdx/edu).

Fossil Fest will be February 11 at Newport.

The next GSOC Board Meeting will be Saturday,

March 10, 2012, 10:00 a.m., at Rosemary’s house.

Notes compiled from board meeting minutes

submitted by Beverly F. Vogt, Acting Secretary.

THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS AND THE BONNEVILLE LANDSLIDE Synopsis of the January 14, 2011 GSOC Friday

night lecture by Dr. Jim O'Connor of the USGS

Water Science Center in Portland, Oregon

by Carol Hasenberg

It got a little wild at the beginning of the February

GSOC meeting when President Rik Smoody asked

the crowd what he had in his bag - round, smooth,

and found in eastern Washington. When onions

were finally guessed, he pelted the crowd with

them. Actually, he threw the onions only to willing

recipients.

Having settled the crowd after this rollicking start,

Jim O’Connor came up to speak to the crowd about

a favorite Northwest object of lore, The Bridge of

the Gods over the Columbia River. No, not the

flimsy-looking cantilever through truss that spans

the Columbia today at Cascade Locks, but a natural

bridge said to have spanned the Columbia River

long ago in the same location.

Science has been putting some truth to the legends

of the Bridge of the Gods. It has been known for

some time that a massive landslide which came

from nearby Table Mountain was the geologic

cause for the Bridge legend. The landslide

completely blocked the Columbia River, which then

backed up all the way to Wallula Gap (where it

turns west out of Washington State). The massive

flood that followed this obstruction was the most

severe flood event on the Columbia since the Ice

Age Floods produced by Lake Missoula.

http://www.oas.pdx/edu


The primary topics of O’Connor’s lecture were the

history of piecing together the origin and the dating

of the landslide. An expert on geomorphology,

O’Connor has also researched the effects of the

landslide on the location and elevation of the

Columbia riverbed along its path through the

Columbia Gorge. O’Connor has worked for the

USGS on and off since 1991, so he has had a long

history of interaction with this topic.

O’Connor began by talking about the legend of the

Bridge of the Gods and how it has been

romanticized in the Northwest in fiction and

artwork for the past century and a half. Along the

same period of time, geologists had speculated

about how the river could have been blocked in the

not-so-distant past, as the evidence for this was

numerous snags sticking out of the water between

Cascade Locks and the Dalles, remnants of trees

which had been drowned in a flood. Also, the

terrain north of the river in the area of Cascade

Locks seemed to be a massive landslide. In the time

of Lewis and Clark, natives of the area described

the river in their forefathers’ day as being

unobstructed to the ocean.

In 1915 Joseph Duller pieced together the current

theory that the Bonneville Landslide had come off

Table Mountain to the north and completely

covered the river. Now the question was when did

this landslide happen? The drowned trees were a

key piece of evidence since various tests could be

conducted on these. Donald Lawrence, a 1930’a

doctoral student of botany at Johns Hopkins

University, catalogued the location of more than

1800 snags and conducted the first attempt at dating

the trees using dendrochronology, the study of tree

growth rings. His tests on the snags themselves

were inconclusive, as he could not correlate any of

the ring patterns found on the drowned trees with

those of growing trees, but by looking at the oldest

live trees growing on the slide itself, found that

these trees had sprouted about 1562. Lawrence also

saved cross-sectional samples of the snags with the

Oregon Forestry Center. In the 1950’s Lawrence

tried dating the snags through the newly devised

technique of radiocarbon dating. His sample date

was 1250, although there was a large margin of

error using this technique.

Since Lawrence’s time, there had not been further

attempts to date the landslide, since the Lawrence

samples were thought to have perished in the 1964

fire that consumed the Forestry Building and the

remaining tree snags had been drowned by the

Bonneville Dam. However, this was not the case,

and several years ago Pat Pringle of the Washington

Department of Natural Resources, a fellow

researcher of the slide, was contacted by the staff of

the World Forestry Center telling him that a box of

tree cross sections had been found with notes from

Lawrence. Photographic evidence showed that

these indeed were taken from the snags in the river.

So they were radiocarbon dated using modern

techniques which initially showed the trees died

between 1411 and 1455. That date has now been

bracketed to be between 1423 to 1444. This

correlated well with the dendrochronology dating

done by Lawrence. There has been a few detours in

the path to the goal of dating the slide, but the early

1400’s is the currently accepted date.

O’Connor also showed some Columbia River

elevation charts he has constructed showing the

river elevations prior to the slide, after the slide and

subsequent outburst flood, and today with the

Bonneville and Dalles Dams in place. In prehistoric

time, prior to the Bonneville Landslide, the

Columbia River was tidal all the way to Celilo

Falls, which bumped the river elevation to 159 feet

above sea level. Indeed, this area was a native

fishing ground for the 10,000 years prior to the

building of the Dalles Dam in the 1950’s. After the

landslide, which blocked the river 200 feet above its

base, the water rose to the elevation of Wallula Gap.

The outburst flood which destroyed the natural dam

created the Cascades of the Columbia, which

limited the tidal part of the Columbia to the area

downstream from its rapids. This is the river that

Lewis and Clark traveled upon in their voyage of

discovery. The dam building of the mid-twentieth

century has now created two great lakes in this

region of the river, drowning the Cascades, the

Dalles of the Columbia, and Celilo Falls.


Further Reading

“The Evolving Landscape of the Columbia River

Gorge: Lewis and Clark and Cataclysms on the

Columbia”, by Jim E. O'Connor. This article first

appeared in Oregon Historical Quarterly 105:3

[2004]: 390–421, and now can be found on the

Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Website

by the University of Nebraska Lincoln at

http://libxml1a.unl.edu/lewisandclark/read/?_xmlsrc

=lc.oconnor.01&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl.

The Columbia River “A Photographic Journey”

website

http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/bon

neville_landslide.html has some nice pictures of the

Bonneville Slide, although the description of the

dating of the slide on the site has been superceded

by subsequent research.

IN MEMORIAM

This past year three GSOC members have died.

Rosina Higdon, a very long-time GSOC member,

died in November. John Newhouse, who had

worked for the USGS and DOGAMI and had been

an active member of GSOC for several years, died

in December. The latest death was a home fire

tragedy occurring February 16 which took the life

of member Tom Owen. GSOC members are

currently putting together a memorial fund for some

sort of tribute to our passing members.


PAYMENTS were due January 1!

Think about all those great member benefits for a

mere annual fee of $25 for an individual and $35 for

a family!

PS – If you joined GSOC in September or later,

your 2012 dues are paid, good deal!!!

http://libxml1a.unl.edu/lewisandclark/read/?_xmlsrc=lc.oconnor.01&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl

http://libxml1a.unl.edu/lewisandclark/read/?_xmlsrc=lc.oconnor.01&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl

http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/bonneville_landslide.html

http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/bonneville_landslide.html




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 78, Number 3

May/June 2012



www.gsoc.org


President:


[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:


[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

May/June Activities




University. Speaker Dick Pugh of the Cascadia

Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University, will

present “Chicken Little Was Right – The Sky IS

Falling!”

The goals of the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory (CML,

http://meteorites.pdx.edu/) are to promote meteorite

research, provide formal education about meteorites,

increase public awareness about meteorites, and manage

the Portland State University meteorite collection. CML

member Dick Pugh is a long-time meteorite enthusiast,

educator, and field scientist who graduated from

Portland State University and went on to teach science

for 30 years at Cleveland High School in Portland. He

has spent decades giving lectures on meteorites and

currently is the face of CML's outreach program. He has

donated many specimens to CML from his private

collection, including many "non-ordinary" ordinary

chondrites. The CML is funded by public donations.

Dick would also like to invite anyone who thinks they

found a meteorite to bring it to the meeting for

inspection.
























http://meteorites.pdx.edu/


Friday evening talk, June 8, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in Room

S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between

Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University.

Speaker Bill Burns of DOGAMI will present “_____”,

the results of his last 2 years’ work studying landslide

and other geologic hazards on Mt. Hood. See more info

at

http://www.oregongeology.org/sub/FIELDOFFICES/pro

file-burns.htm

GSOC Field Trip, “Tidal Pools and Beaver Creek Paddle

Trip”, Saturday, June 23, 2012. Let by GSOC director

and Past President Janet Rasmussen, this trip features a

tide pool exploration with guest speaker Karen Driscoll

and non-motorized boat trip at Beaver Creek State

Natural Area near Newport, Oregon. Fee is $15 and

participants must provide their own lodging and

transportation to the sites, and must either provide their

own non-motorized boat or share with other participants

with boats. Registration form is included in this

newsletter.




Future Activities

There is no Friday evening talk planned for July 2012.

Friday evening talk, August 10, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Jim Jackson, Petroleum Geology

and Mineral Resources adjunct at Portland State

University, will present “___”.


the calendar.

IN MEMORIAM

GSOC’s second-longest member died March 28 at the

age of 90 years. Clara Bartholomay was born in Ohio

and moved to Oregon in the 1950’s. She loved the

outdoors and was a member of the Oregon Agate and

Mineral Society as well as GSOC. Her membership

started in 1959 according to GSOC historian Rosemary

Kenney.

BOARD MEETING NOTES March 10, 2012

The meeting was called to order by out-going

President Rik Smoody at Rosemary Kenney’s

residence. Board and GSOC members present also

included President-elect Jane Walpole, Richard

‘Bart’ Bartels, Bev Vogt, Julia Lanning, Dawn

Juliano, Janet Rasmussen, Doug Rasmussen, Tara

Schoffstall, Paul Edison-Lahm, Larry Purchase,

Dave Olcott, Jan Kem, and Rosemary Kenney. The

minutes of the January 14th

, 2012 board meeting

were approved.

Treasurer's Report:

The treasurer’s report was approved. After an

illustrious tenure as treasurer, Bart is handing over

the reins to Dawn Juliano. Many thanks to Bart for

his many contributions to our society!


President’s Field Trip:

Jane reports that the President’s Field Trip will be

broken up into two days. Dr. Burns has agreed to do

a half-day field trip on July 20th

(2012) on wineries,

terroir, and the floods and one full-day field trip on

July 30th

on landslides.

Other Field Trips an Annual Picnic:

Janet’s coast field trip is scheduled for June 23rd. It

will include tidepools and a paddle trip. Dave’s

geology of the Portland Basin field trip with Terry

Tolan is still on for September 14th – 16th. Bev &

Bart’s trip to the Crooked River and Wildcat

Caldera is still on for September 29th -30th. Paul’s

Downtown Geology field trip will be scheduled in

August after a picnic date has been decided.

Dave will see if he can get a speaker for a

presentation on glaciers, which could be scheduled

for the day of the annual picnic on a Saturday or

Sunday in August.

Upcoming Speakers:

Shelia Alfsen will speak on Iceland in April. The

August lecture on shale gas industry practices will

be informational and is not planned as a debate.

Dick Pugh should also be considered a potential

speaker on meteorites.

http://www.oregongeology.org/sub/FIELDOFFICES/profile-burns.htm

http://www.oregongeology.org/sub/FIELDOFFICES/profile-burns.htm



Annual Banquet:

Jan & Bev will price the books on yellow stickies.

Bart will bring the mugs. The secretary received an

itemized mug inventory from Bart, indicating that

there remain 32 mugs stored at PSU and seven

boxes of mugs (@ 36 mugs each) stored at Bev and

Bart’s.


Business Manager Update:

Jan was pleased that there weren’t enough

envelopes for the last newsletter, since this was a

consequence of having 206 newsletters to send out.

Jan will need a decision on when to stop mailing the

newsletter to non-paying members, as there are

thirty-six members who have not yet paid their

dues.

Rik spoke on GSOC’s behalf at Tom Owens’ recent

memorial. He will circulate Tom’s obituary via

email.

Doris Cruckshank, daughter of Fred Miller (GSOC

President ’65), has a box of pictures and

memorabilia that she might want to donate. We will

follow up with her.

Bob Timmer in Eastern Oregon has a really good

scanner that can scan up to 30 pages a minute and

would be able to digitize our archives.

Bev has completed her GSOC property inventory,

completing her inventory project. Bev will transfer

the inventory list to Jan, who will maintain and add

this duty to the business manager’s list of duties.

Jan suggests going through the inventory and

updating the list each February.

Larry mentioned that NARG is opening a museum

in Fort Vancouver. Larry will ask the Vancouver

library if they could take the GSA bulletins

currently at Bev and Bart’s.

Paul distributed to board members the Guide to

Nonprofit Board Service in Oregon courtesy of

Oregon Department of Justice.

Next Board Meeting will be Saturday, May 12th,

2012, 10:00 a.m. at Rosemary Kenney’s house.


submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary.

PLANNING NEW GROUND IN OREGON GEOLOGY Synopsis of the March 11, 2012 Seventy-seventh Annual

GSOC Banquet lecture by Dr. William Orr, Professor



Oregon

by Evelyn Pratt

To tell the Oregon story, we need to reach way out

of state. The Colorado Plateau, the Snake River

Plain, a little bit of the Basin and Range, the

Klamath Mts. (oldest part is in California, but

economically these mountains are very important in

Oregon), the Cascades, and the Blue Mts., which

unlike the rest, are mostly in Oregon.

A geologic map of western Oregon shows neat

north-south stripes. A geologic map of eastern

Oregon, on the other hand, is a mess.

Let’s put Oregon into a global perspective. The

continental volcanic arc is the engine that drives the

state. In the rain shadow of the Cascades is the high

desert/backarc basin. The Willamette Valley is a

low forearc. It is sinking, and receives sediments

from the volcanic arc to the east and the Coast

Range to the west. The Coast Range is being

elevated by the accretionary wedge of the Juan de

Fuca plate that is moving down and east under the

North American plate. The Juan de Fuca plate is

western Oregon’s “pavement”. The Pacific plate, on

the other hand, is northwestward bound at about 3

½ inches per year. Due to the extreme telescoping

that the sediments have suffered with subduction,

the continental slope is rumpled. The continental

shelf can be compared to a deep sea fan; a seamount

with huge transform faults.

One of the most important ideas in sedimentology is

that of turbidites. These sediments, traveling from

the continental shelf to deep water, are very fast,


strong, and move far. Upturned turbidites are an

index of earthquake events, showing light sand,

dark shale, light sand, dark shale, and so forth.

Offshore banks and plateaus on the Oregon

continental shelf show that the Juan de Fuca plate

moves a couple inches a year. Chris Goldfinger

(OSU) has produced a detailed map of the

continental slope.

Offshore from Yaquina Bay are the Wecoma, Daisy

Bank, and Alvin faults. Along the base of the Alvin

slope the clathrates (gas hydrates) are a new

discovery. Another recently-learned fact is that the

Siletz block (Siletzia Terrane) is really big, and is

rotating clockwise. It was the last terrane to be

accreted onto Oregon.

How many North American cities can lay claim to

being in the middle of an ancient volcanic field?

Portland’s Boring Volcanics are young – generally

2 million to 56 thousand years old. Up the

Columbia River a few miles, Beacon Rock is the

youngest at 56,000 years. Like Los Angeles,

Portland is cut by a mix of northwest-trending

lateral strike-slip faults. Dr. Orr’s latest book has a

chapter for each of nine physiographic strips

between the faults. He also includes summaries of

the hydrology and hydrogeology of the strips.

Geologic hazards of Oregon include earthquakes,

tsunamis and storm surges, floods, blasts and ash

clouds spewing out of volcanoes, and mass

movements such as landslides. There is a 1996 map

of local landslides. The best place to see mass

movement is the Columbia Gorge, especially the

Washington side. The Bonneville landslide is a

small part of the Cascade landslide complex. The

town of Stevenson has slump blocks as well as

landslides, which are affecting home sites. The

biggest landslide, 25 miles by 100 miles, or about

2000 square miles, is off the continental slope off

the coast of southern Oregon, just north of the

Gorda Plate.

The Sandy River is building a delta into the

Columbia River. The Sandy has flooded during

each of the last three eruptions of Mt. Hood, and it

floods every time we have a heavy rainfall with

melting snow.

A hazard map of lahars shows that they have come

down Hood River, White River, and Sandy River,

in actions similar to the recent Pinatubo lahar in the

Philippines.

Three kinds of Oregon faults produce earthquakes.

Subsidence by earthquakes produce ghost forests,

such as the cedar stumps that Brian Atwater

(USGS) recognized in southern Washington.

The latest technology for seeing through vegetation

is LIDAR, or LIght Detection And Ranging.

LIDAR is used almost exclusively for land surveys,

especially of forested areas and where geologists

are looking for evidences of landslides and faults

breaking the surface.

Crooked River and Wildcat Mountain each form

huge calderas. The tuff of Smith Rock erupted from

the Crooked River caldera. The John Day tuffs were

once thought to have been derived from Cascade

volcanoes, but are now known to be largely derived

from these two calderas. The Danforth Formation

was thought to be composed of four ignimbrites or

tuffs. Now the Miocene/Pliocene tuffs are

considered as separate formations with separate

eruptive centers. From the youngest to oldest they

are Hampton, Rattlesnake, Prater Creek, and Devine

Canyon.

A diagram of Sheep Rock shows a cap of CRB on

top, then a thick layer of ash on a layer of

ignimbrite (a pyroclastic flow deposit, which occurs

suddenly and makes a good time marker). In 1995,

an ignimbrite on Mt. Unzen, Japan, traveled over

100 miles an hour. Blue Mountains stratigraphy

includes ignimbrites that moved more than 100

miles from their vents.

The Blue Mountains used to show 5 accreted

terranes. Now they show 3, with Baker and

Grindstone combined and Izee overlapping. From

the late Triassic to the early Cretaceous, terranes

merged offshore and were stitched together with

plutons.


The Yellowstone hot spot initially erupted, so it was

thought, at McDermitt Caldera on the Oregon-

Nevada border. Fault zones from there funneled

Columbia River Basalts northward, ending with the

Wanapum Basalt and lastly, the Saddle Mountain

Basalt in southeastern Washington. As the North

American crust moved southwest, the Yellowstone

hot spot left a series of volcanic centers extending

northeast and forming the Snake River Plains. The

hot spot now underlies the Yellowstone Plateau.

The sixth edition of William and Elizabeth Orrs’

Geology of Oregon is due to be published soon.

Major revisions in the sixth edition include:

Annexes Steens basalt to CRB

Explains Yellowstone mantle plume

Demotes Grindstone and Izee from terrane

status

Explains Oregon-Idaho graben on Owyhee

Shows Crooked River Caldera in the east Blue

Mountains

Relates gas hydrate volume on continental slope

Shows huge submarine landslide offshore

(~2000 square miles)

GEOLOGY OF T HE LAND

OF F IRE AND ICE Synopsis of the April 13, 2012 Friday night GSOC

lecture by GSOC member Sheila Alfsen, MAT, GIT,

Chemeketa and Linn-Benton Community College

Instructor and Consultant

by Carol Hasenberg

Why do people go to Iceland? If you’re like most

people, you might say the Nordic experience or the

wonderful hot springs and spas. But not us rock

nuts! We know that Iceland is the only place on

planet Earth that you can stand on a section of a

mid-oceanic ridge (sans diving suit) and has

wonderful geology to observe as a result. Last

month’s GSOC speaker Sheila Alfsen was a part of

a 2008 geological tour of Iceland organized by the

GSA for American educators. Alfsen had a leg up

on a lot of her colleagues on the tour because she

hails from Oregon, where there are many features

similar to that of the land of fire and ice.

So why is there land on the mid-oceanic ridge in

Iceland? In addition to sitting on a spreading

center, the island is also atop a “hot-spot” or plume

of especially hot material coming from the earth’s

mantle. There are other examples of islands atop

hot spots, notably the island of Hawaii. This hot

spot produces a large amount of lava, creating

enough mass that it allows the ridge to poke out of

the water. The mid-oceanic ridge cuts right through

the middle of the island from the SSW to the NNE

(approximately) with an additional spur from the

middle of the island towards the south. At the end

of this spur lies a couple of active volcanoes in the

ocean to the south of the island. One of these,

Surtsey, formed a small island which will probably

be very short-lived.

Iceland was an important player in the development

of the theory of continental drift. In 1912, Alfred

Wegener, a professional meteorologist, advanced

the theory which was proven to be correct nearly 50

years later. Wegener spent a lot of time in

Greenland and Iceland in collecting evidence to

verify his theory. In 1930 he installed a series of

survey markers in Iceland which demonstrated this

theory. Alfsen’s group visited and photographed

one of these important markers.

The first stop on Alfsen’s tour was to Thingvellir

National Park, which straddles the mid-oceanic

ridge near the capital of Reykjavik. Large cracks are

present along the ridge and one of these is the

feature of the park. At its deepest it is filled with

clear fresh water of Lake Thingvallavatn. Alfsen’s

pictures of the crack reminded the author of Crack

in the Ground in Eastern Oregon. You can

allegedly have one foot on the North American

plate and one foot on the Eurasian plate in the park,

although the rift zone contains a series of parallel

cracks.

Icelandic people have learned to live in this land --

avoiding its catastrophic natural hazards,

engineering its volcanic features, learning from its

unique geology, and profiting from the heat

produced by its seething lava. Hydrothermal power

plants supply most of the energy to the country, and

Alfsen’s group toured the largest one,

Hellisheidarvirkjun, on the tour. A byproduct of


power generation is geothermal home heating. The

geothermal aquifers near the continental margin

supply water that is 300 degrees Celsius and the

power generation process leaves it still pretty hot.

One interesting feat of its inhabitants occurred when

the port town of Heimaey was overrun by a lava

flow in 1973. Although the buildings in the town

were mostly destroyed, the Icelanders were able to

divert the flow by spraying its edges with cold

seawater and save the harbor and port area which

provided their livelihood. This example was cited

in John McPhee’s book The Control of Nature.

