Pegrum Lecture : Late Pleistocene Ice and Outburst Floods in the Arkansas River Valley, Colorado

Given By: Nicholas Young of the SUNY Buffalo Geology Department

Mr. Young, one of the UB Geology graduate students, was kind enough to deliver a lecture on one of his side projects he's working on with Dr. Briner.

Beryllium-10 has a well constained production rate, i.e. the Be-10 totals on the surface of a rock can be used to determine how long said rock has been exposed. This dating technique is useful in that it doesn't give the age of the rock itself, but the time it has been in its present location (ideally). During the Last Glacial Maximum a glacier from the Sawatch Range, Colarado expanded to the Arkansas River Valley to impound a large lake. Flood terraces identified down-valley have been the focus of this research to determine the flood timing. Mr. Young used the Be-10 method after collecting samples of boulders on the flood terraces.

Hypothesis:
Clear creek and Pine creek glaciers crossed the Arkansas river, damming a large lake and terraces correlate to the Bull lake and Pinedale glaciations.

Conclusions:
1. Terraces formed during the Pinedale Glaciation
2. There were four Pleistocene advances
3. 17.3 Ka is not in the morraine record
4. 15.2 Ka is unique
5. Be-10 dating is reliable
- Be-10 saturation limit is ~10 Ma

Departmental Halloween Festivness

Shame on those who didnt dress up ;)

Pumpkins Gone Wild!!

Several crafty members of the UB GGSA got together October 18th to carve up some fun times and represent some Halloween holiday cheer.

Trevi and Nik prepare thier canvases...

Trevi's homage to Bacchus or the grad student's horn of plenty? On the lower right is Sonja's favorite muppet drummer!

Jessica's truly frightening pumpkin made to look even scarier by my obvious lack of photography skills....

Nice effects eh?

Kelley and Emily's pumpkin goodness. Will having a Marxist pumpkin in my house make the Right call me a communist ? Its ok, the kickass grim reaper Emily carved has my back.

Nik is obviously a Nihlist.

Useful puppy tool #9: Pumpkin goo cleaner up crew

Welcome

Hi everybody, this is just a trial run to see if a blog would be useful for Graduate Geology Club event planning, etc. The calendar at the bottom of the page is pretty handy, if you click on an event, you are taken to an events page that has maps, rsvp capability, and more information about the event. Eventually this will all be put on a website rather than a blog, but while that is being set up, this will function as a website.

Sarah
Graduate Geology Club President