So true

As a followup to my AGU posts, an offering from Surviving The World (my new favorite webcomic):

An interesting field trip at the Portland GSA

While I was at the Toronto AGU, I happend to be looking at GSA's website for their annual meeting, which is going to be held in Portland this year. Naturally, I'm excited for the chance to get closer to some volcanoes (which are noticeably lacking in Toronto), and I was even entertaining the idea of going on a field trip. So when I saw this title, I perked up a bit:

425. Breached Dam Overlook at Mount St. Helens
Sat., 17 Oct. US$95 (L, R).

It's even affordable for a poor grad student. Then I looked at the field trip leader:

Leader: Steven A. Austin, Austin Research Consulting.

Usually, I expect to see people from the USGS or local universities leading a field trip - although the name sounded strangely familiar. So I did a little research...and all the hits that came up were from creationism websites. Namely, the Institute for Creation Research.

It appears that Steven Austin has degrees in geology (they're listed as B.S. Geology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA,1970; M.S. Geology, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 1971; Ph.D. Geology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 1979), but that he is also the person who introduced the Mount St. Helens/Grand Canyon/Flood and Mount St. Helens "old" lava dome dacite arguments for the Flood and a young Earth. (Links to the debunking of these arguments can be found here and here on the Talk Origins website.)

Stuff like this just makes me twitch. I can't say whether or not Austin knows the recent geologic history well enough to lead a good trip. But what I do strenuously object to is the fact that the field trip description very carefully gives no indication that Austin works for the ICR, and that he has been very vocal in promoting what many geologists would consider to be extremely bad science.

Here's the trip description:

This six-hour hike follows a 13-kilometer-round-trip route to an extraordinary geologic location called “Breached Dam Overlook” just seven kilometers north of the crater of Mount St. Helens. The trail leads us from the Johnston Ridge Observatory onto the largest landslide deposit to have accumulated during human history. This debris avalanche deposit of May 18, 1980, forms one of the earth’s newest landscapes of 45 square kilometers area within the headwaters of the North Fork of the Toutle River. The objectives of the field trip are (1) to identify, classify and name individual landforms within the upper North Fork Toutle River landscape, (2) to relate the landforms to the sequence of events and processes that have occurred next to the volcano, and (3) to ponder questions about how the landscape at a volcano changes through time. Landforms on the debris avalanche landscape are relicts that have been impacted significantly by geomorphic processes that exceed a certain minimum energy threshold. Following the debris avalanche of May 18, 1980, the most significant event was the mudflow of March 19, 1982. That mudflow event breached the natural debris dam, caused adjustment within the drainage basin, and derived the present landscape. Now that the power of geomorphic processes has diminished, finer sediment is what is being moved. Channels are incised and armored with coarser clasts, and valleys are now plugging with sediment. Hikers can observe the new landscape from two selected overlooks. Johnston Ridge Observatory on the west side of Mount St. Helens Volcano National Monument is the staging area this roundtrip hike of 13.6 kilometers (8.4 mi).

Knowing Austin's background puts this into an entirely different light, and it's not one that I like. I'd say the odds are pretty good that his Grand Canyon and argon arguements are going to pop up on the trip, and unless the attendees know what they're getting into (and like to debate creationists for fun), people will probably be shocked and disappointed that they spent money and time only to be a captive audience for someone's bad pet young Earth theories. It's a pity; I would have liked to spend some time at St. Helens with a legitimate geologist (someone from the CVO, say; why aren't they leading any MSH field trips?)

Bottom line? I'm kind of surprised that GSA is allowing someone who so blatantly goes against their position statement on evolution and creationism to lead a field trip. I don't know what the vetting process is for field trip leaders, but if I were a GSA official, I wouldn't allow someone like Austin to potentially use GSA as an avenue for promoting theories that directly contradict the geological science that GSA works so hard to promote. (Then again, this may be a recurring thing - does anyone know if Austin has led other GSA field trips? Perhaps GSA just doesn't care.)

If you know of anyone who's thinking of attending the Portland GSA, please let them know about the background of this particular trip leader before they sign up and fork over their money - if they don't already recognize him.

2009 AGU Joint Session in Toronto: Days 3 & 4

Having hit conference overload about halfway through the day on Tuesday, I neglected to blog about what I'd been seeing, so I'll be combining two days. Tuesday was definitely talk day; I attended volcanology and kimberlite sesions in the morning and afternoon, in which I heard about:

• How melt inclusions in olivines and glass from eruptive products on Procida Island, Italy could be used to trace the volatile evolution, and thus melt movements into/out of the island's magmatic reservoir (Esposito et al.).
  
