End of the year reflections.

The holiday season is very near and christmas just waiting around the corner. December has been pretty quiet here and will most likely continue to be so for the rest of 2009. In the year that is now passing I have been and still am very busy with my graduation work. All geological travel this year was directly related to it either for my diploma mapping project in the beginning of 2009 or thesis fieldwork closer to the end of 2009. The mapping project as been brought to a successful end and even though I am still waiting to receive my official grade both examiners have hinted that there is nothing I need to be worried about.

As my planing goes I will travel to the Southwest of Germany in January or February again. The regional geological survey offered me to examine two new cores of Jurassic limestone for my thesis. This will be a welcome supplement to highlight the regional aspects of my study which is so far focused on Eastern France. The coring will be done in January. So they'll be very fresh. The core locations are directly based on my diploma mapping work by the way.

I realise the activity here has been a bit low in the recent weeks or months. That is mainly due to my thesis stress which simply doesn't leave me with enough peace of mind to author high-quality blog-posts on geology. I tried filling the gaps with some interesting news and geological tools. Also, being engulfed in my thesis, I hardly find the time to read or write something that has not to do with my thesis. Because my thesis is company sponsored there are also some aspects and results which I cannot openly publish online. I hope you understand.

Next year, with the thin-section completed, I hope to make a few good posts on microfacies and diagenesis of limestones. The half-done sections already seem to promise good photographic illustrations. We will see.

 

As this will most likely be the last post for this year I already want to wish everyone of my readers a wonderful christmas time and a happy new year!

Instructional video on how to use a Geologic Compass

In my last post I showed you a geologic compass in the Freiberg version. Below is a link on how to use a geological compass in the field. The compass used in the video is a Breithaupt model but usage is basicly identical. The only difference is the location of the dip scale which is not located on the sides of the joint but on the inside above the compass circle, as you will see in the video. Unfortunately there is no such video in English language. The video here is exclusively in German.

How to use a geological compass (Gefügekompass)

Early Christmas Gift

Wednesday I ordered with my first, own, hard earned money (the Internship wages don't count as I was just standing in the way and being useless really) a high-quality geologist compass, a UV lamp and some boxes for thin-sections. To my great surprise the parcel arrived today already! Usually it takes up to two weeks! So today I had a bit of an early geologist's christmas feeling that resulted in running around the house and examining everything with the UV lamp and the compass (in lack of any near-by outcrops the kitchen was measured). I can now confirm that the walls are indeed all standing vertical and are well aligned. On the foto I added a simple description. The compass is a 360° compass after Clar, Freiberg Modell, that I learned with and still consider one of the best. Neither the Brunton (which broke after 1 day of use), nor some Breithaupt Models (which lacked some marks) or the recently used, cheap imitation (which resulted in daily injuries of my fingers because of the extremely sharp edges and lose screws) of the Freiberg version were able to convince me. This one should last a lifetime though.

I will post some instructions on how to correctly use it sometime soon.

Tools and Tricks of the Trade - the GPS

Ahead of fieldwork for my thesis I asked what kind of GPS device is recommmendable. A number of fellow geobloggers replied with valuable advise. I actually went and bought a GPS ahead of fieldwork. Now I am a proud owner of a GPSmap 60CSx.  The device has fullfilled all expectations in terms of durability, endurance and accuracy under not perfect conditions. The batteries last for 3 days of work or more. Dropping it on rock doesn't cause a scratch and signal reception under dense tree cover is excellent. As a matter of fact I still had a signal when entering underground caves. Well, at least for the first two or three meters. But I don't want to make a commercial here. Fellow geobloggers will know, non-trained readers might wonder though what I do with a GPS device. The idea is pretty simple. It allows to rapidly map and document geological relationships in the field with sufficient accuracy. Mapping lithological borders i.e. becomes a piece of cake. Find the contact in 3 or 4 locations, take a measurement of Easting and Northing, if possible also take a dip measurement with your geologists compass, and you are done. At least in principle. You don't necessarily need the expensive GPS device I decided to buy. A price of 260 Euros is not cheap. There are cheaper alternatives or even more expensive ones with a great variety of additional gadgets.

