Mt kineo

I had an oil spill response job to do in rockwood last week. This pic is of m

Mt. Kineo. The frozen lake I am standing on is Moosehead.

  The geology of Kineo is pretty interesting.  The rocks are officially named the Devonian Tomhegan Formation Kineo Rhyolite member garnet rhyolite.

Native Americans in the area would use these rocks for spear point, cutting tools etc.  The Kineo rhyolite, a flint like blue-gray rock with small quartz crystals that could be shaped into spear points, knives, axes, and other tools.  Artifacts made of Kineo rhyolite have been founding hundreds of locations in Maine and at sites as far a field as Martha’s Vineyard and Nova Scotia. -referemce: some website

According to the usgs .

Consists of blue-gray, bone-white-weathering, massive, conchoidally fracturing felsite with quartz and feldspar phenocrysts; blue-gray, greenish-white-weathering, irregularly fracturing felsite with garnet and white feldspar phenocrysts; dark-blue-gray, greenish-white to light-gray-weathering tuff; blue-gray, chalky-white-weathering tuff containing felsite and pumice fragments and fine-grained volcanic debris (devitrified shards); rhyolitic felsite pebble conglomerate; and flow breccia resembling the felsite but containing numerous irregular felsite fragments in a matrix of same material. Thickness ranges from 0 to 4,000 ft. Underlies main part of Tomhegan formation; overlies Tarratine formation. Report includes geologic map and correlation chart. (ME003) Revised to include rocks previously mapped as both Heald Mountain Rhyolite and Kineo Volcanic Member of Boucot and Heath (1969). Exposed in Long Pond and Pierce Pond 15-min quads. Consists of weakly metamorphosed rhyolite ash-flow tuff, flows, domes, volcanic breccia, grit, and conglomerate as well as associated hypabyssal, garnet-bearing felsic intrusive rocks. Separately mapped intrusive garnet rhyolite in Tomhegan Formation, previously mapped as both unnamed garnet rhyolite and garnet rhyolite of the Kineo Volcanic Member by Boucot and Heath (1969), is now considered to be equivalent to Kineo. 

Maybe next time im up there Ill actually stop to look at the rocks. I totally didnt this time. Oh well, whatever. Next time.

The Significant Relationship of Geology and the PB&J Sandwich

It's likely that you have eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But do you understand the significance of the PB&J in the world of GEOLOGY? Probably not....unless of course you are a geologist. Here I present:

The Top Five Greatest Lessons of the PB&J Sandwich to the Field of Geology.

1) SUSTENANCE: Many a grad student has spent long durations of time far far away from civilization searching for that unit-of-pillow-basalt-to-prove-that-ophiloites-extend-further-into-the-pacific-northwest-than-previously-thought. The trouble comes as, what the fuck to eat out there? Luckily the PB&J is light weight, has a good calorie count and maybe most importantly CHEAP. I know as a grad student I had no pay and was frequently deep in the Maine woods looking for more damn schist on an empty belly. PB&J saved me more than once.

2) HYDROGEOLOGY: The main lesson that comes right to mind when talking about a good PB&J is related to hydrogeology and proper construction of the PB&J. Peant Butter acts as a very impervious barrier between 'watery' jelly and porus bread. Any PB&J worth its weight will be constructed in this manner: bread, peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, bread. Whereby the peanut butter retains the jelly, keeping it from soaking the bread. It's just common sense people. The peanut butter also tends to act as a seal, keeping the jelly in, when the sandwich is bitten into. No Mess.

3) TECTONICS: Many a PB&Js sitting side by side on a flat table have been mashed into one another demonstrating mountain building processes. The jelly can even look like the lava of and erupting volcano. *haha*

4) SEDIMENTARY: The Law of Superposition is no where better illustrated than in the construction of the PB&J. (See #2) Alt Link. Chuncky peanut butter can even stand in as a conglomerate or melange.

5) STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY: Cut a PB&J in half and faulting can be demonstrated, sinistral, dextral, reverse normal. Fold it up, syncline. Fold it down, anticline (pic right-->). Fold it and flip it, recumbent fold. BLAM!
There you have it. This is by no means a definitive list and I encourage you to add your best peanut butter and jelly sandwich stories.

I am spending some time today and tomorrow at the Northeast Geological Society of America meeting. This morning I managed to grab some GSA schwag (pictured), cruise the poster presentations and sit in a couple of talks.

My problem with the talks, as it has always been, is that while the presenters are among the best know and respected geologist in their field, few of them have any clue how to present good, clear and meaningful slides or how to SPEAK THE FUCK UP.

