Cover art for Geology Underfoot in Western Washington

Geology Underfoot in Western Washington cover art. Painting by Eric Knight. Click for full size image file.

Geology Underfoot in Western Washington has gone to the printers, and should be on store shelves the end of April or early May. Start bugging you local bookstore to get orders in now. Here’s the book’s cover. It is an oblique view of Mount Rainier during a moderate eruption, made by Eric Knight, and is modeled in part on the 500-year-old Electron lahar. Eric painted the bird’s-eye-view in an arc looking from the north  to the southeast, from the Tacoma Tideflats around to the erupting volcano. There is a lot of detail. Look closely and you will see lahars descending the northwest and western flanks into the Mowich and Puyallup River valleys. The boiling cloud of a pyroclastic flow is on the right, covering the Tahoma Glacier. The lahars coalesce and inundate the Puyallup valley. That’s Lake Kapowsin at lower right. A short distance downstream from the lake, the lahar passes through the center of Orting, which appears seriously damaged and on toward Puyallup and Tacoma. The lahar would likely have a much reduced sediment load by this point, and be more of a hyperconcentrated flow- predominantly extremely muddy water rather than a dense slug of mud. The muddy flow enters Puget Sound at Commencement Bay, having sloshed mud and water all over the Tacoma tideflats industrial area. Suspended sediment has discolored Puget Sound most of the way to Elliot Bay at Seattle. There’s not enough detail in this image to tell, but I-5 appears intact where it crosses the Puyallup. In this hypothetical eruption, no lahar has entered the White River valley so the Auburn-Kent-Duwamish area has been spared.

ERic Knight’s art showing a glacier-filled Yosemite Valley on the cover of Geology Underfoot in Yosemite National Park by Allen Glazner and Greg Stock.

Erik also did the cover art for Geology Underfoot in Yosemite National Park. He makes wonderful panoramic maps. Visit his website to see a fine panoramic painting of the Salish Sea. It is interactive, so you can zoom in, pan very different perspectives. The tool bar at the bottom includes a ‘help’ button for instructions.

BOOK RELEASE EVENT!!!!!

Yes, friends, the rumors are true. My book, Geology Underfoot in Western Washington, is slated for publication. I am having a book release ‘party’ at the Whatcom Museum on May 12th at 7 PM. Village Books is co-hosting and will have copies for sale. My presentation will be about how the book came to be, how I wrote it, how I made some of the many diagrams and maps, and a bit about what drove me to write it in the first place- YOU!!!!

Seating is limited to around 150. Doors open at 6:30. Get that hint? It is not intended to be subtle!

There will also be a ‘reading’ at University Bookstore in Seattle’s U District on May 13th, also at 7 PM.

There will be other book ‘readings’, although I can’t imagine actually reading a geology guide-book out loud. So, no reading, I promise. I will be speaking at various REI stores in the region later on, and I’m scheduling talks at other bookstores.

Call for citizen vounteers: Nooksack delta and Bellingham Bay

An opportunity for citiizen volunteers to assist with USGS river and storm surge monitoring

From Eric E. Grossman, PhD, Research Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey

Hi,

As part of our USGS Coastal Habitats in Puget Sound Project and WWU Coastal Resilience Project, we actively measure river floods and storm surge/wave impacts. We have witnessed some extreme flooding, inundation and erosion the last few storms and need help.

Volunteers are requested to help:

1) measure river flow and its partitioning through delta distributaries using fancy Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers

2) sample for suspended and bed load sediment

3) map bedforms and changes in channel morphology/aggradation

4) measure maximum runup and inundation following floods/storms with RTK-GPS

5) Deploy instrument packages that continuously measure water levels (tides), waves, currents, suspended sediment flux and water temperature/salinity.

This work is ongoing with a big push during the winter months. If anyone is available periodically for full or half-day outings please contact Eric Grossman – USGS/WWU Geologist (831-234-4674 or 360-650-4697) and/or Christopher Curran – Hydrologist, USGS, 253-380-7409). If anyone is around during the Holidays and interested in exciting field days, please let us know.

Thanks and have fun and safe Holidays,

Eric E. Grossman
Research Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
USGS Western Fisheries Research Center, 6505 NE 65th St., Seattle, WA 98115; 206-526-6282×334 (office), 831-234-4674 (cell)
email: egrossman@usgs.gov

Affiliate Researcher, Western Washington University
Dept. of Geology, 516 High St., MS 9080
Bellingham, WA, 98225; 360-650-4697 (office)
email: Eric.Grossman@wwu.edu
http://puget.usgs.gov/
http://coralreefs.wr.usgs.gov/

http://www.usgs.gov/coastsalish

Washington interactive geology map

I get a lot of emails asking about on-line geologic maps. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has a great resource. It is the Washington Interactive Geology Map. It allows you to select map scales, map background (topographic? street map? terrain?) and the type of geology you are interested in (faults? surface geology? tsunami inundation zones? landslide? volcanic vents?). You can play with scales and move around on a map of the entire state. The portal is here, which connects you to several interactive maps: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/ResearchScience/Topics/GeosciencesData/Pages/geology_portal.aspx

