Accretionary Wedge #12: Geology as a connector science

Hooray! I finally have both a working computer and internet connection. Definite cause for celebration, since I can now get back to blogging - at least as much as grad school allows, that is.

Even more cause for celebration: This is post #100! I think it's fitting that it should be an Accretionary Wedge entry, since at least part of the reason I started blogging was to connect with other people in the "geoblogosphere" - and what better way to do that than an online panel discussion? (Hey, there's that connection theme again.)

I've decided to write about something that's going to happen in a few days: I'm going to stand in front of an introductory geology lab and try to convince myself that I'm qualified to be teaching people who are only a few years younger than me. I expect that many of them will be freshmen, or non-science majors, who are in the class because they have to fulfill a science requirement. My undergrad classmates called this the "Rocks for Jocks" phenomenon, and we always laughed gleefully afterward, because we knew that anyone who picked geology because it was a "soft" science would be very surprised when they got to class. This phenomenon is also, in my opinion, at the root of the difficulties that science educators have keeping geology in science curricula at the K12 level. We as geologists all know that geology is one of the most inclusive sciences there is - but how do we get this across?

One of my main concerns is to make my labs not only fun for my students, but relevant to their lives. They're probably used to thinking of sciences as compartmentalized - this is chemistry, this is physics, this is astronomy, etc. I want to prove to them that not only is this untrue, but that they've probably used or relied on geology - and all the other sciences it incorporates - on a daily basis.

I'm planning on doing a short activity based on one that my mineralogy professor did early on in his course. I'll be handing out Oreos (knowing full well that food is an excellent tool for bribery), then asking the students to think about what goes into them (and the packaging). Once we've got a list, I'm going to ask them to tell me where each ingredient comes from, and how it is obtained. This is a great place to bring geology - and other sciences - into the discussion. Cocoa, for example, is commonly grown in tropical climates, and in rich volcanic soils (like in Central America). That chocolate flavor came (ultimately) from a volcano! The white filling is colored with TiO2, otherwise known as rutile, which can also be found in quartz crystals. There are minerals in that cookie! The plastic wrapper and tray are made from chemicals derived from petroleum products, which started as rotting leaves in a coal swamp teeny dead ocean critters hundreds of millions of years ago! And so on.

The value in the activity - aside from the brief boost in attention span resulting from sugar intake - is that they see the connections that science, and geology in particular, have to their everyday lives. Geology isn't just something that grubby, bespectacled rockhounds do off in the mountains somewhere; it's something that ultimately helps produce the food we eat, the packaging that keeps it fresh, the fuel for transporting it, the nuclear energy that runs the lights in the grocery store, and more.

Hopefully, in trying to communicate how geology is intimately connected to our lives, I'll also be able to get across how important it is to me, and how exciting I find it because of all those wonderful connections. And, according to the people in my three-day "how to not fail as a teacher" training session, getting your students excited about learning is the most important part of the job.

And there are some thoughts on connections, with a bit of wandering thrown in. (And after what I've gone through to get moved into a new apartment in a new state and trying not to panic about teaching and taking classes, I think I'm allowed a few tangents!)

Roughing it

Another apology for the long delay in posts...who knew that moving to your first apartment required so much work? (And an unnecessarily long delay in getting internet access.) I'll be trying to post this weekend, and possibly joining in the next PodClast (if I can review all the current events in time - again, difficult without internet).

Costa Rica: Volcanoes in the mist

Costa Rica lies at the boundary where the Caribbean Plate is subducted underneath the Cocos Plate. Both are relatively small, compared to the North American or Pacific Plates, but the subduction zone forms a string of volcanoes (the Central American Arc) that stretches from Costa Rica to Guatemala. Costa Rica contains six: Rincon de la Vieja, Miravalles, Arenal, Poas, Turrialba, and Irazu. Turrialba and Irazu are both located very close to the capitol city of San Jose, and the area's older residents still remember the damaging effects of the ashfall from Irazu's 1963-65 eruptions. Mirivalles is the only volcano which has not experienced any significant historical eruptions, although it has shown fumarolic activity.