• An interesting pyroclast from the Sept. 1997 Soufriere Hills dome collapse. The pyroclast contains shattered feldspar and quartz phenocrysts (with really cool little 'pipes' where melt inclusions erupted out of the phenocryst fragments). Ben Williamson suggests that the pyroclast may have started as an injection into the base of the lava dome, sat there for a bit crystallizing cristobalite (also present), and was then ejected in the dome collapse while still somewhat viscous.
• Roger Mitchell and Steve Sparks (and a number of other folks) sparring over kimberlite origins and evolution (and even over whether some deposts are kimberlites). This was particularly amusing, because there was much implying that the volcanologists who were involving themselves in kimberlite geology didn't know as much about the subject as the petrologists who'd been working on it, and vice versa. I get the feeling this has been going on for a while.
• An example of a sub-glacier eruption in Iceland a few tens of thousands of years ago that created eruption ridges of pillow basalts, fissures similar to Hawaiian spatter ramparts on Kilauea, and possible sub-glacial ponding of water from the melted ice (which could have affected glacier dynamics).
  

My non-conference time was taken up by a visit to the St. Lawrence Market, which is in the Old Town portion of the city. I love these markets; I've been to the Reading Market in Philadelphia and a similar market in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, and I'm always excited to see all the different fresh foods. In the St. Lawrence Market, I discovered custard tarts, a fantastic Portuguese dessert that seems to be pretty popular in Canada, as well as cheese curds (a favorite treat from my field work in Utah); I also got to peruse whole sides of beef, giant king crab legs and tiger shrimp, and quite possibly one of the best crepe combinations I've come across (strawberries, Nutella, and mozzerella). (Did I mention at some point that I thought I would lose weight at this conference? Scratch that.)

Wednesday was fairly relaxed - in the morning, I listened to a talk by Don Dingwell entitled "When melts start behaving like rocks (very bad things can happen)", which focused on the brittle-ductile transition at magma/lava fragmentation. I'm not sure I totally agree with Dr. Dingwell that the "essence of eruption is decompression" - there are certainly other factors involved - but it's an interesting point. I also listened to a talk about Mount St. Helens dome rock by Rosanna Smith, whose study results show that high-frequency earthquakes caused by brittle fracture of rocks is possible in the interior of lava domes, and a discussion of the effects of volcanic edifice collapse on hydrothermal systems and ore-grade mineralization.

It's good to be back in Buffalo, even if it was a slow trip getting out of Toronto, and we had to stop at the border because my car was full of foreign people and still has VA plates. This is apparently a cause for alarm, despite the fact that it also has several decals that someone could use to figure out that I came from a different state than I now attend school in. (Mostly it was a cause for fingerprinting and for the Department of Homeland Security to charge my French passenger to take the electronic fingerprint scans. Talk about moneygrubbing!) I'm also convinced that DHS guards are chosen for their ability to look surly and hulking.

Photos to follow as soon as I can find the right camera cord...

2009 AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto: Day 2

Today started out with the early (7AM) student breakfast, in which we got to meet some of the AGU big shots. Our table seemed particularly attractive, since I was chatting with the president, president-elect, the manager of AGU's education and career services, and one of the Union's lobbyists. I immediately discovered a few connections to my previous job, and was steered toward the only volcanologist present, who turned out to be Steve Sparks, who was my advisor's advisor.

All in all, it was a very successful morning, and I even got a chance to mention (in response to the general call for concerns from students) that AGU's policy on student travel grants is somewhat unfair. (You can only apply for a grant if you're a presenting author, and only if it's your first meeting, which means I wasn't eligible for this meeting and won't be for any others.) I will be very happy if this is changed, and from the conversation, I think there's a good chance it will be. This is especially important, given how expensive it is to attend an AGU meeting (even as a student), and how few perks there are (no free coffee or snacks for anyone, for example, which I think is a little cheap for how much the meeting costs).

Today's lecture lineup wasn't quite as engaging for me as yesterday's. I stopped in on a talk about multi-melt origins for anorthosite, one about the Fawakhir Ophiolite in Egypt, and the Daly Lecture, which was given by Mark Harrison about Hadean zircons. This was probably the most interesting of the bunch; Dr. Harrison suggested that zircons found in conglomerates in the Jack Hills, Western Australia challenge the prevailing belief that the Hadean was a hot, dry, water-less period in Earth's history. He gave as lines of evidence high delta O-18 values, which he said suggests clay protoliths, and inclusions of quartz, feldspar and muscovite in the zircons, which suggest crystallization from hydrous melts. The ultimate model was of a sediment cycling system that involved liquid water, and possibly some sort of subduction and tectonic activity (although crustal recycling has probably erased much of the early crustal record). One of the UB students working in paleoclimatology also gave a very good talk about the records of advance and retreat on Greenland glaciers in the morning; it was nice to hear about non-volcanology research in my department, since the research groups are often pretty insular.

The afternoon I spent sightseeing in the city. I'm becoming rather fond of it; Toronto is like a shorter, greener version of New York City, and everyone seems to have been careful to preserve a little open space here and there. I saw the headquarters of the original Hudson River Company (which boasts a pedigree even older than my alma mater), the old City Hall, a number of cathedrals, the biggest shopping mall I've ever been in (and most of it underground!), and some really inspired architecture along the way. I also wore my feet out with all the walking, and I'm very glad that the hotel has a hot tub.

