| Introduction
The following is a list of
essential or desirable locations for geologists or travelers to visit.
It contains many of the interesting geological wonders of the world, with
links for most of them. Other interesting natural phenomena are also presented.
Much of this website is basically a modified and extended version of a
list from an outstanding article written by Lisa A. Rossbacher (President,
Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia) in the April,
1990 issue of Geotimes. The credit for any redeeming value in this document
goes to her. Additional thanks go to those people who have sent in the
suggestions which have been added to this page.
Specific locations that every geologist
should visit sometime
The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And
back.
Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the
Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible
The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia,
to see the largest coral reef in the world.
The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well
exposed folds on a massive scale
The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to
better appreciate the air you breathe (from the paleogoddess).
The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, even
if viewed from a distance
Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest
lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
Ayers Rock, Australia. This inselberg of
nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more
than 350 meters high.
Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to
see a classic example of columnar jointing (and to experience some of
the best crack climbing in the world).
The Alps.
Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National
Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of
Death Valley - 11,330 feet below
The Li River, China, to
see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art .
The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see
the original Karst.
The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred
headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows
from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah,
an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic
neck.
Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for
fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina,
to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the
results of recent explosive volcanism.
Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau,
Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian
border, to see the classic "horn"
The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian
and Georgian coastal plain, just so that you, too, can have a theory about
how these parallel surface depressions may have formed (here is an interesting
article).
The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington, to
see these mysterious landforms of unknown origin.
Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where
James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed this
classic unconformity and recognized the meaning of stratigraphy.
Other suggested sights: The moving rocks
of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, Yosemite Valley, Landscape Arch, the
Burgess shale, the Channeled Scablands of central Washington, Bryce Canyon,
the Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone, Monument Valley - a great website,
The San Andreas Fault, The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain, The
volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands, The Pyrennees Mountains, The
Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand, Denali (an orogeny
in progress), Druid Arch, The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National
Park, the black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand (olivine) beaches?),
Barton Springs in Texas, Hells Canyon in Idaho, The Black Canyon of the
Gunnison in Colorado, TheTunguska impact site in Siberia, ...
Things which need to be experienced rather
than merely seen
Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.
Find dinosaur footprints in situ . Click
here to see photos of dinosaur footprints. Try the backcountry of
southern Utah, there are millions of them.
Find a Trilobite, relatively easy in the
Ordovician limestones and shales around Cincinnati. See
also - information on Cincinnatian trilobites from the Dry Dredgers Homepage,
an association of amateur geologists and fossil collectors in the Cincinnati
area.
Find gold, however small the flake.
Other suggestions: (Witness) see a tsunami, experience a volcanic ashfall,
find a meteorite fragment, experience a sandstorm,...
|
"The
best geologist is the one who has seen the most geology"
"For geologists, life is a field trip"
A
Geologist's Lifetime Field List
An erupting volcano. Possible
locations include Hawaii, Italy, or Iceland.
"The man who feels smug in an orderly world has never looked down
a volcano"
A glacier, preferably continental.
An active geyser, such as those in Yellowstone
or the type locality of Iceland.
The Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) boundary .
Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red
Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
A river whose discharge is above bankful stage, or a catastrophic flash
flood. Click
here to see Cincininati Flood photos.
A limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns
in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves
of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia).
An open pit mine, such as those in Butte,
Montana,Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci,
Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
A subsurface mine.
An ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex
in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus.
An anorthosite complex, such as those in
Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger.
A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons
are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado
Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky
Gulch and the Round Valley Draw.
 This
excellent photograph of Antelope Canyon was taken by Jonathan Jasper,
a graduate student in Karst studies at Western Kentucky University (he's
the guy standing in the canyon!).
Varves, whether you see the type section
in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
An exfoliation dome, such as those in the
Sierra Nevada.
A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana
or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate.
A ginkgo tree, which is the lone survivor
of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere
in the Mesozoic.
Other suggestions: Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier
National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites),
a field of glacial erratics, a large catastrophic mass-wasting event,
a sand dune more than 200 feet high, a fjord, a caldera, a recently formed
fault scarp, sizable breccias, an actively accreting river delta (scenic
photos), a natural bridge, a large sinkhole, a glacial outwash plain,
a sea stack, a house-sized glacial erratic, an underground lake or river,
the continental divide, fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals, petrified
trees, lava tubes,"booming" sands,...
The best of the rest: other natural
phenomena to see or experience
Totality!! A total solar eclipse is claimed
to be the single most spectacular phenomenon in all of nature. They occur
somewhere on this planet at a rate of approximately one every 1.5 years
(world map of total eclipse paths from 1997 to 2020). The next total solar
eclipse paths to cross the North American continent will occur in the
year 2017 and again in the year 2024 (map of total eclipse paths in North
America for years 2001-2050). Also, a path of totality passes thru major
population centers in Europe on August 11, 1999.
Witness a tornado, firsthand. (important
rules of this game).
Witness a meteor storm, a term used to
describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower . Meteor
storms are extremely rare and hard to predict. The 1998 or 1999 Leonid
showers are possibilities.
View Saturn and its moons through a respectable
telescope.
See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known
as the northern lights. by Jan Curtis.
View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity
which occurs only a few times per century (see "Great Comets in History"
at this website). Both Comet Hale-Bopp (1997) and Comet Hyakutake (1996)
fell into this category, two great comets in two years. For a brief time,
Comet Hyakutake had a spectacular tail over 70 degrees long (only visible
from dark skies). The only way to fully appreciate a bright comet is to
get far away from the light pollution of the cities and suburbs. Nice
photographs of these two recent comet can be found at this website, perhaps
the second best website ever created by upright man.
Comet Hyakutake Photographs from Ohio by Terry Acomb
50 mm, tracked for about 4 minutes.
The entire tail length of this amazing comet could not fit into the field
of view provided by a 50 mm lens (this photograph was used in the Skywatching
CD-ROM by the Discovery Channel Multimedia)
Jonathan Jasper obstructs
an otherwise perfect view of the comet near Aneth, Utah, April 5 (50 mm,
fixed, about 30 seconds)
Other suggestions: See a lunar eclipse, view a distant galaxy (great photographs)
through a large telescope, experience a hurricane, see noctilucent clouds,
walk through an ancient redwood grove, see the green flash, witness a
supernova, witness hail 3 inches or larger falling from the sky, ball
lightning,...
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