Blogrolling

I'm looking at my blogrolls in preparation for some changes, and I realized that I haven't listed a lot of blogs I read. (Chris Rowan's geoblogosphere feed is great for me, but not so great for people who are chasing links from blog to blog.)

Anyway, if you want me to link to you, and you don't see your blog name on my sidebar, please leave a comment. Especially if I've been linking to your posts and commenting on your blog, and somehow I've managed to forget to add you to my public list.

Networking opportunity for women in atmospheric science and meteorology

Via the Association for Women Geoscientists e-mail newsletter:

Are you a woman interested in atmospheric science or meteorology? The Desert Research Institute and the National Science Foundation are sponsoring a program called ASCENT (Atmospheric Science Collaborations and Enriching NeTworks), designed to connect women faculty and post-docs with one another. It's an opportunity for networking and making professional connections, during a three-day workshop in Steamboat Springs, Colorado this June.

From their website:

Atmospheric Science Collaborations and Enriching NeTworks (ASCENT) is a program focusing on women in atmospheric science/meteorology and is designed to initiate positive professional relationships among female faculty of different ranks and postdoctoral researchers. The program consists of a three-day summer workshop with follow-up reunion events at major national meetings. While networking with like-minded women scientists, participants will have the opportunity to be involved in frank discussions to explore specific promising practices toward eliminating the "leaky pipeline", defined by the attrition of women at different stages in their academic careers. By fostering relationships among women faculty and researchers, ASCENT will develop research opportunities and improve the quality of collaborative atmospheric research conducted at multiple universities and colleges.

The workshop will also accept two female high school teachers and two female high school students. The application deadline is March 15.

Panel discussion on women in science - ideas?

I've got a great new dean who's an active supporter of women in science (and a woman scientist, as well). When the call went out for ideas for Women's History Month, she suggested that the scientists do something. So... we're bringing in Dr. Marjorie Chan of the University of Utah, who has a women-in-geology talk she's given as an Association for Women Geoscientists lecturer, and besides her talk, we're going to do a panel discussion on issues facing women scientists. I'm organizing it, and I think I may be moderating it.

I've never organized any sort of panel discussion before, and I've never been in the audience for anything like this. So I'm looking for ideas.

We're a small public liberal arts college, so the audience will be a mixture of faculty members and undergraduates - no grad students, no post-docs. The panel members so far include Margie and the senior woman in the biology department - we're working on finding someone else. The other someones won't be from physics/engineering or chemistry - each department has one woman professor, but they're both assistant profs, and we don't want to put them on the spot.

So what should we talk about?

Margie knows the current statistics for women in the geosciences, and the biologist knows the history of her department, so at the very least, we can talk about the history in those two fields. Some of my other ideas are:

- Debunking persistent myths about women's abilities as scientists. (Maybe more important for students in intro classes, though.)

- Discussing Virginia Valian's ideas about the ways that tiny differences in perception can lead to big differences in women's success.

- Discussing the problem of balance.

- Doing some kind of exercise like Sciencewoman recently did, thinking about our strengths and how to promote them.

- Discussing the success of our biology program in hiring and educating women.

- Brainstorming things that we can do to help women in science (both students and faculty).

Anyone led a panel like this, or been in the audience for one? Any advice for what works and what doesn't?

There's No Place Like Home

I'm a day late for this month's Accretionary Wedge - somehow I got it in my head that we had until the last day of the month. I should have known that the due date was approaching when everyone else started posting!

I got into geology because I wanted to go places. I remember sitting on the grass near the end of Freshman Orientation, talking to a guy in my freshman seminar about traveling. He told me that I should major in geology and then specialize in some obscure type of rocks, so I would have to go to exotic places to study them. I took his advice: I majored in geology, and then I went to grad school on a plate boundary to study high-pressure metamorphic rocks. (He also majored in geology, but went on to get a Ph.D. in Tibetan Buddhism.) I know the lure of geologically spectacular places.

So my suggestion for the "100 great geologic places" list might surprise you:

Your own backyard.

"You should talk," you might be thinking. "My FIELD CAMP goes to your backyard. But I live in the most geologically boring place in the world. I want an excuse to get out of here!"