Probably the best known natural phenomenon that

occurs often in Iceland is the eruption of volcanoes

below the surface of its ice cap Vatnajokull, the

third largest continental glacier after the Antarctica

and Greenland ice caps. These eruptions convert

great amounts of ice into water from underneath the

ice cap, and the resulting flood gushes out from

beneath the ice cap, sweeping all in its path,

building an outwash plain, and finally rushing into

the sea. The Icelandic term for these is Jokulhlaups,

and they occur every few years on the island. The

Icelanders have learned not to build anything

permanent in the areas where these occur.

Geologists, having observed this phenomenon in

action, also can study the mountains produced in

such a manner on the island. These “table

mountains” are flat-topped and contain a material

for which the Icelandic term is moberg, a glassy

breccia that forms when the lava cools very quickly

from exposure to the ice or water. After Alfsen’s

talk, PSU Professor Emeritus Paul Hammond

mentioned that we have a local table mountain,

Lone Butte, near Indian Heaven in Washington, that

erupted during the Pleistocene beneath an ice cap on

the Cascades.

Alfsen wrapped up the talk on Iceland’s geology by

showing the beauty of this volcanic wonderland.

The basaltic lava flows with their massive

entablatures and scored colonnades were

reminiscent of those from the Columbia River

Basalt, but much younger. The oldest rocks on

Iceland are Miocene in age. Huge waterfalls

abound in Iceland, as water is very abundant there.

Icebergs dot the ocean in areas. Humans seem very

small indeed when projected onto this incredible

geologic canvas.

References and Additional Reading

Thingvellir National Park website:

http://www.thingvellir.is/english

“Tidal Pools and Beaver Creek Paddle Trip”, Saturday, June 23, 2012 GSOC Past President Janet Rasmussen, trip leader

GSOC member and Past President Janet Rasmussen is leading a one day trip (Friday evening activities

are optional) to explore tidal pools at the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, and the Beaver Creek State

Natural Area near Newport, Oregon. Participants are encouraged to bring their own non-motorized boats

(canoes, inflatables, kayaks, rowboats, or drift boats). If you don’t have a boat, there will be some to share.

Kayaks may be rented with delivery and pick-up service from Newport, but these are expensive.

Fee and camping/lodging: Fee of $15 includes field guide, insurance and speaker honoraria. All other

costs and arrangements are the responsibility of the participants, including transportation, lodging, and meals.

Janet will assist facilitating the car pool and boating arrangements, so participants should indicate needs or

offers to accept passenger(s). Camping can be arranged at Beverly Beach State Park (for reservations go to

http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/PARKS/reserve.shtml). Participants wishing to camp are urged to reserve sites

as soon as possible. Participants wishing to lodge indoors will need to make motel arrangements in the Newport

area. Motel options can be reviewed on the Trip Advisor website for the Newport area

(http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g51992-Newport_Oregon-Hotels.html#). Some members will be staying at

http://www.thingvellir.is/english

http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/PARKS/reserve.shtml

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g51992-Newport_Oregon-Hotels.html


Moolack Shores Motel (http://www.moolackshores.com), a small, unique, oceanfront establishment just north

of the Yaquina Head lighthouse.

Itinerary: For those who arrive in Newport Friday, June 22, we will plan a group dinner at a local

restaurant. At 7 pm, our tidal pool expert, Karen Driscoll will host dessert and give an overview at her Newport

home, 515 SW 4th

St.

On Saturday, June 23, at 7:30 am, participants will gather for breakfast at the Chalet Restaurant and

Bakery, 2026 N. Coast Hwy, just north of the Fred Meyer on the east side of Hwy 101. We will drive from the

Chalet to Yaquina Head at 8:30. Low tide is at 9:30 am (-1.0). Admission to Yaquina Head is $7 per car, but

free for those who hold Golden Age passes. We will carpool as needed so that no fee is assessed. We will

explore the tidal pools, go to the Visitor Center, watch for birds and seals, and examine the local geology.

After lunch at a local restaurant (to be determined), or on your own, we’ll carpool to Beaver Creek State

Natural Area with our boats, about 9 miles south of Newport. There is minimal current and no tidal influence on

the portion of Beaver Creek that we will explore by water. If there aren’t enough boats for the entire group to

paddle together, we’ll split the group into paddlers and hikers, and then switch after an hour or two. There are

many hiking trails through the marsh and hills from the Visitor Center at Beaver Creek.

Trip Participation Policies: If you plan on participating in this trip, please send in your registration

form and fee by June 15, 2012. Participation will be limited to the first 20 persons who have paid for the trip.

All participants must be GSOC members or their guests. Minors must be accompanied by a responsible

adult GSOC member parent, designated person, or legal guardian. A letter from his or her own parent or

legal guardian giving permission for a minor to participate in the field trip with a designated person must be

attached to this registration form if the child is not attending with his or her own parent or legal guardian.

Participants must also fill out and sign a liability waiver at the meeting place in Newport to participate. Minor

participants will need the signature of a parent or legal guardian on the liability waiver. All persons must wear

life jackets while boating. All boats are required to carry Invasive Species permits for 2012

(http://www.dfw.state.or.us/conservationstrategy/invasive_species/quagga_zebra_mussel.asp).

If weather forecast indicates a strong possibility of rain, this trip may be cancelled. Registered

participants will be advised at the earliest opportunity and full refunds will be made.

Things to Do if you plan on participating:

Contact Janet and get on the participant list [email protected] or 541/753-0774.

Send in registration form and payment by June 15, 2012.

Make car pool and lodging arrangements for Friday and possibly Saturday night. (The Rasmussens are

staying for both nights.)

Join GSOC if you are not a member (form is included on the registration form)

Wear/bring appropriate clothing with a change just in case– might be warm, cold, wet, dry, muddy, or

very windy. Bring water bottle, hat, sunscreen, sunglasses, bug spray, hand lens. Binoculars, camera,

and field guide to birds and/or tidal pools would be very useful.

Meet to sign waiver either at dinner Friday (to be arranged via email/phone with registered participants),

at 7 pm meeting at Karen Driscoll’s house Friday, or at the Chalet during breakfast on Saturday

morning.

QUESTIONS? Contact Janet Rasmussen [email protected] or 541/753-0774. Directions to Karen

Driscoll’s house, arrangements for Friday dinner, availability of boats will be communicated via email or by

phone after June 15 registration deadline.

STAY TUNED: Additional details will be available on the GSOC website, www.gsoc.org.

http://www.moolackshores.com/

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/conservationstrategy/invasive_species/quagga_zebra_mussel.asp





REGISTRATION/MEDICAL INFORMATION FORM

Tidepools and Coastal Paddle Trip – June 23, 2012

NOTE: Fill out one registration and medical information form for each participant. Apply for

membership if you are not a member or guest of a participating member. The membership form is

located on the last page of this newsletter. Additional registration forms may be downloaded from the

GSOC website www.gsoc.org.

REGISTRATION

Participant name___________________________________________________ Minor (circle one): Yes or No

If participant is not a GSOC member, name of GSOC sponsor _____________________________________________

If participant is a minor, name of designated GSOC accompanier __________________________________________

Address of participant ____________________________________________________________________________

City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- ____________

Phone (_____)______-__________Cell Phone (_____)______-__________Email address ______________________

Car-pooling (circle one): I need a ride I can accept __ passenger(s) I neither need nor can offer a ride

Boats (fill in blanks with yes/no/details): I will bring a boat____. I am willing to loan my boat to other

participant(s)_____. I will need to use someone else’s boat____.

Fee: $15, includes field guide, insurance and speaker honoraria. All other costs are responsibility of the

participants. Send this form and payment to:

GSOC, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, by June 15, 2012.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

MEDICAL INFORMATION

Name of physician: __________________________telephone number: ______________________________

Allergies: _______________________________________________________________________________

Medications (attach list if necessary): _________________________________________________________

Special medical conditions: ________________________________________________________________

In case of an emergency call: _______________________________________________________________





February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 78, Number 4

July/August 2012

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907 www.gsoc.org 2011 - 2012 Administration: President: Jane Walpole – 503/590-7501 [email protected] Vice-President: John Piccininni – 503/284-9674 [email protected] Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm – 971/404-6064 [email protected] Treasurer Dawn Juliano (2 years) - 503/367-7708 [email protected] Directors: Tara Schoffstall (1 year) – 503/513-6925 [email protected] Julia Lanning (2 years) – 503/201-8022 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen (3 years) − 541/753-0774 [email protected]

Past Presidents: Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019 [email protected] Larry Purchase – 360/254-5635 [email protected] Newsletter Editor and Calendar: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Website: Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Business Manager: Jan Kem – 503/799-6871 [email protected] Assistant Business Manager: Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827 [email protected] Field Trip Committee Chair Dave Olcott– 503/695-5219 [email protected] VISITORS WELCOME AT ALL MEETINGS

CALENDAR July/August Activities There is no Friday evening talk planned for July and August 2012. The talk previously scheduled for August 10 will happen this fall. We will resume Friday night meetings in September. GSOC Field Trip, President's Field Trip: President Jane Walpole has arranged for Dr. Scott Burns of Portland State University to lead two trips on separate days in the Portland vicinity. On Friday, June 29, he will lead an afternoon tour of local landslides. The second day of the field trip will be held on Friday, July 20. On that day he will lead a short tour of wineries and discuss the importance of terroir. Stay tuned to the GSOC website www.gsoc.org for further details. Van transportation is being considered.

NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Future Activities Friday evening talk, September 14, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Terry Tolan, Senior Geologist/Hydrogeologist at GSI Water Solutions Kennewick, Washington, will present “Tectonic, Volcanic & Stratigraphic History of the Portland Basin.” This talk will be a prelude to the GSOC field trip organized by Dave Olcott and featuring guest field trip leaders Tolan and Dr. Steve Reidel the following two days. GSOC Field Trip, “Ancient Walls” Tour of Downtown Portland Geology, Saturday, August 25, 2012. Come See Hidden Fossils & Billion Year Old Building Stones! Join us Saturday, August 25th at 9:00 a.m. for a 2½ hour


















outdoor walking tour of downtown Portland’s geological mysteries and oddities. Our 1½ mile tour will begin at the Fossil Cartel in Pioneer Place Mall (700 SW 5th Avenue — parking at 4th and Yamhill — accessible by bus and MAX). Bring good walking shoes, sunscreen and clothing for a cool, but potentially warming summer morning. Water and snacks are advisable. Open to public. Wheelchair accessible. Children under 12 must be supervised. Cost is $10.00. Space is limited so please RSVP by August 20th to [email protected] with name and email and number of expected guests. GSOC Annual Picnic The GSOC Annual Picnic will be held on Sunday, August 26, 2012. This year’s picnic will be a total potluck event at the picnic area atop Larch Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. Bring your own food and beverages and we will provide the plates and plastic utensils. It also wouldn’t hurt to bring your own chairs and perhaps a card table if you have one, as the available picnic tables are scattered. The picnic will begin at 12:00 noon and there will be a brief GSOC board meeting before the picnic at 11:00 a.m. Plan an hour’s driving time from Portland. Dr. Andrew Fountain from PSU is scheduled to talk about glaciers at 1:00 p.m. For information about the picnic site see the Larch Mountain picnic area page on the Forest Service website. You will need a $5 day-use permit or a FS recreation pass to park there. Day-use permits may not be available on site according to our information. For more information on Forest Service recreation passes (and alternatives) see the FS Region 6 Recreation Passes & Permits page. To purchase a day-use permit or FS recreation pass online or through a Forest Service outlet see Discover Your Northwest Store and Store Locations. They are also available from some commercial establishments such as REI and Big Five. They are not available at the Nature of the Northwest store anymore. In the event that Larch Mountain remains closed or other such last minute emergencies, stay tuned to the GSOC website. The directions to Larch Mountain on the website are really lousy, so here are some better directions courtesy Dave Olcott: Traveling east on I-84 from the Portland area, take Exit 22 (Corbett). Travel 1.6 miles up Corbett Hill Road to the intersection with the Historic Columbia River Highway - turn left onto the old highway. Travel approximately 2 miles to Larch Mt. Road (go straight). If you go left at this point you will end up at the Vista

House. Proceed 14 miles up Larch Mt. Road to the upper parking lot. For more geology info on Larch Mountain refer to the USGS and Wikipedia sites. This should be an outstanding site for a picnic. GSOC Field Trip, “Tectonic, Volcanic & Stratigraphic History of the Portland Basin,” September 15 and 16, 2012. GSOC field trip chair Dave Olcott will coordinate a Friday night lecture (Sept. 14th), followed by two days in the field. Terry Tolan, a highly recognized professional in the geologic community will present the lecture and guide the comprehensive field trip. He will be assisted by Dr. Steve Reidel, another outstanding geologist. Transportation will be by two twelve-passenger vans. Cost of the trip will be $70.00/person and participation will be limited to the first 22 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip. The assessment fee will cover the cost of van rental, gas, insurance, printing, and honoraria for leaders. Participants will be responsible for lunches, snacks, and beverages. The registration form for the trip is at the end of this newsletter. The assessment fee and registration form must be in by September 3rd. If you have questions or wish to reserve a participant spot at this time, email Dave at [email protected] or call (503) 695-5219. GSOC Field Trip, “A Trail of Two Calderas,” September 29-30, 2012. Bart Bartels and Bev Vogt are planning a field trip to the Crooked River and Wildcat Mountain Calderas in central Oregon on September 29 and 30. We plan to camp the nights of Sept. 28 and 29 at Haystack Reservoir Campground, located on the eastern shore of Haystack Reservoir about 8 miles south of Madras between US 97 and US 26, and motels are also available in Madras and Redmond. The field trip will start at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning at Haystack Reservoir and finish Sunday afternoon. Cost of the field trip including field trip guide is $20. Lodging, transportation, and food are the responsibility of the participants. For questions, details, and registration, contact Bart and Bev at 503-292-6939 ([email protected] or [email protected]). Deadline for registration is September 17. There will be a registration form available in the next issue of The Geological Newsletter. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar.






http://www.discovernw.org/store_recreation-passes_1PASS/

http://www.discovernw.org/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=LOCATIONS



http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Oregon/BoringLavaField/VisitVolcano/larch_mountain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larch_Mountain_(Multnomah_County,_Oregon)


http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gDfxMDT8MwRydLA1cj72BTJw8jAwjQL8h2VAQAzHJMsQ!!/?ss=110601&ttype=recarea&recid=39142&actid=82&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&position=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&navid=110400000000000&pnavid=110000000000000&cid=null&pname=Central+Oregon+-+Haystack+Reservoir+Campground+and+Day+Use+Area

http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gDfxMDT8MwRydLA1cj72BTJw8jAwjQL8h2VAQAzHJMsQ!!/?ss=110601&ttype=recarea&recid=39142&actid=82&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&position=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&navid=110400000000000&pnavid=110000000000000&cid=null&pname=Central+Oregon+-+Haystack+Reservoir+Campground+and+Day+Use+Area





BOARD MEETING NOTES May 12, 2012 The meeting was called to order by President Jane Walpole at Rosemary Kenney’s residence. Board and GSOC members present also included John Piccininni, Dawn Juliano, Paul Edison-Lahm, Julia Lanning, Tara Schoffstall, Janet Rasmussen, Rik Smoody, Larry Purchase, Carol Hasenberg, Richard Bartels, Beverly Vogt, Jan Kem, Dave Olcott, and Rosemary Kenney. The minutes of the March 10th, 2012 board meeting were approved. Treasurer's Report: The board reviewed the club’s finances. Field Trips and Other Events President’s Field Trip (Jane): Dr. Burns will still do the half-day winery field trip on July 20th 2012, but will need to reschedule his landslide presentation which will now be only a half-day. Coast Field Trip (Janet) June 23rd: The cost of the trip is now $15 and it is limited to 20 people. Karen Driscoll has invited people to her house the evening before the tidepool event. Larry brought copies of the DOGAMI Oregon Geology issue relevant to Janet’s field trip. Additional copies may be available for other field trips if there is a DOGAMI publication on point. Geology of the Portland Basin (Dave) September 14th – 16th: There will be a geologist in each of the two vans, now that Terry Tolan will be assisted by Steve Reidel. A driver for the second van may be needed. Crooked River & Wildcat Caldera (Bev & Bart) September 29th-30th: Bart suggests that people go to the campsite at Haystack Reservoir Friday night to set up their tent; or people could stay at Madras/Bend area hotels. The trip will break early afternoon Sunday so people can drive back to Portland. Carol requests that if people hear of a good lecture that they send an email to the group or let Rik know for posting on the Facebook page, rather than put such announcements in the newsletter. Downtown Geology (Paul): It was decided that this field trip will occur on Saturday 8/25. Guides will include Rik, Tara, Jane, Clay, Paul, and Larry. Prior

to the trip, Sheila Alfsen will give a class for the field trip guides. Pending confirmation with Sheila, the class is penciled in for Saturday 8/18. Paul will organize online registration and have this information and a flyer to Carol by the June 20th newsletter deadline; he will also coordinate with Fossil Cartel and Pioneer Place. Carol, Jan, Julia, Bart, Bev will help with registration on the day of the trip. Cost will be $10, with children under 12 free. Carol will need the descriptions of field trips limited to one page for newsletter. Annual Picnic: It was decided that the Annual Picnic will be held on August 26th, 2012 at 12:00 pm. at the Larch Mountain picnic sight. Dave will coordinate with Dr. Andrew Fountain from PSU to talk about glaciers at 1:00 p.m. Upcoming Speakers (John): June’s speaker will be Bill Burns from DOGAMI discussing Mt. Hood geo-hazards. No speaker is planned for July. John will reschedule Jim Jackson from Portland State for either October or November; Jim will discuss Shale Gas Exploration. In January 2013, Yumei Wang from DOGAMI will discuss her post- earthquake trip to Japan. Old and New Business Poster Printing and Distribution: (Jan & John) John did the poster for last night’s presentation. Tara suggests using a format in addition to pdf so that it will show up on mobile devices. Paul will look into this. An exhaustive discussion of formatting was tabled. Jan reports that procedure for the newsletter is working well. Jan has 225 copies of the newsletter printed and includes warnings to members who have not paid dues. The Board approved Jan dropping non-paying members from his list, with Bev first reviewing the drop list. John raised the issue of the price of posters for off-newsletter-month speakers. Larry suggested that printed posters be abandoned in favor of sending pdf by email. Jan will still mail four posters to DOGAMI. Additional Business: Rosemary would like members to be reminded of the lending library. Janet will put it on the website in Friday night meeting announcements and Jane will mention it at the meetings. Rosemary is working on a book about the GSOC presidents and needs information on every president


from the year 2000. Tara and Janet will follow up on research for Rosemary. Tara will send links of archived field trip guides to Rik for eventual storage on Google docs. Bart reminded us that we still have a large supply of mugs; it was suggested that they be offered for sale at the Downtown Geology walk. Happy Birthday was sung for Rosemary. Next Board Meeting will be Saturday, July 14th, 2012, 10:00 a.m. at Rosemary’s house. Notes compiled from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary. LEARNING ABOUT PALEOSEISMICITY THROUGH THE STUDY OF TURBIDITES by Carol S. Hasenberg Author’s note: I attended a recent lecture sponsored by the Portland State University Geology Department where Dr. Chris Goldfinger of Oregon State University described his work in analyzing turbidite flows along the Oregon coast over the past several years. This lecture included some background information on the nature of turbidites and the prehistoric earthquakes along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and then described the techniques used to analyze the extent, synchroneity, and other characteristics of the flows. Turbidites or turbidity currents are landslide-like phenomena which occur on the continental margins of the oceans. Fine sediments are shaken loose from the continental shelf and are transported down oceanic canyons for many miles on a cushion of water. They can occur for many reasons, including sediment load, storms, methane release from the ocean floor, tectonic over-steepening, meteor hits, and earthquake shaking. At the time Goldfinger began his study of turbidites, evidence for large subduction zone quakes had been found along the Washington and Oregon coastlines, in a tectonic region known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone. This gave an opportunity for study of the turbidites to see if any correlations

could be made between the turbidites and earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest. Turbidite sediments could be useful in determining the number and extent of earthquake events in the past several thousand years if the two could be correlated. But this might not be as easy as it seems. The first problem is to determine which, if any, of the turbidites could be construed to have been produced by an earthquake. This problem was solved by studying the cross section of the turbidite deposits themselves for characteristic signatures, as well as studying the structure of the turbidite deposition system all up and down the coast. It was found that some of the turbidite cross sections had fine grains on the tops and bottoms, grading to coarser grains in the middle. Others had coarse grains at the bottom grading to fine grains at the top. Goldfinger believed that the earthquake-generated turbidites would be the ones with the coarse to fine sequence, since earthquakes occur over a period of less than 5 minutes, shaking all the material up at once and then settling out, whereas the storms build in intensity over a longer period of time, then fade away. This was verified by later studies of the recently produced turbidites from the Chilean and Sumatran earthquakes, and also those produced in 1906 by the San Francisco Earthquake. Other clues to the correlation of turbidite layers include marker sediments in the hemipelagic material deposited between the turbidite flows, such as the ash produced by Mt. Mazama and transported to the ocean as sediments. In Goldfinger's research, sediment cores were taken from the Oregon coastal oceanic canyons at various points. Sequences of sediments were correlated to match the occurrence of specific turbidite events. This was aided by the fact that one or two of the largest earthquake- induced turbidites had a very distinct cross sectional signature. Turbidite events were then analyzed to determine the extent of the area they cover, shelf width, synchroneity and sediment source. The results of the research so far have shown that there are a number of major earthquake events that have affected the entire Oregon coast, and in addition there have been several events that have


affected the coast at Florence and south to the southern end of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. There have been a few more events affecting Coos Bay and south. These findings have shown Goldfinger and other researchers that segment boundaries are present in the Cascadia Subduction Zone at Coos Bay, Florence, and Astoria. They estimate based upon the past frequency of earthquakes in these areas during the last 10,000 years that the northern segment of the CSZ in Oregon has a probability of having a subduction quake of 12% in the next 50 years, and the southern zone has a probability of 37% in the next 50 years. Recently Goldfinger has turned his attention to turbidite flows in the lakes of Oregon. He hopes to determine the effect of the large subduction zone earthquakes in areas like the Willamette Valley and eastward, and also amass additional data to confirm the oceanic findings from an unrelated source. RECOMMENDED READING Arthur D. Frankel, “Summary of November 2010 Meeting to Evaluate Turbidite Data for Constraining the Recurrence Parameters of Great Cascadia Earthquakes for the Update of the National Seismic Hazard Maps,” U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2011–1310, http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1310/of2011-1310.pdf “Analyzing Major Indonesian Earthquakes,” ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2007) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070430134306.htm Chris Goldfinger and C. Hans Nelson, “Holocene Seismicity of the Northern San Andreas Fault Based on the Turbidite Event Record,” http://ecosystems.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climatechange03/elnino/Holocene%20Seismicity.pdf Rachel Berkowitz, “A seismic story told by turbidites: Sediment deposits off the coast of Washington and Oregon reveal periodic tsunami and earthquakes of similar magnitude to the ones that struck Japan's Tohoku region in March 2011,” physicstoday.org, February 3, 2012,

http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/down_to_earth/a_seismic_story_told_by_turbidites

