Privacy Policy

/

UPDATED JAN 2020

1. Names, addresses, home phones and emails are listed in our database, and this private data is available to GSOC Board members for use in maintaining membership records and historical information. This information is intended solely for GSOC internal affairs. It is not intended, and will not be used for, any commercial mail or email or any other commercial use. 

2. You have complete control over the data that you would like to be public and private on the membership directory profile. If you sign up for an activity, your activity leader will have access to your profile information for purposes of scheduling and in order to ensure your safety on the activity. 

3. We never sell our membership or contact list. We may partner with another organization to disseminate information that we think is relevant to you. In this case, we will send out information from our partner to you but we will not share your information directly with the partner.

4. If you do not want your personal information to be included in the online directory, please email us at membership@GSOC.org

Meteorites on the Road

/
Meteorites on the Road

Richard "Dick" Pugh passed away peacefully at home in N.E. Portland, Monday, June 15, 2020 at the age of 80. Dick was a frequent GSOC lecturer and instrumental in founding the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University. Below is GSOC President Evelyn Pratt’s account of Dick’s last lecture for us in 2009.

“Portland State University is proud of having the only meteorite lab in the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory was established in 2003 as part of the Department of Geology. In 2005 it became an official repository for type specimens of newly-classified meteorites. The laboratory is run by Melinda Hutson, Alec Ruzicka, and Dick Pugh. It now has slightly under 500 meteorites.”

Read More

60 Years of GSOC Field Trip Guides Now Available Online

/
60 Years of GSOC Field Trip Guides Now Available Online

GSOC members can now access all historical field trip guides! Was there a field trip you did not have an opportunity to go on that you want to explore on your own? Or are you interested in simply perusing all the locales that GSOC has visited over the years?

Field trip guides from 1951 to 2020 are all readily accessible. To view them, go to the Membership tab and click on Field Trip Guides. You will see a spreadsheet that serves as a Table of Contents. The first column shows the file name and is the link to the actual guide - just click the title to bring it up! Columns to the right (you'll have to scroll right to see them all) include: Trip Name, Locations Visited, and Leaders. The Locations Visited column may not include all specific areas visited but gives an overview of the area the trip covered. Enjoy!

Read More

A Brief Introduction to Zircon Geochronology

/
A Brief Introduction to Zircon Geochronology

by Carol Hasenberg

Zircon crystals—zirconium silicate to be precise—have become a very important age dating medium for geologists. Let’s take a look at why, how geochronology analysis is done, and what types of applications are being made of this technology.

This article, the third in a series of three articles focused on geochemistry for fall and winter of 2020, have been written to familiarize our readers with some key tools used in modern geological research. Written in plain language, they describe the techniques used in analyzing these crystals. References to papers and videos are provided to further the reader’s understanding of and provide insights on how these analyses are being used in geological research today.

Read More

More on Stable Oxygen Isotopes

/
More on Stable Oxygen Isotopes

by Carol Hasenberg

The geochemistry of rocks is a study that brings many great tools to the geologist’s tool chest. In the last article from October 2020, “Oxygen Isotope Analysis in Paleoclimatology,” I addressed an aspect of the geochemistry of the ocean and meteoric water on earth (meteoric water being rainwater, snow, water vapor in clouds, etc.) in the form of oxygen isotope distribution. This is a sort of shell game using stable isotopes of oxygen and how they are preferentially distributed in the waters of the earth. I will in this article explore the distribution of oxygen isotopes in rocks of the earth. These types of analyses are commonly used in many aspects of geological research and the reader will undoubtedly run across them in academic papers.

This article is not intended as a mathematical derivation of the equations used in isotope fractionation studies. (Recall that in the October 2020 article the term fractionation was described as a process of concentrating certain types of matter, in this case isotopes, in response to a phase change.) Instead, I will discuss in qualitative terms the principals that dictate how stable isotopes of oxygen distribute themselves in the rocks of the earth, and the resulting ranges of the isotopic ratios one expects to find in the rocks of the world.

Read More

Contribute to Geoscience Scholarship Opportunities for Women Undergraduates

/
Contribute to Geoscience Scholarship Opportunities for Women Undergraduates

Are you a woman undergraduate geoscience student interested in applying for this year's Pacific NW Chapter Tanaka Scholarship? Or are you personally interested in contributing financially to the scholarship?

For applicants: the due date is December 15. More information can be found on the Association for Women Geoscientists website here.

