Keck Geology Consortium Projects: 2008/2009
In 2008/2009 the Keck Geology Consortium offered the following projects:
2008 Keck Project Announcement in pdf format.
This project will be an integrated structural and metamorphic study that will focus on two high-grade fault zones in the Adirondack portion of the Grenville Province, with a focus on dating deformation, determining shearing conditions within the zone, and identifying discontinuities across the boundaries. We will concentrate on creating a group of research projects around the CCSZ and BLSZ that can be stand-alone theses or independent study projects at the students’ home institutions.
This project will involve students in 2 to 3 complimentary areas: 1) neotectonic – tectonic geomorphology, fault characterization, and paleoseismology; 2) glacial, periglacial, and fluvial geomorphology, and 3) paleoclimatic proxies of Late Quaternary climate change.
Block Island thus offers unequalled opportunities for integrative research in earth and environmental sciences: within its modest perimeter we can study rates of recent sea level rise and anthropogenic pollution within the framework of climate and environmental changes over centuries to thousands of years,with even a peek into the past a hundred million years ago.
Paleoecology and Paleoenvironment of Early Tertiary Alaskan Forests, Matanuska Valley, Alaska: July 1 - July 28, 2008This project aims to expose students to methods of paleobiological and historical analysis on a fluvio-lacustrine early Tertiary basin in south-central Alaska. The summer program will consist entirely of fieldwork, with the expectation that some laboratory analyses will be carried out through the academic year 2008-2009.
Greenstone belts are useful for understanding ancient seafloor processes that we cannot access directly. When we study the ocean crust it is generally either just on the very surface of the seafloor, in a one-dimensional hole drilled into the crust, or by some remote method that prohibits detailed mapping. At the AGB, we will map and sample in several dimensions for studies of physical properties (including density, velocity, and porosity) and geochemistry to help constrain original setting, understand fluid flow and porosity of extrusive rocks, and explore the variety of compositions and relationships between volcanic facies preserved. We will put our results into context, using comparisons from other greenstone belts, ophiolites, and modern seafloor rocks.
This project will join a large interdisciplinary study (Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory: Weathered profile development in a rocky environment and its influence on watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry—NSF 0724960) directed by Suzanne Anderson, University of Colorado and Institute for Arctic and Alpine Studies (INSTAAR). The “observatory” will consist of 3 small, instrumented sites in the Boulder Creek basin: (1) a steep alpine area in the Boulder watershed; (2) a forested, mid-elevation catchment developed in deeply weathered materials, and (3) a steep, lower-elevation basin where surficial deposits are of variable thickness
Geoarchaeology of the Poggio Colla Archaeology Field Site, Italy: June 22 – July 20, 2008
A long-term goal of the MVAP is an interdisciplinary regional landscape analysis of the area around Poggio Colla. Through the integrated use of geomorphology and archaeology (both survey and excavation), the research team hopes to construct a landscape archaeology for the region.