Geoscience Education in the Mountain State: CATS Applied Geology Telecourse, Spring 2000, Show 4 Transcript

CATS Telecourse
Applied Geology
March 7, 2000

Dr. Bob: Greetings everyone, with Deb Hemler. It's Dr. Bob here and it's a great day for a field trip. Trust me. Here in Morgantown it must be close to 80°. It's a nice clear sky.

What we're going to do today is talk about the geology around the state, including parks, wildlife areas, some fossil collecting sites. A variety of things around the State of West Virginia and focus on the entire state so that when you get to Quiz #3 you see the types of things that we're asking about so that you can go to a site and maybe plan a one day trip or within the framework of being able to come to class, go off to the site and come back with your students. Talking about quizzes we need to chat a little bit about Quiz #2 because that is finally up. Could you give us the feedback on that please?

Dr. Deb: Sure. Quiz #2 is finally posted on the web site. Tom sent an e-mail out to everybody to let you know that it's there. We haven't posted a due date yet and we need to do that.

Dr. Bob: How about the 25^th of March.

Dr. Deb: The 25^th of March will be when Quiz #2 is due. We're going to post Quiz #3 early next week and that will pertain to tonight's show. Quiz #4 will not be posted after the following broadcast but after the last broadcast. We're only going to have 4 quizzes this time. You'll have a little bit of a space there where you can catch up get all the quizzes in that needed to be worked on. Quiz #4 will entail the last two shows. In case some of you were getting a little antsy, I did get one e-mail on "A Civil Action." You need to watch the video before the last broadcast. That's when we'll be dealing with the issues of super funds and nuclear waste. Although "A Civil Action" doesn't deal with nuclear waste, it does qualify as a super fund site which we'll talk about on that last broadcast. The quiz question will be on that final quiz pertaining to "A Civil Action." At this point just watch the video and take in what it's talking about and you might jot down some impressions you get from watching the movie. What are you learning from this? What's you're gut reaction to the movie in terms of what's happening during that. That's all you need to do for right now. On Show 5 we'll elaborate more about super fund sites and more on the topic of "A Civil Action" and look for the quiz to be posted following that last show. That pretty much ties up our announcements.

Dr. Bob: Super. We are going to introduce and you should have in your hands the rock kits. We're going to touch base on that just for a few minutes at the start of the show. We'll talk about the gazetteer, mentioned a week or two ago. We all feel that for the price, it's a great thing to have in your car available when you're out traveling around the state. We'll talk about physiographic regions of West Virginia so that we can better appreciate the natural areas and also to speak in generalities as to what you might consider with respect to both the river systems that drain the physiographic provinces and what you'd expect to find with respect to geology and landforms. We'll talk in general about the sites and the RESA regions. We had to have some sort of a scheme for looking at all the sites so we decided to choose the eight RESA regions and break it up in that way. Realize that some of you are near a border and you'll see things more in the north and central and eastern area and the southern area and then building your own nature trail. Some things that have happened in West Virginia and some really interesting possibilities, even with a little bit of funding available. Then next week we'll have the last show of Dr. Renton and myself. We're going to talk about igneous rocks and the great northwest. Everything from Yellowstone National Park down to northern California and all the way out to the Pacific Ocean to reflect both on the rocks that you have in your kit and national parks and volcanics in general and really get into those details for our last session on the adjuncts.

I was real impressed with the quality of the rock kits and the size, I think is important.

Dr. Deb: The size of the specimens themselves are nice because they're hand specimens. They are a little bit more expensive so if you're budget is limited you might have to opt for the smaller if you want a lot of samples to go around for the class. If budget isn't an issue then a sample the size of one of these is really nice for students to be able to hold in their hand.

Dr. Bob: What did these cost?

Dr. Deb: I think these were $1 a piece. The average about $1 a piece. If you get the smaller samples, those of you that have been to RockCamp and have seen the samples that we provide you with, which are considerably smaller, are about a quarter a piece. These are nice because you can see the crystal patterns and the structures very easily and it's just nice to have a handful of rock. What we're going to talk about tonight, we're not going to rehash what these specimens are because we went over them on a prior program and then Dr. Bob and J.J. (Dr. Jack Renton) will be talking about these next Tuesday. If you tune into that show you can find out more information on those. We're going to discuss tonight what can you do with your kids and these and it makes for a really nice exploratory if you have these mineral samples available to your students to just ask them to classify them. You've got a pile of rocks in front of you. Draw two big circles and classify them and tell us what you based that classification system. You'll find that the students will pick dark and light or red and black...

Dr. Bob: I have one of the coarse grained here. It happens to be the pegmatite and then what I found was real interesting when working with youngsters, say how many different things do you see in the rock?

Dr. Deb: Exactly, once you've gotten your classification system down and you've talked about the fact that some of them have different classifications then others then you can lead them into a discussion of how igneous rocks are identified. They are identified on two criteria. The relative light or darkness of these rocks and then the texture of them. Once you take a look at that classification system then you can talk about the component minerals in those rocks. If you take a look at a rhyolite and a granite you can talk about the same basic composition. Here you see two crystal sizes, obviously different.

Dr. Bob: One is small grain size and one is coarse grain size. Then you can engage in discussion of why you think the difference.

Dr. Deb: So rather then lecture on the different types of rocks or just immediately throw them into some activity on identification, let them explore a little bit. Let them develop some understanding of what the criteria might be used for to identify an igneous. You'd be surprised and they will be surprised that they will come up with that criteria. We suggest that you explore igneous rocks first.