But I'm serious. Every place has geology. Even if it's flat and buried beneath black soil. Even if it's under pavement. Even if it's covered by trees. Somewhere below you are rocks, and below that are more rocks, and eventually there are metamorphic rocks and mantle rock and on and on and on. Those rocks contain water, maybe near enough to the surface that it seeps into your basement, and maybe deep enough down that your community should worry about running out of it. Those rocks affect the types of soil that develop or the stability of very tall buildings. Your home's tectonic and climatic history created the landscape you look at, whether it's rolling hills or flat fields or mountains hidden in the smog.

Maybe you don't have a point of geologic interest along your local highway. But wherever you are, there's something. Maybe it's a roadcut. Maybe it's the boulders piled up in old fences, collected from glacial debris. Maybe it's the river the made your city great, or an old quarry, or gullies that form after it rains. Maybe it's the stone used in your buildings. (There's human history there, too. Where did the rocks come from? Are they quarried locally? Were they imported from halfway around the world?) Even concrete has a geologic source.

The best assignment I was ever given as a student was to figure out how geology had affected my hometown. There's a world of spectacular geology out there, but geology is also part of the mundane and ordinary space that we live in every day. So yeah, go over that rainbow and check out the erupting volcanoes and glaciers and shear zones and waterfalls and canyons. But then click your heels together and bring it all back with you.

There's no place like home.

Friends of volcano monitoring on Facebook

I forgot my Facebook password the day after I signed up, so I can't join this. But the rest of you technologically hip people can!

Facebook friends of Volcano Monitoring

I think Maria is responsible for the creation of this group.

Edit: Maria says she wasn't responsible for setting it up - they just referred to her post to explain the group.

What makes a great paper?

'Tis the season for nominating papers for awards (at least if you're a member of the GSA Structure/Tectonics Division, like I am). The division's rules are that the nominees must still be alive, but there isn't any restriction on the publication year. (In fact, last year's award was given to a paper published in 1977.)

Two summers ago, when I was preparing to teach my first ever upper-level structural geology seminar, I looked through some of these papers to try to find something to discuss. And... I chose other papers instead. I got a copy of one (Treagus and Lisle, 1997) that seemed to ask fundamental questions about the discipline, but I didn't end up using it, because it seemed too theoretical for the interests of my students. I haven't even read most of them. I've got the three books on my shelf (Pollard & Fletcher, 2006; Passchier & Trouw, 1996, and Ramsay & Huber, 1983), and have meant to read them, but in the end, I've only read sections as I needed information. (I've been meaning to read Pollard & Fletcher and blog my way through it, because I found myself needing to stop and think about the material frequently. But that's pretty far down on my to-do list right now.) And I've only read three of the papers (all while I was an undergrad). (I also recognize five more as papers that I really should have read, and that I've seen cited and listed as great papers for class discussions, and yes, I do feel guilty about not having read all of them.)

So my experience with the Best Papers is pretty limited. But at least for those three, I agree with the choices:

Davis, Suppe, & Dahlen (1983) The mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges.
I think about this paper every time I shovel my driveway. It's an important paper because it solves a big problem (how do thrust faults manage to move stuff so far?), it's led to a fruitful model for understanding mountain belts all over the world, and it's got practical use (because thrust belts are so important for oil exploration). It transformed the way that we think about one major type of structure. I don't make students read it, in part because there's a lot of math (and although it's explained very clearly, a lot of my students are math-phobic, and I want them to understand the concepts even if they get lost in algebraic manipulations). But it's also a weird paper for structural geology - so much of structural geology involves using evidence from a particular place, either field evidence or GPS or modeling. Davis et al. derived a new way of thinking of a major type of structure from first principles. Very cool, and very powerful. But as a model for "this is the way a geologic paper is written," it's an anomaly, because it's making a different kind of argument from the ones we usually make.