 
The GPSmap 60CSx operating inside

Using a GPS is easy. If you do not get training at University the documentation should allow you to catch on easily. The basic steps are simple. When the accurate position is your main or only interest, as it may be for most geological fieldwork, there is not much to do. After activating the device give it a moment to acquire a satellite signal. Depending on the location and ground conditions this should not take longer than 1 minute with a good device. Next select the position format and map datum. Usually these are hidden in the units or settings options of your device. In the most simpliest sense the position format determines the way how you write down your coordinates. As the Earth is an irregular globe your need a projection to realistically depict the surface in a flat, 2D map. One of the most common formats is the UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) format that devides the surface into boxes. The map datum is the reference system. Because our planet is not a perfect globe you need a different model of the surface depending on your position. A model that best fits the real shape of the planet. A commonly used datum is the WGS84. Depending on your location you may wish to use another format and datum. In Germany you will still frequently encounter the Gauss-Krüger-coordinate system combined with the Potsdam-Datum or the Bessel-Ellipsoid (Bessel 1841). It fits the Geoid in Europe exceptionally well.

Having decided on your position format and map datum you can start mapping. Either simply noting the coordinates into your fieldbook or saving way points for download in the evening. When using way points remember to always save the way point and not to forget one. When working on large areas way points will make it easier to track back your movements.

ByeBye Twitter

I have been on Twitter since June. Even though a lot of other geobloggers are also active there and even though there are quite some people following me, and me following them, I see no point in it. Never have and after several months of giving it a chance it is time to quit. The only thing it successfully does it waste a little more of my time while reading tweets. Time better invested in either blog posts or working on my thesis. No worries though. The blog will not be affected by it. I just decided to declutter my online life a bit. Twitter is the 2nd activity to go. Last week I stopped using and deleted my account for one of the various social networking sites I used to be registered on. Now I need to learn how to effectively use the won time. I think I forgot some real life competence. Should be fun to re-learn them!

Fun with a Triangle

Today I got the results of the geochemical analysis of the samples that I took during fieldwork in France. Plotting the CaCO3 (top), MgCO3 (left) and Impurities (right) into a triangle gives a...well...boring but good result. Totally depending what you want to do with these rocks. But what else to expect from shallow-marine non-skeletal pack- and grainstones? I hope you can recognise the tiny dots at the top.

Mineral Deposits Studies Group (MDSG): Annual Meeting - University of Glasgow

The 33rd Annual Winter Meeting of the Mineral Deposits Studies Group (MDSG) of the Geological Society will be held from the 5th to 7th of January 2010 at the University of Glasgow. The MDSG is a group within the Geological Society of London. It focuses on the study and promotion of research on mineral deposits and mineralisation processes. The 2010 meeting is sponsored by the Society of Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA). Although the full scientific programm will only be available after the abstract deadline three known geologist will be presenting as keynote speakers. These will be Prof. Jake Lowenstern talking about Magma intrusion, degassing, and hydrothermal setting of the Yellowstone Caldera, Prof. Dick Tosdale presenting Tectonic transitions in the porphyry-epithermal environment and Prof. Gaston Giuliani updating about Academic and economic geology of precious colored gemstones : an update. The size of this meeting is rather small in nature. The 2008 meeting has seen around 100 delegates from various countries, mining companies, students and academics.

Considering my absence from the last two conferences including symposia on mineral deposits I feel very tempted to drop-by in Glasgow for a couple of day this winter - time and especially money permitting.

Are any of you Geobloggers situated close to Glasgow? Any additional reason to go would be great.

New Geoblog: Chiemgau Impact

Robert has taken-up the task to author a new blog devoted primarily to the discussion of the controversial Chiemgau impact in historic time. The issue has created some debate within the geological community in the past due to contradictory evidence. Hence also the blog name: Chiemgau Impact? The blog was added to my German Geoblogosphere feed as one of the few German written blogs on geology.

Thanks to Ole and his blogging effort that alerted me to this new blog.

