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By Jay, on May 3rd, 2012% 
The Raleigh, North Carolina area is a peneplain. The area has been devoid of any mountain building events for quite some time so the land surface has very low relief. As a result, outcrops of exposed metamorphic bedrock across the Piedmont physiographic province are few and far between. Additionally, bedrock may be covered by a literal veneer of dense soil and/or saprolite which conceals the bedrock below by mere inches.
But fear not! I am a trained geologist and have become adept at finding these obscure bedrock outcrops. So for reference, and in case anyone wants to go and visit, lets start with a map that I cobbed together.
Site Location of Bedrock Outcrop along US-401 South, Raleigh, North Carolina – photo by J. Sents, 2012
I used the Wake County iMAPS GIS [Beta] for the base layers used to create the map above. The location presents itself as an unpaved, unmarked parking lot. Along the southern edge of the lot, a stand of trees and bushes conceals the exposed bedrock. So a few days after the initial identification of this site, I made first contact with my camera and compass.
Bedrock Outcrop Photograph facing South – photo . . . → Read More: Raleigh Bedrock Outcrop
By Jay, on December 4th, 2011% Check out this web page for the Online Geoengineering Library powered by Geoengineer.org. I haven’t given it a rigorous test yet since geologic engineering and geotechnical are not my primary fields, but it looks pretty nifty:
Online Geoengineering Library
By Jay, on October 2nd, 2011% 
Earlier in the Summer on a trip to Kure Beach, North Carolina, I just happened to find a small piece of copper in the Coquina Rocks. In a nutshell, the Coquina Rocks are essentially a partially submerged outcrop of sedimentary rocks found near the southern end of Kure Beach near the Fort Fisher Recreational Area. More on Coquina Rocks later…
I was walking along, carefully maneuvering through the Coquina Rocks during during Maximum Ebb Tide this one day. Many people apparently scout the micro-lagoons formed in the cracks and crevasses of the rocks during Low Tide looking for sharks teeth. I really don’t care for sharks, let alone their teeth but these people do. I looked down and saw a gold-red glint with a hint of bright green. Below are some photographs of what I found:
The rule is for scale. It is a standard engineer rule with 1/10th-inch graduations. What is the green stuff? Well that would be considered a marine concretion. First, the environment here is [or has been] oxygenated enough that copper and copper alloys would corrode and oxidize. Chemically unweathered copper is a golden, reddish-brown in most cases. An oxidized copper surface is usually black . . . → Read More: Marine Concretion on a Copper Fragment
By Jay, on May 8th, 2011% 
This is a pretty cool site a friend just shared with me. Thought I’d pass it along quickly for the astros, photogs, and other sky watchers. It’s called Photopic Sky Survey—a very high-resolution interactive photographic visualization tool for the Milky Way Galaxy produced by Nick Risinger.
Photopic Sky Survey – Nick Risinger 2011
If you click on the page name plate in the lower right, you can read more about the technical details. Enjoy. And to all the mothers out there, Happy Mother’s Day!
By Jay, on March 19th, 2011% This is a rather unique combination of remote sensing and GIS applications for data visualization of tsunami damage in Japan. Remote sensing is defined as the technique of obtaining information about objects through the analysis of data collected by special instruments that are not in physical contact with the objects of investigation [Avery & Berlin, 1992].
Remote sensing plays a role in GIS [refer to this post] since the data collected in this form of “reconnaissance” can be geo-rectified and aligned with other useful data that have undergone a measured survey defining their location on Earth. Remote sensing of cultural, populated, or other land use areas [agricultural, forestry, ecology, etc.] on the surface of Earth is usually accomplished using photogrammetric tools. This can be film or digital photography from aircraft or orbital satellite platforms.
I think you get the idea. The combination of remote sensing and GIS is pretty cool. The second part of remote sensing is the analysis of the data, in this case, hi-resolution photographs comparing the before and after damage on the surface of Earth across the west coast of Japan. Instead of a typical side-by-side comparison, the authors presented the data in a unique visualization layer . . . → Read More: 2011 Japan Tsunami Unique Visualizations
By Jay, on March 8th, 2011% 
Real quickly, I wanted to pass this along for any teachers interested in taking their classes on some very cool, extremely useful trips over to Historic Yates Mill County Park located just south of downtown Raleigh on Lake Wheeler Road.