Dr. Bob: Another thing, this is a piece of pumice. It's got a lot of holes in it. One thing I've found to be a real interesting activity is to just give them a little eyedropper of water. You can get the eyedroppers at the local drugstore and just fill it with water and label it water. Give them a plastic container, like an old Cool Whip container and four or five rocks, including some of your local sedimentary rocks and say, examine the statement solid as a rock. Don't tell them any more. Soon enough, they'll be taking the water, give them a paper towel. That is interesting too when they put the water on the paper towel, the water immediately disappears. On some of these rocks the water will just sit. If you get a piece of sandstone locally, if you put it on one surface, the water sits there. You turn the rock 90°, you put the water in and it soaks right in because the sandstone has little plates of micas and when you put them parallel and put the water drop on, it just sits on the mica flakes. You turn it on end and the water just soaks right into the rock. You can use some of these rocks as well as the local rocks. It's really a neat exercise. I've done it with 3^rd grade all the way up to the teachers in different groups. Eventually you can talk about the aspects of porosity and permeability and lead into a discussion about groundwater. It also helps to describe that some of these rocks are real tight.

You have some rocks to work with.

Dr. Deb: We also have some questions actually. One of the things we like to do is talk about and smooth out some problem areas that teachers might have. One question that I always get is, if you take out the piece of rhyolite and the andesite, for example. We always read in all the books that rhyolite is pink, pink to gray. We always read in the textbooks that andesite is an intermediate color, or gray. We know that they're both fine-grained, but the question is, what if you have a gray piece of andesite and you have a gray piece of rhyolite. How do you tell the two apart?

Dr. Bob: In this case, the andesite makes it far more difficult because the andesite is a porphyry. That means its gone through two phases of cooling, yet that is the key factor. The andesite stayed for awhile. It pulled material, it came from very deep. It's a darker colored gray because it has more iron and manganese and magnesium. Then as it came up it incorporated and melted some of the country rock that it came through but still it's imparted with a little bit darker gray color and it also, in this particular piece, it stayed awhile. Crystals started to form. Then, it was ejected to the surface where it cooled very rapidly, we call it chilling, and then it's a fine ground mass around the larger particles. Whereas, the rhyolite, if you turn it against the light, occasionally you might see a crystal, but by and large, it almost looks like limestone. There are many limestones that this looks like. If you had collected this piece, this particular piece came from Montana but not from Yellowstone National Park. You can't collect them from Yellowstone. It just happens to be a very, very fresh piece, probably deeply in a mine or an excavation or a quarry for road aggregate. As a result, it just doesn't have the fleshy color pink at all. If you play it against the light, sometimes you'll almost sense that certainly it's light colored.

Dr. Deb: In conclusion, andesite's always going to be darker then any rhyolite, even if the rhyolite is a light gray. A pale gray will most likely be a rhyolite.

Dr. Bob: Occasionally there's a rhyolite porphyry or individual grains that may have grown around it. They're not as busy as the andesite porphyry. There's a few grains in there but not as much.

Dr. Deb: Not all andesite is a porphyry. The andesite that aren't porphyritic, will they always have larger crystals then the rhyolites?

Dr. Bob: You probably couldn't tell.

Dr. Deb: It's pretty much going to be a color thing. Then, the second questions is, you have a piece of vesicular basalt in your kits. You have a piece of scoria in your kits. When we were out west with the Marion County teachers we walked on cinder cones that were loaded of tons and tons of vesicular basalts. Those vesicular basalts happened to be the exact same color as that scoria in places where it had been weathered.

Dr. Bob: It weathers real rapidly and some of it just forms red because it's heated. It's like taking rocks and putting it into a fireplace.

Dr. Deb: The question there is, if you're walking on these cinder cones how do you know you're not walking on a bunch of scoria? How do you know you're walking on vesicular basalt?

Dr. Bob: It's not an actual percentage sort of situation but if you look at this, and when you hold these two pieces the vesicular basalt will be much heavier because the vesicles or gas holes are far less volume of the total sample. Whereas in the scoria, in this case it's bright red, it's the type of stuff that you'd buy and put in your grill at home to gather all the nice juices as you continue to use it. The mass is very, very light. You'd don't say that there are more void spaces then solid material but it is quite clear that the void spaces in the scoria are many, many, many, many times greater percent of the volume then the void spaces in the vesicular basalt. Sometimes in the vesicular basalt there's only a couple of them. Eventually you'll get to a place in the field and throw up your hands and say I don't know what it is. If it's lighter I'd call it a scoria.

Dr. Deb: The same exact mineral composition with many, many more holes would be considered scoria.

Dr. Bob: Many, many times it's reddish or brownish because it's been oxidized at or near the surface. That makes a lot of sense too, it's not quite like pumice. I often characterize pumice as a foam, volcanic foam. There's a grade. Think of all three, pumice at one end of the spectrum, scoria in the middle, and then vesicular basalt at the other end, and then basalt with one or two little bubbles in it, that's it. There's a gradation as to the escape of the gas trapped within the magma when it comes to the surface to become lava.

Dr. Deb: Great, I think we just helped a bunch of people out there with some questions about rocks.

Dr. Bob: Again, we will bring these back next week when we discuss the adjunct session and really think about these in much greater detail and revisit that. Place it in the context of both intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks. You have a couple of intrusive igneous rocks, a gabbro and a granite in these packages.

We're talking about materials and help aids. I've brought a copy of West Virginia Atlas and Gazetteer. You'll find this particular publication distributed at WalMarts, bookstores, it is a big, big seller. When I got this one the list price was $16.95, I didn't check within the past week or two, it may be higher now, I don't know. In some stores you find them discounted.

Dr. Deb: This is really nice, I carry it around in the back of my car. and when we're out looking at state parks or want to take a side road, it does an excellent job of getting you down the county roads. They are very well marked. You can see exactly where the road's going to come out.

Dr. Bob: The jeep trails obviously, if you're going to be doing the really back woods type travel, you'd want a topographic map. There's a nice big index with the page numbers on them as to where you'll find the information. It has a really good gazetteer.

Dr. Deb: It has a legend in it just like the topographic maps would have.

Dr. Bob: If you're really interested in a gazetteer, the West Virginia Geological Survey has it. It has all the sites in it. This is an excellent publication and it has historic sites, attractions, covered bridges, wineries, glass makers, in general it's excellent.

One other thing I'd like to call attention to is that West Virginia does have an official web site.

