Category: Recorded Event

2025-09-13 Tom Badger – Hazards and Highways: Troubles for the NW Olympic Peninsula

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The Lecture 

Hazards and Highways: Troubles for the NW Olympic Peninsula

State Route 112 is the sole access road for the northwestern Olympic Peninsula and the remote communities situated along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, west of Port Angeles. Particularly unfavorable geology underlies the western half of this road and this, combined with steep topography and an exceptionally wet winter climate, make it one of the most landslide-afflicted highway corridors in the state. Landslides and lowland flooding impact travel most winters, causing short duration closures of one or both lanes and necessitating persistent maintenance efforts.  On a longer cycle of years to decades, major landslide events severely damage or destroy the highway at one or more locations, resulting in closures lasting three to six months or longer. Detour options are limited to nonexistent, so communities and local businesses suffer from these closures until highway repairs can be made or floodwaters recede. Low frequency-high consequence hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis add to the risk profile and further complicate mitigation strategies.

This presentation summarizes the results of a planning-level study commissioned by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) that examined the geologic and hydrologic hazards that threaten this highway, conducted a comprehensive risk analysis, and provided recommendations to improve its resiliency and reduce community impacts. The study, completed in 2023, enabled WSDOT to secure a 5-yr $30 million allocation from a NOAA Climate Resiliency grant in late 2024 to proceed with initial recommendations, which are expected to begin Spring 2025.

About the Speaker

Tom Badger

Happy to leave the Midwest flatlands behind in 1981, Tom completed his BS in geology in 1983 at WWU and his MS in geological engineering at the University of Nevada Reno in 2002. He is licensed in Washington as an engineering geologist, hydrogeologist, and civil engineer. Tom worked for WSDOT for 32 years, the last five serving as chief engineering geologist, before retiring in 2016. Tom specializes in the assessment and mitigation of slope hazards, soil and rock slope engineering, and risk management for transportation infrastructure. He has published and lectured extensively on these topics, and consults part-time for the Portland-based firm, Landslide Technology.

 

2025-04-12 Dan Muhs – Tectonic Uplift in the Pacific Northwest

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The Lecture
Subduction-related late Quaternary tectonic uplift and sea-level change in the Pacific NW and around the Pacific Rim

This was a Zoom-only lecture.

Quimper Geological Society welcomed Dan Muhs, an emeritus USGS geologist. He provided marine terraces as evidence of tectonic uplift along the Pacific Ocean plate.

In 1979, Seiya Uyeda and Hiroo Kanamori introduced a tectonic model with two end members of a subduction-boundary continuum: the “Chilean” type (shallow dip of the subducting plate, great thrust events, compression, and uplift of the overriding plate) and the “Mariana” type (steep dip of the subducting plate, no great thrust events, tension, and little or no uplift). The concept has been used to explain variable rates of Quaternary uplift around the Pacific Rim, and the paper has been cited over a thousand times since its publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research.  We now have a sufficient number of dated late Quaternary marine terraces from around the Pacific Rim to test the veracity of this model. In this presentation, well-dated emergent shorelines of the Pacific Rim was explored, from South America, North America, the Aleutians, Japan, and the Marianas.

About the Speaker

Dan Muhs is an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He earned B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. He was a research geologist with the USGS from 1985 until his retirement in 2022.  Despite his retirement, Dan remains an active researcher, lecturer, and writer.

Dan’s interests are in the fields of coastal and eolian geomorphology, Quaternary stratigraphy, soil genesis, and paleoclimatology. Most of his work has been in the US (Alaska, western US, and Great Plains), but he has also worked in Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Spain, and western Pacific. Over the course of his career he has authored more than 150 scientific papers on a diverse range of subjects focused on the Quaternary period, including the origins and history of loess and dune fields, paleozoogeography of marine fossil invertebrates, tests of glacial isostatic adjustment models, and sea-level histories and tectonic uplift rates deduced from emergent marine terraces. Dan has received numerous awards and recognition, including the Geological Society of America Kirk Bryan Award.

2025-05-03 Leigh Tucker and Marquis Richardson

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Where are the Olympic Coast garnet sands coming from and how did they get there?

Washington State contains multiple beaches where garnet bearing sands are present, including the outer coast and within Puget Sound. The source of these garnets is unclear. To better understand where these garnets come from, we look inside them to investigate inclusion minerals. When garnets form in metamorphic environments, they can trap other minerals from their surroundings. These trapped minerals can give us pressure and temperature constraints to narrow down the source of the garnet. We can then compare results between garnet samples and their potential sources to their current locations. This information improves our understanding of how glaciers and rivers transported sediment during the last glaciation of the region. Our study also furthers a new technique of using garnet inclusions as tracers of where sediments originated.

About the Speakers

Leigh Tucker is a post-baccalaureate student at the University of Washington working towards a Bachelor of Science in Geology. Her undergraduate honors research extended the work started by Marquis Richardson, comparing sands from the Puget Sound and the Olympic Coast to determine if the garnets came from the same source. She recently interned with the USGS Earthquake Science Center on the development of an automated earthquake rupture mapping tool using machine learning and unmanned aerial vehicles. Leigh plans to pursue a graduate degree in volcanology after completing her BS in June 2025. When she isn’t studying, you can find Leigh baking, hiking, or reading to her granddaughter.

Marquis Richardson graduated from the University of Washington with a BS in Earth and Space Sciences: Geoscience. During his time there he investigated index mineral inclusions in garnet sands from Ruby and Rialto Beaches on the Olympic Coast (Washington). After graduation he hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and worked as a staff geologist for a geotechnical consulting firm before moving to restoration ecology work. He will be hiking the Continental Divide Trail over the summer of 2025 with plans to pursue graduate school after he returns.

POST Lecture emails:

5/3/2025 (PM) Carrie Carpenter from Whidbey Island wrote an email asking about sand on the beach close to where she lives:  “i live on whidbey…East Point in Saratoga Passage… garnet sands?”

Yes, these too are garnet sands…