Yates Mill Educators Open House 2011 – Register by march 21st
It’s geology! It’s biology! It’s hydrology! It’s engineering! The history from local Colonial Era life forward has practical relevance and implications as well. The variety of topics can be graduated to any level of student. In fact, I went on the Guided Mill Tour that’s open to the public three times last summer. No matter what the age, everyone always walked away with some good knowledge and a new understanding of just how important the mill was and still is. If I had to guess it’s because the whole park is sort of like a laboratory-slash-model, and the young ones easily stay focused.
If you are interested as an educator, you will not disappointed, so check them out! But first, go to the link below and give the nice people there a holler just to make sure they can accommodate your classes and requirements:
Yates Mill Field Trips . . . → Read More: Yates Mill Educators Open House 2011
By Jay, on October 13th, 2010% What is most important in science? Is it the destination, product, or answer we arrive at? Or, is it the method and means by which we arrive there? Some would say the former whereas, others would argue it’s the latter. Others may say both coalesced together in some strange voodoo-like or even abstract metaphysical “understanding” is the most important.
Say I sit down at my computer, fired up one of the many different computer modeling applications I use, and attempted to answer a geology question. After performing several model runs and a detailed sensitivity analysis I conclude there is ultimately a small set of finite, distinct answers. How would it make you feel if I told you afterward that the answer I gave you did not have the highest probability, yet I changed the model input parameters such that that answer came up more frequently? I forced the answer by forcing, obscuring, or even manipulating the raw data used for the methods that led to that answer.
What I did in the example above falls into the age-old category of scientific ethics. I wish to share with you a letter. By now this is old news in the scientific community; however, . . . → Read More: Science: The Destination or the Journey?
By Jay, on October 12th, 2010% 
So much to read and so little time. In addition, looking much more closely inside the Raleigh Beltline for some geology-related places is heating up. I want to talk a lot more about this photograph soon.
0208732534
Some call it 0208732534. I call it the United States Geological Survey’s [USGS] stream gauge on Pigeon House Creek at Cameron Village. They are calling for rain here later in the week, so I would like to go back up here and take a few photographs during high flow stream conditions. Until then…
By Jay, on September 30th, 2010% 
Want to go for a walk? I went on a walking tour of Charleston, South Carolina last week while there for a geology conference. Many of you know that Charleston was the unfortunate victim of a rather large earthquake back in the late 1800s. Led by Dr. Briget Doyle’s fill-in of the Geology Department from the College of Charleston, we walked around the southeastern portion of the Charleston Peninsula for an overview of the earthquake and an account of the structural damage recorded in the repair work still visible today.
I will say that I did not get a lot of one-on-one time with Dr. Doyle’s substitute guide. He was busy. The whole conference seemed to have an aura of “busy” about it. Or, maybe it was “running late”? I’m not sure. There was definitely the sense of a shortage of time the whole week with just about everyone. Regardless, I thought of you, my beloved readers and guests, and obtained enough digital photographs to fill about 3 DVDs. Not that I’m going to show that many here! More that there are plenty to choose from. So let’s go for a walk around town and I’ll try to do this . . . → Read More: Charleston Earthquake Photo Tour
By Jay, on September 5th, 2010% Yesterday I did a little recon of the Fall Zone. What is the Fall Zone? On a map it’s a line; however, that’s not entirely accurate as it’s more of a band. Essentially, it’s the boundary between two distinct regions of bedrock, called physiographic provinces. At the transition of the two rock types, there is a low rise in the landscape and any rivers that cross the Fall Zone generally contain rapids, riffles, whitewater, and waterfalls.
The Fall Zone from New Jersey to Texas – from CSRA, 2010
The Fall Zone is a pretty big deal. The whole zone stretches from southern New Jersey to Texas. In the Southern Atlantic States, the Fall Zone marks the boundary between the metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont Province and the sedimentary rocks of the Coastal Plain. The Piedmont rocks are more resistant to weathering and erosion compared to the softer Coastal Plain rocks, hence the waterfalls and rapids in the rivers that cross the Fall Zone.
View facing west along US-70 toward Nuese River near Selma, NC – photo by J. Sents
The significance of the Fall Zone goes back to Colonial American time. The early waves of . . . → Read More: Fall Zone Recon
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