For potential donors: if you are fortunate enough that you have not been impacted financially by the pandemic, please contribute to our scholarship fund -- even small donations add up! Even though most WA and OR colleges are currently holding virtual classes, the need is as great as ever since most students have lost any part-time jobs they may have had — and their parents may have lost income as well. This year only (because of the CARES Act), even if you don't itemize deductions, you'll be able to deduct up to $300 in charitable contributions on your 2020 income taxes. Since the AWG Foundation is a 501(C)(3) charity, this rule will apply to any donation you make.

Learn more about applying or donating ➡

Read More

DIY Geology Trip to Eastern/Central Washington State

/
DIY Geology Trip to Eastern/Central Washington State

by Carol Hasenberg

What do you do when you can’t go on a GSOC field trip?!? Well, my husband John and I have been watching Nick Zentner do his video thing all spring and summer on YouTube, and we really wanted to see some of the features of Washington state that have been highlighted on the series. So, we decided to go ourselves to eastern and central Washington and see some of this geology. This article is an interactive travelogue of that adventure!

Read More

The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley

/
The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley

A companion article to Andrew Dunning’s online Meetup talk about Death Valley geology to GSOC on May 16, 2020.

by Carol Hasenberg

Death Valley National Park, the largest in area in the lower 48, boasts the lowest point in North America and the world record hottest temperature. It is also the driest desert in North America, contains relief of over 11,000 feet and exposes a remarkably full geologic history spanning 2.5 billion years (2.5 Ga.). The faults that created it are part of a system that in time may become the plate boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. Significant fossil finds from many different time periods have been made in the park. The combination of all these features make it one of the most geologically valuable sites in North America.

Read More

Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes

/
Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes

By Carol Hasenberg

There are many reasons why people might produce a fake fossil, but here are the leading contenders:

  • Fossils can be very valuable items, and if one wants to make some easy money, one can mass produce fossil products for profit, and

  • Wouldn’t it be fun to fool the gullible public into believing in this fake I’ve made!

Dr. Orr had lots of examples of these enterprises that have been done since man first started studying fossils. A spectacularly popular fake of the early Twentieth Century was Piltdown Man, a fake “missing link” fossil made by Charles Dawson in Britain. He combined a human skull with the mandible from an orangutan and this was passed off as real for 40 years, until the advent of Carbon-14 dating exposed it as a fraud.

Read More

GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

/
GSOC Goes Online with Lectures and Meetups after COVID

In February and March we all thought that this coronavirus wave would burst over us and be done in a couple of months, and then we’d all go back to normal. Meanwhile GSOC President Sheila Alfsen had been conferring with the March 8 GSOC Annual Banquet speaker David Montgomery, who told her that he had been in and out of the SEATAC airport several times the week preceding the banquet and might have been exposed to the virus. They reluctantly concluded that the banquet needed to be postponed. The decision was accepted by the GSOC Board of Directors and proved to be prophetic. Within hours of the decision the University of Washington closed, and within a week it became clear that to combat this highly contagious virus homes and businesses in the Pacific Northwest were going to have to go into a quasi-quarantine state for awhile. But we still entertained hopes of returning to normal sooner than later. With great reluctance the GSOC board also decided to try meeting via this new meeting platform called Zoom. A couple of the board members had tried it and thought it might be easy enough to try for board meetings, but the consensus was that our membership would not be willing to see an online lecture, and it would be technically difficult. So, we cancelled the lecture for April and crossed our fingers.

Read More

Washington State: Land of Geologic Complexity

/
Washington State: Land of Geologic Complexity

Based on the February 14, 2020 lecture by Dr. Marli Miller, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon and her book co-authored with Dr. Darrel Cowan.

GSOC members were delighted to welcome back Dr. Marli Miller to speak to the society about her latest book, Roadside Geology of Washington Second Edition. Miller co-wrote the book with her former PhD. Thesis advisor, Dr. Darrel Cowan of the University of Washington, whose experience and perspective in understanding the geological framework of the state was invaluable. In her opening remarks, she said that her favorite thing to say about writing these (roadside geology) books is that she learns so much.

