Well we are all back from our amazing Spring Break Fieldtrip to New Mexico. We went down through Idaho, Utah then onto New Mexico. We went through Colorado, Wyoming and back through Billings, Montana on our return journey. All in all we covered 3,000 miles in eight days!!
Our first stop was Green River in Utah where we studied the Book Cliffs- Cretaceous Interior Seaway cliff forming sandstone similar to the Eagle Formation in Billings where we will be mapping this summer.
We then drove further South to the Bandelier National Monument where we spent two days camping. On our first day we hiked down through the Frijoles Canyon (Beans Canyon) where we got to walk down through the sequence of various volcanic activites, where fluvial processes have incised through the canyon since its formation exposing the stratigraphy. We got a few hours to roam around the area ourselves to experience the Pueblo history in the form of ancient dwellings.
From Bandelier we went further south through the Rio Grande Rift where we got to hike down to the confluence of the Red River and the Rio Grande River. We also went to an overlook point of the Rio Grande Rift.
From here our journey started northwards towards Montana. In Colorado we stopped off at the Great Sand Dunes National Park where we got see modern aeolian processes in action. We hiked the great sand dunes and got to experience hurricane wind speeds at the summit. Our professor had visited this site on numerous occasions prior to this and he felt it was his best experience of sedimentary transport at this location.
Our last stop was in Billings, Montana where Joern told us more about his thesis work and we got a glimpse of where all four of us will be mapping this coming summer. We revisited some of the locations we saw last summer to familiarise ourselves more with the area.
Check out our amazing pictures documenting our experience during the trip.
Next week there will be undergraduate research presentations held here in UM with incoming students from across the country which is a great opportunity for us to learn from our peers.
All the best,
IFGs
As part of our degree, International Field Geosciences, we are set to spend a year at the University of Montana, followed by a shorter time at the University of Potsdam, Germany. We began our studies at UCC in the course Environmental and Earth System Sciences, and in second year we specialised into the area of geology, while also taking a german language module. Now we're off to Montana. We will keep you updated on our progress.
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UCC geoscience 09-10 Montana is not affiliated with UCC in any way, but contains the writings of 4 of its students for education /recreational purposes.
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