If you choose the Interactive geology map, you end up here: https://fortress.wa.gov/dnr/geology/?Theme=wigm

The menu lets you select lots of features to turn on or off. You have to play with it a bit to get it really

screen capture of a portion of the interactive geology map. Click to enlarge.

figured out, but it isn’t difficult. The figure above shows the screen set for western Whatcom County. In this menu I selected ‘surface geology’, 1:24,000 and 1:100,000 scale geologic map overlays. 1:24,000 scale maps are only available for some areas, and show up in the image as an area with denser information; an example is in the center, and lower left. You can zoom in on those for more detailed geology. You can turn text labels for geologic units on or off to reduce clutter. The more data you request, the slower the system is to load. I also clicked the box for ‘seismogenic features’, which turned on the blue dashed diagonal faults on the left edge of the screen.

Interactive map showing mapped faults in wesern Whatcom County. Click to enlarge.

This figure shows a much simplified view of seismogenic features only, in the same area. There are several fault strands in the Kendall area at center, as well as the same three faults between Gooseberry Point and Blaine. All the other information is turned off for clarity.

REQUEST TO READERS. If you experiment with any of the other interactive maps on the portal page (tsunami inundation zones, coal mine inventory map, natural hazards, seismic scenarios, etc. please consider writing a comment below about how useful you found it.

New book: Geology of the San Juan Islands

San Juan Islands geologist Ned Brown brings us a wonderful new geology guide- just in time for holiday gifts.

Ned Brown’s Geology of the San Juan Islands. Chuckanut Editions, 2014

Geology of the San Juan Islands is a full color guide to the geology of these beautiful islands. The book is written for the geophile of all stripes. It is the best, easiest-to-understand explanation of San Juan geology I have seen, and I urge you to spend $19 and get your own copy right now.

Ned Brown is an emeritus professor in the Western Washington University Geology Department. He has been working in the islands for decades. The complex geology of the archipelago has long inspired and exasperated geologists. Ned’s book describes the remarkable tectonic history that has repeatedly brought together unrelated rocks from around the Pacific and stacked them against each other during subduction. His color photos and detailed diagrams explain the processes and evolution of each of the rock units clearly. The book also explains how he and others have come up with this most current interpretation of San Juan Islands geologic history, by mapping rock units and faults, dating zircon crystals in the rocks, identifying fossils and correlating these with the ancient areas where these creatures lived.  Ned tells you just where to go to see the best outcrops, including all the photo locations. Among the more amazing ideas he throws out is the possible origin of the oldest rocks in the  350- to 500-million year old Turtleback Complex on Orcas Island. The gabbro and granitic rocks, once intruded deep in the crust,  may have originally intruded deep in the crust….in northern Europe! This was during the time of the supercontinent Rodinia.

The book is self-published through the Chuckanut Editions imprint of Village Books in Bellingham. The book is not yet available. Go buy a copy in the store, or write Village Books and ask them to please make the book available for on-line orders.Dave Tucker

 

Book chapter title: Thanks for all your ideas!

A blizzard of your serious, and funny, suggestions for the Geology Underfoot in Western Washington chapter about golden Horn granite at Washington Pass. If you have an idea and haven’t contributed yet, get going! I will be sending my final revisions to the editor on December 1 to begin the publication process.

Thanks to all!

Dave

Racehorse Landslide Fossil Fields- access update

Friends,

I received a reliable report from Saturday, August 9, 2014 from my friends Bob and Adena on conditions at the Racehorse Creek landslide fossil fields.

Here is the report, which I’ll add to the webpage for the fossil fields ( https://nwgeology.wordpress.com/the-fieldtrips/the-chuckanut-formation/the-racehorse-landslide-fossil-fields/).

It is still possible to find leaf fossils among the brush. These were found in August, 2014.

“The place is hardly recognizable. No changes to the trail in from the road (we did some clipping but little was needed) BUT…the smaller slide by the big dead fir tree (DT note- Bob is referring to the fossil fields I describe on the webpage above) is so grown up to six-to-ten foot alders that the only way you know you have reached the end of the trail is when you feel the slope start to steepen. Worse, there’s a tangle of underbrush under the alders, and both brush and leaf duff make it tough to find fossils anywhere except right on the few paths that lead upward through the landslide to the ridge crest; i.e., you easily find only what everyone has already looked over. About 40 vertical feet below the ridge and on up, DNR has cut a lot of alders but not all. There were no alders growing on the main slide debris (beyond the ridge crest).”

So, seems like the trip is no more difficult, but fossil seekers must persevere and be willing to scuff around in the bushes. Visitors are requested to report any new developments.