MULTI-HAZARD RISKS OF

MT. HOOD AREA Synopsis of the June 8, 2012 Friday night GSOC lecture by Bill Burns, landslide expert at DOGAMI by Carol Hasenberg Bill Burns, an engineering geology graduate from Portland State University, is the technical lead on landslide hazards at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI). He came to talk to the GSOC group about a study done at DOGAMI with a grant jointly funded by the State of Oregon and the USGS to study the risk of geologic hazards in the Mt. Hood area. Due to the size of the grant and the interests of benefitting most of the inhabitants of the region, the study was limited to corridors that included Hood River, State Highway 35 and US Highway 26. The study area included portions of Hood River, Multnomah, and Clackamas Counties. The study of risk includes examining the probabilities of types of hazards and their effects upon the human-built assets of the region. The Mt. Hood study described by Burns included the geologic hazards of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions from Mt. Hood, floods, stream channel migrations and landslides. Assets included buildings, emergency services and schools, roads and bridges, electric towers, and dams. The data was analyzed geospatially to see what hazardous regions impacted which assets. Prior to conducting the analyses, the residents of the study area were polled online by the research team to see what risks were perceived by the population. The hazards that scored high in the polls for risk included earthquakes, volcanoes, floods and winter storms. Very few residents felt that landslides were potential risks. Asset data was collected and prepared for input into the analysis platforms, which included spatial overlays in a GIS (Geographic Information

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1310/of2011-1310.pdf

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070430134306.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070430134306.htm

http://ecosystems.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climatechange03/elnino/Holocene%20Seismicity.pdf






Systems) software program, and also a FEMA-produced risk assessment program called HAZUS-MH. For example, the research team used population data from 2010 census blocks combined with maps of building locations to build a higher resolution population density map for the study area. Hazard information was also processed for each type of hazard considered. Volcanic hazards included near-volcano (proximal) effects and lahars, which are ash and debris flows traveling down stream channels. Earthquake hazards included shaking from the Cascadia Subduction Zone as well as 133 faults in the local area, many of which were discovered using the high-resolution LiDAR elevation mapping system being used by DOGAMI in producing landslide hazard maps. Landslide hazard areas included large deep seated landslides, debris flows and steep slopes. LiDAR bare earth data was really helpful in identifying these zones. There were 394 deep seated landslides and 1112 fans created from debris flows (over time)in the study area. The research team also looked at airphotos taken over the last 50 years to identify recent activity. Steep slopes and mass wasting hazard zones were also obtained from LiDAR imagery. Floods and channel migration data were processed again by using LiDAR data. The research team found very little difference between the 25-year and 500-year flood plains. Channels migration zones were much more extensive than the normal stream floodplains, but are also fairly common occurrences in this area of glacially-fed streams. Hazardous areas included 45% of the study area for volcanoes, 26% of the study area for landslides, 3%

of the study area for floods and 37% of the study area for earthquakes. In analyzing the risks the researchers consider not only the severity of individual hazard events but also the return period of the events, in order to compare the potential of risk over a period of time for a particular hazard. Economically, the volcanic risks are the most severe with an average annualized risk exposure of $5.5 M per year; earthquake , landslides and channel migration average annualized risk exposures are similar., $2.8 M to $4.0 M per year; and flooding less severe with an average annualized risk exposure of $0.8 M per year . Flood and landslide hazards have shorter return periods and smaller economic loss ratios, and volcano and earthquakes occur less often but are more catastrophic. The results of the study are available online at the DOGAMI website: http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/fs/mthood-factsheet.pdf. There is also an open file report available which contains a poster and can be previewed at: http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/ofr/p-O-11-16.htm. ADDITIONAL READING Open-File Report O-11-16, “Multi-Hazard and Risk Study for the Mount Hood Region, Multnomah, Clackamas, and Hood River Counties, Oregon,” by William J. Burns, Kaleena L. B. Hughes, Keith V. Olson, Jason D. McClaughry, Katherine A. Mickelson, Daniel E. Coe, John T. English, Jed T. Roberts, Rachel R. Lyles Smith, and Ian P. Madin . DVD, $30

http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/fs/mthood-factsheet.pdf

http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/fs/mthood-factsheet.pdf

http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/ofr/p-O-11-16.htm

http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/ofr/p-O-11-16.htm









Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________

Children under age 18______________________________________________________________________ Address __________________________________________ City _____________ State ___ Zip________-______ Phone (_____)_____-__________ Email address____________________________________________________ Geologic Interests and Hobbies_____________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Please indicate Membership type and include check for appropriate amount: Individual $25.00 ___________ Family $35.00 _____________ Student $15.00 _____________ Make Check Payable to: The Geological Society of the Oregon Country PO Box 907 Portland, OR 97207-0907


Geological Society Of The Oregon

Country EXPLORE THE GEOLOGY OF THE PORTLAND BASIN

ITS TECTONIC, VOLCANIC & STRATIGRAPHIC HISTORY GSOC FIELD TRIP

SEPTEMBER 15th AND 16th, 2012 GSOC field trip chair Dave Olcott will coordinate a Friday night lecture (Sept. 14th), followed by two days in the field. Terry Tolan, a highly recognized professional in the geologic community will present the lecture and guide the comprehensive field trip. He will be assisted by Dr. Steve Reidel, another outstanding geologist. The evolution of the Portland Basin, an 18 by 48-mile topographic trough confined by the Coast Range to the west and the Cascade volcanic arc to the east, will be thoroughly explored over the two days. The tectonic, volcanic, and stratigraphic history of this dynamic piece of real estate will be brought to life by these highly regarded and enthusiastic geologists. All major Neogene and Holocene events and deposits preserved in the basin will be visited. Minimal walking/hiking will allow any and all interested individuals an opportunity to enjoy this trip. Transportation will be by two twelve-passenger vans. Having a professional in each van will permit discussion and answers to questions in transit, not just at field trip stops. Participants will need to arrange their own transportation to the Gateway Light Rail Terminal, our point of departure both days. Cost of the trip will be $70.00/person and participation will be limited to the first 22 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip. The assessment fee will cover the cost of van rental, gas, insurance, printing, and honoraria for leaders. Participants will be responsible for lodging (if required), lunches, snacks, and beverages. The assessment fee and registration form must be received by September 3, 2012. If you have questions or wish to reserve a participant spot at this time, email Dave at [email protected] or call (503) 695-5219. Trip Participation Policies: If you plan on participating in this trip, please send in your registration form and fee by September 3, 2012. Participation will be limited to the first 22 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip. All participants must be GSOC members or their guests. Non-members may send in a membership registration form (located in The Geological Newsletter or at www.gsoc.org/membership.html) with an additional, separate, payment for membership to participate in the trip. Minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult GSOC member parent, designated person, or legal guardian. A letter from his or her own parent or legal guardian giving permission for a minor to participate in the field trip with a designated person must be attached to this registration form if the child is not attending with his or her own parent or legal guardian. Participants must also fill out and sign a liability waiver at the meeting place in order to participate. Minor participants will need the signature of a parent or legal guardian on the liability waiver.


http://www.gsoc.org/membership.html

REGISTRATION/MEDICAL INFORMATION FORM Tectonic, Volcanic & Stratigraphic History of the Portland Basin Trip – September 15 and 16, 2012 NOTE: Fill out one registration and medical information form for each participant. This application must be accompanied by a membership application and payment if you are not a member or guest of a participating member. The membership application form is located in The Geological Newsletter or at www.gsoc.org/membership.html. REGISTRATION Participant name___________________________________________________ Minor (circle one): Yes or No




City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- ____________


Fee: $70, includes van rental, gas, insurance, printing, and speaker honoraria. All other costs are responsibility of the participants. Send this form and payment to: GSOC, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, by September 3, 2012. _______________________________________________________________________________________ MEDICAL INFORMATION


Allergies: _______________________________________________________________________________







Volume 78, Number 5




www.gsoc.org


President:


[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:


[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

September/October

Activities




University. Speaker Terry Tolan, Senior

Geologist/Hydrogeologist at GSI Water Solutions

Kennewick, Washington, will present “Tectonic,

Volcanic & Stratigraphic History of the Portland Basin.”

This talk will be a prelude to the GSOC field trip

organized by Dave Olcott and featuring guest field trip

leaders Tolan and Dr. Steve Reidel the following two

days.

GSOC Field Trip, “Tectonic, Volcanic & Stratigraphic

History of the Portland Basin,” September 15 and 16,

2012.

GSOC field trip chair Dave Olcott will coordinate a

Friday night lecture (Sept. 14th), followed by two days in

the field. Terry Tolan, a highly recognized professional

in the geologic community will present the lecture and

guide the comprehensive field trip. He will be assisted

by Dr. Steve Reidel, another outstanding geologist.

Transportation will be by two twelve-passenger vans.

Cost of the trip will be $70.00/person and participation

will be limited to the first 22 GSOC members and their

guests who have paid for the trip. The assessment fee

will cover the cost of van rental, gas, insurance, printing,

and honoraria for leaders. Participants will be

responsible for lunches, snacks, and beverages. The

registration form for the trip is at the end of this

newsletter. The assessment fee and registration form

must be in by September 3rd

. The registration form was

published in the July/August edition of The Geological

Newsletter and is also available on the GSOC website

www.gsoc.org. If you have questions or wish to reserve


















a participant spot at this time, email Dave at

[email protected] or call (503) 695-5219.

GSOC Field Trip, “A Trail of Two Calderas,”

September 29-30, 2012.

Bart Bartels and Bev Vogt are planning a field trip to the

Crooked River and Wildcat Mountain Calderas in

central Oregon on September 29 and 30. For questions,

details, and registration, contact Bart and Bev at 503-

292-6939 ([email protected] or

[email protected]). Deadline for registration is

September 17. The registration form is available at the

end of this issue of The Geological Newsletter, and on

the GSOC website www.gsoc.org.




Friday evening talk, October 12, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Jim Jackson, Petroleum Geology

and Mineral Resources adjunct at Portland State

University, will present “Shale Gas: Exploration,

Production, and Problems with an Unconventional

Reservoir.”

Future Activities

GSOC 4th Annual Holiday Party - Friday, December 14,

2012. The party will be held in lieu of the December

Friday night meeting and attendance will be limited to

GSOC members and their guests. The location will be at

the Simon Benson House on the Portland State

University campus. The program will include slide

shows of this year’s field trips, food dishes-to-share as

provided by the attending members, and music.

Donations to help cover the venue rental are being

accepted by GSOC Treasurer Dawn Juliano. Food and

other contributions to the event will be coordinated by

GSOC member Anne O’Neill.


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES August 26, 2012

The meeting was convened by President Jane

Walpole at the GSOC annual picnic on Larch

Mountain. Board members present included Paul

Edison-Lahm and Rik Smoody, and GSOC member

Dave Olcott was also present.

Since the board didn't have quorum for the meeting,

no business was conducted, but the board did agree

to reset the meeting for Saturday, October 13th,

2012. Location for the meeting will be announced

on the website.

HISTORY OF LARCH

MOUNTAIN AREA Synopsis of the August 26, 2010, talk by

Charles A. Rollins, historian

by Carol Hasenberg

Chuck Rollins, President of the Crown

Point Historical Society and Past

President of the Multnomah County

Pioneer Association, attended the GSOC

picnic as guest speaker. As a young man growing

up in Oregon, he loved to hear stories told by the

old folks about the history of this area, and now as

an older man he loves recounting these stories to the

next generation. He has written a history book of

the Pacifiic Northwest called The Loggers: How

They Saw it, Kizzar Publishing, 2010 (ISBN

numbers 0615335330 and 9780615335339, 153

pages), which recounts history of the logging camps

using photos taken by the loggers. He told GSOC

that beginning in 1906, photos sent in for

processing by Kodak were returned as post cards,

and he collected a number of these to illustrate the

book. He also generously donated a copy of the

book to the GSOC library.

His talk recounted a history of Larch Mountain.

Native Americans had a thick population in this

region prior to the arrival of Europeans. It is

estimated that 2 million people lived along the

Columbia River and its tributaries – it was the most

populated native site in North America. However,

the introduction of European diseases decimated the

population prior to the settlement of the area in the

1800’s. Native peoples had trails leading to Larch

Mountain because it was a popular area for picking

huckleberries.







The first settlers mistook the native Grand Firs and

Noble Firs for Larch trees, thence the name Larch

Mountain. The trees in the area were magnificent.

One large Grand Fir was recounted as being 7 feet

in diameter with a height of 185 feet to its first limb.

An early homesteader named Moore recognized the

potential from this resource and developed logging

in the area. The Palmer Mill was built on the

mountain to rough saw the logs, and the rough-sawn

wood was flumed down the mountain to Bridal Veil

on the Columbia River.

The Palmer Mill area was quite the development in

the early part of the twentieth century. Three

hundred families lived near the mill, and facilities

were built for them. The Palmer Mill school was

the first school in Oregon with electrical service. A

rail system was introduced on Larch Mt. to help

move logs to the mills. Steep railroad grades were

common and braking systems for heavy and heavily

laden trains were primitive. Logging and

railroading jobs were very dangerous. The logging

camp averaged losses of one man per day. The

railroads had frequent accidents, and brakemen

were often lost on the perilous journey down the

mountain.

Technology evolved at the logging camp. In the

beginning, oxen were used to transport newly felled

logs to the railroad cars. One can still find prone

logs that were “sniped”, or beveled, so that the oxen

could drag timber over these. The oxen were later

replaced by steam donkeys, which were used as

winches to haul logs horizontally or vertically.

High lead logging raised one end of the log so that

they could be loaded as well as dragged to the

railroad. As technology improved, lumberman also

became more conscious of conserving their

resource. The Palmer Mill began using “waste

logs”, ones with knots and tops of trees, to burn for

heating fuel.

Inevitably, the area experienced a major fire, which

occurred in 1902. Although smaller than the

Tillamook Burn, this fire was one of the biggest

fires in Oregon history. It destroyed much of the

best timber on the mountain. The Palmer Number

Two Mill was built after the fire, because there still

was timber in the area. Although the Douglas Fir

was in high demand for building framing and ships’

masts, the timber men began to find uses for the

other species such as the Grand Fir and Noble Fir

for finish material such as molding. The wood from

Larch Mountain was straight grained and knot free.

During World War I Noble Fir was used to build

frames for airplanes.

Looking around at the trees growing on Larch

Mountain today, Rollins noted that the trunks were

not as big as 100+ years of growth should have

produced. He told GSOC that this was because the

early foresters did not realize that trees acclimate to

their particular elevation and the modern trees had

been planted from seedlings produced at lower

elevations. Nowadays certain large conifers are

selected as “seed trees” and painted with an orange

stripe around the trunk, and these are prohibited to

be cut.

Rollins recounted a few more snippets of history

regarding the community of Bridal Veil along the

Columbia River. The mill at Bridal Veil was the

biggest lumber mill on the West Coast, processing

about 50 million board feet of lumber per year. It

also produced boxes, and in 1913 suspended its

lumber production to make 23 million boxes for a

bumper crop of apples. The biggest monument for

the cemetery in Bridal Veil was for a 16 year old

boy who was killed tending a steam donkey that

exploded.

Rollins knew first-hand the life of a logger as he

worked as a logger in his youth. He relies on

eyewitness accounts for his historical tales, from

numerous sources over the years. Recently he made

the acquaintance of a centenarian who grew up in

the Palmer camp and was able to fill in a number of

gaps in the history. Rollins ended the talk by

recounting a little bit of rock lore for us GSOCers.

He told us that in days gone by a lot of agates could

be found along the Columbia River and its

tributaries, and had a bucket full for us to choose

from at the end of the talk.




February.







PUBLICATIONS: THE GEOLOGICAL NEWSLETTER (ISSN 0270 5451), published bimonthly and







Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907




Country

TWO CENTRAL OREGON CALDERAS FIELD TRIP

SEPTEMBER 29 AND 30, 2012

Past Presidents Richard Bartels and Beverly Vogt will lead a field trip to Crooked River

and Wildcat Mountain calderas in central Oregon on September 29 and 30. The Crooked River caldera, called

Oregon’s Super Volcano by its discoverers Mark Ferns and Jason McClaughry of DOGAMI, is enormous,

covering an area approximately 25 by 17 miles and containing Smith Rock State Park on the northwest side,

Prineville in the middle, and Prineville Reservoir State Park on the southeast side. Tuff ejected during the

eruption that caused the collapse of the caldera has an age or approximately 29.5 Ma. Wildcat Mountain caldera

to the northeast of Crooked River caldera is smaller and older, covering 10 by 7 miles. Tuff produced by its

catastrophic caldera-producing eruption has an age between 41.5 and 39.35 Ma. Steins Pillar, a famous pioneer

landmark located in the caldera, is an erosional remnant of this tuff. This trip will explore features of Crooked

River caldera on Saturday, the 29th,

and Wildcat Mountain caldera on Sunday, the 30th

. The trip will be over no

later than 2 p.m. on Sunday.

The trip will start Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at Haystack Reservoir Campground on the east side of Haystack

Reservoir, a few miles south of Madras. Participants can camp starting on Friday night at Haystack Reservoir

Campground or stay in one of the motels in nearby Madras. Participants are responsible their own lodging,

transportation, and food arrangements. Carpooling is recommended. Much of the trip will be on gravel roads, so

vehicles with good clearance are preferable. Cost of the trip is $25, and participation will be limited to the first

25 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip. If you have questions or want to reserve a place

on the trip, contact Richard Bartels ([email protected]) or Beverly Vogt ([email protected]), both at

503-292-6939. If the weather is bad or there are fires in the area, the trip will be canceled and your money

refunded. More information about specifics will be emailed or sent to participants after the deadline.

Trip Participation Policies: If you plan on participating in this trip, send in your registration form (printed in

this newsletter) and $25 fee by Monday, September 17th

. Each participant must be a GSOC member or

guest and should have a separate registration form. A nonmember may register if he/she includes a

membership application form and payment with the registration form and fee.

Minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult GSOC member parent or guardian. A letter from his

or her parent or guardian giving permission for a minor to participate in the field trip with a designated person

must be attached to this form. Each participant must also fill out and sign a liability waiver at the meeting place

in order to participate. Minor participants must also have the signature of a parent or legal guardian on the

liability waiver.




Two Central Oregon Calderas Field Trip – September 29 and 30, 2012

NOTE: Fill out one registration and medical information form for each participant. This application

must be accompanied by a membership application and payment if you are not a member or guest of a

participating member. The membership application form is located in The Geological Newsletter or at

www.gsoc.org/membership.html.

REGISTRATION





City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- ____________


Fee: $ 25, includes printed materials. All other costs are responsibility of the participants. Send this form and

payment to:

GSOC, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, by September 17, 2012.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

MEDICAL INFORMATION


Allergies: _______________________________________________________________________________







Volume 78, Number 6


The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907 www.gsoc.org 2011 - 2012 Administration: President: Jane Walpole – 503/590-7501 [email protected] Vice-President: John Piccininni – 503/284-9674 [email protected] Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm – 971/404-6064 [email protected] Treasurer Dawn Juliano (2 years) - 503/367-7708 [email protected] Directors: Tara Schoffstall (1 year) – 503/513-6925 [email protected] Julia Lanning (2 years) – 503/201-8022 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen (3 years) − 541/753-0774 [email protected]

Past Presidents: Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019 [email protected] Larry Purchase – 360/254-5635 [email protected] Newsletter Editor and Calendar: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Website: Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Business Manager: Jan Kem – 503/799-6871 [email protected] Assistant Business Manager: Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827 [email protected] Field Trip Committee Chair Dave Olcott– 503/695-5219 [email protected] VISITORS WELCOME AT ALL MEETINGS

CALENDAR November/December Activities Friday evening talk, November 9, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Dr. Lara O'Dwyer Brown, Curator, Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals, Hillsboro, Oregon, will present “The Geology of Ireland.” O'Dwyer Brown focused on minerology and petrology while pursuing her PhD from the University of California at Davis. She traces her love of geology back to Sunday drives with her family through the mountains and valleys of the beautiful Irish countryside. She has always enjoyed sharing her knowledge of the Earth with anyone willing to learn. Working at the Rice Museum is her dream job!