Costa Rica's volcanoes play an indispensable role in its economy and history. The rich volcanic soil is perfect for growing the country's three main cash crops: bananas, pineapples and coffee. (All of which are fantastic, by the way, and ridiculously cheap when you're there. I don't think I went a whole day without having some form of pineapple.) Volcanoes are also good for tourism, and help make Costa Rica the most visited Central American country. They are still dangerous, however; Irazu's eruptions in the 60s killed at least 20 people and destroyed buildings with ash and mudflows, and Arenal's 1968 eruption killed 87 people and buried 3 small villages (Tabacón, Pueblo Nuevo and San Luís).

My first visit was to Volcan Poas, a stratovolcano about an hour's drive from Alajuela (where I was staying for the majority of my trip). Driving to Poas takes you from the suburbs of San Jose, which still have some scattered patches of jungle, up into the high slopes of the Cordillera - coffee country that eventually gives way to cloud forest. And, because it's cloud forest, it is very, very cloudy. In fact, when we reached the volcano, you couldn't tell there was anything there.

After an hour of waiting, the clouds suddenly decided to start blowing away, revealing the central crater. I've never heard a crowd cheer for a volcano before - my kind of people!

Poas has two craters that both contain lakes, but this one is the site of numerous phreatic and phreatomagmatic eruptions since 1828 (the southernmost crater, Botos, last erupted 7,500 years ago).

Poas shows a somewhat varied suite of lavas - basalt, andesite, and low-silica dacite are all present, although the younger caldera contains a lot of basaltic andesite (and, from the look of the deposits, ash and pumice as well).

The lake is very sulfur-rich, and the side closest to the viewing platform has an active fumarole that imparted the essential whiff of sulfur dioxide (and a bit of hydrogen sulfide) to the air. I like the smell, strangely enough, but most people nearby didn't agree.

The clouds briefly cleared enough to afford a view of one of a small valley leading to the volcano's lower slopes, and what would undoubtedly be a funnel for any pyroclastic flows and lahars to come out of the crater.

Later in the trip, we took an overnight trip to the town of La Fortuna, a tourist mecca built around the base of Volcan Arenal in the northwest part of the country. There are dozens of hotels, resorts, and spas in a loop around the volcano, but getting to the national park takes a bit of driving. These signs show up in quite a few places, and naturally, as a death-defying geologist, I had to get a photo of myself scoffing at one.

A short 2km hike brings you to an andesite lava flow erupted (I think) in 1993. Arenal, which is mainly an andesitic stratovolcano, is very young - its oldest rocks are less than 3,000 years old, and the most recent period of eruptive activity has been ongoing since 1968. Arenal is one of the most active volcanoes in Central America (and possibly the world), but because of weather patterns around the volcano (particularly in the rainy season), it's almost impossible to see the entire cone. Eruptions vary between explosive and effusive, but since the lavas are andesitic, they don't flow very far, and create very bouldery and blocky flows rather than the smooth extensive ones you'd see on a shield volcano.

This is a pretty typical view of the cone. It's actually a lot higher than you would expect, but in two days, we only saw the top for maybe a minute. (Unfortunately, being the rainy season, it rained at night, and there was no way to tell if there was any eruptive activity going on.)

We did stay on the lava flow for long enough to hear the rumbling of rockfalls going on, and this fairly recent rock avalanche (possibly a small pyroclastic flow) was still steaming in the rain.

It's easy to tell that Arenal is an active volcano, even without seeing an eruption, because the deposits from eruptive activity cover the slopes and keep the normally relentless jungle life from retaking the slopes.

Not seeing any eruptions was disappointing, but Arenal is still a remarkably beautiful volcano, and a fun place to spend a weekend.

