Each year the Department of Geosciences takes field trips to allow students to apply knowledge learned in the classroom to a real world experience. During the year, there are many local field trips during lab time. In the Fall and the Spring, the department takes students on longer out-of-state trips to destinations around the country (and sometimes out of the country). The Spring field trip is traditionally longer, scheduled during Spring Break. During the past few years, Geoscience students and faculty have traveled to study sites in Tennessee, West Texas, Death Valley, Ontario, Costa Rica, the Bahamas and Hawaii.

This year, the Department of Geosciences held their Fall Field trip September 16-20, 2015. 13 students and 4 faculty made the trip in two large vans, staying in cabins and motels along the way to study sites in three states.

The field trip began with an examination of fold-thrust structures in and around the Seneca Rocks area of the Wills Mountain anticline in West Virginia (photos 23, 58 and 95). We investigated carbonate karst geomorphology on the Appalachian plateau, highlighted by exploration of the Sinks of Gandy cave system (photos 103, 181); Neoproterozoic Catoctin basalt flows of the Blue Ridge province in Virginia (photo 269), and the amazing folds at Roundtop Hill in Maryland (photos 338 and 352).

September 4, 2015