For more information on the Rice Museum and the geology of Ireland see these websites: Rice NW Museum and Bedrock Geology of Ireland. Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lecture for an informal dinner and conversation. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Streets. GSOC Annual Holiday Party GSOC Members and their guests are invited to the 4th

GSOC Annual Holiday Party and field trip slideshow, Friday December 14th, 2012 at the Simon Benson House on the Portland State University Campus, 1803 SW Park Avenue at Montgomery Street corner. GSOC Board Members will provide main dishes with protein of various sorts. Other members please bring vegetable,
















http://www.ricenorthwestmuseum.org/

http://www.ricenorthwestmuseum.org/

http://www.burrenconnect.ie/UserFiles/Image/file/Geopark/NEED/maps/ModuleA2_Map.pdf


side dishes or desserts for 6 to share. Those interested in bringing drinks or table ware please contact Janet Rasmussen (541) 753-0774. Schedule of Christmas Party activities: 6:30 pm: Dinner buffet 7:15 pm: Welcome presentation 7:30 pm: Nominations for GSOC Board members

for the 2012-2013 year will be open, followed by "Year in Review" program.

This year's GSOC field trip leaders with present brief slide show summaries of their trips. Jane Walpole: "Landslides and Wineries" June

29 and July 20 Paul Edison-Lahm and Clay Kelleher: "A

Geological Walking Tour of Downtown Portland" August 25

Dave Olcott: "Tectonic, Volcanic, and Stratigraphic History of the Portland Basin" September 15-16

8:30 pm: Dessert and musical entertainment Donations will be accepted for the room rental. Suggested donation is $5 per participant, except for children of members. Send donations to Dawn Juliano at the GSOC mailing address or give them to her in person at the event. Geological Society of the Oregon Country, P.O. Box 907, Portland, Oregon 97207 If you would like to come but are not yet a member of GSOC, you may join now and receive membership benefits throughout 2013. Future Activities Friday evening talk, January 11, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Yumei Wang, Geotechnical Engineer and Earthquake Expert at Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), will speak on a topic to be announced. Friday evening talk, February 8, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Peter McGrail, environmental engineer at PNNL, will present his current research on the feasibility of wind energy storage in rock formations.

Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES October 13, 2012 The meeting was called to order at Rosemary Kenney’s residence by Vice-President John Piccininni (substituting for President Jane Walpole who was out with a cold). Board and GSOC members present also included Dawn Juliano, Larry Purchase, Rosemary Kenney, Jan Kem, Paul Edison-Lahm, Julia Lanning, Janet and Doug Rasmussen, and Dave Olcott. The minutes of the May 12th, 2012 board meeting were approved. The Treasurer’s Report was approved. The board approved $50 to be earmarked for addition to the annual PSU scholarship in honor of Paul Hammond per the suggestion of last night’s speaker who declined the $50 speaker’s honorarium. Field Trips and Other Events Dave provided a financial statement for his Portland Basin field trip showing a balance after expenses of $422.18! Bev and Bart’s Crooked River & Wildcat Mountain Caldera trip will be rescheduled to May 2013 with dates to be determined. The board approved repeating the Downtown Geology tour on an annual basis and suggested that the next tour be held early in the summer of 2013. Old and New Business Use of email or listserv? The idea of using email or a listserv for meeting and field trip notifications was raised and set on the agenda for the November board meeting. Dave wondered whether it would be appropriate to notify potential field trip participants by email to secure early registration and the consensus of the board was that this was a great idea. Nominating Committee: The bylaws require that the president appoint a nominating committee in October subject to board approval. The board approved the use of an email vote once Jane has been able to appoint the nominating committee.



Holiday Party: Per Anne O’Neill’s email suggestions, Janet assigned the following roles for the Holiday Party: Clean-up leader: Jan will make the reservation

and be the main contract contact (assisted by Bart and Bev).

Layout leader: Julia and Mark will rearrange the tables and furniture and put them back at the end of the evening.

Beverage and Food leader: Janet will delegate beverage and food assignments — and appoint an official alcohol server. Note: board members should bring main dishes with protein.

Program leader: Dave will organize the PowerPoint presentations.

Recreational/Entertainment director: Dawn. Donations: Since last year’s donations only

amounted to $40, the suggested donation will be emphasized more this year (e.g., Larry will make a sign to call attention to the donation bucket).

Inventory: Discussion to update the inventory was set over to the November board meeting. Old and New Business In order to get back on a regular board meeting schedule, the board decided that the next board meeting would be in November and alternate months thereafter. The next board meeting will be Saturday, November 10th, 2012, 10:00 a.m. at location to be announced. Meeting adjourned. Notes compiled from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary.

in memoriam GSOC member Beth Hiller died on September 6, 2012, after a short battle with liver cancer. Although she was a relatively new GSOC member, she had quickly become actively involved in our meetings, field trips, and other activities. Her enthusiasm, friendliness, energy, and warm smile will be sorely missed by her new GSOC friends. She is survived by her sons, Chris and Pete Ho, and her partner,

GSOC Business Manager Jan Kem. We extend our deepest sympathy to them all. GSOC would also like to extend our sympathy to the family of Gale Rankin, a long-time member who for many years hosted the post-meeting hospitality with Archie Strong. Gale died on July 22, 2012.

A Brief History of the Portland Basin Synopsis of the September 14, 2012, talk by Terry Tolan, Senior Geologist/Hydrogeologist at GSI Water Solutions Inc., Kennewick, Washington. by Carol Hasenberg and Dave Olcott As a precursor to the September GSOC field trip, guest speaker Terry Tolan took on the task of painting in large brushstrokes a brief geologic history of the Portland basin. He discussed the basic bedrock units in the basin and also the key geological maps and their authors that have been used in the past to reference that history. The Portland basin did not exist 30 to 40 million years ago, when the subduction zone for what we call the Farallon plate was located beneath the present Cascade Range. A piece of oceanic crust then docked onto the North American continent, choking the subduction zone which subsequently reformed west of this accreted terrane. This basement bedrock for the Portland Basin can be seen today in the Waverly Heights Formation, outcropping along the Willamette River from the Sellwood Bridge to the Pete’s Mountain area. This basalt rock layer can be distinguished from Columbia River Basalt due to the secondary mineralization of its vesicles, making it non-porous. Underlying this volcanic unit are marine sediments of Eocene to Miocene in age. As time has progressed to the present, the interaction between the tectonic plates has caused this accreted terrane to rotate clockwise, and form crustal faults in a NW- to SE-trending pattern, as well as a NE- to SW-trending pattern perpendicular to the first. It has taken many years to confirm the existence of most of these faults, which were


suspected decades ago. The standard geological map of the area, compiled by Trimble in 1963 and used for several decades, shows few faults in the area. Since the Trimble geological map, two geological mapping project series have dramatically improved our understanding of the geology of the Portland basin. One of these was the mapping of the Columbia River Basalt Group by Portland State University Professor Marvin Beeson and his students, and the other is the push instituted by the USGS and DOGAMI to more fully understand earthquake hazards in Oregon as a result of the discovery of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and its recurrent great earthquakes. Many outcrops of Columbia River Basalt Group can be seen in the Portland Basin. These voluminous flows erupted from feeder dikes in the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon, and each flow covered huge parts of the states in a few weeks’ time. The CRBG flows occurred during the Miocene era and covered much of the marine sediments in the basin. Intertwining and overlying these are several other volcanic and sedimentary units. The Troutdale Formation and the Sandy River Mudstone were both deposited by the ancestral Columbia River. The routes taken by the Columbia River long ago were many and varied. The Coast Range and Cascade Range were not the barriers they are today. The Columbia River also carried much more water, two or more times the volume it has today. The Sandy River Mudstone was deposited as a result of very large flood events in the Columbia River Basin. In more recent times the High Cascades have formed, and some of the magma has erupted in the Portland Basin from Boring-age volcanoes (2.6 Ma-100 Ka). These irregular bumps dot the landscape especially in the southeastern part of the basin, but also form larger peaks such as Larch Mountain and Mount Sylvania. The oldest of these are slightly over 2 million years old and are located south of Oregon City, but ages are scattered around to the north.

The faults of the Portland Basin have been confirmed with exposure, well log analysis, and seismic monitoring techniques. It was long suspected that a fault underlay the Portland Hills at the edge of the downtown area. Within 11 hours of Tolan concluding his orientation to the Portland Basin, Friday evening, an energized group of geology enthusiasts joined him and Steve Reidel in the field. The two day trip was a patented Terry Tolan field trip; extremely informative, interactive, highly spirited and totally comprehensive. Through the choreographed selection of field stops, participants were able to reinforce and validate what they had heard in the Friday night talk as well as what they viewed in Tolan’s outstanding field guide. The wealth of knowledge that Tolan and Reidel offer, and more importantly, their success in articulating it to the novice or professional, really makes a field trip with them very special. Our GSOC organization is very fortunate to have had the opportunity to interact with these two highly regarded and enthusiastic geologists.

SHALE GAS AND FRACKING: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Synopsis of the October 12, 2012, talk by Jim Jackson, Petroleum Geology and Mineral Resources adjunct faculty, Portland State University Department of Geology. by Carol Hasenberg This densely packed presentation was the first GSOC has had about oil and gas production, which might come as a surprise to many people, as the oil and gas industry is a major employer of geologists. However, working petroleum geologists are not thick on the ground here in Portland, so we were pleased to welcome PSU adjunct faculty Jim Jackson to introduce our group to the topic. Jackson has extensive experience in the industry,


and primarily worked for the Atlantic Richfield Company. Jackson introduced the topic by describing the geological environment which produces oil and gas. It all begins with algae in a lake, swamp or marsh, or marine environment. As the algae cells die, they sink to the bottom of the body of water and collect on the bed. If the water column is anoxic, such as that found in the Black Sea today, then the carbon in the dead cells is preserved as the shales form. Kerogen is a substance produced by the breakdown of the organic matter as it is compressed into shale and buried, and is the substance that produces the oil and gas. The geologic process necessary to produce oil and gas requires a source rock, a shale which contains the kerogen. As the source rock gets buried deeper and deeper, the rock temperature rises and the kerogen begins to cook. Kerogen produces optimal amounts of oil at a temperature range from 60°C to 150°C. Natural gas is optimally produced at a temperature range from about 80°C to over 200°C. Eventually the source rock will overmature, that is, all the volatile oil and gas will have been cooked out of it and only graphite will remain. Jackson then discussed what is involved in conventional petroleum systems. When we talk about drilling a conventional oil and gas well, we are talking about tapping into a geological system that includes a source rock as discussed above, above which lies a porous and permeable reservoir rock, and above that a sealer rock that forms a trap structure for the reservoir. The reservoir has to be buried in the “oil window”, i.e., at just the right depth to produce the oil and gas. As the source rock heats, gas and oil migrate into the reservoir rock and continue to rise until they collect underneath the trap. The sealer rock must form some sort of a dome or wedge to hold in the gas and oil. Then the oil company can come along and tap into the reservoir with its wells, and recover oil and natural gas. Of course, finding this oil is the tricky part so conventional drilling requires a good deal of geologic expertise.

Well drilling is a tricky business, and problems can occur, as all the world knows now because of the failure of the BP drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. When a well is drilled, a metal casing is inserted into the hole and a mud slurry is used to fill the hole and maintain the pressure in the hole. After the desired depth is reached, a foamy cement slurry is pumped into the bottom of the hole and the pressure forces the cement up into the gap between the hole and the casing. After the cement cures, the soundness of the completed casing is tested by changing the density of the fluid in the well to see if a corresponding pressure increase or decrease occurs in the fluid. These positive and negative pressure tests fail if the fluid pressure shows significant change, because this means that the casing is not resisting the pressure. As a contrast to conventional petroleum exploration, we have shale gas drilling and fracking. A shale gas system does not need to have a complicated reservoir and trap geology. Only a source rock that is buried in the “natural gas window” depth is needed. The product is natural gas only. The idea is to drill into the source rock and pump into that a mixture of mainly sand and water under enough pressure to crack the source rock. The sand then helps the cracks stay open once the fracturing fluid pressure is removed. The development of these fracking operations requires more expertise in the engineering end than the geology end. Well drilling involves drilling slanted or horizontal sections, the chemistry of the fracking mud, etc. Fracking operations require the use of many heavy trucks and trailers to haul around the fracking mud. However, it is a desirable process economically because there is so much shale gas out there to be tapped. Shale fields in the U.S. include the Barnett Shale in Texas, the Michigan Basin, and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Fracking can have significant environmental hazards though. The fractures produced in the process of extracting the gas might send natural gas and hydraulic fracturing fluid into drinking water supplies. The quantities of water used in fracking operations can be very great and residential waste water treatment operations may not be able to


handle the volumes or contaminants they hold. Fracking operations can also produce small earthquakes. Fracking operations can suck up needed water reserves in drought stricken areas. Trucks and equipment for fracking operations can degrade fragile country roads. Some improvements have been made in fracking operations as gas men have instituted water recycling and other economizing measures. Regulation of the industry is also “in the pipeline” to safeguard public infrastructure and drinking supplies. REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL READING You can learn a lot about the oil and gas industry by visiting these websites:

The definitive primer on Shale Gas from the Department of Energy: http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/publications/EPreports/Shale_Gas_Primer_2009.pdf The Open University Learning Space Petroleum pages take you through the oil and gas basics and beyond with quick links from an outline: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399434 Geology.com has a very nice section on gas and oil development: http://geology.com/oil-and-gas/ News article about shale gas regulation: http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/indiana-dnr-mandates-companies-report-fracking-chemicals-36023/

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/publications/EPreports/Shale_Gas_Primer_2009.pdf



http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399434

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399434

http://geology.com/oil-and-gas/

http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/indiana-dnr-mandates-companies-report-fracking-chemicals-36023/







Membership applications are available on the website www.gsoc.org. PUBLICATIONS: THE GEOLOGICAL NEWSLETTER (ISSN 0270 5451), published bimonthly and




Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





Volume 79, Number 1




www.gsoc.org


President:


[email protected]

Vice-President:


[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer


[email protected]

Directors:


[email protected]


[email protected]


[email protected]

Past Presidents:

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]


[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

January/February

Activities




University. Speaker Yumei Wang, Geotechnical

Engineer and Earthquake Expert at Oregon Department

of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), will

present "Surviving Cascadia Earthquakes: Oregon's

Critical Infrastructure".

This talk will cover Oregon's critical infrastructure

seismic vulnerabilities including lessons from Japan's

2011 Disaster, efforts led by the Oregon Seismic Safety

Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) on Resilience

Planning, and the need to build Earthquake Preparedness

into our culture. The information for the talk was jointly

prepared by Wang, Chris Goldfinger (OSU), and Kent

Yu, (OSSPAC ).

Friday evening talk, February 8, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in



University. Speaker Casie Davidson, environmental

researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

(PNNL), will present “Wind Energy Meets PNW

Geology: A Preliminary Look at Compressed Air

Energy Storage Opportunities in the Pacific Northwest.”

Located in Richland, Washington, PNNL is one among

ten U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national

laboratories managed by DOE's Office of Science. They

perform research to help find solutions for not only

DOE, but for the U.S. Department of Homeland

Security, the National Nuclear Security Administration,

other government agencies, universities and industry.

Their Richland campus includes unique laboratories

such as the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular

Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science national

















scientific user facility. In addition to the Richland

campus, they operate a marine research facility in

Sequim, Washington; and satellite offices in Seattle and

Tacoma, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and

Washington, D.C.


Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lectures for an informal







Future Activities

The Seventy-eighth Annual GSOC Banquet will be


Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker Dr. Rob McCaffrey,

geophysicist and research scientist with the Dept. of

Geology at PSU will present "Velocity Field Mapping

for the North American Plate in the Pacific NW".

McCaffrey is a geophysicist with interests in tectonic

plate motions, crustal deformation, earthquakes, GPS

and seismology. With students and other geophysicists,

he is involved in several research projects globally. This

talk will focus on determining the tectonic plate motion

that will produce future earthquakes.


GSOC Annual

Banquet is attached to this newsletter. Please

submit your registration by March 3 if you wish to

attend.


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES November 10, 2012

The meeting was called to order at the home of Jan

Kem by President Jane Walpole. Board members

present included Jane, Dawn Juliano, Paul Edison-

Lahm, Julia Lanning, Larry Purchase, and Rik

Smoody. Also present were Bev Vogt and Richard

Bartels. The minutes of the October 13th, 2012


Treasurer's Report: The board reviewed this year’s

income and expense figures and the results of the

September field trip. Treasurer Dawn Juliano will

donate $850 as our annual scholarship to the PSU

Geology Department before the end of the year. The

Treasurer’s Report was approved.

Membership List: The board agreed that a copy of

the membership list needs to be kept online. Rik

will investigate how we can use Google docs to

allow access to a list for board and committee

members.


Holiday Party: Jan has signed a contract with

Aramark Catering for the required alcohol server.

Members have donated $155 to cover the wine and

corkage fees. PSU will also need a $165 check by

the time of the party for the Benson House rental.

Suggested donations of $5 are still needed to cover

this rental cost.

The rental of the Benson House is from 4:00 p.m. to

10:30 p.m. Jan and Janet will begin the setup

around 4:00 p.m. Happy hour will be at 6:00 p.m.,

followed by the buffet at 6:30 p.m., and the meeting

at 7:00 p.m. The bartender will be on duty from

5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., but will only be serving

from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Janet will bring coffee.

Clean-up will begin at 10:00 p.m.

Upcoming Field Trips: Bev and Bart are looking at

the weekend before Memorial Day weekend for

their Caldera trip. Paul will look for an available

weekend in early July for his Downtown Geology

walk. Additional field trips in the planning stages

include trips to: Eliot Glacier washout (Rik),

Parkdale (Larry), Idaho (Dave Olcott), TBA (John

Piccininni), possible one day trip TBA (Jane).

Upcoming Speakers include Yumei Wang in

January and Peter McGrail in February.

Banquet Committee: Dawn was appointed Banquet

Committee chair (with assistance from Bart). Jane is

now looking for a banquet speaker and welcomes

suggestions. Janet will create the program. Jane will

make place-cards. Jan will run the sales table. Bart



will get the pick engraved. Jane requests that her

commemorative gift be a rock hammer.


Mugs: Bart provided a mug inventory — 263 mugs

remain, so assuming that 15 mugs per year are

given to speakers and field trip leaders, our supply

will only last until 2020. The board voted to drop

the price of the mugs to $5 each.

Newsletter: Jan reminds us that the text of the

newsletter needs to be to Carol by the 20th of the

month in which the newsletter is due. He also needs

mailing labels from Clay by the 25th of that month.

Nominating Committee: Jane has appointed Rik,

Janet and Paul to the committee. Janet is making

contact with potential nominees for Vice-President

and Director. The Treasurer and Secretary have

indicated that they will run again for their offices.

The committee will confer on their

recommendations by email.

Listserv: The board agreed to investigate using a

listserv for meeting and field trip announcements.

Rik will look for a suitable listserver.

Inventory: Bev is updating her inventory list and

will contact people she hasn’t yet talked to. Rik will

assist Bev in putting the inventory list on up Google

docs. Jane appointed Bev as Inventory Chair.

Library: Larry points out that the library needs to be

purged of 1940s textbooks, fossil related materials,

etc. This would make room for the GSA bulletins

now being stored at Bev and Bart’s. Some of the

purged items could be sold at the banquet sales

table. Jane appointed a Library committee with

Larry and Bart as co-chairs, and with Diana Gordon

and Rosemary Kenney as committee members. The

committee will recommend an appointee for

librarian.

Next board meeting will be Saturday, January 12th,

2013, 10:00 a.m. at Carol Hasenberg’s house, 614

NE 114th

Avenue, Portland.



Holiday Party Wrap-Up

Yes, another fascinating year was

marked at the 4th

annual GSOC Holiday Party on

December 14. Delicious food, good fellowship, and

lovely entertainment was had by all. This year we

had plenty of delicious protein dishes, plus veggies

and desserts at our potluck. Yum!

Musical entertainment was provided by Dawn

Juliano, Barbara Smoody, and David Keyes. Not to

mention the many carol-singers, whose names shall

remain anonymous. Thanks to you musicians! Also

special thanks to Jan Kem, Julia Lanning, Janet

Rasmussen, Dave Olcott, Bev Vogt, Bart Bartels

and Jane Walpole, without whose efforts we would

not have had a party.

Also thanks to the folks who scrambled at the last

minute to hire the caterer so that we could enjoy a

little cup of holiday cheer!

Nominating Committee

Results


this year’s nominating committee:

President .................................. John Piccininni

Vice President .............................. Sheila Alfsen



Director, 3 years ..................................Bo Nonn


Director, 1 year........................... Julia Lanning

Nominations will be closed for this year’s slate of

officers after the January meeting of the society.

The slate of officers will be voted on and approved

at the February monthly meeting.

The Nominating Committee members were Rik

Smoody, Janet Rasmussen and Paul Edison-Lahm. Our

thanks to the selected members and members of the

Nominating Committee!



PAYMENTS are due! Think about all

those great member benefits for a mere annual fee

of $25 for an individual and $35 for a family!

PS – If you joined GSOC in September 2012 or

later, your 2013 dues are paid, good deal!!!

IRELAND’s

GEO-TIMELINE

Synopsis of the November 9,

2012, talk by Dr. Lara O’Dwyer

Brown, Curator, Rice Northwest

Museum of Rocks and Minerals,

Hillsboro, Oregon. Working at the

Rice Museum is her dream job!

by Larry Purchase

Lara was raised in Dublin, Ireland. Lara earned her

Bachelor’s Degree from Trinity College at the

University of Dublin, and recently received her PhD

from the University of California at Davis, focusing

on mineralogy and petrology.