Dr. Deb: This is www.wvparks.com and it is the web site for the state parks and forests. It has divisions of whether it has a lodge or resort, whether it's a cabin vacation, a camping vacation, a day use park, whether it has trails or if it's a national historic park or a state forest. There's not a lot of information on some of these. Some are more developed then others.

Dr. Bob: I have one additional bit of resource material. It's another book. It's not only for West Virginia. It's Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic States by Jasper Burns. I'll give you the ISBN number because that's the best way to reach this.

Dr. Deb: It is available at the Geologic Survey. They sell this

Dr. Bob: It's not very expensive. It's a paperback. The ISBN No. is 08018, the paperback number is 4145-3. There are quite a few sites from West Virginia. Not all counties are represented. There's Hardy, Pendleton, Monroe, Hampshire, Pocahontas, Ohio, Brooke, Berkeley, and so forth. I have all that information down. There are a number of sites. One of the problems is that most of these sites are along highways. Therefore, you might find this publication for your own particular enjoyment or perhaps a very small group such as a specialty geology club and you want to go out with just 3 or 4 with a couple of chaperones, not all the sites are in dangerous places, you'll have to use your good judgement. I urge you to go out and look for them first. This book is a decade old and some of the sites get worn and weathered and the fossils aren't as well shown anymore.

Then, there will be additional publications and these publications will be available as you get to the parks. It's very much a natural history. I'm very much in favor of this. A single publication just for the geology is not enough. It should be everything from the trees to the birds and the mammals, wildflowers, anything possible. The WVU Extension Service has had some fine publications and then there are specialty ones in a region. We want to emphasize that because within your region you might find the location that you want to emphasize specifically and maybe put together a little publication like this. We're not asking you to put together a little brochure but I have in the past given an exercise for a site that you wanted to particularly recognize. From time to time they come to us from the state at the Welcome Buildings along the interstates, these types of things do draw people. There are people who will take the time to go off the interstate to find these locations because of their particular interests.

Dr. Deb: What's a nice classroom activity is if you go to an area or you're creating your own nature trail or whatever, have your students develop one of these. They can draw a map of the trails. They can do it to scale. You can have them then incorporate the natural history of the area, talk about the geology, and get them on the computer and get some technology and have them develop a brochure. It's a great way to integrate all the sciences as well as the technology and get them thinking.

Dr. Bob: Some of the places actually have human history associated with them too that needs to be enhanced. For example, in West Virginia we have a richness of caves. One publication I saw recently that said that West Virginia has more caves then any other state in the United States. Many of them are small but they have a history from Civil War or Pre Civil War and much of that information. The web sites and surfing the net and using the publication potential in your classroom with the software that you might have, even though it's modest, some really nice looking things. When the kids do it themselves there's a real satisfaction that I have done this.

Let's now start the discussion of West Virginia. What I have here is a way in which we look or could look at West Virginia. It comes from a base map that the West Virginia Geologic Survey has available. That is the river patterns in the state. I have added a few things. I have added the names of the major river systems. The Ohio River forms the boundary between Ohio and West Virginia. I point out that there's one interesting location. You can get a topographic map that just has that particular stretch of the Ohio River and if you ask your students, I would only do this for 6th grade and up. Which way does the Ohio River flow? They'll say, it flows south, everybody knows that. That particular area there's a meander bend and on that map the only part of the river is flowing north. If you look at it there's a big blue arrow right in the middle of the river. The students don't look for it and it's a great learning experience. You say, aha, you thought you knew what it was. That's one of the real problems in science when you think you know what it is you stop looking for it. Assumption is the mother of all screw ups.

The New River coming out of Virginia all the way from North Carolina and the New River once it meets with the Greenbrier River then becomes the Kanawha River. The Kanawha River is a critical river system and then we'll also have the discussion that there is an abandoned channel. This abandoned channel, the Teays Channel, is so pronounced that you can see it from space. Satellite imagery shows this, this channel would accommodate the current Ohio River very easily because it was a river of that size. The river used to flow in this direction, but probably a million years or so ago it was altered and changed in response to the onset of glaciations, though glaciers never entered West Virginia, there were profound effects in this Teays abandoned river system. It's not only in West Virginia. This is th first part of it in the up stream sense, but there are components of this in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. If any of you are familiar with OU, Ohio University in Athen, Ohio, there is a big valley but no river flows through it. The Teays used to flow through it. Now the river has changed and it's the Little Kanawha River and it comes up and joins the Ohio River and comes back to the south. The Monongahela River and also the extensions of the Cheat River. Both the Cheat and the Monongahela River flowing to the north to join with the Allegheny in Pittsburgh. At that location then at the point in downtown Pittsburgh and it goes north as the newly named Ohio River. This system is relatively new geologically speaking because this system all used to drain north probably into the river system that is now the Great Lakes. This system drains south. Around New Martinsville there was a drainage divide but when the ice came down and outwash from the glaciers dammed the rivers and the ice sat in the valley there had to be a new path. It's like filling up a bathtub and it spilled over and cut down through those rocks and today we find that the Ohio River describes a path down to the south and west of the Gulf of Mexico. This is all a result of the events during the Quaternary. Probably the past 2.5 million years. Then moving further to the east the other river systems that you need to know about are the Shenandoah and the Potomac and all the branches of the Shenandoah and the Potomac. In this area the drainage pattern is dramatically different. There are long segments with short little stubby components. This isn't all the streams, to be sure, but in the western part of the state, moving due west, it's called the dendritic drainage pattern because it looks like the dendrites and the tree leaf. Over in the eastern part it's long and narrow with short segments it looks like a trellis. It's a trellis drainage pattern. This is going to help describe the physiographic provinces. Difference in structure and rocks exposed is going to come forth here. I'll also point out before we leave this that the Shenandoah River does actually flow totally within West Virginia. It's not of great length but it does not form the border between West Virginia and Virginia. Loudin County border is the crest of the Blue Ridge. It has a very interesting history. Abraham Lincoln basically decided that this was going to be the border rather than having Loudin County come along with West Virginia in the break from the State of Virginia. Loudin County sympathized 50/50 with the south and the north. He thought it would be way too much so he left Loudin County with the State of Virginia.