Almost every hotel has a great view of the cone (or would if the clouds ever went away), and there are lots of restaurants and - one of my favorite parts - hot springs to visit. Several of the hot springs have been turned into small theme parks, with waterslides and spa services and exorbitant entrance fees, but if you look carefully, you can find the ones the locals go to. They're often not marked, but they're much less expensive, and it's not uncommon to see entire families visiting them for the day, complete with grandparents and young children and pets and enough food to feed a small army. And hey, if all you're doing is lounging in hot water and staring intently at the volcano, why not save your money for dinner afterwards?

Costa Rica: Don't drink the water...but the swimming's fine

I'm back! Having survived Costa Rica's rainy season, attacks by macaws and capuchins, cheesy coffee tour guides and every kind of biting insect in existence (and all without getting sunburned!), I have lots of great photos and stories to tell. As my masters research may be taking me to Guatemala, I was glad to have the chance to spend time in a Central American country, although I have to report that my Spanish is only slightly improved (meaning I know how to ask "What's in this food" and several different ways to swear at kamikaze drivers). I am glad, however, to be back in a country where I can drink the water and don't have to put up with whistles and suggestive leering just because I'm female and breathing. (Most people were very nice, actually, but I could have done without the whole "macho" culture experience.)

Costa Rica is an amazingly beautiful country, and topographically quite varied. The Costa Rican Cordillera make up the backbone of the country, stretching from the northwestern hills to the more central volcanoes (Arenal, Poas, Irazu, Turrialba), to the highest peaks near the southeastern border with Panama. Most people live in the Meseta Central, a huge central valley region centered on the capital city of San Jose. Costa Rica's lowlands are scanty on the Pacific coast, where you don't leave the mountains and hills until you're pretty much on the beach (or in the water), but the less populated Caribbean coast has much larger lowland areas. Forests are nearly everywhere you go, from the lush jungles on the coasts and in the central valley to the clammy cloud forests on the high peaks and volcanoes.

The people in Costa Rica tend to cluster around San Jose and its suburbs (Alajuela, Cartago), or in small towns linked by winding two-lane (or one-lane) roads through the mountains. The tourist areas (Jaco, Quepos, Manuel Antonio, La Fortuna) are full of hotels and restaurants and souvenir shops, and have growing populations of ticos (Costa Ricans), but they're isolated, and seem to have popped up more like shantytowns than fixed establishments. I spent the first few days of my trip at one of these, the town and national park of Manuel Antonio, one of the most popular ecotourism sites in the country.

To get to Manuel Antonio from Alajuela, it's a two hour drive through the mountains. The mountains last pretty much until you hit the coast - in fact, Manuel Antonio's hotels and restaurants are all built on steep hills. It's impossible to get a beachfront hotel unless you're really lucky - otherwise, you have to do some walking.

Some of the restaurants have slight aircraft problems. This one houses a pretty popular bar.

Dogs, sloths and monkeys are very common in Manuel Antonio. Apparently so are very short children in Darth Vader outfits.

The beaches, however, are often nearly deserted - and quite beautiful.

And when you can have views like this from your hotel room? Even Darth Vader couldn't spoil the stay. This is the Hotel Costa Verde, which is listed as "Expensive" in guidebooks, but because of the good exchange rate for US dollars is actually quite reasonable.

This is the walk to the room, which is part of a complex of small buildings set into the hillside. I was in the "Adults Only" section, which was absolutely wonderful - instead of screaming children, all we heard were screaming howler monkeys. (On second thought, howler monkeys are louder and more disturbing than most small children. Let me tell you, hearing one of those things outside your window at 3AM is not relaxing.)

Down by the pool bar, you can meet the regulars...

...and have breakfast with some really laid-back folks.

Of course, you should always be on the lookout for pickpockets when you visit the beaches.

But what would a blog entry be without some geology? This geology happens to have a few crabs sitting on it...