Platt (1986) Dynamics of orogenic wedges and the uplift of high-pressure metamorphic rocks.
I read this paper repeatedly during grad school, because it essentially inspired my dissertation. Here's the gist, for people who haven't been obsessed by (and then disillusioned with) high-pressure metamorphic rocks: blueschists are way cool, because they form at unusually low temperatures for their high pressures. The only place where they form is in subduction zones, where cold rocks are shoved into the mantle at faster speeds than heat flows - they get buried too fast to heat up. They're only found in a few places around the world, in places that used to be subduction zones (or still are, in some cases). Blueschists were yet another puzzle that was solved by plate tectonics, but in this case, the solution created another problem. If blueschists form in subduction zones, where rock is sliding down into the mantle, how do they get back to the surface? To make matters worse, the mineral assemblages that record the metamorphism can be transformed if they get heated up (which is probably the reason why there aren't many good blueschists in Vermont, or in Precambrian rocks, or in my %$&@@! dissertation field area).

John Platt proposed a solution to the problem that used Davis et al.'s wedge idea: blueschists could be exhumed during subduction (which would keep them cold) if the wedge dynamics worked out correctly. The wedge needs to keep a constant shape (according to Davis et al.'s analysis), so if you add material to the bottom of it, you can force the wedge to spread horizontally, which would move rocks toward the surface. Presto! Exhumation!

In retrospect, this paper doesn't seem as powerful as it did when I first read it. For one thing, I wonder if Davis et al.'s model works for metamorphic rocks. (The derivation is based on the behavior of brittle rocks. If the rocks are ductile - whatever combination of plastic and viscous behavior you need to explain the various deformation mechanisms - does the wedge theory actually work?) For another, the only talks I've seen that have applied the model successfully in the field have been by John Platt or his students. (Of course, I may just be cranky because there weren't any well-preserved blueschists in my dissertation area, so I couldn't test the model myself.)

The third one of the papers that I've read is Paul Hoffman (1988)'s paper on the Precambrian assembly of North America. It's an interesting example, because it's an Annual Review, not a new research paper. It's the kind of thing that I'm more likely to assign in a class, however, because it pulls together ideas from a lot of different research and summarizes it in a way that's easy to digest. I haven't used it in class, because there's been enough new research on the Precambrian geology of North America that the paper is now somewhat dated.

***

What about the rest of you? Have you read any papers on the list below? Are there any that I really should read? And what do you think a Best Paper should do - should it change the way we think? Should it inspire new research? Should it summarize the state of research in an accessible and elegant way? Should it be a nice example of how research should be done (which was how a couple of the papers awarded in this decade have been described)?

And are there any papers that really should be on this list? (How about Tanya Atwater's original paper on the San Andreas Fault - the paper that brought plate tectonics onto land? Or for metamorphic people, Phil England & Alan Thompson's paper on metamorphic pressure-temperature-time paths? Or anything about metamorphic core complexes?) Would it be better to have recent papers, to show that the field is still dynamic (no, really, it is!), or should we recognize the classic papers that have shaped the field?

For reference, here's the list of all the papers ever given the Best Paper Award, stolen from the Structure/Tectonics Division web page:

2008: Thomas, W. (1977) Evolution of Appalachian-Ouachita salients and recesses from reentrants and promontories in the continental margin. American Journal of Science 277, 1233-1278.

2007: Pollard, D.D. & Fletcher, R.C (2006) Fundamentals of Structural Geology. New York, Cambridge University Press. 512 p.

2006: Dixon, T.H, Miller, M., Farina, F., Wang, H. & Johnson, D. (2000) Present-day motion of the Sierra Nevada block and some tectonic implications for the Basin and Range province, North America Cordillera. Tectonics 19, 1-24.

2005 (2 awards): Beaumont, C., Jamieson, R.A., Nguyen, M.H. & Lee, B. (2001) Himalayan tectonics explained by extrusion of a low-viscosity crustal channel coupled to focused surface denudation. Nature 414, 738-742.

Hodges, K.V., Hurtado J.M. & Whipple, K.X. (2001) Southward extrusion of Tibetan crust and its effect on Himalayan tectonics. Tectonics 20, 799-809.

2004: Atwater, T. & Stock, J. (1998) Pacific-North America plate tectonics of the Neogene southwestern United States - An update. International Geology Review 40, 375-402.