I was sitting there this morning thinking of this. Guy! speak INTO the microphone. Don't look at your slides and speak towards them. Not only that you are not projecting your voice AT ALL. Good lord man your like one of the 10 ten guys in this room right now.
I wanted to shout out ' could you please speak up'. But, as that I know who most of the people in the room are; it is really not the situation to be shouting at the idols. It would be poor form.
After lunch Ill go back up and sit in on a couple of more talks. Might as well. It's ligit time away from the office.

Batholith Study

Here is just a flash thought I had today. I will come back and define the idea better at a later date:

I would like to propose a study into the thickness of the Sebago Batholith. I would like to drill a hole (core preferable) through the batholith to measure among other things, thickness. The reported thickness in 1-2km. My study would include chemical analysis at 500 meter intervals and an anlysis of the rock type(s) beneath the Sebago. Who can drill this? geothermal drillers perhaps...it the grand scheme it just ain't that thick.

I know its been measured by gravity by Behn et. al in 97-8 (Can. J. Earth Sci. 35: 649–656 (1998). And they have a great paper about it HERE.

There is more here to uncover I think.

Comments from the geologists please.

Radon Testing

We've lived in this house since 2001. Only recently while I was spending more time in the basement building a workbench that I began to think about the radon levels.

There are tons of links for Radon in cyberspace but briefly Radon is a colorless, odorless gas that is naturally occuring. It is a daughter element of Uranium. It is radio active (alpha radiation). It can cause lung cancer. Radon makes its way into your house by migrating through the rock and soil into the basement through cracks and holes (like sumps). Radon is measured in picoCuries.

Since I work in the environmental field I called and ordered two radon test kits for air. Radon can also be tested in groundwater, particually important for homes with private wells as the water source. I also have a well, but have not tested the water yet. Anyway, I ordered two because the basement is partitioned and wanted throrough sampling.

The sample is very easy to collect. Each test kit has two small vials (about 3 inches tall, 1 inch diameter) with a carbon trap inside each one. Just pop open the vials, set 4 inches apart up on a chair. Depending on humidity you let sit undisturbed for 48 to 96 hours. Box it up and mail back to the lab with a check for 35$ per kit.

About a week later the sample results came back and I was happy to find out that there was only 1 picoCurie detected in the basment air. So working down there wont kill me.

Maine is known for it's high radon levels. Luckily my local geology is keeping the radon at bay. Clayey soils and a high water table are keeping the gas from entering my space.

Everyone that owns a home should test for radon. Its cheap and easy. If you want to order a radon test kit let me know and I can send you the contact info of where I got mine (unless of course you can make it out in the photo).

Teaching Geology

My first formal exposure to geology in the 8th grade. There was more earth science in 9th grade, thou the quality of what I received the year before was profoundly better. In college I continued my interest in geology and then declared it as my major. Somehow I got the silly idea to go on and get a masters degree. Today I am lucky enough that I actually have a job in my field.

All along thou the method in which geology was taught seemed out of order to some degree. First you learn minerals and rocks. Then it goes on and on from there. One day it got me thinking : how would I teach geology?

My approach would to first teach environments. Tectonics. Plate interaction. Warm salty seas. Deep cold sea. Volcanic areas. etc. In each case staring with the largest scale working towards the microscopic. Starting with what we can see. Starting with the historic and moving into present day. Then, what to expect at these places. I think it would be a simpler way for younger students to understand what is under their feet. Then, for instance, when you pick up a limestone you start thinking of the environment in which it formed and other rocks or fossils or bed grading or whatever, that may also be associated with it. And why learn anything about schist when studying rocks in Hawaii?
It's just a thought. It's what I do.

Reading geology, snowshoeing and drinking wine

It was a fine weekend, indeed. I finished reading one of the greatest geology articles I have ever read. It summarized with some detail the history of the Rheic Ocean. I spent a couple of hours reading it because I wanted to really understand and follow it. But I now can I say I have some grasp on the subject. Wikipedia and the Science News Blog both had good information about the Rheic.

**update** I knew that once I got home I could find a link. HERE is the full article from GSA Today.

Saturday I opened an excellent bottle of cabernet sauvignon El Huique 2001 reserve from Chile. After I pulled the cork I notice that small 'wine diamonds' had formed on the inside. Wine diamonds are the crystal form of potassium bitartrate and from what I understand they help with the pH and help to stabilize fermentation. It was good.