Precambrian (Ended 542 mya)

The two halves of Ireland (NW and SE) are

separated by the Iapetus Ocean. Scotland and NW

Ireland, on the other hand, are closely situated even

this long ago and so have similar geological

records. Gneisses and metasedimentary rocks have

been formed. Lots of deformation takes place.

Ediacaran soft-bodied fossils are preserved.

Cambrian (490 mya)

Transgression (advance of the sea onto land) in NW

Ireland is similar to that in Canada. Canada,

Greenland, and NW Ireland are all part of the

supercontinent Laurentia. Shallow marine rocks

evolve in NW Ireland, deep marine rocks evolve in

SE Ireland.

Ordovician (443 mya)

A volcanic arc setting for NW Ireland produces

sediments and lavas in the rock record. NW Ireland

is near the Equator, & SE Ireland is close to ~50-

60° south. Graptolite, brachiopod, trilobite and

conodont fossils are present. There is evidence for

ocean shrinking between NW and SE Ireland.

Silurian (417 mya)

Caledonian Orogeny (mountain building), melting

of the Saharan Ice Caps, and the final closure of the

Iapetus Ocean, evolve as a minor continent

Avalonia (large archipelago) develops, and later

becomes Laurasia where Ireland and North America

further evolve together.

Devonian (354 mya)

The Munster Basin to the south of the country is

formed at this time. Continents come together to

form Gondwana land. This is the age of fishes.

Carboniferous (290 mya)

Early Carboniferous produces extensive limestone.

Coal is deposited in England and Pennsylvania in

North America. A block and basin pattern emerges

as transgression erodes. Lead and zinc deposits are

plentiful in Ireland, The landscape is severely

deformed to the south during the complicated

world-wide Variscan Orogeny.

Permian (251 mya)

Rocks of this age in Ireland are not well preserved.

Continents come together to form Pangaea, a super

continent.

At this time Ireland and the North America are

together. At the end of the Permian, 95% of life dies

off. Trilobites and brachiopods disappear on a very

hot and high carbon dioxide planet.

Mesozoic (66 mya)

Triassic (208 mya), Jurassic (144 mya), and the

Cretaceous (66 mya) sees the breakup of Pangaea

and basalt is deposited in Ireland. Age of Dinosaurs

comes to an end, & Pangaea breaks ups. Sadly

neither Oregon nor Ireland has any dinosaur fossils.

Only marine fossils such as crinoids (sea lily) are

found. A desert environment existed on the New

Red Sandstone terrain, and evaporites like gypsum

are laid down.


Cenozoic (to present)

The mammals begin to thrive. North America was

attached to Ireland, but, by now is moving apart as

the Atlantic Ocean begins to form and widen. The

southern tip of Ireland has never had an ice sheet,

but the rest has been covered during the Quaternary.

GSOC is fortunate to have such a knowledgeable

speaker to talk to us about Ireland’s geology.

Previously Sheila Alfsen enlightened us about the

geology of Iceland. We would also be very

interested to hear about Greenland’s geology from

Lara’s husband, Dr. Eric Brown, who has traveled

& extensively studied the geology there, while

earning his PhD.

Reference and Additional Reading:

As you can tell from the timeline, the geologic

history of Ireland is closely related to the shifting

continents over the ages of the earth. You can

review maps of the earth through the ages on

Christopher Scotese’s Paleomap Project:

http://www.scotese.com/

Wikipedia also has numerous pages related to

continental drift and the history of earth’s

continents. A good place to start is the page on the

Iapetus Ocean, which is closely related to the

geologic history of Ireland.

WELCOME NEW MEMBERS! Welcome new members from 2012! May the

new year bring lots of great geology!

Steve and Priscilla Butler Marjan Rotting

Joshua and Jennifer Conley Bill Stein

Rachael Roberts Robin Calver

Charles Belusko Kathryn Alexander

Joel Chua Connie Battaile

Linda Budan Adam Altson

Dennis Chamberlin Kevin Friscia

Bruce Howard David Sutherland

Ken LaCour Alyssa Kleehammer

Jeff Payne & Betsy Julian Cris Morgante

Beth Smith Jordan Lawrence




Volume 78, 2012

compiled by Carol Hasenberg

January/February .......... no.1 ....... pages 1-10

March/April .................. 2 .....................11-16

May/June ...................... 3 .....................17-25

July/August ................... 4 .................... 26-32

September/October ....... 5 .................... 32-35

November/December .... 6 .................... 36-42

ARTICLES and REPORTS······································································································· Page

Holiday Party Wrap-up with “Here We Come A Fossiling” by Al LePage ························································ 3

Scott Burns Tells GSOC About Geology og the Pacific Northwest National Parks: Synopsis of the November 11, 2011,

GSOC Friday night lecture by Dr. Scott Burns of Portland State University, by Beverly Vogt ······················· 4

Earth profiles Pat Pringle, by Beverly Vogt ··························································································· 6

Review of The Ocean of Truth, by H.W.Menard (1986), by Beverly Vogt ························································ 7

The Bridge of the Gods and the Bonneville Landslide: Synopsis of the January 14, 2012 GSOC Friday night lecture by

Dr. Jim O’Connor, USGS Water Science Center in Portland, Oregon, by Carol Hasenberg ························· 13

Planning New Ground in Oregon Geology: Synopsis of the March 11, 2012 Seventy-seventh Annual GSOC Banquet

lecture by Dr. William Orr, Professor Emeritus and Curator of the Condon Collections, Museum of Natural and

Cultural History, University of Oregon, by Evelyn Pratt ································································· 19

Geology of the Land of Fire and Ice: Synopsis of the April 13, 2012 Friday night GSOC lecture by GSOC member Sheila

Alfsen, MAT, GIT, Chemeketa and Linn-Benton Community College Instructor and Consultant, by Carol

Hasenberg······················································································································· 21

Learning about Paleoseismicity through the Study of Turbidites: Synopsis of a recent lecture sponsored by the Portland

State University Geology Department by Dr. Chris Goldfinger of Oregon State University, by Carol Hasenberg ··

··································································································································· 29

Multi-Hazard Risks of Mt. Hood Area: Synopsis of the June 8, 2012 Friday night GSOC lecture by Bill Burns, landslide

expert at DOGAMI, by Carol Hasenberg ··················································································· 30

History of Larch Mountain Area: Synopsis of the August 26, 2010, talk by Charles A. Rollins, historian, at the GSOC

annual picnic, by Carol Hasenberg ·························································································· 33

A Brief History of the Portland Basin: Synopsis of the September 14, 2012, talk by Terry Tolan, Senior

Geologist/Hydrogeologist at GSI Water Solutions Inc., Kennewick, Washington, by Carol Hasenberg and Dave

Olcott ···························································································································· 38

Shale Gas and Fracking: A Brief Introduction: Synopsis of the October 12, 2012, talk by Jim Jackson, Petroleum Geology

and Mineral Resources adjunct faculty, Portland State University Department of Geology, by Carol Hasenberg

··································································································································· 39

SOCIETY BUSINESS

Board Meeting Notes: November 12, 2011, from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm ·················· 2

Board Meeting Notes: January 14, 2012, from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm···················· 12

Board Meeting Notes: March 10, 2012, from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm ····················· 18

Board Meeting Notes: May 12, 2012, from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm ······················· 28

Board Meeting Notes: August 26, 2012, from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm ···················· 33

Board Meeting Notes: October 13, 2012, from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm ··················· 37

MEMORIALS

In Memoriam: Rosina Higdon, John Newhouse, Tom Owen ······································································ 15

In Memoriam: Clara Bartholomay ···································································································· 18

In Memoriam: Beth Hiller, Gale Rankin ····························································································· 38




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907





Volume 79, Number 2

March/April 2013

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907 www.gsoc.org 2011 - 2012 Administration: President: John Piccininni – 503/284-9674 [email protected] Vice-President: Sheila Alfsen – 503/662-3678 [email protected] Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm – 971/404-6064 [email protected] Treasurer Dawn Juliano (2 years) - 503/367-7708 [email protected] Directors: Julia Lanning (1 year) – 503/201-8022 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen (2 years) – 541/753-0774 [email protected] Bo Nonn (3 years) – 503/235-9135 [email protected]

Past Presidents: Jane Walpole – 503/590-7501 [email protected] Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019 [email protected] Newsletter Editor and Calendar: Carol Hasenberg – 503/522-4249 [email protected] Website: Janet Rasmussen − 541/753-0774 [email protected] Business Manager: Jan Kem – 503/799-6871 [email protected] Assistant Business Manager: Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827 [email protected] Field Trip Committee Chair Dave Olcott– 503/695-5219 [email protected] VISITORS WELCOME AT ALL MEETINGS

CALENDAR March/April Activities The Seventy-eighth Annual GSOC Banquet will be Sunday, March 10, 2013, at the Monarch Hotel in Clackamas, Oregon. Speaker Dr. Rob McCaffrey, geophysicist and research scientist with the Dept. of Geology at PSU will present "GPS Velocity Field Mapping for Active Tectonics in the Pacific Northwest". McCaffrey is a geophysicist with interests in tectonic plate motions, crustal deformation, earthquakes, GPS and seismology. With students and other geophysicists, he is involved in several research projects globally. This talk will focus on determining the tectonic plate motion that will produce future earthquakes. The registration form for the 78th GSOC Annual Banquet was attached to the January/February

2013 edition of The Geological Newsletter, and is also currently available on the website, www.gsoc.org. Please submit your registration by March 3 if you wish to attend. Friday evening talk, April 9, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Dr. William Orr, Director, State Museum of Fossils, Eugene, Oregon, will present “The Origin of Life and Early Life on Earth.” The talk will address some of the ideas on first life as well as the likelihood of life out in the cosmos. The fossil record of the earliest life is much better than generally believed and active research on this subject is being pursued in several venues including NASA. Dr. Orr will outline some of his ideas on the rates of evolution and the integrity of the fossil record itself. By examining in detail three very early separate faunas he

















will support some of his perspectives on the relationship between tectonics and evolution. Bill's ideas on paleontology and evolution stem from his 50 years of research and work as museum director and professor at the University of Oregon. Bill did his baccalaureate at the University of Oklahoma, 1961, Masters UC Riverside 1963, and his doctorate at Michigan State in 1966. He has traveled extensively in Africa, the Middle East and did lecture tours in China in the early 1980’s. He came to UO in 1967 and retired in 1997. In 1982, he was named director of the state museum of fossils, a position he still holds as a volunteer today. A centerpiece of Orr’s early career was his participation as shipboard scientist aboard GLOMAR CHALLENGER then later in the 1970s and 80's when he managed the program for the National Science Foundation. He is the author of all the standard references in the Pacific NW and Oregon on Geology and Paleontology. In addition, he has written books on Oregon water. Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lectures for an informal dinner and conversation. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Streets. Future Activities GSOC Field Trip, “A Trail of Two Calderas,” May 18-19, 2013. Bart Bartels and Bev Vogt are planning a field trip to the Crooked River and Wildcat Mountain Calderas in central Oregon on May 18 and 19. For questions, details, and registration, contact Bart and Bev at 503-292-6939 ([email protected] or [email protected]). Deadline for registration is May 6. The registration form is attached to the end of this issue of The Geological Newsletter, and is also available on the GSOC website www.gsoc.org. NOTE: This trip is a rescheduling of the trip that was cancelled last September. Registrants for that trip were reimbursed for their paid fees. You must re-register for this trip if you wish to go.

NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES January 12, 2013 The meeting was called to order at the home of Carol Hasenberg. Board members present were John Piccininni, Julia Lanning, Janet Rasmussen, Tara Schoffstall, and Larry Purchase, one member short of a quorum. Also present were GSOC members Doug Rasmussen, Bo Nonn, and Sheila Alfsen. Carol took minutes in absence of Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm. The minutes of the November 10th, 2012 board meeting were approved. Board member nominees Sheila and Bo were welcomed and asked to give a brief synopsis of their lives and what brought them to geology and GSOC. Sheila has been a horse shoer, mom, student, and geologist/teacher. Sheila did her graduate work in Paleontology and is currently working with Paul Hammond as well as her job for the Community Colleges. Bo hails from the Midwest where he received his bachelor’s degree in geology from Wisconsin. He and his wife Ellen spent six years in Africa with the Peace Corps teaching high school, another three years as private volunteers in Kenya in the 1970s, and three more years with the Peace Corps in Botswana in the 1980s. In Portland he has worked at OIT as a mechanical engineer doing projects in medical technology. He also been a Mazama club climb leader and taught basic climbing school classes for twenty years. He retired last year, and is now taking geology classes. Treasurer's Report: The Treasurer’s Report was approved. Field Trips and Other Events Larry is planning a field trip based upon the Lidar image of Mt. Hood in the area of Elliott Creek, also






Bo has done some climbing in the area, and thinks we can get over there with vehicles. Larry is hoping to get someone to lead the trip focusing on the moraine of Elliott glacier. President’s Field Trip: John has experience caving, and group was very enthusiastic about doing a trip focused on caving. Bev and Bart’s trip is scheduled for May 18th and 19th. Upcoming Speakers: February speaker will discuss cutting edge research on compressed air storage. Other possible speakers were discussed. Holiday Party: Janet’s sister lives in a mobile home park that has a community center that is free to use. Board approved investigation of this by both Tara and Janet. Jan's report on the 2012 Holiday Party at the Benson House was approved. Annual Banquet: Banquet plans are on track. Old and New Business Tara will investigate links between Twitter and Facebook. She now has web access and will be increasing the networking via Twitter to give us more web cred. Janet would like a reminder at Friday night meetings to turn off cell phones and computers unless people are taking notes. Library revitalization project: Larry and Bart are working on this. Larry is providing GSA bulletins. A meeting at the library (Diana, Bart and Larry) is scheduled for January 25th. The plan is to have a show-and-tell for the library. It was suggested that we get a locking bookcases. Tara, Diana, Rosemary, Larry, Tom are on the library committee.

Slide conversion project: Bo would like to work with Clay on this. He has two Epsom scanners that do a good job scanning slides. Discussion of Google docs and listserv was tabled for next meeting. The next board meeting and annual business meeting will be held March 9th, 2013, 10:00 a.m. at Rosemary Kenney’s house. Minutes taken by Carol and edited by Paul. Notes compiled from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary.

ARE YOU READY!?! Synopsis of the January 11, 2013 Friday night GSOC lecture by Yumei Wang, seismic hazards expert at DOGAMI by Carol Hasenberg and Yumei Wang Yumei Wang, seismic hazard expert at DOGAMI and one of GSOC's most prolific speakers over the last couple of decades, gave a talk about preparing for Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquakes in Oregon. Indeed, this topic and identifying and reducing natural hazard risks has been the focus of Yumei's career at DOGAMI. Wang's talk, prepared with OSU Professor Chris Goldfinger and OSSPAC Chairman Kent Yu, emphasized that the key of preparing for a large earthquake or similar hazard is to define the hazard correctly and then to plan your mitigation strategies. Although Japan is the most earthquake savvy country in the world, they had major problems in the catastrophic Tohoku earthquake because the hazard was underestimated. We should not be complacent in the U.S., either, because only recently have we been able to define the earthquake hazards in our country. Our infrastructure has been aging and decaying with only the most necessary repairs, and it wasn't designed for the real natural hazards to begin with. We've had some unforgettable disasters in the last several years to show what a subduction zone mega


quake can do in Sumatra and Japan. We can learn from those and other earthquakes to plan our strategies for mitigation and survival of a quake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. At this point Wang began to focus on the GSOC audience and each individual's preparations for a major earthquake. She offered prizes to individuals who had bolted their homes to the foundations. She asked the audience what they plan to do if they feel the earth shaking hard. The answers that DOGAMI has been instructing us are to "Drop, Cover, and Hold", and to run to higher ground if you are in a tsunami inundation zone. She asked who in the audience has an emergency preparation kit with 1-2 weeks supply of food and water? To illustrate why the last question is important Wang showed the audience some slides from her earthquake reconnaissance trip to Japan after the Tohoku Earthquake and its devastating effect on buildings and infrastructure. After the quake power generation was a fraction of normal capacity, bridges and roads were destroyed, ports for shipping in supplies were damaged, the airport was flooded, some coastal towns were completely obliterated. After such major damage to the infrastructure, it may take a community months or even years to restore full services. It may even lead to the economic failure of some communities. Kent Yu, an engineer who is on the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC), has led an effort in developing a seismic preparedness plan for the next fifty years for the state. A "gap analysis" chart was made for lifeline services including water, energy, transportation, and telecommunications. The gaps in the study show how much time each sector estimates they will need to repair their services once the earthquake hits and the damage has been done. The gaps show a breakdown of the tasks into more specific aspects of each of the major services. It also has markers showing target repair gaps for improved seismic performance. Wang felt that the gap analysis might be a bit misleading in that the gap times shown may depend on other services being functional as the repairs are being conducted. For example, you may have difficulty in repairing an electrical transformer

in the gap time shown if the road to it has been washed out. In the past 20 years or so, Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has made extensive studies of aging bridges, and has used these in determining the seismic preparedness of the major transportation corridors in Oregon, which include the I-5 and I-84 corridors, major routes to the Oregon coast and central Oregon, and US 101 on the coast. Landslides, liquefaction, and lateral spreading (I.e., permanent soil failures) are a concern along these corridors as well as damage from shaking to the bridges. In the energy sector, energy transmission and storage facilities were studied through a geographic filter of predicted seismic soil failures (i.e., landslides, liquefaction, and lateral spreading) to see where major problems lie. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) has done a very robust study of the vulnerabilities of their systems but once again, this is assuming that other systems are running, employees can get to work, etc. There are many endangered high voltage electrical transmission towers situated in river flood plains full of highly liquefiable soils. Also, fuel tank depots along the Willamette River are built on highly liquefiable soil, and there are no backup storage areas. So, in terms of major services, Oregon does not seem to be very prepared for a mega quake. The report is at http://www.oregon.gov/puc/docs/DOGAMICEIHubreport-8-1-12-R1.pdf So that leads us back to individual preparedness in Oregon. HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE EMERGENCY KITS THAT ARE GOING TO LAST YOU A LONG TIME IN A MEGA QUAKE? Remember, there will be no warning for an earthquake, although there is a short gap of warning for a tsunami. So prepare yourself and your family now. Wang pointed out that in planning for an emergency, the first hour after an earthquake can be very important. You should have a shutoff wrench to turn off your gas service, and any other fire or hazardous chemical hazards that you have should be

http://www.oregon.gov/puc/docs/DOGAMICEIHubreport-8-1-12-R1.pdf

http://www.oregon.gov/puc/docs/DOGAMICEIHubreport-8-1-12-R1.pdf


secured. You should have a family communication plan and a plan to meet up after the event. You may be on one side of the river and the rest of your family be on the other side. After the talk, a few of us were discussing making an emergency preparedness kit and what it might contain. At Fort Lewis the army surplus store has MRE meals that are ready to eat. There are 50 to 80 gallons of water in the typical hot water tank that could be used. You may want to have a camping stove and a camping water filter system on hand.

WELCOME NEW MEMBERS! We’d like to welcome quite a few new members to GSOC for 2013! Hot-diggity! Jon & Barbara Stroud Phillip Kaser Dr Alyson Lighthart Rockne Stephenson Glenn Kirkindall Kyle Dittmer Richard McJunkin Mark Meininger Perry & Terra Crampton Lyle T. Hubbard Jr. Alex Marrero, D.D.S. Carolyn Powers Richard ‘Dick’ Pugh Kathy Goss









Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________




Country TWO CENTRAL OREGON CALDERAS FIELD TRIP

MAY 18 AND 19, 2013 Past Presidents Richard Bartels and Beverly Vogt will lead a field trip to Crooked River

and Wildcat Mountain calderas in central Oregon on May 18 and 19. The Crooked River caldera, called Oregon’s Super Volcano by its discoverers Mark Ferns and Jason McClaughry of DOGAMI, is enormous, covering an area approximately 25 by 17 miles and containing Smith Rock State Park on the northwest side, Prineville in the middle, and Prineville Reservoir State Park on the southeast side. Tuff ejected during the eruption that caused the collapse of the caldera has an age or approximately 29.5 Ma. Wildcat Mountain caldera to the northeast of Crooked River caldera is smaller and older, covering 10 by 7 miles. Tuff produced by its catastrophic caldera-producing eruption has an age between 41.5 and 39.35 Ma. Steins Pillar, a famous pioneer landmark located in the caldera, is an erosional remnant of this tuff. This trip will explore features of Crooked River caldera on Saturday, the 18th, and Wildcat Mountain caldera on Sunday, the 19th. The trip will be over no later than 2 p.m. on Sunday. The trip will start Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at Haystack Reservoir Campground on the east side of Haystack Reservoir, a few miles south of Madras. Participants can camp starting on Friday night at Haystack Reservoir Campground or stay in one of the motels in nearby Madras. Participants are responsible their own lodging, transportation, and food arrangements. Carpooling is recommended. Much of the trip will be on gravel roads, so vehicles with good clearance are preferable. Cost of the trip is $25, and participation will be limited to the first 25 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip. If you have questions or want to reserve a place on the trip, contact Richard Bartels ([email protected]) or Beverly Vogt ([email protected]), both at 503-292-6939. If the weather is bad or there are fires in the area, the trip will be canceled and your money refunded. More information about specifics will be emailed or sent to participants after the deadline. Trip Participation Policies: If you plan on participating in this trip, send in your registration form (attached to this newsletter) and $25 fee by Monday, May 6th. Each participant must be a GSOC member or guest and should have a separate registration form. A nonmember may register if he/she includes a membership application form and payment with the registration form and fee. NOTE: This trip is a rescheduling of the trip that was cancelled last September. Registrants for that trip were reimbursed for their paid fees. You must re-register for this trip if you wish to go. Minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult GSOC member parent or guardian. A letter from his or her parent or guardian giving permission for a minor to participate in the field trip with a designated person must be attached to this form. Each participant must also fill out and sign a liability waiver at the meeting place in order to participate. Minor participants must also have the signature of a parent or legal guardian on the liability waiver.