...but nearby are some great conglomerates. There was quite a bit of green in these rocks, although I neglected to bring my hand lens along to investigate more thoroughly. (Terrible thing to forget, I know!)

Of course, I didn't spend all my time on the beach staring at rocks. Some of it I spent sleeping, or defending my towel from roving bands of capuchin monkeys or hermit crabs.

Next on the menu: volcanoes (with some actual discussions of geology) and city life in San Jose.

In the Humorous Vein #10

Teaching Tools for a 3D World

Though you wouldn't expect it from my slight obsession with volcanoes, my undergraduate training was focused strongly on structural geology. My undergrad adviser is a structural geologist, and his class was probably the toughest I've ever taken. It was also the most in-depth, challenging, make-you-think-really-hard class I've had, but there was something immensely satisfying in being able to grasp those concepts. The class had one major project, a mapping exercise conducted entirely from the confines of the department. Each week, we'd be given a new set of "field" samples to identify and take measurements from (they were firmly fastened to the tables in particular orientations), and then we'd place them on our maps (which showed a fantasy land created by my adviser). As the weeks went by, we "collected" enough samples to produce proper geologic maps and cross-sections.

What I always had trouble with was visualizing the subsurface well enough to create the cross-sections. The area we were mapping ("Pandora", for my class) wasn't just underlain by a nice neat series of tilted sedimentary layers, nor did the cross-sections cut perpendicularly across them. There was much calculating of angles and hand-waving, accompanied by experiments with Play-Doh. I always had difficulty with the math, and I used to spend a lot of time trying to draw the subsurface in 3D, or create Play-Doh reconstructions, so I could visualize the connection between the structure measurements, surface patterns and what was supposed to be happening below the surface. Pandora was a major undertaking, and it is with great satisfaction that I displayed the final map on my wall.

Which is why, when I saw Andrew Alden's post about a new tool for teaching structural geology, I was quite excited. Dr. Yvette Kuiper, an assistant professor at the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Boston College, has created a cube out of dry-erase board in order to help her own students visualize the complexities of structural measurements and geologic mapping. While many people use 2D whiteboards to try and depict 3D concepts, Dr. Kuiper has taken the next step, and added a dimension.

Here's her description of the new cubes:

"A cube made of white opaque high-density plastic, which serves as dry- (or wet-) erase material, makes teaching and learning three-dimensional geology much easier and fun. Maps, cross sections and block diagrams can be drawn (and erased!) and seen in three dimensions, and compared with their two-dimensional projections on paper. For example, the cubes are very useful for teaching the concept of apparent dips, which is essential in the construction of cross sections and block diagrams, and is confusing to many students. Plotting apparent dips on block diagrams is especially difficult, because of the distortion caused by the projection. The dry-erase cube provides an intermediate step. Students can first draw the actual apparent dip on the cube and subsequently construct the same angle on the projection of the block on paper. This can be made especially easy if the edges of the cube have the same length as the edges of an isometric block diagram on paper, so that they can simply be lined up.

"Several dry-erase cubes can be placed adjacent and on top of each other, so that multiple levels of maps, and parallel and perpendicular cross sections can be constructed. The relationship between maps and cross sections is then clearly visible. The cubes are also an aid in the understanding of stereographic projections, because structural data can be made visible as three-dimensional planes and lines before they are plotted. The dry-erase cubes are not only useful for geoscience teachers, but or anyone teaching or dealing with geometries and block diagrams, e.g. engineers and mathematicians, geologists in the petroleum or mining industries, hydrologists and K-12 teachers."