Sunday the dogs and I went snowshoeing for an hour at our favorite place, Jamies Pond. There was no one else there and I did some jogging during the light 3 mile hike to get in some training in for my Trek Across Maine cycling trip.

Finally I would like to say Thank You to those that have donated some money towards my fundraising goals. I owe a couple of posts to Holly Hall and Tony for that. The ride is in June so there is plenty of time for others to help out. My donation page is HERE.

Peridotite as CO2 Storage

Peridotite is a rock that looks like the picture over there --->

and it's not just any rock. It is actually the most common rock in the mantle. It is also the birthstone for August, peridote. Now, lets see if I can simplify this....

Recently these two rock docs, geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter have conducted studies on this rock and it's ability to absorb (react actually) carbon dioxide. They took the process another step and figured out a method to speed up the reaction rate by 100,000 times or more. The method involves drilling holes into the peridoitie and injecting the rock formation with really hot water and pressurized CO2. I presume that the H2O and CO2 will react with the chemical composition of the peridotite (like: magnesium, iron, oxygen, silicon, aluminum, sodium, potassium).

This is big news for the battle against anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, which has been shown to be increasing for many years. This graph (the keeling curve) is perhaps the most well know and convincing evidence.The study our hero rock docs have coming out on November 11 in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences will, I presume, layout in more detail the findings of the study and calculations on storage capacities and costs and all that shit. In the web-articles I have found, they are saying that as much as 4 to 5 billions tons per year will be able to be stored. Humans are currently spewing about 30 billion tons each year, so the amount of capture is significant.

I've done a previous post on carbon trapping before, HERE. That method involved pumping the CO2 in to really deep (many kilometers) aquifers. This has the potential issues of leakage, pH, stabilization and doesn't provide the same extreme long term storage solution that peridodite storage does. The peridotite storage, insofar as I can tell, is a chemical reaction with a crystal (calcite) as the resulting permanent storage device.

from that earlier post I wrote, standby and add:

Carbon Capture and Storage SlingShot Thoughts:

• We have to try. This echos' my thoughts on geoengineering in general (1,2,3,4).
  
• We have less than 50 years to turn this Carbon ship around. More like 1 year.
  
• It is VERY unlikely that the coal fired plants will be retrofitted with CS facilities within 50 years.
• The human effect on the atmosphere in undeniable. see Keeling Curve.
  
• The Earth has great natural carbon sinks. Like the oceans and trees and now peridodite.
  
• Humans are overwhelming the system.
• Carbon sequestration can work but it is only a small part of the solution. Alternatively- we will probably need multiple methods, perhaps geographical.
  
• Humans suck and there is nothing you can do about it.

Earth Science Week

This week is EARTH SCIENCE WEEK.

pass it on to your kids science teacher.

Holy Bat Shit!

Science is amazing to me. Amazing because one can study bat shit, write about it and get published.

What brings this up? Well, last week I received my latest copy of Geology and as I was skimming the abstracts during my Saturday morning post-coffee poo I come across the paper titled: "Stable carbon and hydrogen isotopes from bat guano in the Grand Canyon, USA, reveal Younger Dryas and 8.2 ka events". Thats quite a title for something I might have called 'Bat Shit in a Grand Canyon Cave'.

This group basically showed that the Carbon 13 and Hydrogen isotopes analyzed in bat crap shows the affects of the paleo-climate. It is important because it helps increase, or the term they use is -develop high resolution, of the climate on a more local scale. Additionally, because the Grand Canyon is a semi-arid environment other depositional features (lakes for instance) are rare or non-existent, so this is providing another method to gain information.

The information this adds to the world is that during the Younger Dryas (~12,900 -11,600 years ago) this region of the southwest US seems to have been cool and dry at this time and that the small 400 year change detected during about 8,400 -8,000 years ago was also a cool period. The second event is the first time this anomaly has been detected. Possibly indicating a semi-local effect. EUREKA! A DISCOVERY!

So for fun....why the Ace Ventura reference?

Cycling and a 'lil Geology

This morning was another beautiful day in Vacationland to ride my bicycle to work. The photo here I took on my way in this morning. It is a view looking west at the Presumpscot River, down stream of the falls.

Commuting Stats:
Distance (miles): 14.41
Time: 49 mins. 17 secs.
Average Speed: 17.5 mph

For the the the geology nerds. The geology of the area is fairly interesting. The soil are blue-gray marine clays of the Presumpscot Formation. Very typical of coastal Maine. The rocks are WAY more interesting. Silurian to Ordovician Age Hutchins Corner Formation. A flaggy blueish to purplish gray biotite quartz plagioclase granofels with greenish-gray interbeds of calc silicate. Migmatic pegmatite layers commonly interbeded with the host rock, conforming to the bedding. There are also some unmapable pelitic schist layers.