Another bit of history, this past Sunday in the Washington Post there was an interesting story that they're planning a huge development of 3,300 homes and the flurry of activity in the eastern panhandle area becoming a bedroom community of Washington, DC. This has not been pleasing in the juxtaposition of history of West Virginia versus the money coming in from out of state.

Dr. Deb: One thing that I've done with students in an 8^th grade science class was I tried to get them to understand where the drainage patterns were. What I did was put a dot on each one of the major river systems and they took a magic marker and each in a group had to take that particular dot and trace it all the way to the Ohio. By outlining that whole thing when you put them together, different colors emerged and they could see exactly where the drainage patterns were for those rivers.

Dr. Bob: That is another way of dividing the State of West Virginia. There's very good reason to do that sort of thing. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does that because they want to differentiate the watershed areas. If you're in Moorefield and you have all this chicken waste that must be disposed of, where is it going to wind up? The watershed to the west and south, or is it going to wind up in the Chesapeake Bay area. It winds up in the Chesapeake Bay area because it flows into the branches of the Potomac and therefore you've got to know these differences. Geologically speaking in trying to reconstruct everything in the past 200 million years, I'm sure this thought is going through your mind, it is altogether now the second oldest river in the world. The oldest being the Nile. We don't know that. We do not have an absolute dating technique to measure that, to quantify that. Suffice to say, that it is a river that is exposing very old rock but there are many rivers exposing even older rock. That does not make the river old. The river is cutting across structures so the river must be younger than the structures. It must be younger than the creation of the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains are 250 some million years, that's an old river then, isn't it? Not necessarily. Rivers are generated and created in response to the tectonic activities but there may have well been a time early in the phase of the creation of the mountains when the whole thing just drained in a different direction. The ultimate, the final pattern, is the one we see now but it isn't the final of all time. Just a snapshot in time. Therefore, we have no absolute dating techniques to specify the New River as the oldest river in the world.

Because, there is structure and deformation, we have different physiographic provinces. The major physiographic provinces is the Appalachian Plateaus. It is over 2/3s of the state or more. It happens to be the drainage for the most part this dendritic drainage pattern. Then there's a separate little area in here and this is all branches of the Cheat River. The rocks are gently folded in this section, as a result, the drainage is a transition between true trellis and the dendritic. It's like taking the dendritic drainage and pulling it and stretching it so that the rivers tend to be kind of long and then have tributaries rather then being short and stubby. The Cheat and it's tributaries are in this open fold section. If you look at the rocks, the rocks tend to be folded, but it's a broad fold, many miles between. The rocks in the Appalachian Plateaus in general are more flat lying. This particular segment which we call often the Open Fold Segment, those rocks show the gentle folds. In the eastern part of the state where the trellis drainage exists, that trellis drainage goes all the way down to Beckley, the topography is valley and ridge. The Great Valley in the eastern panhandle is a separate component and that great valley extends down into Virginia up into Pennsylvania and across into Maryland. It is broad, it is rather flat lying and undulating, it includes area in and around Martinsburg and a bit west and east Charles Town. The reason is that the rock is limestone. Not only have the rivers cut in this valley but also solution weathering, or dissolution as we talked about it, has created a broad flatter topography. Because the topography is not great in that Great Valley the rivers and specifically the Shenandoah and it's tributaries, the rivers tend to meander rather markedly because there is a very low gradient. A river flowing in this case to the north eventually to join with the Potomac at Harpers Ferry that a river is able to do work and accommodate the volume and the load in this river by meandering back and forth and taking a very sinuous path. It looks almost twice as long as the straight line distance between point A to point B but this is way it accommodates the energy that needs to be taken care of. Then there's a little section, the Blue Ridge. This actually is a very, very sturdy, singular looking ridge. It looks like a giant anticline but the rocks here are very, very old. They are Cambrian and perhaps some of them are also Precambrian. They're at least in the 500 million year range. The Blue Ridge extends further to the east, the Blue Ridge itself is the border between the states of Virginia and West Virginia. Physiographic provinces set the stage for the different types of natural areas and parks that we find. The last thing I'd like to do is to remind you of this...in the valley and ridge, in general, you'll see the older Paleozoic rocks. Primarily, from the Cambrian, way to the east up through and including the Devonian. In the plateaus we find primarily some Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and occasionally the Permian. Once in a while we may see a hint of the Devonian because of erosion of one of the structures or deeper erosion but by and large it's the younger rocks. In both areas there will be in some places a mantle of Quaternary age deposits. Over the past 2 million years the accumulation of unconsolidated materials sitting in the drainage, sitting as terraces against a river or sitting in poorly drained areas, thus creating wetlands throughout the State of West Virginia. So the older rocks of the Paleozoic, Cambrian, Ordovician's, Silurian, Devonian, that is what you'll see in the valley and ridge. The younger rocks in the plateaus. There is quite often in the natural areas a sameness in the types of parks and what you'll see in the parks in the Appalachian Plateaus. There's a basin, accumulation area, that was forming when Africa was colliding with the eastern part of North America. If you think about this it makes all the sense in the world. As Africa and North America started to collide the crunch created a downward dip well back on the continent that was being collided with. Africa is pushing and pushing and pushing and there is a bowing of the land and therefore as this land builds it supplied great volumes of sediment into this particular basin. We give it the name, a specific geologic name from a site that's right along the Mon County and Pennsylvania area, it's called the Dunkard Basin. At Dunkard Basin is it Permian or is it the latest, Pennsylvanian? In older maps it will always show it as Permian. In pollen work and current research done at the WV Geological Survey in conjunction with Kentucky and elsewhere around the world, this is not just a scientific problem in West Virginia, but it looks more and more like it's the uppermost Pennsylvanian.

