2022 PSU Beverly Vogt Grant Awardees

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2022 PSU Beverly Vogt Grant Awardees

GSOC is pleased to announce our 2022 PSU Beverly Vogt grant awardees! Each applicant was awarded $1,000 to be used toward the achievement of their degree. Each awardee has expressed gratitude to GSOC members for this financial support toward their research goals. Once they complete their research, we plan to have each of them share their findings with GSOC through a Friday Night lecture and/or a Saturday Zoom meetup session.

Read more about the candidates’ thesis projects…

Note: Our three Master’s candidates have expressed interest in having GSOC members assist them in their fieldwork. We are currently working with them to find out dates and what their needs will be. If you are interested in providing some assistance in the field, please contact a GSOC board member or email the PSU Bev Vogt committee members at: gsocfundforpsu@gsoc.org

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Malheur Field Trip Sept 2022

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Malheur Field Station GEOLOGY FIELD STUDY

Led by Michael Cummings

 

3 Night program.  Check in Sept 22 anytime, check out Sept 25 after breakfast.  Program, meals and lodging included in price of $550 per person.  Breakfast served at 7:30am, pack away lunch for the field, Dinner served at 6pm.  Lunch out in the field.  There are various bathroom stops along the way. 

Explore the geology of Harney County.  Learn about the Steens Mt. and geothermal activity in South Eastern Oregon desert.

 

Arrive:  Sept 22, 2022 Thursday.

Arrive anytime, unpack into E-Dorm.  Meet at Malcolm Hall in the AV room at 5pm

Evening session at the station

Dinner at 6pm in Dining Hall

Introduction to the geology of SE Oregon

 

Day 1:  Sept 23 Friday  NORTH OF BURNS ON HWY 395

 

Breakfast at 7:30 am in Dining Hall at MFS – depart for field trip to:

Accreted terrains and evolution of western margin of North American during the Mesozoic

Dinner Creek Welded Tuff (16million) and its local relation to older rocks (Silvies River valley)

Divine Canyon Welded Tuff (9.7 million) and the younger westward trend of rhyolites

Prater Creek Welded Tuff (8.0 million) and the newly discover caldera source west of Hines

Rattlesnake Welded Tuff (7.0 million) and characteristics of zones in welded tuffs

Dinner at 6pm in Dining Hall at MFS

Evening session:  Columbia River Basalt Group (CRGB) and its relation to rhyolite centers in Eastern Oregon.  Newly defined extent of the Picture Gorge Basalt, a member of the CRBG.

 

Day 2: Sept 24 Saturday CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF STEENS MOUNTAIN

Breakfast served at 7:30am in Dining Hall at MFS – depart for field trip to:

Explosion structures in Steens Mountain Basalt flows near the crest of Steens Mountain

Steen Mountain front and active faults

Mickey Springs – silica sinter deposits formed between about 30,000 and 18,000 years ago

Hot spring ecosystems

Pluvial Lake Alvord and shoreline features

Borax Lake – construction of a biomorphic mound and silica sinter from hot spring activity

Dinner served at 6pm in Dining Hall at MFS

Evening session:  Brief wrap up of what we’ve seen

 

September 25 Sunday , Check out after breakfast end of program

For more information, contact

  Rose Garacci, Station Manager

The Great Basin Society, Inc., dba Malheur Field Station

34848 Sodhouse Lane

Princeton, OR   97721

 

541-493-2629

malheurfieldstation@gmail.com

GSOC Beverly Vogt PSU Graduate Student Fund

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Fund will provides financial support to PSU graduate Geoscience students to assist them in completing their degree programs. Applications will open again in Winter 2023.

To honor former President Beverly Vogt and create a legacy for her work and that of the society, the GSOC Board of Directors created the Beverly Vogt PSU Graduate Student Fund. The Board formed a new committee to make recommendations as to the administration of this fund. The Vogt committee arranges for PSU grad students to present their projects and proposals, not only related to scholarships, but also in the interest of strengthening the 70-year+ relationship between GSOC and the PSU Geology Department.

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Goodbye to a dear friend, Bev Vogt

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Goodbye to a dear friend, Bev Vogt

Former GSOC President Bev Vogt — who with her partner in life and geology “Bart” Bartels — led a rejuvenation of our club in the 1990s and 2000s, died peacefully in her home on July 28, 2021. For many of us who remember Bev’s gentle leadership, Bart’s fascinating seminars, and the outstanding field trips they led together, they were very much the heart of the club.