ROCK ON.

Trials, Tribulations and Other Good Things

***ssssmmmmphhhhhhhhaaaa*****

My dad is staying with us for a couple of weeks. He is working at the garage pumping gas (opening and closing) while Wife's parents visit their family in Budapest.

On Monday after I got home from work Dad and I started laying down the hardwood floor (pic right) in the Baby to Be room. Luckily at work I got to have a business meeting on the Boss's sailboat (pic left). WooHoo!

Tuesday I drove the usual 1 hour to the office followed by 2+ hours to job site to work for 6 hours in 90 deg. hazy, hot and humid heat and run around in a dry dusty containment area. However, I did get to see a really cool steel cutter attached to an excavator. The contractor was in the last stage of tearing down the old 500,000-gallon above ground storage tank (pic. right).

I then drove back to the office stopping off at another job site to stick my head down a storm catch basin and squeeze petroleum out of a saturated sorbent pad to collect a sample (nasty pic. left). I made it back to the office at 6. By the time I got home it was a 330 mile day.

Driving back from the first job site I did get a good picture of some nice gneiss. It was in a road cut and I didn't have time to get great pic. or any scale in there but the rock face is about 10-meters. Nice Gneiss (pic. right).

Finally, on my way home I tried to pick up lobsters for dinner but all the places were closed. Fuckin' figures.
I arrived home at about 7pm and I then learned that my sink is HELLA clogged. For the next 2 hours we (me and dad) tried to clear the lines. We both got fuckin' hosed with nasty ass, rank sewer water. I thought we got the lines cleared but no....pretty much made it worse. Ill try again tonight.

Back to the grind.

Carbon Trapping

Last week I attended a lecture on trapping CO2 emissions before it is expelled into the atmosphere. Called CARBON SEQUESTRATION, the idea is basically to include a processing facility on the tail pipe of coal fired power plants and pump the CO2 into deep geological formations. Deep like 8 kilometers.

The lecture was at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and titled: Geologic Storage as a Carbon Mitigation Option. by Michael Celia

I tried to keep some notes: Currently CO2 in the atmosphere is about 385 parts per million (ppm) As measured by ice core data. That concentration is higher than any time in the past 500,000 years. CO2 is projected to double in 50 years. 50 years!

If CO2 were to level off today...in 2060 global temps are projected to rise by 3 deg. C. As reference, when we talk about the Greenland ice sheet melting only 1-2 deg. C is usually the number thrown around as sufficient; add in the projected increases and CO2 really takes control.

So the lecture was about how to 'trap' CO2 under ground. There are a few methods and places to put it: Old oil and gas reservoirs, coal beds and deep saline water formation. The DOE web site describes these.

Dr. Celia is a computer modeler and apparently a very good one. There are so many aspects to this issue I would get a honorary PhD if i blogged it all. But anyway it seems that Dr. Celia really has looked at all the issues in making this viable; from how the concrete will act in the deep wells to the number of wells making holes in the ground, leakage, storage volumes and everything else imaginable.

But without getting into the nasty and boring details I figure it is the thoughts I walked out of the lecture with that blog readers would really like to know. After all just Google 'carbon sequester' and you will be bombarded with information.

Carbon Capture and Storage SlingShot Thoughts:

• We have to try. This echos' my thoughts on geoengineering in general (1,2,3,4).
• We have less than 50 years to turn this Carbon ship around. More like 1 year.
  
• It is VERY unlikely that the coal fired plants will be retrofitted with CS facilities within 50 years.
• The human effect on the atmosphere in undeniable.
• The Earth has great natural carbon sinks.
• Humans are overwhelming the system.
• Carbon sequestration can work but it is only a small part of the solution.
  
• Humans suck and there is nothing you can do about it.

TreeHugger also wrote up a piece on this issue. Some points were ok, others not so good. They mostly pulled quotes from a book. and those quotes are contrary to Dr Celias' studies. It is another perspective and that is always good. Plus the image I used is from their article and I didn't want to steal it outright ;)

Geology Post

Another good example of ptygmatic (tig mat tic) folding. There are hundreds out in cyberspace. I found this while collecting data for my MS back in the summer of 99.

I found this ptygmatic pair very near (less than 25 meters) THIS set of conjugate quartz veins all of which is located at the southwestern extent of my field area. An area I called Buttonwood Hill. If you look closely at the photo in the upper right plunge of the folded vein and hinge are visible. Don't ask me to recall the angle. Its just a cool geologic feature photograph.

