I joined a field trip to the Pinacate Volcanic Field in Northern Mexico this past weekend. It was a part of the Planetary Volcanology class taught by David Williams and Amanda Clarke. It was beautiful and very interesting. I had never been there, but just stared at it on google earth:
In this post, I present some field photographs from the tour, followed by a few slides from Amanda Clarke from a lecture on Water-Magma Interactions:
Kate Scharer (USGS), Mike Oskin (UC Davis) and I organized a geochronology workshop for the Southern California Earthquake Center community this fall. We emphasized methodologies useful for investigating fault slip behavior over time scales from 102 to 106 years. That included Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclides, Uranium Series, and Optically Stimulated Luminescence. We did not talk so much about 14C given its relative maturity, but we certainly recognize its continued value.
Kate lead the charge on the completion of the workshop report. It has a nice summary of the topics covered (here is the original agenda). I had a sense of a real acceleration in the number and quality of applications of the methods and the resulting rich depiction of deformation rates and their variations across time and space in Southern California. I was particularly moved by the climate modulation on the development of landforms (alluvial fans, channels, etc.) that serve as markers as well as the possible temporal coherence of wet and dry times across the region. I think that this modulation and coherence can be exploited with more intensive application of geochronology.
I learned a lot more geochronology, especially having just been at the EarthScope Geochronology Institute a week or so earlier--note that the talks and some of the videos are up (where we covered some similar topics and where Kate was a speaker on 14C). It was very nice to see many SCEC friends and colleagues.
Led by Professor Geoff Abers (speaking above), we organized the Workshop on the Future of the Amphibious Array which was held at Snowbird in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah--and which I remember well from early EarthScope meetings.
The workshop charge was to make the case for further amphibious experiments (emphasizing the idea of crossing the shoreline). We need to articulate the case for integrated amphibious science. And, we were to evaluate the Cascadia experience. We were guided by the EarthScope Science Plan and by the GeoPrisms planning documents. I also helped summarize a breakout session. Here is the PPT.
I spent almost a week in Vancouver, CA for the Geological Society of America Annual meeting. It is a very beautiful city with dramatic views and great food.
I also enjoyed seeing many old friends and colleagues.
I had a wonderful trip to Busan, Korea for the Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, and Archeoseismology (PATA Days) meeting. I really enjoyed it. It was great to see old and new friends, catch up on the latest developments, and to travel in southern South Korea.
Here is a presentation/overview I made for my students and colleagues for our seminar:
PPT
Here is the paper I wrote for the meeting: pdf.
I spent some nice time with my friends Koji Okumura and Shmulik Marco:
It was also an interesting trip because my father was based at the Pusan East (K-9) air base in 1951. He was curious to hear about the trip and mentioned that he turned 21 there. He said they played a lot of cards and that a few times he got to go off base to help his friends who worked at a reservoir.