Photo by Dave Olcott

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Recap of the Coaledo Formation Field Trip

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Recap of the Coaledo Formation Field Trip

The Coaledo Formation field trip began about two years ago when Dr. John Armentrout, a native Oregonian and sedimentary basin stratigrapher with a long career at Mobil Oil, came to talk to GSOC about a project he was working on. He was revisiting a part of Oregon that he had studied in the early days of his career, the Coaledo Formation centered in the Coos Bay and Cape Arago areas. He had assembled a team of researchers from the University of Oregon and elsewhere to work on the multidisciplinary project. And he proposed the GSOC field trip as a precursor to a GSA field trip he would be organizing for the GSA annual meeting in 2021.

So, we were all preparing to go on the trip in August 2020 and then COVID struck. We subsequently revised the trip date and finally this year got the trip ready to go. It turned out to be quite a fun trip and well worth the wait!

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Eastern Oregon Volcanics Trip Remembered

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Eastern Oregon Volcanics Trip Remembered

With forecasts in the Willamette Valley due to surpass 115 degrees, suddenly a four-day geology field trip in traditionally hot Central Oregon seemed to be a very cool place to visit indeed! So, off to the (relatively) cool hills and mountains surrounding Prineville and John Day did 25 geologists and geologist-wanna-be’s travel. Led deftly by three intrepid women: Carol Hasenberg (primary trip organizer), Carrie Gordon (Day 1 & Day 4 Geologist) and Emily Cahoon (Day 2, 3 & 4 Geologist), the group caravanned in up to 14-vehicles to incredibly important and fascinating geologic formations that only friends-of-rocks and aficionados-of-prevailing-geologic theory would appreciate!

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Privacy Policy

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UPDATED JAN 2020

1. Names, addresses, home phones and emails are listed in our database, and this private data is available to GSOC Board members for use in maintaining membership records and historical information. This information is intended solely for GSOC internal affairs. It is not intended, and will not be used for, any commercial mail or email or any other commercial use. 

2. You have complete control over the data that you would like to be public and private on the membership directory profile. If you sign up for an activity, your activity leader will have access to your profile information for purposes of scheduling and in order to ensure your safety on the activity. 

3. We never sell our membership or contact list. We may partner with another organization to disseminate information that we think is relevant to you. In this case, we will send out information from our partner to you but we will not share your information directly with the partner.

4. If you do not want your personal information to be included in the online directory, please email us at membership@GSOC.org

Meteorites on the Road

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Meteorites on the Road

Richard "Dick" Pugh passed away peacefully at home in N.E. Portland, Monday, June 15, 2020 at the age of 80. Dick was a frequent GSOC lecturer and instrumental in founding the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University. Below is GSOC President Evelyn Pratt’s account of Dick’s last lecture for us in 2009.

“Portland State University is proud of having the only meteorite lab in the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory was established in 2003 as part of the Department of Geology. In 2005 it became an official repository for type specimens of newly-classified meteorites. The laboratory is run by Melinda Hutson, Alec Ruzicka, and Dick Pugh. It now has slightly under 500 meteorites.”

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60 Years of GSOC Field Trip Guides Now Available Online

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60 Years of GSOC Field Trip Guides Now Available Online

GSOC members can now access all historical field trip guides! Was there a field trip you did not have an opportunity to go on that you want to explore on your own? Or are you interested in simply perusing all the locales that GSOC has visited over the years?

Field trip guides from 1951 to 2020 are all readily accessible. To view them, go to the Membership tab and click on Field Trip Guides. You will see a spreadsheet that serves as a Table of Contents. The first column shows the file name and is the link to the actual guide - just click the title to bring it up! Columns to the right (you'll have to scroll right to see them all) include: Trip Name, Locations Visited, and Leaders. The Locations Visited column may not include all specific areas visited but gives an overview of the area the trip covered. Enjoy!

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A Brief Introduction to Zircon Geochronology

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A Brief Introduction to Zircon Geochronology

by Carol Hasenberg

Zircon crystals—zirconium silicate to be precise—have become a very important age dating medium for geologists. Let’s take a look at why, how geochronology analysis is done, and what types of applications are being made of this technology.

This article, the third in a series of three articles focused on geochemistry for fall and winter of 2020, have been written to familiarize our readers with some key tools used in modern geological research. Written in plain language, they describe the techniques used in analyzing these crystals. References to papers and videos are provided to further the reader’s understanding of and provide insights on how these analyses are being used in geological research today.