2009 AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto: Day 1

After a long drive up to Toronto from Buffalo, encounters with surly border guards and confusing elevator mechanisms, and a really wonderful dinner at an Indian Restaurant on Jarvis Street, I'm finally diving into my first AGU. It doesn't seem like there are a lot of people here, which is nice - not too overwhelming. The conference organizers decided to put together a mostly useless session guide that doesn't actually tell you what talks are going on in each session, although we can still waste paper by visiting one of the printing stations and getting copies of all the talk titles.

Talks started early for me today; my advisor was running the 8AM volcanology session, in which the audience was mostly the speakers and a few of their students. But it was all about pyroclastic flows, a subject I consider worth an early start.

• Mike Manga from UC Berkeley compared the transport capacity of pyroclastic flows over water and solid substrates, and concluded that large particles in overland flows are transported farther when the flows are concentrated and there is momentum transfer from the fines to the larger particles.
• Sylvain Charbonnier of Keele University showed two different mass flow model results (TITAN2D and VOLCFLOW) as applied to block-and-ash flows on Merapi, and also talked about using ground-penetrating radar to map flow deposits internally.
• Joe Dufek from Georgia Tech talked about ash production in eruptive flows, and how friction and collisional fragmentation help create fines.
• Elke Hanenkamp from the University of Canterbury described decoupling processes in block-and-ash flows.
• Eliza Calder from the University at Buffalo described a mathematical shortcut for reducing the number of "runs" needed to produce good mass flow models of pyroclastic flows.
• Mike Sheridan (also from Buffalo) talked about modifications being made to TITAN2D to better represent multi-phase debris flows.
  

The meeting itself is in the Toronto Metro Convention Centre, which is right next to the CN Tower and is actually a very nice setting. The rooms are a bit bigger than the audiences in most cases, but it's nice to not be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people attending the meeting, as I heard was the case at the past Fall AGU. I'm finding it a bit hard to pop in and out of any talks that don't involve volcanology, since many of them are very over my head (or concern things that I haven't worked with for a few years), but it's a good chance for me to brush up on my mineralogy (for example).

So far I've also discovered that, at least at the convention center, the universe is trying to keep me from spending money. Not only do the ATMs not accept VISA cards, the food stands don't accept any cards. Since I'd have to walk a block just to get out of the building to the street, and the street is full of unaffordable, high-end steakhouses, it looks like I'm living off of gum until dinnertime. Usually stress over an upcoming presentation makes me lose weight, but I may manage to do that without presenting anything at this meeting.

UPDATE: After about five ATMs, I finally managed to find one in the back of a convenience store that would take my card. I also went to dinner with my group at a really great Thai fusion place, and took care of the food concerns by ordering a fried rice dish that was served in half a pineapple. The food situation is definitely improving.

Conference travel again - Toronto AGU

I'm off to AGU's Joint Assembly in Toronto this weekend, which should be fun - despite having been in Buffalo for a while now, I haven't been to Toronto yet (or to an AGU meeting, for that matter). I'm looking forward to getting to watch some sessions specifically on volcanology, instead of skipping around to talks that look like they might have some vague relationship to the field. (This has happened quite a bit at the meetings I've been to so far - then again, I haven't been to an IAVCEI conference yet either, where it's all volcanoes.)

I'm thinking about live-blogging it, but I'll at least try to do some summaries at the end of each day if I don't get around to on-the-spot reporting.

Babbling aside, if anyone is planning on being at the Toronto AGU, give me a heads-up. I'm going to be there Sunday - Wednesday, and perhaps we can organize a meetup somewhere with the appropriate refreshing beverages, eh?

It's course evaluation time!*

And so far I've seen (paraphrased, of course):

Labs/TA were horrible
Labs/TA were okay
Loved lab
Labs were informative and relatively harmless (I would have laughed even more if it had said 'mostly harmless' and referenced the HGTG)
TA is elitist (Because I wouldn't give this person a second make-up date for a quiz they missed, never mind that I didn't have to give them a first one)
TA is responsible and patient
Boring lab material
Exciting/interesting lab material
Lab books sucked (This I totally agree with.)
Quizzes should only test us on what we've already done in lab, not the reading we're supposed to do to prepare for lab (Sorry, that's what the purpose of those quizzes were, since none of you read the labs in advance until I started giving quizzes!)
Had to do all the questions (under "What did you find annoying?")
Needs more group work
Needs less in-class work
Why do we have to come to labs anyway when we can just do the work on our own? (Despite the workbook lab manuals that we had to teach from, mostly because that's the point of being in a class, and not teaching yourself from a library book.)

And my favorite, in answer to "Would you recommend this class to a friend?":

"In the event that I acquire any friends, I would think it not advisable to start our relationship talking about school. Perhaps music, or Darfur?"

I have no idea where that came from, but it was awesome.



*Note the false cheerfulness in that title. What I really mean is, "I care, but that's moot at this point because there's nothing I could have done about the crappy lab books, and I'm not teaching next semester so I won't have any input in the future."