Day: March 13, 2018

03-02-2013 David Williams: Stories in Stone

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About the Talk

Stories in Stone:  Travels through Urban Geology

David Williams of Seattle will present a lecture on “Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology” This lecture is part of the Jefferson Land Trust’s geology program and is co-sponsored by the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau program.

Most people do not think of looking for geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but for the intrepid traveler, any good rock can tell a fascinating story.  All one has to do is look at building stone in any downtown business district to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics.  Furthermore, building stones provide the foundation for constructing stories about cultural as well as natural history.

Take Seattle as an example. At the wonderful Art Deco Seattle Exchange building, you can find 3.54-billion-year-old gneiss, the oldest rock that most of us will ever see. Just up the block is the Rainier Club and its 330-million-year-old stone menagerie of fossils called the Salem Limestone, the most commonly used building stone in America. Or consider the Rainier Bank Building, partially covered in travertine, which comes from the same quarries that provided rock for the Colosseum in Rome.  David conducts field trips through downtown Seattle in association with his new book.

About the Speaker

David B. Williams is a freelance writer focused on the intersection of people and the natural world. His books include Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology; The Seattle Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from the City; and his latest, Cairns: Messengers in Stone. Stories in Stone, the subject of today’s talk, was named a finalist for the 2010 Washington State Book Award in the general non-fiction category. David also works at the Burke Museum and is a former National Parks ranger in Utah and Massachusetts. He maintains the blog GeologyWriter.com from his home base in Seattle.

05-03-2014 Pat Pringle: Mt. Rainier

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About the Talk

Mt. Rainier—New Information about the Volcano in Our Backyard

Mount Rainier has been called the most hazardous volcano in the United States. It’s an active volcano with a seismic pulse and hissing fumaroles in its east summit crater; some crater water is at the 86° boiling point for that elevation. Recent research shows that this sleeping giant has erupted for more than half a million years and that it has had more than 40 eruptions since glaciers retreated from the Puget Lowland about 15,000 years ago. It has generated great lahars (huge volcanic debris flows) that buried forested river valleys for tens of kilometers. Some lahars flowed all the way to Puget Sound and, along with later sedimentation, greatly modified the Puget Lowland landscape. The volcano’s glaciers have been retreating in recent years, and as they do, rivers heading on Mount Rainier have been moving sediment quickly downstream, resulting in an annual drumbeat of alluviation in lowland areas. Pat will discuss how geologists are continuing to study and monitor the volcano and the potential impacts of future eruptions.

About the Speaker

Mr. Pringle is Assoc. Professor of Earth Science at Centralia College, Washington. He was with Washington DNR’s Division of Geology from 1990 to 2005 and with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory from 1982 to 1990. Pat studies volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, and debris flows, commonly using radiocarbon and tree-ring analysis to establish the history of past geologic events. He is the author of books on the roadside geology of Mounts St. Helens and Rainier. His Mount Rainier book won “Best Guidebook Award” at the Geological Society of America’s 2009 Annual Meeting.

04-15-2014 Grant Heiken: Rome’s geology

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About the Talk

GEOLOGY AND URBAN SUSTAINABILITY—THE VIEW FROM ROME

From its time as the historic center of the Roman world, Rome has been continuously a political, religious, and administrative capital. Geologic and terrain factors assured its population growth and provided the conditions for survival of its culture in the ancient world. From lessons of urban development and prosperity, the Roman people developed a capacity to recognize and to manage the natural resources of the region.

Modern Rome was developed in a haphazard manner after WW II. Most residents have not been pleased with the results of rapid development, but they have developed a strong sense of needing to care for the city and to better manage its environment. There are new, detailed geologic maps of the city, programs for engineering and environmental geology, and cooperative work with archeologists—all within the city and regional governments. It is appropriate that the term urban geology has its origin in Urbs, which was the ancient name for the City of Rome. This talk is based on his 2005 book The Seven Hills of Rome—A Geological Tour of the Eternal City(G. Heiken, R. Funiciello, R., and D. De Rita, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 288 p).

About the Speaker

 

After completing his Ph.D. at the University of California in Santa Barbara in 1972, Grant Heiken worked for NASA’s Apollo Program as a geology instructor and as a researcher on lunar surface processes.

In 1975, he and his wife moved to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico, where he worked on geothermal exploration and development, volcanic hazard analysis, the uses of volcanic rocks, basic research on explosive volcanism, continental scientific drilling, and integrated urban science. He has co-written or edited 11 books. He retired in 2003 and moved to Freeland on Whidbey Island, Washington, with his wife Jody, who is a scientific editor. Grant volunteers for several service organizations, is on the board of the Whidbey-Camano Land Trust and is on the Island County water-resources advisory committee.