Dr. Deb: Which is a good point to make to students and that is that science improves on itself. The more research we have the more we know and we correct our mistakes. We do make mistakes.

Dr. Bob: We talk about consensus. This is a beautiful thing to remember, a quick statement. It didn't come from an author but it is not mine. It really should be attributed to someone out there. We do not know, as scientists work with theories, we do not know which theory will prevail much less which theory is right. So often we expect scientists to show us right from wrong whereas a theory is generated and we gather data to support the theory. If the data overwhelms the theory we set that theory aside and back up to the proverbial drawing board, we have a new theory. That's what scientists really do. This Dunkard Basin with the potential age of Permian or Pennsylvanian is really one of those examples.

We are about ready to study sites and use the RESA sites as a general rule of thumb. You probably know your RESA site. You don't have to memorize any of this. It's numbered from the southern part of the state. Mostly in the Appalachian Plateaus but a little thin line of the Valley and Ridge in Region I. Region II, all Appalachian Plateaus. Region III, all Appalachian Plateaus. Region IV, half and half but it's really hard in Greenbrier and Pocahontas County to have a precise line drawn between the Appalachian Plateaus to the west and the Valley and Ridge to the east.

Dr. Deb: The Allegheny Front seems to just kind of disappear.

Dr. Bob: There is a form, a landform, called the Allegheny Front or Allegheny Structural Front it just seems to disappear and after you drive west to east all of a sudden you say, this is Valley and Ridge. Where did I run into it? Beautiful Pocahontas County is somewhere in there. Region V, this is all the Appalachian Plateaus including in the northern portion some of that Dunkard Basin. Region VI is all Appalachian Plateaus and all Dunkard Basin. Dunkard Basin was southwestern Pennsylvania, the northern panhandle of WV and southeastern Ohio. Region VII is a huge area and a great number of counties, this is for the most part a combination of the Appalachian Plateaus that the rocks are pretty much flat lying to the west and then the Cheat River drainage where it is that transition. There are anticlines and synclines and structures. Then Region VIII is the region of the eastern panhandle. It includes a little skinny piece of the Appalachian Plateaus but the rest of it is valley and ridge and then at the very tip of Jefferson County. We have some of the actual Blue Ridge in the state of West Virginia.

Let's take a break now we've got a whirlwind tour over West Virginia. We've talked about the drainage, given a brief understanding of the structure as the closure of Africa and North America, the end of the Paleozoic. Tune in and we'll start doing a spin through the RESA areas and not everyone but talk about the salient features of natural areas that could be visited very close to home.

(BREAK)

Dr. Bob: Back again ready to roll. One of the things that we want to do again is that I mentioned some things about the New River Gorge and we're going to start in the RESA Centers down in the southern part of the state. Deb, you've pulled up some really valuable info, could you share that with everyone?

Dr. Deb: On the opening page for the Geologic Survey web site you don't go to the Geoscience Education section, you go to West Virginia Geology and click on the button and go to the New River Gorge and then the Geology of the New River Gorge and you'll find a really nice article on the New River. If you go all the way to the end there's a nice map of the New River and just below that is the question of the age of the New River has been debated. There's five salient points and five calculations ranging anywhere from 3 million to 320 million years. It's a nice resource if you'd like to check that out and continue the argument.

Dr. Bob: What is interesting and also confusing, if you look at a raised relief diagram of WV where the New River Gorge is, there's a big bulge. It's high country down there and it's not high country in response to the building of the Appalachian Mountains. Something happened during the Cenozoic to cause a bulge. Is there a hot spot beneath there? No evidence of that although there are some igneous rocks in West Virginia. There are some intrusive, igneous rocks from the past 20 million years or so but their very, very minor locations to actually see those rocks exposed. The new river gorge is a very steep walled reminiscent of a youthful stream. It's really a v-shaped gorge but the real problem with all of this is if you go to the Federal Center at the New River Bridge they have a video and it shows glaciers in West Virginia and all kinds of things and it gives an impression, the wrong impression, glaciers never entered West Virginia. We still look for data, it would be fun to find that data. We have absolutely no evidence that it came closer then about 20 miles at the very northern part of the Northern Panhandle. It was still in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The debate about the age of the New River is one that we can't solve. We don't have absolute dating techniques but a river the size of the New River takes geologically a relatively short period of time to create if the river cuts through the cap rock sandstone and gets down into weaker rocks, that's exactly what we have in the New River Gorge. If you get down to the lower part there is an armor of coarse sandstone and so forth but overall it's kind of weak down there. You have that site and location and now what we have here is an exploded view of the RESA Centers in West Virginia. Let's start in the southern part in RESA Center I and what I have done I have just written some things on the county outlines and we're only going to take selected items, trying to get at least one often two in every county. I will be pointing them out and we'll be talking about this.

There are both state forests, such as Panther State Forest in McDowell County, R.D. Bailey Lake along the border in Wyoming County and then in Raleigh there's the Beckley Coal Mine. It's a nice little historic situation. It's a fun little tour and you do go in a little car in the dark and it's well worth it.

Dr. Deb: You get a feel for being underground.

Dr. Bob: We want to focus on one specifically. We will take one or two in each of RESA areas. The one we wanted to look at, Pinnacle State Park. Deb, you were there recently.

Dr. Deb: Last summer I took a trip down to the Cumberland Gap area and on the way down I had never been to Pinnacle Rock. There's a park that's been left unvisited so it's a little out of the way. It's just off the interstate if you go on I-77 and go west on 460 near Bluefield. It's on Route 52 near the little town of Bramwell. It's a nice park with a nice hiking area. It an all natural park. A big sandstone outcrop of Mississippian age. The unfortunate part is that it is right on Route 52 and that's a major thoroughfare for cars going by to get down to Bramwell. You hear a lot of traffic noise. Look both ways before pulling out of this parking lot cause it's right in a curve. It's kind of tricky getting out of there. That's an example of a really nice park that you can take your students to and take a look at geology. It's off the road and a pavilion there for picnic tables.