Other posts from my thesis area are: HERE and HERE.

WOGE#79

I've been pretty lucky in finding these lately. WOGE#78 posted by Ron took me in all kinds of directions before I tracked it down. From ice lands to the Caribbean to eventually Guinea.

Where on Google Earth?

Photo: WOGE#79. Note North arrow.

The location I chose for #79 is pretty tight zoom. But that was the only good way to show that cool landslide feature. I think you smart monkeys out there can figure it out from here.

No Schott Rule today.

SlingShot Thought *geology*

Tonight I was stumbling through some sites and came across the UBasics and found their solution to the answer "What happens if i dig straight down?"

I first did the obvious thing of finding out that from my house I would end up in the sea south-west of Australia. Great.

Figure Left: Yellow slashes show Chain trend. Green slash, lower frame, Valley trend.

Then, I quickly started just swinging the map around to find where Land and Land would meet. I soon discovered that the hot spot responsible for building the Hawaiian Island chain is located approximately opposite of the Great Rift Valley of Africa. The trends of the Chain and Valley are very nearly similar.

My SlingShot Thought is: Are these features related to internal processes within the earth cores? Some type of...equation balance? force balance? What role does mantle convection come into play? Why have I never noticed this before?

If anyone has thoughts to add or documents for me to understand this potential connection better, please comment.

WOGE # 77

I will chalk up finding Ron's WOGE 76 to the good clue of 'paradise'. The atolls he posted are Tahaa and Raiatea located northwest of Tahiti. A place I would love to vacation at some day.

Unlike Ron, I have no students. But I will keep in mind that some may visit I will keep it interesting and fun. Plus the colors are cool.

The view is slightly oblique help enhance the elevation.

Schott Rule is active. Good Luck.

Geology Post : 12-3-07

This photo comes from my field work in 1999. It is in the top 5 cool geology pictures I have. Though the picture quality sucks, the geologic principal is stellar.

The rock is a pelitic schist. The two veins are quartz.

The interesting things to note are that one quartz vein (down from upper left to lower right) is pretty much unchanged. This represents a 'zone of flattening'.
The other quartz vein (the squiggly one; down from upper right to lower left) is within a 'zone of compression'. It demonstrates the direction of compression oriented between approximately N18-40 E.
Which fits in with the regional geology of south western Maine very well.

Teachers, feel free to use in class. Questions? Comments?

Geology Post

After all that excitement of the previous two posts I definitely need to get back to roots. At least for the moment.

Yesterday, I was looking back through some of the pictures and images I got while putting my geology thesis together. I got some really cool pictures and for any of the geologist teachers that may swing through here, feel free to use the pictures for teaching aids.

This is a sketch I made from a thin section (cut parallel to lineation and perpendicular to foliation, is that right? i cant remember) about 9 years ago (*geeze* it dosen't seem that long).
Red/pink colors are garnet.
The green is a chlorite reaction rim contacting the dominantly muscovite matrix.

I believed and still do that there are two generations of garnet growth. The older showing a poikiloblastic internal structure. The younger did not.

On one garnet I highlighted asymmetric quartz tails.
The beige I never actually identify. Though it could have been andalusite. It was very homogenous...almost microscopic oatmeal structure.

Northern Maine Woods

I took a camping/ hunting scouting trip into a remote region of the Maine woods this past weekend. The Seboomook Region to be specific. While out one day searching for deer signs we came across this slate outcrop----->

45o 53.833N

69o 44.353W

Within the outcrop were some slight kinking, as can be seen in this photo and some pyrite clasts (pods). The pyrite I found occurred within the same bed indicating that chemical differences in sedimentary deposition were in play. But that is usually the case, no? Unfortunately I forgot my brunton back at camp, a stupid error on my part, so I was unable to log structural data like strike and dip of the bedding, trend/plunge of the kinking etc.

This region of geology is far enough away from the real tectonic action that little metamorphism has occurred. We explored along the east end of the lake. The interesting thing is that I found slate in an area that is mapped as sandstone with medium bedding. While that was true for where our camp site was located, a direction south east of out camp (roughly the #2 on the MGS figure to the left) is where I found the slate. Then again this figure to the left is just a generalized map.

I wanted to go check out the pillow lava at the west end of the lake but by the time that idea came around I was half way though an 18-pack of budweiser and lost my motivation to drive the woods roads. Next trip.

The Maine Geological Survey has this page with a really good description of the area geology.