2003: Lavé, J. & Avouac, J.P. (2000) Active folding of fluvial terraces across the Siwaliks Hills, Himalayas of central Nepal. Journal of Geophysical Research 105(B3), 5735-5770.

2002: Catuneanu, O., Beaumont, C. & Waschbusch, P.J. (1997) Interplay of static loads and subduction dynamics in foreland basins: reciprocal stratigraphies and the "missing" peripheral bulge. Geology 25(12), 1087-1090.

2001: Dunlap, W.J., Hirth, G. & Teyssier, C. (1997) Thermomechanical evolution of a ductile duplex. Tectonics 16(6), 983-1000.

2000: Passchier, C.W. & Trouw, R.A.J. (1996) Microtectonics. 289 p. Springer.

1999: Treagus, S. & Lisle, R. (1997) Do principal surfaces of stress and strain always exist. Journal of Structural Geology 19, 997-1010.

1998: Muehlberger, W. (compiler) (1992 & 1996) Tectonic Map of North America. American Association of Petroleum Geologists (two sheets).

1997: Molnar, P., England, P. & Martinod, J. (1993) Mantle dynamics, uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, and the Indian monsoon. Reviews of Geophysics 31, 357-396.

1996: Suppe, J., Chou, G.T. & Hook. S.C. (1992) Rates of folding and faulting determined from growth strata. In: Thrust Tectonics (edited by K. McClay). Chapman & Hall. London, 105-121.(Click here for citation and response)

1995: Wojtal, S. (1989) Measuring displacement gradients and strain in faulted rock. Journal of Structural Geology 11, 669-678.[awarded in 1996]

1994: Armijo, R., Tapponnier, P. & Han, T. (1989) Late Cenozoic right-lateral strike-slip faulting in southern Tibet. Journal of Geophysical Research 94, 2787-2838.

1993: Worrall, D. & Snelson, S. (1989) Evolution of the northern Gulf of Mexico, with emphasis on Cenozoic growth faulting and the role of salt. In: The geology of North America - an overview (edited by Balley, A.W. & Palmer, P.). Geological Society of America Decade of North American Geology A, 91-138.

1992: Hoffman, P. (1988) United plates of America, the birth of a craton: early Proterozoic assembly and growth of Laurentia. Annual Reviews of Earth & Planetary Sciences 16, 543-604.

1991: Pavlis, T. (1986) The role of strain heating in the evolution of megathrusts. Journal of Geophysical Research 91, 6522-6534.

1990: Engebretson, D., Cox, A. & Gordon, R. (1985) Relative motion between oceanic and continental plates in the Pacific basin: Geological Society of America Special Paper 206.

1989: Platt, J.P. (1986) Dynamics of orogenic wedges and the uplift of high-pressure metamorphic rocks. Geological Society of America Bulletin 97, 1037-1053.

1988: Simpson, C. & Schmid, S. (1983) An evaluation of the criteria to deduce the sense of movement in sheared rocks. Geological Society of America Bulletin 94, 1281-1288.

1987: Boyer, S.E. & Elliott, D. (1982) Thrust systems. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 66, 1196-1230

1986: Davis, D. Suppe, J. & Dahlen, F.A. (1983) The mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges. Journal of Geophysical Research 88, 10087-10101.

1985: Ramsay, J.G. & Huber, M. (1983) The techniques of modern structural geology: Volume 1: Strain analysis. 307 p. Academic Press.

1984: Coney, P.J., Jones, D.L. & Monger, J.W.H. (1980) Cordilleran suspect terranes. Nature 288, 329-333.

Wayne Ranney speaking at Four Corners Geological Society

Wayne Ranney, co-author of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau and blogger at Earthly Musings, will be speaking at the Four Corners Geological Society meeting in Durango on Friday.



Place: Fort Lewis College College Union Building, Student Memorial Lounge
Date: Friday, February 27
Time: 5:30 pm social hour, 6:30 pm dinner, 7:30 pm talk
Cost: $20 for dinner, $5 for talk only (talk is free for students)

If you're planning to come, let me know - I'm the Durango contact (and am in charge of making sure there's the right amount of food).