Dr. Bob: How close can you get to the base because some of those rocks would fall off? That's the history of it

Dr. Deb: Everybody obviously walks right up to the base. There's nothing to keep you from walking over.

Dr. Bob: From a geologist point of view it's an erosional remnant. There must have been a lot of debris, the sandstone blocks should have been around the base unless there's a carbonate cementing agent and it could be now...

Dr. Deb: Being in the Mississippian age rock where we know there's lots and lots of carbonates, having a carbonate cement wouldn't surprise me.

Dr. Bob: This is Maxon sandstone and you can see that it almost looks like it was built rock upon rock but it is very thin beds. It is part of a sedimentary sequence in between or within the dominant carbonates of Mississippi time and there were very large deltas that were formed in the southern part of the state in Mississippian time. Bramwells an historic place too. That's where the old coal barons lived. Take some time to engage in the history of that area too.

We'll revisit this general location in the southern part of the state when we have the very last session together with respect to the disposal of radioactive waste because there was one citizen, formerly lived in West Virginia, and he suggested that in the southern part of the state we would get money from the Federal Government to temporarily store radioactive waste. Then we could build new roads. We'd build them straight. We would generate all kinds of money for the state of West Virginia. Needless to say, this suggestion came just from a citizen without any contact with state leaders or anything, we do not store radioactive waste in West Virginia.

Region II, we'll move on up. We're now looking at an area from Mingo and Logan county up through Lincoln and Wayne, Cabell and all the way up into Mason County. Geologically it is essentially in the Pennsylvanian age capstone rocks with some coal mining in the area. In the southern part a great deal of coal mining. Major cities, down in Williamson, it gets flooded. If you're in that region look at terraces and different levels and the controls and the attempts to diminish the danger and the loss of property from the flooding. There's a couple of lakes. But I'd like to feature first of all, Logan. You do want to be careful if you use the WalMart site there. There is on the northern end of the WalMart and actually curving all the way behind the stores massive, massive high wall. Those are clastic sandstones forming that high wall and all the way from the WalMart, 119 N. into Charleston, massive roadcuts where they have exposed the sandstones. The Pennsylvanian at this time, rivers depositing those sandstones, but in the WalMart if you walk over on the north end, they have yet to put in another building there, you will find a coal seam. If you walk straight back from the WalMart and close to the coal seam, I would keep the kids away from the high wall because it is steep, you will actually see a stalk of a 200 million year old tree in the Pennsylvanian sitting within the coal units. It is really spectacular. Then there are other things that you can walk along all the way to the back and you find some really fascinating evidence in the sandstone blocks that might be down there. Some really interesting evidence of a tidal, an interaction in the sandstones of tidal change. It is really spectacular behind this WalMart. Be careful, again.

Then, the Big Ugly wildlife management area in Lincoln County. Then Cabwaylingo State Park is in Wayne County. Sometimes the lakes and reservoirs are marvelous little sites. Beechfork Lake. I'd like to focus again on Cabell County. Right through Cabell County and on into Putnam County is the Teays Valley. The streams gently, very small streams getting bigger and bigger towards the Ohio, flowing to the west. The rest of the Teays Valley the streams flow to the east. The width of the Teays Valley as seen from space or from a local topographic map or from your West Virginia Gazetteer, you can do a compare and contrast of the width of the stream valley to the current width of the Ohio Valley. Then project that that was carrying the water that used to drain out in that direction towards the Ohio in the west. When we were at the WVSTA in Charleston this past fall, we didn't get all the way out into the Cabell County but we were still in some of the regions in and around Putnam County and we took the time to actually do a cross section, a valley profile. Your students would find that to be an excellent exercise. I know the teachers did. In the Teays Valley at the present time from Teays Post Office, Scott Depot, and so forth, in places there are great, great thicknesses of slack water deposits or silts and clays from an old river. This lake was probably a million years old. It's been a long, long time since this valley was last occupied. Some of the deposits are reversely magnetized. If you build in that area, you're going to have a backyard that doesn't drain real well. If you want to do some permeability and porosity, it's very nicely done in that area. In Mason County, I would point out, that you can stop off somewhere in the area of the Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area. Many times the wildlife management areas do not have the roads and facilities to really be used. Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, even though it's on the Ohio side, at Gallipolis the restructuring of the lock and dam system was needed because toes, in high water flow, would be pulled and pushed against the dam. They did an entire new lock and dam system. Most of the Ohio River is on about 20, 30, 40 feet of sand, gravel, and occasional boulder. The material right down in the heart of that is only in the 30,000, 20,000 year age bracket. It's very young. It's the last glaciation that has been in charge of the dynamics in the center of the basin, but the old terraces up on the edge, they are very old in terms of they are beyond Carbon 14 dating techniques. Maybe 100,000 or 200,000 and so forth. The problem in the Teays Valley as I see it, engages the discussion between environmental concerns and working with the geology because this is being built at an extraordinary rate and the soils don't accept water, there are drainage problems. If you buy a house in the valley you'll have many more problems then if the house is perched up on the valley wall. There are interesting, interesting problems. Furthermore, the river that drains this now, the Little Kanawha River and the Kanawha River itself, goes up in the Winfield Lock and Dam. They did the same thing there, they had to relocate the lock and dam because of the narrowness, they were having a back up of barges. Before they could start that there was an environmental site because of chemicals, carcinogenic chemicals in the sediments leaking out of old batteries. There was an old repair operation there. They had to take care of the soils first of all. This is an interesting site, the Winfield Lock and Dam site. In the Kanawha River Valley the sequence, you can spend a lot of time looking at the terraces in the Kanawha River Valley and then going out the west, the occupation sites too, on the terraces in and around St. Albans. Some marvelous archeological sites in the St. Albans area. Clay County is a bit isolated here but there are some beautiful meanders on the Elk River.