REGISTRATION/MEDICAL INFORMATION FORM Two Central Oregon Calderas Field Trip – May 18 and 19, 2013 NOTE: Fill out one registration and medical information form for each participant. This application must be accompanied by a membership application and payment if you are not a member or guest of a participating member. The membership application form is located in The Geological Newsletter or at www.gsoc.org/membership.html. REGISTRATION Participant name___________________________________________________ Minor (circle one): Yes or No



Parent signature for minor _______________________________________ Date _____________________________


City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- ____________


Fee: $ 25, includes printed materials. All other costs are responsibility of the participants. Send this form and payment to: GSOC, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, by May 6, 2013. _______________________________________________________________________________________ MEDICAL INFORMATION


Allergies: _______________________________________________________________________________







Volume 79, Number 3

May/June 2013

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907 www.gsoc.org 2011 - 2012 Administration: President: John Piccininni – 503/284-9674 [email protected] Vice-President: Sheila Alfsen – 503/939-6003 [email protected] Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm – 971/404-6064 [email protected] Treasurer Dawn Juliano - 503/367-7708 [email protected] Directors: Julia Lanning (1 year) – 503/201-8022 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen (2 years) – 541/753-0774 [email protected] Bo Nonn (3 years) – 503/235-9135 [email protected]


CALENDAR May/June Activities Friday evening talk, May 10, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Dr. Eric L. Brown, Portland Community College, will present “A Virtual Tour of the 55ma Skaergaard Intrusion, Central East Greenland.” The Skaergaard intrusion formed during the breakup of Pangea and the opening of the North Atlantic ocean basin ~ 55 Ma, and is perhaps the world's best example of an ancient solidified magma chamber. Eric completed a 1 year post-doc at UC Davis, where he had the opportunity to go to the Skaergaard Intrusion. He will discuss the logistical challenges and isolation while working in East Greenland, and provide a photographic tour of the major features of the intrusion.

Eric received his BS in Geology at the University of the Pacific, an MS in Geology at UC Davis, under Dr. Eldridge Moores, and a PhD in Geology at UC Davis under Dr. Charles Lesher. Currently an instructor at Portland Community College, Eric is also a full-time dad. His research interests include the origin and evolution of basaltic magma systems in different tectono-magmatic environments. He addresses these petrologic problems using thermodynamic modeling and major element, trace element, and radiogenic isotope geochemistry. Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lectures for an informal dinner and conversation. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on

















level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Streets. GSOC Field Trip, “A Trail of Two Calderas,” May 18-19, 2013. Bart Bartels and Bev Vogt are planning a field trip to the Crooked River and Wildcat Mountain Calderas in central Oregon on May 18 and 19. For questions, details, and registration, contact Bart and Bev at 503-292-6939 (or email to [email protected] or [email protected]). Deadline for registration is May 6, 2013. The registration form for the trip was attached to the end of the March/April 2013 edition of The Geological Newsletter, and is also currently available on the website, www.gsoc.org. Cost of the trip is $25, and participation will be limited to the first 25 GSOC members and their guests who have paid for the trip. NOTE: This trip is a rescheduling of the trip that was cancelled last September. Registrants for that trip were reimbursed for their paid fees. You must re-register for this trip if you wish to go. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Friday evening talk, June 14, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Deron Carter, Linn-Benton Community College, will present “Large Pleistocene Outburst Flooding from Lake Alvord into the Owyhee River, Oregon.” Large magnitude floods significantly altered portions of the landscape of western North America during the Pleistocene. The well-known and well-documented Missoula Floods illustrate the impact this scale flooding had by altering the course of major drainages and creating the extensive Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. However, other floods, of smaller magnitude, also affected landscapes on a more regional basis. The Alvord Basin, located in Oregon’s remote southeastern corner, once contained a large lake that overflowed at least once about 13,000 years ago into the Crooked Creek drainage of the Owyhee River watershed. This flood altered the regional landscape by leaving behind stripped bedrock surfaces and large flood deposits, some of which are located over 30 meters above the present channel. Come learn about the flood’s connection to Lake Alvord, a variety of geologic dating

techniques that were used to establish the age of the flood, and possible impacts on local ecology. Deron Carter holds an M.S. in geology from Central Washington University and is a faculty member in the Department of Physical Sciences at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon. Future Activities GSOC Field Trip, “Eliot Glacier/Parkdale Lava Flow - Field Trip,” tentative dates August 3 and 4, 2013. Field trip co-leaders Larry Purchase, Bo Nonn, and Rik Smoody are putting an exciting trip together for GSOC. Featuring guest speaker and leader Dr. Andrew Fountain, PSU Dept. of Geology, Glaciologist, and assisted by Cynthia Gardner and Willy Scott, both of USGS, Geologist/Volcanologist. The anticipated two day event may include the following: First Day: 1. Visits to washouts and new bridges on the Middle

Fork, Hood River, one located above, and the other below the Parkdale Lava Flow. The Middle Fork, Hood River starts at the Eliot Glacier passes the Parkdale Lava Flow adjacent and to the west side, on the way down the mountain.

2. A visit is scheduled to a century old water supply system, beginning at the bottom of the Parkdale Lava Flow and supplying gravity fed water to homes almost to the town of Parkdale.

Second Day: 3. An optional opportunity is being presented to see if

there is enough interest in climbing to Eliot Glacier to look at an active glacier. If the climb is a go we will try to schedule Dr. Fountain for a Friday night lecture, just before the trip.

The details on the Eliot Glacier portion of the trip are that we will have to climb from a parking lot near Cloud Cap Inn at 6,000 ft. to about 8,500 ft. up the east side moraine (on a good trail of angular rock) of Eliot Glacier to a point where we will be looking down onto the Glacier. From there we will descend down a steep talus slope of volcanic rock for a short way, then to the ice of the glacier, where we will be led safely to the top of an open crevasse. A lecture may be given as we peer down into the depths of the crevasse. It will be a full day to negotiate the hike up to the glacier and then back down. We can be assisted by board member, Bo Nonn, who has





been a Mazama Climb leader for two decades, knows first aid, and has been on this trip with Dr. Fountain. Another board member, Julia Lanning, is an avid hiker and climber and may be able to assist. If necessary, a conditioning hike up in the gorge, at say, Dog Mountain, could be arranged in advance of the trip, if requested. The group will be camping overnight on the mountain near Cloud Cap Inn, or near the top of the Parkdale Lava Flow. Participants are also welcome to arrange their own lodging at a motel in Hood River. The trip date is dependent upon the opening of a crevasse which is in turn dependent upon the snow melting rate for this year, so for that reason we will not be able to announce a firm date at this time. Every attempt will be made to determine open weekend dates as soon as possible. Participants will provide their own transportation to and from the mountain and carpooling is encouraged. Participants will also be able to sign up for one or both days of the trip. The trip registration form will be available in the next issue of The Geological Newsletter as well as a completed, detailed itinerary for the trip. NOTE: You must be a GSOC member or guest of a member to attend GSOC field trips. You may join GSOC at any time, for $25. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES March 9, 2013 The meeting was called to order at the home of Rosemary Kenney. Board members in attendance were Jane Walpole, John Piccininni, Dawn Juliano, Paul Edison-Lahm, Janet Rasmussen, and Larry Purchase. Quorum was present. (Board members-elect present were John, Sheila Alfsen, Dawn, Paul, Janet, and Jane.) Also in attendance were GSOC members Bev Vogt, Richard Bartels, Dave Olcott, Jan Kem, Peregrine Edison-Lahm and Rosemary. The minutes of the January 12th, 2013 board meeting were approved. Election results: The board took notice of the results of the election on February 8th, 2013 of the following new board members: President: John Piccininni

Vice-President: Sheila Alfsen Treasurer: Dawn Juliano Secretary: Paul Edison-Lahm Director (1-year): Julia Lanning Director (2-year): Janet Rasmussen Director (3-year): Bo Nonn The Treasurer’s Report was approved. Dawn notified us that our post office box has been moved to the location at S.W. 1st and Madison. Field Trips and Other Events Annual Banquet: Fifty-nine people are signed up for the annual banquet. Rosemary will be bringing the free field guides. John will bring other stuff, including free literature. Jan will staff the sales table. The spiffy banquet programs created by Janet were appreciated. Fellows Certificates: Bart explained the process whereby the President and VP automatically become fellows and some active members who have “made significant contribution” can become fellows by unanimous board vote. Upcoming Speakers: Sheila announced that she has scheduled the following speakers: Bill Orr will speak in April on the origins of life; Eric Brown (research assistant for Paul Hammond) will speak in May on the Greenland mafic intrusion; Deron Carter (Linn-Benton Community College Geology Dept.) will speak in June on pluvial Lake Alvord; Paul Hammond will speak in September on the possible connection of the Western US to the Pacific Plate. Other possible topics include: wells and groundwater, coastal turbidites, Sandy river lahars, and South Sister inflation. The board discussed speaker honoraria and providing speakers with an honorary membership for the remainder of the year and the following year. Carol [maintains a spreadsheet of past speakers starting in 1998]. Our VP will need this list. The list might also be put on the public website.



Upcoming Field Trips/Events Possibilities for John’s President’s Field Trip include: Lava Beds National Monument, with the option of some of the group going into the caves. Safety concerns were discussed. Equipment, such as headlamps, would be needed and members of the local caving associations might be invited also for the caving expertise. Another field trip possibility might be going to Southwestern Idaho/Northwest Nevada at the headwaters of one fork of Owyhee. Further possibilities include the Mt. Hood glacier caves or the City of Rocks in Idaho. Bo and Larry are exploring a possible field trip to the Parkdale Lava flow with a guest speaker on glaciology. Sheila may plan a field trip to the Mollala River. Dave and Paul are passing on planning a field trip this year. The club really appreciates their efforts over the past several years. Janet was exploring the prospect of a Canadian Rockies trip, but rooms have filled up fast for this year, so she may plan in few years out. Old and New Business Library committee: Larry and Bart report that the library committee has removed three boxes of fossil books from the library. Larry suggests giving them to NARG. He will swap for some geology books with NARG and then see if GSOC wants these books. Rosemary suggests reminding people of the existence of the library. A lock box is needed for valuable books. John suggests using the COHA open source application to keep track of books. The committee will continue discussion. Janet suggests using a listserv for meeting announcements. Rik and Paul were to research using Google docs and setting up a listserv, but this was tabled until the next meeting. Rik’s proposal of GSOC sponsorship at the Intel NW Science Expo was tabled until the next meeting.

Paul recommended that board members read A Guide to Nonprofit Board Service in Oregon which he passed out. The next board meeting will be held Saturday, May 11th, 2013, 10:00 a.m. at Rosemary Kenney’s house. Notes compiled from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary. PACIFIC NORTHWEST TECTONIC MOTION: FROM TINY MEASUREMENTS TO THE BIG PICTURE Synopsis of the Seventy-Eighth GSOC Annual Banquet lecture by Dr. Rob McCaffrey, geophysicist and research scientist with the Dept. of Geology at PSU by Carol Hasenberg Dr. Rob McCaffrey, a geophysicist and research faculty member of Portland State University’s Department of Geology, has interests in tectonic plate motions, crustal deformation, earthquakes, GPS and seismology. While on a sabbatical trip from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1995, his heart was captured by the Pacific Northwest. The His subsequent move west 15 years later west has meshed perfectly with his interest in measuring and analyzing the rates of motion of the earth’s crust. Before plunging the GSOC crowd into the thick of his research in plate tectonics, McCaffrey gave special thanks to the work done by Tony Qamar, a Washington state seismologist who was killed doing GPS field work but whose data provided the foundation for the long-term GPS database that McCaffrey and other earth scientists use today. He also gave thanks to his colleagues Suzette Payne from the Idaho National Laboratory and Robert King from MIT. Since the late 1980’s earth scientists have had the high precision GPS system for measuring movements in the earth’s crust. McCaffrey explained how the 24-plus satellite system is used by the GPS receiver in your car to obtain your position accurately enough for you to drive about. The high precision GPS instruments used by


geophysicists are a bit more accurate. The measuring array uses antennae that determine the phase of the waves broadcast by multiple satellites, then process these in a complex program to correct errors so that the measurement accuracy is within 2mm. The analysis required for this method sacrifices the ability to obtain real-time observations at that level of accuracy, however. Prior to this technological breakthrough, earth scientists had been trying to estimate the deformation of the earth’s crust by measuring slippage caused by earthquakes, which proved to be very unreliable as it did not get the whole picture. In the last twenty-some years, measurements have been made of many points on the earth’s crust using GPS and this information has given a much clearer picture of the processes of crustal plate movements. For his research in the northwestern section of the North American Plate, McCaffrey has obtained information about the rates of subduction, continental deformation, seismic hazards, and transient deformations. In order to study local plate movement, a network of measuring stations must be developed and monitored. McCaffrey gets measurements from a network of about 1000 continuously monitored stations with permanent measurement arrays, and also takes periodic measurements on geodetic markers and unobtrusive bolts inset in rock in a number of locations. Taking these periodic field measurements can consume a lot of time, so he is always welcome to having volunteers for this duty. The movement data obtained is also being archived for future studies, because the longer the time span in the data, the more one can observe the long term trends. McCaffrey showed an example graph from GPS data obtained on Vancouver Island which demonstrated a long term trend as well as episodic trends with a periodic correction, these episodes occurring over periods of a year or so. This phenomenon was an unexpected "slow slip" aseismic process that has been studied in the last few years. It is believed that this is a frictional process characteristic of the seismic boundary. The physics of the process is still under study.

The plate motion research process has been fairly well developed over the last couple of decades, and similar studies are being done in Japan and New Zealand. McCaffrey is using the data gathered in the Pacific Northwest to determine subduction rates, crustal deformation and strain, define plate sub-boundaries and the earthquake hazards they generate, and obtain an overall view of the deformation trends of the North American plate and its driving forces. In determining all these motion trends, one must study a vast field of motion vectors generated by the field measurements. The motion trends must be decoupled mathematically to reveal crustal squeezing, stretching, and shearing, or strains in the fabric of the crust, as well as overall translation and rotation motions of the plates and sub-plates. This all sounds pretty complicated, but the overall trends can be picked out visually by viewing a slide of the motion vectors. For the western section of the North American plate, two trends are very obvious to the eye. In the northern section, motion is dominated by rotation with the axis of rotation located in the northeastern corner of Oregon. In the southern section, straight-line motion is dominant towards the northwest. McCaffrey explained these overall motion trends with the following model: The Rocky Mountains are being pulled down by gravity. This mass of material moves westward since it is buttressed toward the east. Since the California plate boundary, a nearly vertical slip-strike fault, is much stronger in comparison to the weaker thrust fault in the Pacific NW, the mass is being squeezed out through the northwest. The rotation is likely caused by the thick “root” of the Idaho batholith acting as an anchor. Because the Pacific Northwest is moving in rotation relative to the rest of the North American plate, its boundaries are sites of faulting and earthquakes. The boundaries include the Snake River Plain in Idaho, Yellowstone National Park, the Wasatch Front in Utah, and the Walker Lane fault zone northeast of the Sierra Nevada. This rotation has been fairly constant for at least the last 15 million


years, because the rates of rotation observed in the GPS measurements coincide with the rotation rates gleaned from studying the direction of magnetization in Columbia River Basalt formations. McCaffrey joked that the Pacific Northwest is actually seceding from the US, physically if not politically. The big picture of motion is not the only thing gotten from the study of plate motion measurements. Geophysicists are working to build a kinematic block model of the Western US, which will help in developing future seismic hazard maps. A USGS seismic hazards map is due out in 2014 which will include this information. Strain models are also being developed for the Cascadia Subduction Zone plate boundary. By the pattern of strain they see on the surface, geophysicists can build another model of what the strain is like at depth in the locked zone. This has been corroborated by data from the Sumatra and Tohoku earthquakes, where similar models have been built. Changing assumptions about material properties can alter this type of model from a smoother continuum to a more patchy pattern. GSOC would like to thank Dr. McCaffrey for a very knowledgeable glimpse into the work being done by geophysicists to understand our earth and prepare for its hazards.

DISCOVERING ORIGINS OF

MULTICELLULAR LIFE synopsis of GSOC Friday night lecture, April 12, 2013, “Perspectives on Earth's Earliest Life” by Dr. William Orr, professor emeritus, University of Oregon. The author has also filled in the details of some of the Hadean and Archean evolution with information that has been presented in the recent Nova program, “Australia’s First Four Billion Years: Episode 1, Awakening” on OPB. Dr. Orr began his informative lecture on the origins of multicellular life with a brief look at the origin of life on earth and concepts we have come to understand about life’s origin. But to understand anything about the origins of life, you must first

have some basic understanding about how scientists find out how life originated on earth. The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and it developed continents, oceanic crust, and an ocean of water early in its history. The continents, being composed of less dense rock than the oceanic crust, are thicker and ride higher on the earth’s surface. The oceanic crust is thinner and denser than the continents. Oceanic crust is recycled “like newspaper” back into the molten core of the earth so the really old rocks remain on the original pieces of the continents. Therefore, any old fossils containing an early record of life on earth will have to be found in the rock on the oldest sections of the continents. Scientists did not realize until the middle of the 20th century that the continents and oceanic crust are constantly in motion on the surface of the earth. This concept is referred to as “plate tectonics” or “continental drift” and probably most of you have heard about it by now. Although on a simplistic level the concept explains “sea floor spreading”, the ramifications of the theory have influenced every aspect of the natural history of the earth. Scientists have examined fossil and other clues to piece together maps of the locations of the continents back through the last two “Wilson cycles”, where continents in their movements drift apart and then come back together into supercontinents, or one big continental mass. Not only can they tell the relative positions of the continents with each other but also with the approximate latitudes they occupy. Orr presented some correlations between earth’s tectonic and paleobiological history in the lecture. Researchers have been comparing the plate tectonics record to that of species biodiversity and biomass as determined from fossil beds. There is a rough correlation in these biological indicators with periods of relative continental stability and continental breakup and reassemblage. A large amount of species evolution occurs near a shoreline, so periods of continental breakup and reassemblage tend to have the greatest biodiversity and biomass. The leanest times for biodiversity and biomass tend to be when supercontinents are assembled and relatively stable. Of course there are other factors at play, such as the chemical composition of the atmosphere.