Dispatches from the Field #4

The Final Days

The last days of fieldwork were dedicated to sampling outcrops, measured sections and other outstanding features. In total I collected around 45 samples for thin sections and another 35 sections for geochemical investigations. The geochemical samples are, of course, the counter-parts to the respective samples for the thin-sections to allow direct comparison. Sampling required a lot of manual work with the hammer and chisle. Many locations have a very hard limestone that required intensive hammering, this way taking 4 samples could easily consume more than an hour until a largely unaltered sampled could be obtained. Also, an advise for anyone hammering away in quarries and outcrops, use a helmet! Mine proved to be a valuable addition to my equipment as it was hit two times by falling rock - that otherwise probably would have required a visit to the local hospital. Having survived sampling and last minute observations I headed to Northern Bavaria to drop-off the geochemical samples in the office of my financing company. They will hopefully be able to provide the results in a few weeks. Now I am heading home. Fieldwork is over!

Urgent call for Participation in the Geoblogosphere Survey 2009

Lutz has alerted me that, dispite the wide-spread news about the Geoblogosphere Survey 2009 the participation be you, the bloggers, is very low! The Geoblogosphere encompassed more than 200 blogs but only around 50 have participated in this community effort. Please go to the Survey and fill out the short form. I could do it, and I am in the middle of a fieldwork campagne for my Master degree with horribly bad internet connection. It takes only a few minutes. It is available in several languages, as well!

Dispatches from the Field #3

The internet connection here has gotten really...a matter of chance...each day. So here is the summary of the last few days.

Day 8 to 12:

In the last days I managed to document all profiles in the useful outcrops. The weather has unfortunately worsened and the last three days got me soacking wet every time. I did manage to begin measuring the outcrops for dip, palaeoflow (not much to see sadly) and faults. The compass only arrived thursday, my supervisor had forgotton to bring it. Well, I do get to see every spot at least twice this way. Though it does not really lift my spirits. I found a tiny veinlet with pyrite, chalcopyrite and calcite in the quarry today. The next one and a half hours I spend looking for more and examing the really tiny crystals in more detail. I'm still an ore geology guy by heart I noticed, and how hard it was to leave them and get back to documenting the boring quarry with its very monotonous succession. I am very much looking forward to going home. I can feel that I am doing the 3rd or 4th choice kind of project. I want my ores...

SedLog: A tool for drawing graphic logs.

Today's work literally got drowned by continued rain. The unvoluntary idle time could not be filld entirely with continuing the map thus I spent some time surfing the digital waves, and behold, what did I find?! Something certainly not only useful for my thesis project, but just as well to anyone else out there needing to compile sedimentary graphic logs. I stumbled upon an article (SedLog: A shareware program for drawing graphic logs and log data manipulation) published just recently in Computers & Geosciences by Zervas et al. It appears to be great and easy to use tool that I downloaded. Runs fine on my Win XP. The tool has its own webpage here.

Geoblogosphere Survey 2009

Lutz has kindly asked me to to highlight the Geoblogosphere Survey 2009. Please go here to take the survey. I already did and it only takes a few minutes and is easy to answer! The survey is open for participation until 1st of November.

Dispatches from the Field #2

Mapping complete and fighting with making a good profile

Day 5:

Today was a good day. Dispite sleeping-in late and getting lost on the road - it's really confusing to drive on these tiny French roads - I did what I wanted. The point making my day good was that I found a couple of locations with big calcite veins within 50 to 100 m of where I was expecting to find some clue for a big fault that I had been hypothesing upon the day before. Left and right side of the veins are off-set by at least a few meters. Great! There also is an old quarry that I discoverd today in which can be seen some nicely folded and layered limestone beds. The base of the formation of my interest - I think. It seems like the very old geologic map that I am basing my work on is correct in all its details. Tomorrow I will inspect the last two places of my field area. If there are no unexpected surprises here mapping will be done tomorrow and I can draw the working version of the map. Three days for 2 square km sounds pretty good. If all goes well tomorrow I might also begin with the first profile and selecting some preliminary and random samples. The only downside so far has been that the Mumienbank, a wonderful oncoid bed that would enable a rough stratigraphic positioning, seems to gone. Only some occasional float from the lower most part of the oncoid bed or the underlaying grainstones can be found here and there. To end the day with a positive expression: After taking a few dip measurements it will by a piece of cake to construct the Isoline Map! The morphology here delivers very good clues on where the hard limestones begin even when the lower contact is not exposed.