In her lecture Miller broke down the geological history of Washington into a series of events, which define the physiographic provinces of the state, because it is the bedrock of a region that influences the outward appearance. The original western boundary, the Laurentian margin, is now on the eastern margin of Washington, and these ancient rocks are highly deformed and metamorphosed to varying degrees. A series of accreted terranes, starting with the Quesnellia terrane accreted in the Jurassic, and the latest Siletzia, which stretches from southern Oregon to southwestern British Columbia, and which accreted 50 million years ago, comprise the basement for the remaining part of the state. Atop and within these lie volcanic and sedimentary bodies that covered or erupted through the basement rocks. Stitching plutons were igneous masses that erupted as a result of terranes accreting to each other or to the continent.

Read More

A Fracking Overview

/
A Fracking Overview

Based on the January 10, 2020 GSOC Friday night lecture by Dr. Laird Thompson, Managing Partner of UF3.

Dr. Laird Thompson is an expert on rock fracturing and after working on imaging technology for boreholes in the 1980’s, he was appointed head of Mobil Oil’s fracture technology. He owns his own consulting firm now and is currently partnering on some work which has brought him into Oregon -- where GSOC is fortunate to have him as a speaker. He is the author or coauthor of several reference books which are the standards for the fracking* industry.

*See discussion below about whether it should be spelled “fracking” or “fracing.”

In explaining the rise and importance of fracking, Thompson reviewed the natural, financial and geopolitical history of the oil industry. Oil** is a commodity whose value is shaped by the laws of supply and demand. It is a commodity that is limited in supply. For the most part, it was created from biomass, which on earth is concentrated in the ocean in the form of diatoms, plankton, etc. These little oceanic critters have died by the trillions, and the little drops of oil they used as ballast have turned into oil reserves over millions of years.

Download pdf of Laird Thompson’s January lecture.

Read More

Invitation to AWG Northern California San Andreas Fault Geology Field Trip

/

Join the Association for Women Geoscientists for a week-long field study of the remarkable geology along the North Coast of California from San Francisco to Mendocino. We will meet at Union Square in San Francisco on September 10th at 1:00 pm and end with a drop off at the San Francisco International Airport around 2:00pm on September 17th. We will stay four nights at the Marin Headlands Hostel Annex and three nights at the Mendocino College Coastal Field Station in Point Arena. Transportation is by coach and driver.

Read More

“The Times, They are A- Changing”

/

Upcoming changes to GSOC organization are being designed to facilitate membership registration and communications and to just “get the jobs done.”

With this edition, GSOC is publishing our last print format newsletter for the foreseeable future. Almost. By now, most of you members have been turning to the GSOC website for your information about what is going on in the club. And that will continue to be the case. For those of you who would like something to download and print, the GSOC board is planning to produce a pdf archive document summarizing the website articles and club activities at the end of each year starting in 2020. Those documents will be available on the website, included in the page with the archived newsletter files.

GSOC is also adopting a new software platform to perform membership registration, renewal and mass email communications starting in 2020. The GSOC Board of Directors will be sending an email to the membership outlining the membership renewal process and will be available to answer questions the members may have regarding the new platform and registration process. It will be important for members to renew their memberships using the process outlined in the email in order to continue to receive society emails and other membership benefits.

Needless to say, all these changes need to also be reflected in the society’s bylaws, and the board is working hard on those changes and is planning to present them to the membership in December 2019, so they can be put to the vote in the society’s annual business meeting in February 2020.

As the outgoing newsletter editor, I would like to express my appreciation for the society and for the opportunity I’ve had for writing and editing The Geological Newsletter. Twenty years have flown by so fast!

– Carol Hasenberg

Read More

Floral Notes From the GSOC Wallowa Field Trip

/
Floral Notes From the GSOC Wallowa Field Trip

by Teresa Meyer

For those of us who were fortunate enough to participate in the Wallowa GSOC field trip, along with stunning geology we were immersed in an abundance of wildflowers. We were surrounded by an unbelievable variety of wildflowers everywhere we went. At any one time you could stand still and see more than a dozen or more different flowers surrounding you.

Read More

Nick Zentner, Pacific Northwest’s ‘Rock Star’!

/
Nick Zentner, Pacific Northwest’s ‘Rock Star’!

This article is going to be a bit of a departure from the typical GSOC Friday night lecture synopsis, because there is an online video version of the “Supervolcanoes” lecture available on Nick Zentner’s web page. However, the GSOC lecture itself was a happening due to the popularity of Zentner’s video productions, and there were some wrinkles in the Supervolcanoes lecture that he did specifically for our group that are worth noting. To begin the lecture, Zentner talked about his inspiration for doing the topic of Supervolcanoes in the Pacific Northwest.

Read More