Ok, number IV. Now these are some counties of great note. First of all, Greenbrier County has one of the great exposures, the Mississippian age Greenbrier formation (MGR). It's a limestone. This county alone accounts for significant portion of the caves and the Greenbrier limestone has an enormous number of caves in it throughout the state wherever it's exposed. So Lost World Caverns in Lewisburg, for example, you can see the evidence of sinkholes. In downtown Lewisburg periodically they have the problem of the collapse because the underground, the limestone has been dissolved and the roof caves in as they withdraw more and more of the groundwater. Beartown is a site I call special attention to. It is administered by the Droop Mountain Battlefield ranger. Droop Mountain is in Pocahontas County. They are fairly close, only about a 10 minute drive. Beartown is a situation where the lower Pennsylvanian sandstone caps the bluff and then down below you get some shales and eventually the Greenbrier limestone and that has weathered away and these big blocks of limestone are sliding off and create a beautiful rock city environment. You walk well designed, very sturdy, safe, boardwalk area where you walk all through here. It is one of the hidden gems in West Virginia. If your interested in the vegetation, its always damp and cool. What is interesting is that are very few birds which suggests to me there are very few insects down there. I don't know if it's been sprayed or it's the ecosystem that does not seem to have the complete...

Dr. Deb: There's not a lot of vegetation down there in terms of cover and trees and shrubs. You have to get up on the tops of the rocks is where you'll find the birds. There are small little ecosystems there.

Dr. Bob: If there's one park that you should really go to is Beartown. Right on the border between Greenbrier and Pocahontas County. In Fayette County, the New River Gorge, Hawks Nest, the New River Bridge, Babcock State Park, a wealth of sites in this little arc to stop and look and listen and learn about the erosion of the New River Gorge and the rocks of the area. Nicholas County, some very nice sites but their relatively small. There's a little Civil War battlefield, Carnifex Ferry, Summersville Dam. Are you aware of the fact that at the base of the dam they're putting in a hydroelectric power plant. A very small plant to supply Summersville. It will only be operated if there is sufficient water to draw out of the reservoir. If that power plant had been up and operating this past summer, with the drought, it wouldn't have been operating. They would have had to shut it down. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working on building this. The Gauley River is an absolutely spectacular river system. Below the dam it's still wild. At one time they had suggested and proposed another dam at Swiss, but fortunately they never put that in because the gorge below Summersville Dam just runs out from the dam, you have the reservoir behind and then this deep, beautiful, still very natural gorge beyond it. Craigsville, an interesting location. There's Krupperneck Bend (sp.) just south of Craigsville. A beautiful, beautiful meander, close and tight. It has an excellent overview on the road there and I'd recommend it. It rivals some of the goosenecks of the San Juan River in the Colorado Plateau. Another location you can see tight meanders like is at the Breaks State Park, in Kentucky, but it's close to the Kentucky/West Virginia border.

Then, Pocahontas County, gosh, what a beautiful county. Tucker County ranks right up there too as does Pendleton. Several of these counties are spectacular. First of all, Cranberry Glades. It's in the upper reaches of the Gauley River drainage system. We'll talk about another glade system where there is a boardwalk where you can walk out. Cranberry Glades, if you've never been there, you owe it to yourself to go look at it.

The Green Bank is right there in Pocahontas, the NRAO. There's some beautiful geology there. Deer Creek is not real big.

Dr. Deb: I was there two weeks ago and you can see stream deposits everywhere along that. It's small. You can walk across it. It's maybe 20 yards across and very shallow.

Dr. Bob: We're going to start doing some research there. Then, Cass Scenic Railroad. Because we're going to have a team of the honor's students at WVU with some of the teachers in the Green Bank area, who have been through RockCamp, and they are going to team up in a mentor relationship to do the research. Cass Scenic Railroad, Snowshoe, a big flap going on in that area. Are they going to put a quarry in this area? Limestone quarry is the big...why do they want a limestone quarry there? Because of aggregate. It has place value. If you can cut down on the cost of shipping, and if Corridor H is built, that's going to be real close by. We shall see about that. Then there's Durbin and Bartow. There's all kinds of little railroads. There's a fascinating little railroad and if you ever get a chance to take that, it's an old yellow engine and a flat car or two and it's an interesting little ride down the tracks. The beauty of it is that the tracks were completely washed out in the 1985 flood. The guy and his wife have rebuilt that. It's a labor of love.

Dr. Deb: There's another one on the top of Cheat Mountain, Salamander or whatever it's called.

Dr. Bob: It's becoming a real interesting area of those types of things. Webster County, you have lots of national forests throughout this region. Much of the area is covered by national forests. Holly River State Park, you have some possibilities there. The Burnsville Wildlife Management, the Elk River in Braxton County, and the Sutton Dam. Any of these sites have some potential in the State of West Virginia.

Moving on to V, we've got lots of counties here again. In Roane County there's some natural bridges but they are on private land so we'll not give you any more of the details of that. Calhoun, there's a little county park there. In Jackson, at Ravenswood, because it's a private corporation company, where you come into the aluminum plant, right there at the entrance where they have they're little park there are old sand dunes. There are even wind blown lust deposits in that area. Old grindstone quarries in Jackson County. Some slides and slips on some of the new little roadways they've cut. Wirt, North Bend, the Hughes River, the Palestine Fish Hatchery is there. Ritchie County, the Ritchie Mines where there is solid hydrocarbon that had been mined for many years, some of the material used in Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. A solid hydrocarbon from the Ritchie Mines. Ellenboro, along Rt. 50, neat little stop. You've got to go see the marble baking machine at Ellenboro. It is fascinating. I had engineering professors from WVU stop by there and they were fascinated. It was hard to pull them away watching them make marbles. Did you know that West Virginia used to be the marble making capitol of the world. We've since lost that title but as recently as the 1970s we were still making more marbles. In this particular site they're making decorative marbles. There are three different types of marbles. There are play type marbles, decorative type marbles, and then there are the marbles that they use in the spray cans or paint cans when you shake them. They are industrial type marbles. In Wood County some fascinating history about the oil and gas because of the Burning Springs Anticline. The Burning Springs Anticline can be seen, its just a relatively small anticline but the history of the oil and gas industry, you can stop off at a marvelous museum. It's like you're basement and attic. It's in an old hardware store in downtown Parkersburg. I recommend it highly. It's just chock full of things stashed everywhere. If you have some time visit the museum and take the ferry boat ride to Parkers out to Blennerhassett Island. When you're down there you'll see the flood wall and you have to walk through the flood wall and realize how dominant the Ohio River is with respect to the city of Parkersburg and life in the city of Parkersburg. The north end of Parkersburg you can see the water plant and a field, looks like giant created sewer tower, but really they're tall towers to protect the well field from which Parkersburg gets it's well water. It's a well farm but they built up the towers because it's out on the flood plain and you don't flood waters to get down into the well head. When the Ohio River floods there are problems folks. Beautiful sites through there.