Day 6:

Today went well. Found another few spots with calcite veins just in the right location for fault lines. The morphology also screams "fault"! The entire area is mapped now and I think I found all useful outcrops as well. The evening was best, when putting everything onto the map and get confirmation that all veins, silified rock and similiar stuff is really where I suspected that it should be. Good!

Day 7:

A slow day. Wasn't really motivated. I managed to speak to the owner of the active quarry and I can come friday to pick-up the keys so I can access it on the coming weekend. I hope two days will be enough to make the profile, measure it and take enough samples. Aside of that I spent a very long time in an old quarry trying to make sense of it. The bedding is really a mess. Most of it is simply an extreme version of stylo-bedding in my opinion. I grouped these stylobeds into a "bed" when they were identical macroscopical. I got 12 beds this way in a 20m high quarry wall. Still, lazy, I hope the other places will go quicker than all day long.

Dispatches from the Field #1

After some internetless time I found some way to access it. The connection is horribly bad, so no pictures unless necesarry. Some stories about my Diplom degree fieldwork. 

Getting there and first impressions

Day 1:

Having spent the last two days packing everything that I might possible need I left home around lunch time. The traffic on the highways was a disaster and one construction site followed the other. I only arrived around 7pm at my half-way stop in Hessen. The pension was nothing special, actually the room was stinking terribly like cigarette smoke and it was awfully noisy. I don't think I slept more than 3 to 4 hours till the next morning. Luckily I did manage to get a nice Tagliatelle a la Pirata at a local restaurant. I didn't feel like eating in the pension.

Day 2:

Construction sites the 2nd day. Today also accompanied by traffic jams for a long way! Drinking awfully much Cola to fight my sleepiness I arrived in Bad Krozingen, a nice thermal bath, around 5pm. Here I spent the night in a, this time, very nice pension. Too bad I had no time for vacation!

Day 3:

Not entirely rested I met the quarry manager and the chief geologist of the company I am doing my thesis at. After an organisational meeting and talking about how to drive we took-off and drove some 90km south-west to the southern most end of Alsace. On the road we found out that the French don't understand the same under "Fast Food" as we do. The Kebab took forever. But it gave us time to talk. After having arrived on the site of interest we took a short hike to the next outcrop, a former quarry, and discussed some of the work that would be ahead of me. I took a short walk after that to see some more of my work area and then drove to my room. It's very nice by the way. Sadly, very bad WLAN internet and only three TV channels - all French! The shopping tour in the local supermarket also made me realise that I am very out of place here with my virtually non-existing French language skills. Feels very embarassing when I can't even ask what they are selling at the meat, cheese or fish stand. Very exhausted I fall to sleep in my bed later on. Finally a really good night!

Day 4:

I drove to an active quarry to ask the owner for permission to access it to do my stuff there. He ain't there. Need to come back on Monday. Good the guy at the door also spoke Alsatian dialect - something inbetween French and Swiss-German. Then I drove horribly long till I found a parking place for todays checking-out of the field. The hill is very steep! Impossible to walk lines. Will just follow the forest tracks and check if the geologic map from....very, very old...matches reality somehow, as agreed with my supervisor. Then I will pick sites for profiling and sampling. Today I already found two or three potential sites. One is small and the other a German bunker from WW 1 that has been built into an artificially extended cave. Carrying the flashlight and helmet all day came in very handy. First impression: Very confused. Too much vegetation. Worse than in the Amazonas. Sigh. Did I mention this hill is a huge, overturned fold that has consecutively been faulted, up- and down-lifted? It has, well better said had, a stone age fort on top. Together with the WW 1 bunker all kinds of imaginable rocks now all lay happily united and scattered all over the hill. The steep slopes do the rest to spread float to every possible and impossible corner. Did I volunteer for this????