The earliest known fossils date back to about 3.5 billion years, and are single-celled forms. Trace fossils go back to about 4 billion years. For a long time life existed as single-celled biota that lived individually or in mats or other groupings. Nevertheless, some profound changes to earth’s environment occurred during this time, due to the influence of this biota. The first cells were formed in anaerobic conditions, i.e., without atmospheric oxygen. Scientists have been working on experiments to simulate or re-create the beginnings of life for quite a number of years now. It is actually quite easy to synthesize amino acids from the inorganic chemicals that existed in earth’s early atmosphere, and this exercise, called the Miller experiment, was first done in 1953 by Stan Miller, a graduate student of Dr. Harold Urey of the University of Chicago. Orr and others have speculated that simple forms of life have been initiated many times and in many places throughout the universe. Orr joked that most of this life would resemble Precambrian biota rather than more complex forms (and here he showed the audience a picture of ALIEN). During the long reign of single-celled biota, cyanobacteria, or “blue-green algae” developed (at least 2.7 billion years ago), which could perform photosynthesis and produce oxygen. Similar forms of these exist today in mat forms called stromatolites, found on the western shores of Australia in high salinity bays which discourage predators. These were successful because they could synthesize power directly from sunlight, and did not have to rely on volcanism to heat the water which contained it. They also produced an overabundance of oxygen, which first precipitated out the iron in the oceans, then converted atmospheric methane to carbon dioxide and oxygen. This poisoned most of the anaerobic forms and our atmosphere has contained a large percentage of oxygen ever since. Orr mentioned a couple of the research scientists who have contributed our knowledge to this part of the history of life on earth: Elso Barghoorn, who interpreted cyanobacterial fossils in Gunflint chert in the Lake Superior region found in 1953, about 2 billion years old, and William Schopf from UCLA, who has fleshed out

the paleobiological history from fossils back to about 3.5 billion years. For many years scientists did not find evidence of multicellular forms of life until the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time. Or life forms in general, for that matter. Orr remarked that the principal was a backwards take on the old adage “seeing is believing”. Scientists tend not to see things that they are not looking for. Therefore in science, “I wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t believe it” applies. This is true in the finding of Ediacaran fossils as well as tiny indicator fossils which we will cover a bit later. Trace fossils such as tracks made by worms were also ignored until the 1970’s. So now the fossil records show metazoans, or multicellular life forms, appearing about 600 million years ago. This is the Ediacaran biota, first discovered in Australia by Martin Glaessner, an oil micropaleontologist. Ediacaran forms were soft bodied, segmented, most were vagrant (i.e., travelled about), not sessile or sedentary. Adolph Seilacher was mentioned by Orr as being the paleontologist that interpreted most Ediacaran forms as having a hydro-skeleton, like a quilted membrane filled with seawater. Dickinsonia, of dinner plate dimensions, was a typical Ediacaran life form. Xenusion is the only one known with spines or other means of defense. As soft-bodied forms, Ediacaran life was quite edible, and thus they disappeared as soon as jaws were developed. Spriggina, an important Ediacaran find, sports a notochord and head-like area and is a transitional form to animals with brains. Holothurians, or sea cucumbers, as modern creatures resembling Ediacaran life, now have evolved chemical means of protecting themselves. Orr had finally arrived at the Cambrian Explosion of life, which began about 540 million years ago, and he took a look at both large and small fossils which scientists are using to study life at this point. Fossils can be both taxial or parataxial, that is, they can represent the whole individual or a piece of that individual. This can confuse the picture quite a lot, and scientists have to be careful that they don’t make limiting assumptions about a particular kind


of fossil until good examples are found. It is also important to find fossils which have recorded the soft tissue of the specimen. This underlines the importance of the Burgess Shale, a 530 million year old outcrop in the Canadian Rockies discovered by Charles Walcott in 1909. This was scientists’ first good look at the soft tissues of Cambrian fauna. A population was preserved on soft shale showing very complex forms, arthropods of several types, Anomalocaris, who was a large predator, mollusk Hyolithids, which survived for 300 million years, and primitive vertebrate animals. Trilobites characterize the Cambrian, and some species were used as guide fossils in piecing together fossil ages and continental drift positions. Olenellus is an American Cambrian guide fossil. Paradoxides was another trilobite found in Europe in the Cambrian and much bigger than Olenellus. These trilobites were useful in some circumstances (such as continental drift assemblages), but for being a guide fossil they had some strikes against them. They were facies fossils, that is, they preserved well in shales and limestones but not in sandstones. They were provincial, not cosmopolitan, in their distribution. They were also hard to identify from fragments. So scientists have turned more and more to tiny, ubiquitous, hard mineralized fauna to use as guide fossils. Better guide fossils for the Cambrian are the oldest shelled metazoans, Tommotian microfossils. They are very tiny, but much better than trilobites. They are now being used by researchers analyzing stratigraphy for relative dating. Their shells are made of aragonite and calcite. They come in many shapes -tubes, horns, clams, snails, spaceship-looking spikes, ridged scales- which are characteristic of their era. Radiolarian microfossils are also now commonly used in dating stratigraphy. These protozoa contain opaline skeletons in a variety of characteristic shapes for particular eras of time. They are present in seawater as zooplankton and so are found in all oceanic sediments from Cambrian time forward. Orr showed the audience pictures of a particular species group that he uses in classifying strata from

10 million years to the present, and how this population has evolved in shape over that time. Which brings us to the penultimate topic that Orr covered, that of transitional species. Scientists like to neatly classify types of organisms into certain groups, but all life on earth has evolved from one form to another throughout its history. Just looking at chordates, there have been fish that evolved into amphibians, who evolved into reptiles and mammals, dinosaurs, and birds. Some species along this evolutionary path represent transitional forms between these classifications, say therapsid reptiles that have mammal-like characteristics such as dental specialization. Likewise there are mammals such as opossums that retain some reptile-like qualities. There are examples like these throughout the fossil record as well as living specimens. Orr’s lecture ended at the place where most life forms have begun, the continental margins. Most oceanic species evolve on or near the beach, and as time passes they are displaced farther and farther offshore down the continental shelf. When they reach the continental shelf, they die out completely. This concept ties us back to the plate tectonic biodiversity model explored at the beginning of the article, and why the breakup or reassemblage of continents, which produces a lot of shallow water is so important to the evolution of life on earth. It is a long, slow dance between earth’s geology and its life. ADDITIONAL READING University of California Museum of Paleontology: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/index.php and subpages The Geologic Time Scale http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.php and The Tommotian Age http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/tommotian.html Wikipedia: Cambrian Explosion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion contains many of the concepts from the lecture, with links to many others.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/index.php

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.php

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/tommotian.html

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/tommotian.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion


Wikipedia: Small Shelly Fauna: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_shelly_fauna has some pictures of Tommotian fauna Wikipedia: Burgess Shale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale Wikipedia: Gunflint Chert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunflint_chert Wikipedia: Radiolaria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolaria Paleomap Project: http://www.scotese.com/ Wikipedia: Plate Tectonics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_Tectonics The Wilson Cycle, part of the Department of Geology and Environmental Science, James

Madison University, Geologic Web Sites: http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/fichter/Wilson/Wilson.html Some additional background info from the Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Eons can be gleaned from these Wikipedia pages: Wikipedia: The Great Oxygenation Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe Wikipedia: Snowball Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth Missed the NOVA “Australia’s First Four Billion Years: Episode 1, Awakening” show? Watch the video at http://video.pbs.org/video/2364992087/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_shelly_fauna

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunflint_chert

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolaria


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_Tectonics

http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/fichter/Wilson/Wilson.html

http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/fichter/Wilson/Wilson.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

http://video.pbs.org/video/2364992087/









Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





Volume 79, Number 4

July/August 2013



www.gsoc.org


President:


[email protected]

Vice-President: Sheila Alfsen – 503/939-6003

[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer

Dawn Juliano - 503/367-7708

[email protected]

Directors:

Julia Lanning (1 year) – 503/201-8022

[email protected]

Janet Rasmussen (2 years) – 541/753-0774

[email protected]

Bo Nonn (3 years) – 503/235-9135

[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

July/August Activities

There will be no GSOC Friday night meeting in July.

GSOC Field Trip, “Fluvial Features and Basalt

of the Molalla River,” Friday, July 19, 2013. GSOC Vice President Sheila Alfsen and Past President

Jane Walpole are planning a half-day trip to the Molalla

River Corridor, upstream from the town of Molalla in

the Western Cascades. This stretch of the river is being

considered in Congress for a Wild and Scenic status, and

it certainly deserves the moniker. Columbia River

Basalts and other lava flows intermingle with fluvial

features of the river. A trip through the Corridor is trip

back through time; a glimpse of Oregon’s ancient history

as displayed in the rocks, and it present condition due to

the erosive power of the river.

We will meet at 10:00 a.m. at the Molalla High School

parking lot. For questions, details, and registration,

contact Jane 503/590-7501 (or email [email protected]).

Participants need to be prepared to pay the fee and sign

the liability waiver at the meeting area. GSOC fee for

the trip will be $10. Participants will be responsible for

providing their own transportation and bag lunch.

Participation will be limited to 18 people and 5 vehicles,

so contact Jane to reserve your name on the list of

participants. Registration will be done onsite at the

meeting area. Jane can also help facilitate carpooling.

Each participant must be a GSOC member or guest of a

member. A nonmember may register for membership at

the meeting area. The membership registration form is

included in this newsletter. Since there aren’t any picnic

tables along the route, you are encouraged to bring your

own chairs for lunch. Last minute announcements will

be found on the calendar page of the GSOC website,

www.gsoc.org.



















Minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult

GSOC member, parent or legal guardian. A letter from

his or her parent or legal guardian giving permission for

a minor to participate in the field trip with a designated

person must submitted at the registration. Each

participant must also fill out and sign a liability waiver at

the meeting area in order to participate. Minor

participants must also have the signature of a parent or

legal guardian on the GSOC liability waiver.




GSOC Annual Picnic, Sunday, August 4, 2013: This year’s annual picnic will be held at Guy W. Talbot

State Park, which is located west of Bridal Veil State

Park and east of Vista House on the Historic Columbia

River Highway in the Columbia River Gorge. At this

year’s annual picnic, we plan to gather at the shelter in

the park at noon. Take the Bridal Veil #28 exit off east-

bound I-84, and go west on the Historic Columbia River

Highway about 2 miles to the park.

GSOC will supply the paper plates, napkins, paper cups,

and utensils. The format for the picnic will be a potluck

meal. Attendees bring their own beverages. If your last

name begins with A through G bring a side dish or salad;

H through P bring a dessert; Q through Z bring a main

dish.

After the picnic the participants may wish to take the

short walk to Latourell Falls, or drive to the trailhead

near the freeway exit and hike up to Angel’s Rest.

Participants are encouraged to look for last-minute

announcements on the calendar page of the GSOC

website, www.gsoc.org.

Friday evening talk, August 16, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.,

in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave.


University. Speaker Dr. Andrew Fountain, Portland

State University Department of Geology, will present “A

Primer on Eliot Glacier.”

This talk will help acquaint those interested in the Eliot

Glacier field trip with Oregon’s largest ice stream,

located on Mt. Hood. The talk is open to the public, not

just the field trip participants.









GSOC Field Trip, “Eliot Glacier/Parkdale Lava

Flow,” August 17-18, 2013. GSOC Past President Larry Purchase, Director Bo Nonn,

and Past President Rik Smoody are planning a trip to

Eliot Glacier and Parkdale Lava Field on August 17 and

18. For questions, details, and registration, contact Larry

at 360-254-5635 (or email [email protected]).

Deadline for registration is August 12, 2013. The

description flyer and registration form for the trip are

attached to the end of this edition of The Geological

Newsletter, and are also currently available on the

website, www.gsoc.org. Cost of the trip is $25 or $40,

depending on how many days you wish to participate,

and participation for Day 2 (the hike to Eliot Glacier)

will be limited to the first 22 GSOC members and their

guests who have paid for the trip.




Future Activities


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES May 11, 2013

The meeting was called to order at the home of

Rosemary Kenney. Board members in attendance

were John Piccininni, Sheila Alfsen, Dawn Juliano,

Paul Edison-Lahm, Julia Lanning, Janet Rasmussen,

and Jane Walpole. Quorum was present. Also in

attendance were GSOC members Bev Vogt,

Richard Bartels, Dave Olcott, and Jan Kem.

Delicious cake was served in honor of Rosemary’s

birthday. The minutes of the March13th, 2013,


Treasurer’s Report: The Treasurer’s oral report was

approved.

http://www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=112

http://www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=112






Events

Annual Banquet (recap): Dawn reports that there

was a small net income on this year’s banquet. One

of the comments about the banquet was that the

vegetarian entrees were poorly prepared. The board

referred this to the banquet committee to investigate

either working further with the Monarch Hotel staff

or investigating other venue options (tabled for

committee until Fall).

Upcoming Speakers: (Sheila) Larry would like

Andrew Fountain to give a talk prior to Larry and

Bo’s Parkdale Lava Flow/Elliot Glacier trip. Sheila

will arrange this for a Friday meeting the second

Friday in July [editor’s note- this talk has been

rescheduled for August]. Paul Hammond will speak

on the North American and Pacific Plates in

September. October and November are still open.

Room keys need to be transferred to Sheila. Sheila

will investigate room options with the university

when greater attendance is expected. Julia will

investigate getting the necessary computer, cords,

and adapters to ensure that we have AV backup for

speakers. A motion was made to inventory all keys

and an inventory sheet was passed around.

Annual Picnic: The Picnic Committee (Dawn, Jane

and Carol) will investigate finding a venue and date.

The committee was given full authority by the

board to arrange all necessary details.

Upcoming Field Trips

President’s Field Trip: (John) Destination and date

TBA.

Caldera Trip: (Bev & Bart) Trip is full and

everything handled!

Parkdale Lava Flow: Responding to emails from

Larry and Carol, the board suggested that the charge

for the trip be at least $10/day plus printing costs.

Janet will follow up with Larry concerning costs

and liability issues.

Molalla River: (Sheila) Friday, July 19th

, 2013 was

chosen as the date for Sheila’s trip.

John noted that Bo has donated two scanners and

that he (John) may be using these to digitize old

GSOC photos and newsletters.


Newsletter: Jan reports that 206 newsletters were

mailed out last week, of which 38 were stamped

with a notice of expired membership.

The board approved the motion that the emcee of

the annual banquet be automatically given an

honorary membership.

Library committee: (Bart) No report from the

committee. John raised the issue of cataloguing

software and this was left to the committee for

further investigation.

Listserv & Google Drive committee: (Rik, Paul,

and Dawn) Paul argued that the need is growing for

a listserv for event notifications and other member

communication, but apologized for stalling out on

this project. Dawn has joined the committee and

will do some additional research.

GSOC sponsorship at Intel NW Science Expo (Rik):

This was tabled until the board can discuss with Rik

present.

Holiday Party: Janet announced that because of

tightening rules that the community center she

suggested is not available after all as a venue for the

holiday party.

Membership cards/nametags: Because Pizzacato is

now offering a discount on meals for GSOC

members at the Friday meetings, Janet had the idea

of making nametags/member cards for this and

other events. She will beta-test the idea of printed

nametags at the next Friday meeting.

Next board meeting: July 13th

, 2013, 10:00 a.m. at

Rosemary’s house.




A TRAIL OF TWO CALDERAS One participant’s take on the GSOC field trip, May

18 and 19, 2013

by Carol Hasenberg

It all began with water in Central Oregon. One

location was the best place to find ground water;

another, the worst place to find it. Bend and its

northern neighbors along the Deschutes River had

abundance; nearby Prineville along the Crooked

River had scarcity. And so DOGAMI geologists

were charged with the task of finding out why.

Their work led them to discover massive volcanic

calderas that were sources for much of two of the

most abundant Tertiary volcanic formations in

eastern Oregon.

Two calderas from two distinctly different tectonic

settings. A massive caldera just a shade smaller than

Yellowstone and probably produced by the same

hotspot plume, as evidenced by the magma

geochemistry as well as the trace of volcanics over

the landscape to the present-day Yellowstone. A

smaller caldera to the northeast produced by

subduction arc melting before and during the

docking of the Siletzia terrane along the western

margin of the Pacific Northwest, and about 10

million years older than its larger neighbor. The

massive, younger Crooked River Caldera contains

the town of Prineville and wide, sweeping

countryside. Smaller, older Wildcat Mountain

Caldera to the northeast is more rugged and

accessible through a sparse network of Forest

Service byways.

The GSOC trip to explore the two calderas was

planned by Past Presidents Beverly Vogt and

Richard Bartels to visit most of the stops published

in the 2009 Oregon Geology field trip guides by

McClaughry, Ferns, Gordon, and Patridge. As is

usual with a trip planned by Bev and Bart, mileages

were logged, maps made, and a detailed field trip

guide was produced.

Since the group was studying volcanic calderas on

this trip, Bart reviewed some key concepts about

eruptions of this sort the night before the trip began.

These volcanoes contained rhyolitic magma, which

is viscous and tends to erupt explosively. A caldera

eruption is a cataclysmic event which produces a

cloud of ash which drifts on the wind and rains

down, and also pyroclastic flows which settle and

weld into glassy tuff. A massive amount of tuff was

produced in the caldera eruption of the Crooked

River Caldera, it is estimated to exceed 580 cubic

kilometers. Some of the tuff produced by the

eruption falls back into the caldera and that is

referred to as the intracaldera tuff, and the material

that is deposited outside the boundary of the caldera

is the outflow facies. The field trip stops were

designed so that both of these could be observed.

Some other interesting things are also going on at

the edges of the calderas. In the Crooked River

Caldera edges, blocks of pre-caldera stratigraphy

have tilted and fallen toward the caldera during the

main caldera eruption. After the main eruption,

both calderas experienced resurgent eruptions fed

through the faults at their margins.

Day 1 of the trip the group explored the Crooked

River Caldera, which stretches from Smith Rock

and Gray Butte in the northwest to the Prineville

Reservoir in the southeast. The main caldera

eruption 29.55 million years ago produced the Tuff

of Smith Rock, which is 1000 feet thick within the

caldera. The first stop of the day featured the

outflow facies of the Tuff of Smith Rock. From the

repeated patterns of sediment, ash-fall deposits, and

ash-flow tuff in the sequence it is clear that the

caldera eruption was not a single event but several

events relatively close in time. At the second stop at

Peter Skene Ogden State Park, pre-caldera

stratigraphy on nearby buttes dipped towards the

caldera and dammed a thick sequence of Tuff of

Smith Rock.

The group then proceeded to Smith Rock State

Park, and contemplated the thick intracaldera tuff

there while lunching. Next the caravan climbed up

onto Grizzly Mountain, a ring fracture rhyolite

dome which erupted long after the main caldera.

Most of the Crooked River Caldera can be viewed

from this high point. The easternmost portion of the

caldera was then viewed from Ochoco Wayside

State Park on a bluff above the town of Prineville.

Lastly the group went southeast from Prineville to


the boat ramp of Prineville Reservoir, to observe the

stratigraphy at the southeast caldera edge and the

outflow facies of Tuff of Smith Rock beyond.

As the day went along field trip co-leaders Bev and

Bart also explained that the Crooked River Caldera

was one of the sources for the late Eocene to

Oligocene John Day Formation, and prior to the

discovery of the caldera, no sources had been

known for this formation. The formation and

thickness of the tuff at Smith Rock had also long

been a puzzle to geologists, and that had also been

explained by the caldera. The dense and glassy ash

flow tuff also explained why groundwater was

difficult to find around Prineville. Bart included a

chart of the stratigraphy of the John Day Formation

in the field guide and explained which units in the

chart corresponded to the ash flows and other

features observed by the group. Unit A, the oldest

unit of the John Day Formation, is the outflow

facies of the older Wildcat Mountain Caldera, and

Unit G is the Tuff of Smith Rock.

Day 2 was dedicated to exploring Wildcat Mountain

Caldera to the north and east of Prineville. the

caravan headed past the Ochoco Reservoir to the

east of Prineville, then north in the Mill Creek

Valley to the caldera. At the first stop the group

observed a dacite dike cutting through a brecciated

mass of precaldera andesite. Nearby Mahogany

Butte is the product of post-caldera rhyolite flows

from feeder dikes which trend toward the northeast.

Up the road a bit from stop one the group stopped

briefly at a flow-foliated rhyolite mass which marks

the edge of the caldera. Shortly afterward Steins

Pillar came onto view, and the GSOCers stopped to

admire this remnant of the main caldera eruption.

The Tuff of Steins Pillar has not been dated, but

bracketing stratigraphy indicates that it is about 40

million years old. This date and the geochemistry of

the magma indicates that this caldera was one of the

later sources for the Clarno Formation, formed by

the melting of the subducting Farallon Plate.

One reason that the terrain in Wildcat Mountain

Caldera is so rugged is that a post-caldera eruption

of rhyolite created a plateau of rhyolite in the

northern portion, and then Mill Creek eroded the

plateau to its present condition. The caravan

climbed the north rim of the caldera to the last stop

of the day at Hash Rock. The Rhyolite of Hash

Rock created the plateau, which can be seen at this

viewpoint, as well as its source conduit in the

distance, Twin Pillars. After admiring the view and

observing the interesting flow-banded rhyolite in

the outcrop, the tour was over and the group left for

home. I am sure all the participants thought that

this field trip was a far, far better thing to do than

any of them could have done elsewhere. Thanks to

Bev and Bart for making it memorable.




February.














Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





________________________________________________________________________________________________




PO Box 907




Country

ELIOT GLACIER/PARKDALE LAVA FLOW FIELD TRIP

AUGUST 17 AND 18, 2013

Past Presidents Larry Purchase and Rik Smoody, plus Director Bo Nonn, will lead a field

trip to the Cloud Cap area on Mt. Hood to access the Parkdale Lava Field and Eliot Glacier. Eliot Glacier,

Oregon’s largest ice stream, feeds the Parkdale Lava Flow below it, which in turn feeds a residential water

supply field. The trip will be organized in two-parts. Day 1, Saturday, August 17, guest speaker Dr. Cynthia

Gardner, USGS, geologist and volcanologist, will accompany the group to view various portions of the

Parkdale Lava Flow. Day 2, Sunday, August 18, guest leader Dr. Andrew Fountain, glacier specialist at PSU

Department of Geology, and Bo Nonn, an experienced Mazama climber and leader, will take two groups up to

Eliot Glacier where Dr. Fountain will interpret the glacier and its crevasses. The two hiking groups for Day 2

will be limited in number to eleven participants plus the leader for each, because of NFS Wilderness Area rules

for the Mt. Hood Wilderness area (wilderness rules link).

Day 1: The trip will start Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at the Kinnickinnik Campground on Laurance Lake north

of Mt. Hood. To get there from Portland, take I-84 to Hood River, go south on Oregon 35 to Parkdale, take

spur road into the town of Parkdale, at the center of town head south on Clear Creek Road for 2-1/2 miles, then

take a right on Laurance Lake Road (NF 2810) to the Kinnickinnik Campground on Laurance Lake. Activities

will include driving to and hiking on portions of the Parkdale Lava Flow. Participants are responsible for all

transportation, parking/access fees and meals on the trip. Participants wanting to camp overnight can do so at

the Kinnickinnik Campground, or Tilly Jane Camp Site or Cloud Cap Saddle Camp Site. Campers are

responsible for making all camping arrangements and fees. GSOC trip fee for Day 1 only will be $25.

Day 2: The hike up to Eliot glacier will set off from the parking lot at Cloud Cap Inn promptly at 9:00 a.m. To

get there, take Oregon 35 south from Hood River (or north from Hwy 26 if you’re driving from Sandy, Oregon)

to the Cooper Spur Ski Area exit (several miles south of Parkdale), go about 1 mile to the Cooper Spur Ski

Area, then take Cloud Cap Inn Road (NF- 3512) about 10 miles to historic Cloud Cap Inn. The road is a real

doozy so make sure your vehicle is high clearance and four wheel drive. Participants are responsible for all

transportation, parking/access fees and meals. Participants should also have a walking stick or sticks, sturdy

ankle-supporting boots, warm clothes, and plan to pack a lunch. The hike up to the glacier will be strenuous,

and participants will not be allowed to wander from the group on side trips. GSOC trip fee for Day 2 only will

be $25. GSOC trip fee for both days will be $40. Participation for Day 2 will be limited to the first 22 GSOC

members and their guests who have paid for the trip. If you have questions contact Larry Purchase at 360-254-

5635 (or email [email protected]). If the weather forecast for the weekend looks bad, the trip may be

postponed until the following weekend. Announcements will be made on the GSOC website, www.gsoc.org, so

please review the website prior to the trip date.

Trip Participation Policies: If you plan on participating in this trip, send in your registration form (attached to

this newsletter) and appropriate fee by Monday, August 12, 2013. Each participant must be a GSOC

member or guest and should have a separate registration form. A non-member may register only if he/she

includes a membership application form and payment with the registration form and fee.

Minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult parent or legal guardian who is also a member of

GSOC. No minors under 16 years of age will be allowed to register for Day 2. Each participant must also

fill out and sign a liability waiver at the meeting place in order to participate. Minor participants must also have

the signature of a parent or legal guardian on the liability waiver.

http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/mthood/specialplaces/?cid=stelprdb5192346

http://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/mthood/recarea/?recid=53214






Eliot Glacier/Parkdale Lava Flow Field Trip – August 17 and 18, 2013

NOTE: Fill out one registration and medical information form for each participant. This application

must be accompanied by a membership application and payment if you are not a member or guest of a

participating member. The membership application form is located in The Geological Newsletter or at

www.gsoc.org/membership.html.

REGISTRATION



If participant is a minor, age of participant ____________________________________________________________


City _____________________________________________________ State _____ Zip___________- ____________


Participating in (circle one) Day1 only Fee $25 Day 2 only Fee $25 Both days Fee $40

Fee: circle appropriate fee above, includes printed materials. All other costs are responsibility of the

participants. Send this form and payment to:

GSOC, PO Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907, by August 12, 2013.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

MEDICAL INFORMATION


Allergies: _______________________________________________________________________________







Volume 79, Number 5


The Geological Society of the Oregon Country P.O. Box 907, Portland, OR 97207-0907 www.gsoc.org 2011 - 2012 Administration: President: John Piccininni – 503/284-9674 [email protected] Vice-President: Sheila Alfsen – 503/939-6003 [email protected] Secretary Paul Edison-Lahm – 971/404-6064 [email protected] Treasurer Dawn Juliano - 503/367-7708 [email protected] Directors: Julia Lanning (1 year) – 503/201-8022 [email protected] Janet Rasmussen (2 years) – 541/753-0774 [email protected] Bo Nonn (3 years) – 503/235-9135 [email protected]


CALENDAR September/October Activities Friday evening talk, September 13, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Sheila Alfsen, MAT, GIT, Oregon Community College Instructor and Consultant will present "The 1980 Eruption of Mt. St. Helens." Besides being the Vice President of GSOC, Sheila Alfsen is a community college instructor and course developer who teaches both face-to-face and online courses in geology. In addition, she is working towards geologic registration in Oregon and has worked as a consultant for various construction projects in the western United States.

Join GSOC members at Pizzicato Pizza, 1708 SW 6th Ave., at 6:00 p.m. before the lectures for an informal dinner and conversation. Free parking is available at Portland State University Friday nights after 5 p.m. in Parking Structure 2 on Broadway Ave. directly across from Cramer Hall and on level one of Parking Structure 1, bounded by Broadway and 6th Aves. and Harrison and Hall Streets. Friday evening talk, October 11, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., in Room S17, Cramer Hall, 1721 SW Broadway Ave. (between Montgomery and Mill Sts.), Portland State University. Speaker Dr. Vicki McConnell, Oregon State Geologist, will present “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About State Geologic Surveys.” Dr. McConnell will give an overview of the state of State Geologic Surveys across the country. She will also give an update on the recent programs, projects and accomplishments at DOGAMI. What are the successes

















for DOGAMI? And where are the challenges? What is next? Dr. McConnell’s geologic career spans three decades of study of volcanoes and volcanic hazards. From her first helicopter landing on the dome of Mt. St. Helen’s in 1983 she has been fascinated by the power of geologic processes and how humans respond to those processes. Dr. McConnell received her Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks where her studies took her to the Aleutian Islands and Long Valley Caldera in California. Future Activities GSOC 5th Annual Holiday Party – Planned for Friday, December 13, 2013. The party will be held in lieu of the December Friday night meeting and attendance will be limited to GSOC members and their guests. The location is tentatively scheduled at the Simon Benson House on the Portland State University campus. The program will include slide shows of this year’s field trips, food dishes-to-share as provided by the attending members, and music. Donations to help cover the venue rental are being accepted by GSOC Treasurer Dawn Juliano. More details will be posted in the Nov/Dec issue of The Geological Newsletter and on the GSOC website. Check the GSOC website (www.gsoc.org) for updates to the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES July 13, 2013 The meeting was called to order at the home of Rosemary Kenney. Board members in attendance were John Piccininni, Dawn Juliano, Paul Edison-Lahm, Janet Rasmussen, Bo Nonn, and Rik Smoody. Quorum was present. Also in attendance were GSOC members Larry Purchase, Dave Olcott, Jan Kem, and Tara Schoffstall. The minutes of the May 11th, 2013, board meeting were approved with minor correction. Treasurer’s Report: The Treasurer’s report was approved with a minor correction to the current date.

Events Upcoming Speakers: (from Sheila’s email) Vicki McConnell will speak on news items from DOGAMI including LIDAR in October. Nametags: Janet has produced prototype member nametags that can be worn on a lanyard or kept in a wallet. The cost for making them for all members would be 5 to 10 cents each, although members would need to provide their own lanyards. Janet is investigating whether Pizzacato will give a discount to members who show a GSOC nametag. The motion to have Janet make nametags was approved. Cables, computers, and adapters: This discussion was tabled until Julia is present at the next meeting. Annual Picnic: John has paid the $50 reservation fee for August 4th at Guy Talbot Park. Instructions for what to bring are in the last newsletter and directions are on the website. The picnic will start at noon, but there will be no board meeting this year. Upcoming Field Trips The President’s Field Trip will be merged with the Boring Lava field trip below. Mt. Hood/Parkdale Lava Flow field trip is cancelled due to the danger of trees falling on the road. Rik will organize a work party to hike up and investigate whether this field trip can be done next year. Larry suggests instead that a one-day Boring Lava field trip be planned for Saturday, August 17th beginning at Rocky Butte and ending in Oregon City. A $10 fee was suggested. Andrew Fountain may still be able to give his lecture on glaciers Friday, August 16th. Molalla River: (from emails from Jane and Sheila) Jane reports that thirteen people have signed up. Sheila will keep registration open until full. There will be a $10 fee.



Old and New Business Library committee: Larry and Bart will report next time. Electronic Mailing List & Documents committee: (Rik, Paul, and Dawn) Various Listserv-type electronic mailing lists were discussed, however the committee still needs additional information. Paul will get more info from Larry, Bo and Tara about other mailing lists. Rik will draft an explanation on how the List Serve works, but the board may still vote down the whole List Serve idea.

GSOC sponsorship at Intel NW Science Expo (Rik): This is now moot, since the Expo was back in February. Newsletter scanning: Jan has boxes of newsletters back to 1935. Tara plans to start scanning them using the scanners donated by Bo and his hard drive. Larry will bring Bo's scanner for Tara's use. Next board meeting: Sept. 14th, 2013, 10:00 a.m. at Paul’s house. Notes compiled from board meeting minutes submitted by Paul Edison-Lahm, Secretary.









Name________________________________________________ Spouse____________________________________





Volume 79, Number 6




www.gsoc.org


President:


[email protected]

Vice-President: Sheila Alfsen – 503/939-6003

[email protected]

Secretary


[email protected]

Treasurer

Dawn Juliano - 503/367-7708

[email protected]

Directors:

Julia Lanning (1 year) – 503/201-8022

[email protected]

Janet Rasmussen (2 years) – 541/753-0774

[email protected]

Bo Nonn (3 years) – 503/235-9135

[email protected]

Past Presidents:


[email protected]

Rik Smoody - 360/546-2019

[email protected]



[email protected]

Website:


[email protected]

Business Manager:

Jan Kem – 503/799-6871

[email protected]


Anne O’Neill - 503/477-7827

[email protected]



[email protected]


CALENDAR

November/December

Activities

Friday evening talk, November 8, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.,



University. Speaker Dr. William Orr, Paleontologist and

Director of the Condon Collection, University of

Oregon, will present "After 150 Years, Conodonts

Solved."

Conodont microfossils were first described in 1830, and

soon became indispensable tools for dating Paleozoic

rocks. Whether these fossils originated from a snail,

squid, worm, or fish, however, remained a mystery until

quite recently. Our speaker will relate a series of

discoveries that eventually led to a carbon impression of

the creature. For more, please click on the link to this

talk for a poster with more information.









GSOC 5th

Annual Holiday Party – GSOC Members

and their guests are invited to the 5th

GSOC Annual

Holiday Party and field trip slideshow, Friday December

13th, 2013 at 2211 NW Front Avenue. GSOC Board

Members will provide main dishes with protein of

various sorts. Other members please bring vegetable,

side dishes or desserts for 6 to share. Those interested in

bringing drinks or table ware please contact Jan Kem,

















Beverly Vogt, Richard Bartels or Julia Lanning. Music

will be organized by Dawn Juliano.

Schedule of Christmas Party activities:

5:30 pm: Set-up

6:30 pm: Dinner buffet

7:15 pm: Welcome presentation

7:30 pm: Nominations for GSOC Board members

for the 2013-2014 year will be open, followed by

"Year in Review" program.

This year's GSOC field trip leaders with present

brief slide show summaries of their trips.

Bart Bartels and Bev Vogt, “A Tale of Two

Calderas,” May 18-19, 2013.

Sheila Alfsen and Jane Walpole: "Fluvial

Features and Basalt of the Molalla River" July

19, 2013.

John Piccininni, Larry Purchase and Bo Nonn:

"Boring Lava" August 18, 2013.

8:30 pm: Dessert and musical entertainment

9:30 pm: Clean-up

Donations will be accepted for party supplies. Send

donations to Dawn Juliano at the GSOC mailing address

or give them to her in person at the event.

Geological Society of the Oregon Country, P.O. Box

907, Portland, Oregon 97207

If you would like to come but are not yet a member of

GSOC, you may join now and receive membership

benefits throughout 2013.

Future Activities




University. Speaker Tom Pierson, a hydrologist with

Cascade Volcano Observatory, will present a talk about

the Lascar Volcano in Chile. Details to follow.

Friday evening talk, February 14, 2014, at 7:30 p.m.,



University. Speaker Dr. Stephen Taylor, Western

Oregon University Professor of Geology, will present

"Morphology and Spatial Distribution of Cinder Cones

at Newberry Volcano, Oregon: Implications for Relative

Ages and Structural Control on Eruptive Processes."

Newberry Volcano in Central Oregon is associated with

over 350 basaltic cinder cones, located in a complex,

extensional tectonic setting. Digital mapping of cinder

cones and spatial analyses of vents were used to learn

more about the eruptive history of this fascinating area.

Click on this link for a poster with more information.

The project website is available from this link.


the calendar.

BOARD MEETING NOTES September 14, 2013

The meeting was called to order at the home of Paul

Edison-Lahm. Board members in attendance were

John Piccininni, Sheila Alfsen, Dawn Juliano, Paul,

Julia Lanning, Janet Rasmussen, Bo Nonn, and Jane

Walpole. Quorum was present. Also in attendance

were GSOC members Larry Purchase, Jan Kem,

Carol Hasenberg, and Doug Rasmussen. The

minutes of the July 13th, 2013, board meeting were

approved.

Treasurer’s Report:

The Treasurer’s report was approved.

Events

The Holiday Party is planned for December 13th

,

however the Benson House is booked. Dawn will

get us on the waiting list in case there is a

cancellation and will also look into other venues

such as churches, restaurants, and office spaces.

This committee will include Carol (chair), Dawn,

Julia, Bart, and Bev.

Upcoming Speakers (Sheila): Scheduled speakers

and topics are: October — Vicki McConnell

(DOGAMI) LIDAR; November — Steve Taylor,

Newberry Volcano cinder cones; January — Jon

Major (USGS) Chaitén volcano lahar mitigation.

Posters for the Friday night speakers are now linked

on the GSOC website. Sheila is still looking for a

speaker for February and John is looking for a

speaker for the March banquet.

Cables, computers, and adapters: Julia will

investigate our cabling needs and report back.

Annual Picnic recap: The Latourelle Falls/Guy

Talbot State Park location was acclaimed as best

http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/taylor/newberry/taylor_etal_2005.pdf

http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/taylor/newberry/newberry.htm



picnic site ever with easy access to hiking and other

picnic amenities. A total of $55 was collected to

cover costs of $58.

Field Trips recaps:

Molalla River: Participants enjoyed good weather

and the nice pace of the trip. Bringing lawn chairs

was a good idea.

Boring Lavas/President’s Field Trip: Larry has

extra copies of the field trip guides which could be

sold at the banquet.


The Nominating committee was appointed

composed of John, Janet, and Jane.

PSU Computer Access: a backup account is needed

when Sheila, who is an adjunct professor, is not

available. [See discussion of building security

below.] Sponsored accounts are no longer available

because of PSU’s concerns about security. Also, for

backup purposes, the projector could be kept in the

locked cabinet in the library.

Newsletters: Jan mailed out 200 newsletters to

members, 28 of whom had not paid. He also

brought in three boxes of newsletters from 1935 to

the present for scanning. Carol will take the 1935

volume for scanning and the remaining volumes

will be stored temporarily with Paul.

The board approved a motion that, beginning in

2014, board meetings revert to even months of the

year so as to coordinate with the timing of the

newsletter (so the first board meeting of 2014 will

be in February).

Library committee: Larry brought several volumes

of biography and photos of past GSOC presidents.

There was interest in eventually scanning the photos

and perhaps producing a booklet.

Electronic Mailing List and Documents committee:

the board approved use of a simple “bcc” email list

for occasional distribution of GSOC

announcements, newsletters, and dues reminders.

Paul will maintain the list. Members can be asked to

update their emails at Friday meetings. The board

also approved putting the master membership list

(which contains the most current emails) on Google

Drive with secure access to appropriate board

members and officers.

PSU Building Security: PSU has been locking down

Cramer Hall at 6:00 p.m. on Fridays because of

security concerns. Sheila will investigate getting an

access card as an adjunct faculty member for

building access and computer access [see above]

and will also investigate whether there are other

ways that GSOC can get access to the building. For

Friday meetings, security will need to be contacted

and we need to be on the list maintained by Nancy

in the Geology Dept. We will also need to have

both a doorman to let people in and a sign on the

door with a phone number for late arrivals.

The next board meeting will be Nov. 9th

, 2013,

10:00 a.m. at Rosemary’s house (pending approval

by Rosemary).



New Electronic Mailing List for GSOC Members

GSOC will send electronic newsletters every two

months to members. The mailing list will also

provide a means to send occasional messages in

case of unexpected changes or cancellations of

GSOC events, such as lectures or field trips.

Members will still receive the paper newsletter in

the mail. If you believe that we don't have your

email address, and would like to be included in this

list, please send an email to Paul Edison-Lahm at

[email protected] with "subscribe" in the

subject line.

Likewise, if you prefer NOT to receive the

newsletter and messages electronically, please send

an email with your name and "unsubscribe" in the

subject line.



Doin’s at DOGAMI, the State Department of Geology and Mineral Industries Synopsis of the October 11, 2013, talk by Dr. Vicki

McConnell, Oregon State Geologist

by Carol Hasenberg

Dr. McConnell began the discussion about

DOGAMI’s work by describing the climate in

which her department and other state geologic

surveys are working. State funding for geologic

surveys has been getting squeezed and other sources

of funding, including federal and industry have had

to be pursued with differing levels of success.

Publications sales, once an important revenue for

the department, have been steadily dwindling since

the mid 2000’s with the rise of the internet. Federal

dollars are doled out to states who have experienced

geologically based natural disasters or are working

on large projects such as carbon dioxide

sequestering in Illinois.

McConnell described DOGAMI as serving the State

of Oregon in several different ways:

Earth Science Data Collection – DOGAMI does

both traditional stratigraphic mapping and LIDAR

surface mapping. LIDAr (LIght + raDAR), is a

recent method of getting highly accurate images of

the earth’s surface by saturated bombardment of the

surface with small laser bursts from a flying LIDAR

unit. It has many applications for both industry and

geologic assessment such as forest inventory,

building inventory, emergency preparedness

assessment, fish, wetlands, road, and wildfire

assessment, plus landslide inventory, earthquake,

tsunami, flood, channel migration, and coastal

change. DOGAMI has gotten very involved with

this technology and its applications.

Resource Assessment – Oregon has not had a large

amount of resource assessment for industrial use,

such as the energy sector. The main energy

resource at this time is geothermal energy, and this

industry has made a modest start in Oregon. This

first commercial geothermal plant is in Vale serving

eastern Oregon.

Natural Hazards Assessment – The DOGAMI

earthquake and tsunami assessment projects have

had a lot of development since the research of the

Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the combined

effects of the Loma Prieta, Scotts Mills and

Klamath valley earthquakes over 1989 to 1994. The

latest item of interest is that DOGAMI has a new

mobile app out called TsunamiEvac – NW for

tsunami evacuation routes along the Pacific

Northwest coast. In addition to earthquake and

tsunami hazards, the department also assesses

hazards from coastal change, river flood and river

channel change, landslide and debris flows and

volcanic lahars.

Education and Outreach – DOGAMI personnel

regularly speak to private groups like ourselves,

have press releases, host open houses and other

informative events. A calendar of such events is

available on the DOGAMI website. Also, DOGAMI

still puts out publications on a print-to-order basis,

as well as digital releases.

Resource Management – DOGAMI manages state

permitting for uses such as geothermal energy, oil

and gas, and surface reclamation projects for

extraction of rock and minerals. The state has had

some coal and gold extraction projects in the past.

Dr. McConnell ended the talk with a discussion of

the challenges the department is having. The big

question in view of the economic climate is whether

DOGAMI can survive as an independent agency.

Ohio, Iowa, Colorado have been decimated in their

state geologic surveys in the last few years, and

these states have huge oil and gas resources. Some

relevant policy issues that DOGAMI could continue

to evaluate are climate change adaptation, mineral

resources, restoration and ecosystems.

THE PEAKS DISTRICT, BLUE

JOHN AND THE DEVIL’S ARSE by Carol S. Hasenberg

My husband John and I took a little trip to England

and Scotland this past August to commemorate our

30th

anniversary. We did a lot of fun things, so the

focus of the trip was not geology. But we did take a

little side trip to the town of Castleton nestled in the

Peaks District National Park, and explored some of

the rich geology there. We went there to meet up

with an old friend of mine, a native Sheffielder who

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nanoos.tsunami&hl=en


now lives on Vancouver Island and has a friend in

Castleton running a bed and breakfast place.

The little town of Castleton, which originally

housed miners and farmers, was built by the

Normans. It is strategically and dramatically placed

at the foot of a hill on which a Norman garrison was

built in the 12th

Century. Peverel Castle is also

situated on a limestone hill overlooking a cleft

which holds a large cavern which has been known

for centuries as the ”Devil’s Arse.” A few other

caves and mines dot the hillside to the west of

Castleton.

The entire area was formed between 350 and 300

million years ago, when a shallow sea producing

limestone was covered with mud and then sand

from an encroaching river delta system. The

geological period of formation is the Carboniferous.

Between the formation of the rocks and now the

area was deeply submerged and overlain by rock.

Minerals, especially lead, were deposited in cracks

in the limestone. Eventually the land was uplifted

and eroded into the landscape seen today. The town

site at the head of the Hope Valley, is situated on a

bedrock of shale overlain by alluvial gravels. The

limestone hill sits atop the shale to the south of the

town, and to the north of and west the valley walls

are composed of Millstone Grit, a sandstone formed

from the large river delta system.

The limestone hill to the south of town continues to

the west to terminate into the Mam Tor, a large hill

which is the terminus of the Millstone Grit. Along

the base of the limestone hill can be seen several

buildings which sit at the entrance of several caves

and mines. These were the sites of several lead

mining operations for a number of centuries. In the

more recent centuries a banded fluorite called Blue

John has also been mined in several of the sites for

ornamental stone carving and jewelry. Blue John is

very attractive with light purple, deep purple and

yellow bands of color. Rope making for the miners

was done in the Devil’s Arse cavern. And since the

1700’s tourists began visiting this and several of the

other caves.

Our little party toured the Devil’s Arse, now

officially known as the Peak Cavern, while visiting

Castleton. The tour began with a demonstration of

rope making done in the traditional fashion. The

rope is made using a manual winding device and a

heavy cart which is used to keep the strands of

hemp taut. The work is done in the cave due to its

favorable humidity for keeping the fibers pliant.

Since this cave did not have lead veins it was used

by the rope makers.

When tourists started coming people started

exploring farther into the cave although to get to

some of the inner chambers it was necessary to

crawl or be pushed through a narrow passage on a

small boat. This changed in the 19th

century when

the young Queen Victoria toured the cave. A new

larger passage was made since it was undignified

for royalty to enter this way.

The reason Peak Cavern was known as the Devil’s

Arse is that it floods yearly. When the floodwaters

recede they get sucked through the passages with an

incredible gurgling sound. Early peoples associated

underground places with the devil; so, to them it

was the sound of the Devil cutting wind!

Another thing our little group did was to hike up the

limestone hill and cut across country to Mam Tor.

This hill was the site of a bronze age village, and its

name means “Mother Hill”. En route we passed

across fields filled with sheep. The stone walls

enclosing the fields were full of fossils. We noted

some nice crinoid stems in one of the stone stiles we

climbed over. We climbed up to the hill above the

village through a cleft called Cave Dale which was

loaded with small caves and shafts into the deeper

Peak Cavern. When we arrived at Mam Tor we

observed how the eastern face of the hill is one

large slide scarp. A road below the hill had to be

abandoned about 40 years ago because of constant

slumping of the slide. Some of the layers in the

Millstone Grit are quite crumbly claystones.

We had to leave Castleton after only two days but

thoroughly enjoyed our stay in this little corner of

England. We hope that other GSOC travelers to

this corner of the world might pause to enjoy the

interesting geology there.




February.














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