Then, Pleasants County and along with Wood County and up into Tyler County, it's one of the gems, is the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge. There are a tremendous number of islands, most of them are in West Virginia but they do run all the way in the Ohio even into Kentucky. Tyler County and Sistersville. The old oil industry, to see the old oil and gas industry in that area. See the pictures the turn of the last century, not the most recent one. Oil wells and gas wells used to be everywhere in that area.

RESA VI in the northern panhandle. Again in Wetzel County. You see Paden City in the Ohio River and New Martinsville where the drainage divide. It's kind of hard to really see it but it's rather narrow right there. The Ohio River divides in that area. Moundsville, a big re-entrant where the Ohio River used to flow and Grave Creek Mound and a nice museum. You can go see old Sparky right across the street. Old Sparky is right across the street from the Grave Creek Mound State Park. You go in and see lots of great artifacts, old Sparky was the electric chair. The prison is right across, Moundsville Prison. In Ohio County, Oglebay is a nice facility and some interesting flood problems from Wheeling Creek. That's a real interesting problem. There's an Ames site up in Brooke County that you'd find itemized in Gasper Burns book on fossils. Then in Weirton and Hancock county there's a great meander scar because the old steel industry is in an old channel of the Ohio River but which way did the Ohio River flow when that channel was cut? Most likely it flowed to the north not to the south. Again the Ohio River, how old is this Ohio River up in this age? It's older then the 15,000 or 20,000 years that you hear about. It probably was a result of some of those earlier glaciations, maybe as much as 780,000 years but we don't have an absolute date. The older terraces are at least Illinoians. It's at least a couple hundred thousand years old but may go as old as 800,000. Then up in Hancock County you can see some neat sand deposits right along, in a safe place, along the side of the road. Most of the old sand and gravel deposits are covered over. Of course, go see the bridge and the connecting link to Ohio. There's an archeological site in Pennsylvania that you might go to also. You can find in these sands and gravels, igneous and metamorphic rock but it's in the sands and gravels. Chester is right up there at the crest but those materials are from Canada. They were brought down by the glacier. The ice front was in the border of Pennsylvania and Ohio. It's only about 20 miles but when the ice melted it distributed these igneous and metamorphic rocks throughout the valley. It's really a neat little location to include.

Roman numeral VII. A vast area and I'm not going to pick up all of these but Jackson's Mill is one possibility down in Lewis County. We get some natural bridges in Upshur County. In Randolph County the Valley Bends Wetlands Area, Blister Run Swamp is another one. One of the things we have great quantities of are both the wetlands and caves. Think of those as excellent sites. Then Audra State Park which is a pretty little park, what a gem in Barbour County. Valley Falls State Park along Taylor and Marion counties is excellent. Be careful it can be dangerous. The rocks can be slippery. You've got to watch out with the kids at all times. It's not much of a fall but it's very, very pretty and provide some danger. There's a neat site for the Ames fossil collecting in Mon. County along a safe entrance ramp to the interstate, down in Sabraton. Then Coopers Rock State Forest and Park is along the border between Preston and Mon county. A well know site for lots of great things. Swallow Falls is really in Maryland but it's close enough to look at. Cathedral State Park, trees. Beautiful. Virgin hemlock stand, just a really nice quiet area to go look.

Dr. Deb: You forgot the swamp...Cranesville.

Dr. Bob: Cranesville swamp has a boardwalk, a must see opportunity in the northern part. Excellently done. There's a brochure on it put out by the Nature Conservancy.

In Randolph County, Valley Bend Wetlands Areas, the Blister Run Swamp, and old Tucker County, Blackwater Falls State Park, Canaan Valley State Park, Dolly Sods and Bear Rocks. What everyone needs to do is come to our meeting. When is our meeting down there in Canaan? That is the NAGT meeting.

Dr. Deb: May 18-21.

Dr. Bob: Then, Pendleton County, what a beautiful county. Spruce Knob, Seneca Rocks, Greenland Gap, Germany Valley. Spectacular things extending up into Grant County. Smoke Hole Cavern, Lost River State Park over in Hardy County. There's a beautiful fossil collecting site in Mineral County just south of Keyser in the Narrows area. Morgan County, Cacapon State Park, beautiful Tuscarora sandstone exposed on the mountain tops. Berkeley and Jefferson county and of course Harpers Ferry. The junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah. Excellent, excellent site. Don't shortchange the Harpers Ferry site. While you're there do the history of Civil War too. Antietam just north in Maryland is well worth it.

Well, that's a quick spin. We didn't get to discuss making your own. We'll pick that up again because we want to spend a couple minutes and do that right. In two weeks we'll pick that up. Next week, bring along your bag of samples, the rocks. We're going to talk about them in greater detail when Jack Renton and I are again for the adjuncts. So until that time, it's time to leave.

Dr. Deb: Don't forget to turn your quizzes in by March 25^th.

Dr. Bob: Take care, see you next time.

WVGES Education Specialist, Tom Repine (repine@wvgs.wvnet.edu)

Page last revised: March 2000

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