I'm quite excited to see something like this, not only because it will make my life easier, but because I'm going to shortly be TAing for intro geo labs. Geologic mapping is a difficult skill to acquire for even the geologically-inclined, and for a generation of people who have grown up with Mapquest and talking GPS units, it's also a very important skill. If you can handle a geologic map, then you can handle a regular old road map, which is an ability that's becoming rarer and rarer nowadays. Hopefully, having one of these cubes will make it easier for me to explain the connection between surface patterns and the underlying geology of a region.*

The dry-erase cube are currently being published in the newest issue of JGE:
Kuiper, Y.D., 2008. The dry-erase cube: making three-dimensional visualization easy. Journal of Geoscience Education v. 56, n. 3, May, 2008, 261–268.

♫

Dr. Kuiper estimates that the price should be no more than $15 per cube (plus shipping from Boston College); inquiries and requests should be emailed to her at kuipery - at - bc.edu


*Only if I can brush up on those drawing skills, though!

The Great Southern California ShakeOut

Even though I'm sure this has been mentioned in many places, I promised I'd post on it (in case there's anyone out there who didn't see the first few iterations).

While I was at the Boston NSTA meeting, I ha d the chance to meet a fellow from the Southern California Earthquake Center, and chat with him a bit about the Center's work. I was really impressed by their public awareness campaign (which has a slogan of, appropriately, "Shift Happens", in addition to Dare to Prepare). It often seems to me like the US is poorly prepared even for natural disasters that happen more often than major earthquakes (any number of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and fires come to mind), but outside of a few areas o f the country, hardly anyone is prepared for earthquakes.

The Great Southern California ShakeOut is a fantastic idea, but it needs to happen in other places than California. The Pacific Northwest, sitting on a subduction zone capable of producing 9+ magnitude earthquakes, is especially at risk, as well as the entire Midwest (which could experience another New Madrid quake) and even the East Coast (where Charleston was once the site of a ~7 magnitude quake). While the recurrence interval for quakes in the eastern US is certainly much longer than elsewhere, major quakes can - and do - happen. And when they do, very few people will be prepared in any way whatsoever. That's why the ShakeOut is a great opportunity for the entire country to get involved in an earthquake drill. Even if it's something as simple as securing heavy shelves to the wall (a good idea anyway), mapping out a route to get away from urban centers, putting together an emergency kit, or stocking up on bottled water and canned food, get involved!

Here's the info from the ShakeOut website:

"The Great Southern California ShakeOut is a week of special events featuring the largest earthquake drill in U.S. history, organized to inspire Southern Californians to get ready for big earthquakes, and to prevent disasters from becoming catastrophes. An Earthquake Drill for the Record Books

"At 10 a.m. on November 13, 2008, millions of southern Californians will “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” Why? An enormous earthquake is in our future, and the ShakeOut Drill is our chance to practice what to do when it happens. Individuals, families, businesses, schools and organizations will join firefighters, police officers, and other emergency responders (involved in the statewide “Golden Guardian” exercise) in our largest-ever earthquake preparedness activity. Don’t miss out!

"ShakeOut is based on a potential 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This type of earthquake occurs in southern California every 150 years on average, and the last was 151 years ago! Dr. Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey has led a group of over 200 scientists, engineers, and others to study the likely consequences of this enormous earthquake in great detail.

"In summary, the ShakeOut Scenario estimates this earthquake will cause some 2,000 deaths, 50,000 injuries, $200 billion in damage and other losses, and severe, long-lasting disruption. The report has regional implications and is a dramatic call to action for preparedness, and is available at www.ShakeOut.org.

"The ShakeOut includes these main events:

• ShakeOut Drill (Nov. 13)
• International Earthquake Conference (Nov. 12-14: Presented by the City of Los Angeles - iec.lacity.org)
• Golden Guardian Emergency Response Exercise (Nov. 13-19: Emergency mangers, fire fighters, and other first responders will practice how they will respond to this large earthquake -
• Los Angeles Earthquake: Get Ready Rally (Nov. 14: designed by Art Center College of Design)
• Take One More Step (Nov. 14-16: community activities to promote additional preparedness.)"

("Shift Happens" makes a fantastic bumper sticker, by the way.)