|
Laura Clor was a participant in one of the Keck Geology Consortium's 2000 Summer Research Projects entitled "Deformation History of the Coast Shear Zone, Prince Rupert, British Columbia." Under the leadership of project director Cam Davidson (Beloit College) Laura traveled to British Columbia where her base station was located near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, the "City of Rainbows." She stayed at the North Pacific Cannery, an 1889 fish packing facility which was converted to a museum and Bed and Breakfast in the 1980s. The primary goal of this project was to construct the complete deformation and metamorphic history of the coast shear zone at the latitude of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Laura used structural, petrologic, geochronologic, and remote sensing techniques to help define the deformation history of the Coast shear zone, and to compare the exhumation histories of the crustal blocks on either side of the shear zone. Allen Dodson will serve as Laura's Senior I.S. advisor. Russ Kohrs is working in cooperation with the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves sampling old growth forests in Ohio. He spent a month working on samples taken from Johnson Woods State Preserve, an old-growth forest, just north of Orrville, Ohio, that boasts some of the oldest and biggest oak trees in the State. Russ is interested in extending the tree-ring record from Johnson Woods and assessing the use of these records for historical archaeological dating. He also is interested in these tree-rings as annual records of drought over the past 500 years. This work is particularly timely as gypsy moths have now arrived in northeast Ohio and are defoliating large tracts of oaks. Russ also spent a month working with Greg Wiles in the Department's Tree Ring Lab where he updated and added to a tree-ring chronology from Johnson Woods. This work was done in cooperation with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Russ' data will be contributed to the International Tree Ring Databank maintained by the NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program. Kirk Lapman participated in a NSF-funded Wooster-led research project to Columbia Fiord near Valdez, Alaska. Together with Greg Wiles and Aaron Shear, Kirk joined Parker Calkin from the University of Colorado and Austin Post of the United States Geological Survey with the aim of understanding the last 2,000 years of history from the Columbia Glacier. Since the early 1980s, the glacier has retreated over 15 kilometers revealing an almost-continuous paleoforest in its wake. Kirk's primary focus is on reconstructing the most recent advance of this spectacular glacier down its fiord over the past 1,000 years. Radiocarbon and tree-ring dating of these forests should reveal a detailed and unique record of advance of this well-studied ice mass. Kirk received an NSF-REU grant to support much of his work. His Senior I.S. advisor is Greg Wiles. Also participating in a Keck Project during the Summer of 2000 was Debbie Prinkey. Debbie traveled to Greece where she participated in "The Tectonometamorphic Evolution of Cycladic Subduction Zone Rocks." She stayed in the Hotel Olympia in the coastal village of Finikas on the island of Syros. Project director Jack Cheney (Amherst College) described this project as a field-oriented, petrologic, structural, and geochemical investigation of high-pressure, blueschist-facies, metamorphic rocks that represent the crustal roots of the Cycladic (Alpine) orogenic belt. The main purpose of this project was to examine, describe, and evaluate the results of relatively recent subduction on a variety of protoliths with particular attention focused on the mineralogic and textural consequences of exhuming these materials. The group was interested in determining and subsequently integrating the mineralogic and structural evolution of these blueschist/eclogite facies rocks as a function of temperature and depth during this complex series of events. Debbie's Senior I.S. advisor will be Allen Dodson. Aaron Shear joined Greg Wiles and Kirk Lapham (see
above) on the Columbia Glacier project. Aaron is also working
on dating trees sampled from along the Columbia Glacier Fiord
and developing the long tree-ring record from Columbia Fiord.
Aaron is working closely with Kirk on the data processing. He
will identify the climatic significance of this millennia length
record of tree growth, and his dendroclimatic results will be
then compared with the details of the reconstructed glacier record.
Aaron will be working in cooperation with Greg Wiles and Dave
Barclay (State University of New York, Cortland) in the hopes
of extending the 1000-year long continuous tree-ring record from
Prince William Sound, Alaska, through the past two millennia.
Aaron's Senior I.S. advisor is Greg Wiles. |