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More on Stable Oxygen Isotopes

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More on Stable Oxygen Isotopes

by Carol Hasenberg

The geochemistry of rocks is a study that brings many great tools to the geologist’s tool chest. In the last article from October 2020, “Oxygen Isotope Analysis in Paleoclimatology,” I addressed an aspect of the geochemistry of the ocean and meteoric water on earth (meteoric water being rainwater, snow, water vapor in clouds, etc.) in the form of oxygen isotope distribution. This is a sort of shell game using stable isotopes of oxygen and how they are preferentially distributed in the waters of the earth. I will in this article explore the distribution of oxygen isotopes in rocks of the earth. These types of analyses are commonly used in many aspects of geological research and the reader will undoubtedly run across them in academic papers.

This article is not intended as a mathematical derivation of the equations used in isotope fractionation studies. (Recall that in the October 2020 article the term fractionation was described as a process of concentrating certain types of matter, in this case isotopes, in response to a phase change.) Instead, I will discuss in qualitative terms the principals that dictate how stable isotopes of oxygen distribute themselves in the rocks of the earth, and the resulting ranges of the isotopic ratios one expects to find in the rocks of the world.

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Contribute to Geoscience Scholarship Opportunities for Women Undergraduates

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Contribute to Geoscience Scholarship Opportunities for Women Undergraduates

Are you a woman undergraduate geoscience student interested in applying for this year's Pacific NW Chapter Tanaka Scholarship? Or are you personally interested in contributing financially to the scholarship?

For applicants: the due date is December 15. More information can be found on the Association for Women Geoscientists website here.

For potential donors: if you are fortunate enough that you have not been impacted financially by the pandemic, please contribute to our scholarship fund -- even small donations add up! Even though most WA and OR colleges are currently holding virtual classes, the need is as great as ever since most students have lost any part-time jobs they may have had — and their parents may have lost income as well. This year only (because of the CARES Act), even if you don't itemize deductions, you'll be able to deduct up to $300 in charitable contributions on your 2020 income taxes. Since the AWG Foundation is a 501(C)(3) charity, this rule will apply to any donation you make.

Learn more about applying or donating ➡

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DIY Geology Trip to Eastern/Central Washington State

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DIY Geology Trip to Eastern/Central Washington State

by Carol Hasenberg

What do you do when you can’t go on a GSOC field trip?!? Well, my husband John and I have been watching Nick Zentner do his video thing all spring and summer on YouTube, and we really wanted to see some of the features of Washington state that have been highlighted on the series. So, we decided to go ourselves to eastern and central Washington and see some of this geology. This article is an interactive travelogue of that adventure!

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The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley

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The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley

A companion article to Andrew Dunning’s online Meetup talk about Death Valley geology to GSOC on May 16, 2020.

by Carol Hasenberg

Death Valley National Park, the largest in area in the lower 48, boasts the lowest point in North America and the world record hottest temperature. It is also the driest desert in North America, contains relief of over 11,000 feet and exposes a remarkably full geologic history spanning 2.5 billion years (2.5 Ga.). The faults that created it are part of a system that in time may become the plate boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. Significant fossil finds from many different time periods have been made in the park. The combination of all these features make it one of the most geologically valuable sites in North America.

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Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes

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Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes

By Carol Hasenberg

There are many reasons why people might produce a fake fossil, but here are the leading contenders:

  • Fossils can be very valuable items, and if one wants to make some easy money, one can mass produce fossil products for profit, and

  • Wouldn’t it be fun to fool the gullible public into believing in this fake I’ve made!

Dr. Orr had lots of examples of these enterprises that have been done since man first started studying fossils. A spectacularly popular fake of the early Twentieth Century was Piltdown Man, a fake “missing link” fossil made by Charles Dawson in Britain. He combined a human skull with the mandible from an orangutan and this was passed off as real for 40 years, until the advent of Carbon-14 dating exposed it as a fraud.

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GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

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GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

In February and March we all thought that this coronavirus wave would burst over us and be done in a couple of months, and then we’d all go back to normal. Meanwhile GSOC President Sheila Alfsen had been conferring with the March 8 GSOC Annual Banquet speaker David Montgomery, who told her that he had been in and out of the SEATAC airport several times the week preceding the banquet and might have been exposed to the virus. They reluctantly concluded that the banquet needed to be postponed. The decision was accepted by the GSOC Board of Directors and proved to be prophetic. Within hours of the decision the University of Washington closed, and within a week it became clear that to combat this highly contagious virus homes and businesses in the Pacific Northwest were going to have to go into a quasi-quarantine state for awhile. But we still entertained hopes of returning to normal sooner than later. With great reluctance the GSOC board also decided to try meeting via this new meeting platform called Zoom. A couple of the board members had tried it and thought it might be easy enough to try for board meetings, but the consensus was that our membership would not be willing to see an online lecture, and it would be technically difficult. So, we cancelled the lecture for April and crossed our fingers.

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