Quimper Geological Society

The Lecture Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia) and Mount Rainier (US) exist a hemisphere apart, but they both project similar hazards for communities downstream.  Central to their stories is the development and continued presence of weak and collapse-prone hydrothermally altered rock, and perennial covers of glacier ice and snow. Slopes of both volcanos are mantled by loose rock debris that can be remobilized to initiate lahars. At both volcanoes, five major glaciofluvial rivers flow down narrow valleys to lowland areas that support large human populations. More than a 150,000 persons live in areas at risk of lahars that could emanate from… Read more2022-01-08 Carolyn Driedger, USGS—Hazards from the Nevado del Ruiz and Mount Rainier volcanoes

The Lecture On Saturday February 19, geologist and photographer Marli Miller spoke about the geology of Oregon and Washington as seen along our federal and state highways as outlined in her recent Roadside Geology books.  With its spectacular mountain ranges, lush valleys and awesome rivers, the Pacific Northwest landscape offers an incredible geologic story grounded in continental accretion and mountain-building, magmatism, and glaciation. Beginning with the Crescent Terrane (Siletzia), the latest addition to North America, she described elements of continental accretion that form the underlying but diverse basement of the region, followed by a photographic “roadtrip” up the Columbia Gorge… Read more2022-02-19 Marli Miller, University of Oregon — Roadside Geology of Washington

The Battle for the Abyss:  Mining, conservation, and bioprospecting interests square off on the deep sea The Lecture Nearly 60% of the surface of our planet is covered by more than 2000 m of water. The deep seabed is the largest and least explored ecological region on Earth. With no light for photosynthesis, this cold high-pressure environment is a food desert, with most organisms feeding on organic debris that sinks from the surface ocean. Yet, there are an estimated 500,000 or more species in the deep sea, many of which occur nowhere else. The abyss has seen relatively little disturbance… Read more2022-04-02 Kim Juniper, Univ. of Victoria: The Battle for the Abyss

Washington’s fossil footprints—Tracking birds and beasts of a bygone era   The Lecture The Chuckanut Formation is one of North America’s thickest sequences of non-marine sediment.  It was deposited by a meandering river that flowed westward across Washington at a time when the Cascade Range had not yet been created. The strata accumulated to a thickness of at least 6,000 meters (20,000 ft). The oldest beds were deposited in the late Paleocene, but most deposition occurred in the early Eocene. The warm early Cenozoic climate allowed subtropical rainforests to flourish. Abundant plant fossils in the Chuckanut include fronds from palms,… Read more2022-05-14 George Mustoe, WWU Bellingham:  The Chuckanut—Not just another good brewpub

Geology of Tamanowas  Rock and Peregrine’s Rock, Chimacum, WA On Friday, July 8, 2022, five of our QGS geologists led a 4-mile, 4-hour hike  from HJ Carroll County Park near Chimacum to the Tamanowas Rock Sanctuary, then up on top of Tamanowas Ridge to see Peregrine’s Rock. This 4-mile hike is vigorous, steep, and rough in parts and is tailored to agile citizen scientists who are already knowledgeable about geologic principles and vocabulary. Subjects discussed on the field trip include the glacial history of the Quimper Peninsula (specifically Chimacum Valley), glacial erratics on the Peninsula, and the geology of the underlying Eocene volcanic rocks that form Tamanowas Rock. This feature… Read more2022-07-08 Walk to the Rocks Field Trip

The role of oceanic plateau collision in the geologic development of the Olympic Peninsula: testing geologic connection between Wrangell-St. Elias (AK) and Olympic (WA) National Parks. The Pacific Northwest (PNW) has a long geologic history of seismic activity. Recent studies suggest the PNW experienced a collision ~50 million years ago (Ma, early Eocene) which resulted in an enormous oceanic plateau attaching itself to the west margin of the continent. That plateau is known fondly, as Siletzia. On October 15, 2022, Erin Donaghy discussed what occurred after the accretion of Siletzia. She described the interbedded siltstone and sandstone turbidites in the… Read more2022-10-15 Erin Donaghy, Revisiting stratigraphy of the Eocene to Miocene sedimentary peripheral rocks on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington

Nan Evans of KPTZ and local geologists, Jeff Tepper and Michael Machette, explore two significant rocky outcrops in Eastern Jefferson County – Tamanowas Rock and Peregrine Rocks, both just northwest of Chimacum.  To download the field trip guide that this interview was based on, click here. The interview is for Nature Now, a weekly radio broadcast on KPTZ 91.9 MHz. Because Nan got so many interesting tidbits, the interview will be broadcast in two parts and each will be recorded as MP3s and be available if you can’t hear the broadcasts: Show #587: Hard Rock Geology in Eastern Jefferson Country,… Read more2022-11-02 KPTZ Nature Now Interview, Part 2—Walk to the Rocks field trip

Earthquakes, Rock Avalanches, Displacement Waves, and Turbidites: The Amazing Holocene Sedimentary Record from Lake Crescent, Clallam County, Washington   The Lake Creek–Boundary Creek fault zone lies below Lake Crescent, a deep, glacially carved lake on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula, west of Port Angeles. This fault zone includes a system of structures that reveals at least 56 kilometers (35 miles) of late Pleistocene to Holocene surface rupture. New data from the sediment cores taken from the lake’s bottom document four ruptures along the fault zone. Those seismic events triggered several large rockslides along the slopes adjacent to ancestral… Read more2022-11-19 Karl Wegmann, Recent advances in understanding the Lake Crescent fault system

Nature Now, a weekly 30-minute broadcast on KPTZ 91.9 MHz in Port Townsend, will interview Dr. Bjornerud as a preview to her Dec. 10th lecture. Nan Evans of KPTZ and JLT and geologist Marcia Bjornerud of Lawerence University (Appleton, Wisconsin) will discuss how geological perspectives can deepen our understanding of our home Earth and the impact on the human species on it. The show will broadcast on KPTZ three times. Show #596: Dec. 7 (Wed.) at 12:30 PM, Dec. 8 (Thur.) at 5:30 PM, Dec. 10 (Sat.) at 12:30 PM.   The recorded broadcast will be available later on KPTZ’s podcast webpage.

The Lecture Developing and calibrating the geologic timescale — reconstructing Earth’s past from the raw rock record — is one of humanity’s greatest, but least appreciated, intellectual achievements.   But as a society, we are time illiterate, lacking a sense for the durations of the chapters in Earth’s history, the rates of change during previous intervals of climate instability, and the intrinsic timescales of ‘natural capital’ like groundwater systems.  This matters because environmental wrongs, social conflicts and existential malaise are all rooted in a distorted sense of humanity’s place in the history of the natural world.  Thinking like a geologist can… Read more2022-12-10 Marcia Bjornerud – Timefulness