Field Trips
The Geology Dept. offers a number of trips within and outside of the United States to see geological features first hand. Following is a sampling of the places and sites that were recently visited by Kansas University faculty and students. This page is a work in progress, so comments and suggestions are very welcome. Please direct them to our
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Book Cliffs Field Trip
Southern California - Mapping in Southern California
Bahamas - Modern Carbonates of Florida and the Bahamas
Guadalupes - Permian Basin Carbonates
Great Lakes - Precambrian of North America
Mexico - Cretaceous Carbonates
Book Cliffs - Sequence Stratigraphy
An 8-day field seminar in sequence stratigraphy is held in September, in the Book Cliffs of eastern Utah. During the field seminar students are introduced to concepts in sequence stratigraphy, including parasequence recognition and variability in outcrop, correlation of parasequences, recognition of parasequence stacking patterns to identify systems tracts, and expression and recognition of sequence boundaries and incised valleys.
Typical Outcrop Expression
Parasequence Exposures
Sequence Boundary and Incised Valley
Mapping in Southern California
Every other year a group of students are taken to southern California for advanced field mapping experience. The areas of study are chosen to be geologically challenging and to present research opportunities to the students. After two weeks in the field over winter break, students compile their mapping and put together a regional tectonic framework. Students are exposed to computer-based mapping techniques.
Modern Carbonates of Florida and the Bahamas
Study of modern environments of carbonate deposition provides powerful insights into carbonate facies in the rocks. South Florida and the Great Bahama Banks are a natural laboratory for study of sedimentary processes and facies on a regional scale. A week-long field trip provides the opportunity to snorkel through environments ranging from reefs, shelf-margin skeletal and oolitic sands, open-platform pellet sands, to semi-restricted inner shelf mudbanks. Important adjacent environments include tidal flats and beaches of Andros Island and lacustrine carbonates and mangrove peats of the Everglades. Shallow cores and Pleistocene exposures provide the third and fourth dimensions of time and depth in the development of carbonate facies.
Acropora Palmata reef, Andros Island, Bahamas
Diving in Rat Cay blue hole, Andros Island, Bahamas
Porites Porites, Rat Cay blue hole, Andros Island, Bahamas
Forfar field station campsite, Andros Island, Bahamas
Guadalupe and Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico
This course will involve a trip (October 23 - Nov 1) to southern New Mexico and west Texas to visit classic exposures in the Sacramento and Guadalupe Mountains. We will examine a stratigraphic section that ranges from Ordovician to Triassic and includes some of the more famous outcrops in North America. Stratigraphic highlights include some incredible exposures of Mississippian bioherms, a cyclic succession that marks a Pennsylvanian shelf margin, the spectacular exhumed Permian reef, backreef, slope and basinal succession, and some of the Permian evaporites filling the basin. The exposures will allow elucidation of basic concepts of sequence stratigraphy, tectonic evolution of North America, evolution of carbonate facies through time, and tectonic controls on sedimentation.
The major tectonic elements that affected the stratigraphic succession and that will be exposed and studied will be the southern tip of the transcontinental arch, the Pennsylvanian Orogrande basin and Pedernal Uplift and the late Paleozoic Delaware Basin. The tectonic history we will be able to interpret from these rocks will include a period of tectonic quiescence from Ordovician to Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian uplift of the ancestral Rockies, probable Laramide thrusting and intrusion, followed by Basin and Range block faulting and intrusion. The trip will also include side excursions to White Sands National Monument and to Carlsbad Caverns.
Foresets in the Capitan, Guadalupe Mountains
Muleshoe Mound, a Mississippian "Waulsortian" Buildup, Sacramento Mountains
Phylloid Algal Mound in the Permian Laborcita Formation, Sacramento Mountains
End of the day at White Sands National Monument
Great Lakes Precambrian Geology Field Trip
The field trip commonly leaves on Saturday of Labor Day weekend and returns on or before Sunday the following weekend. We normally go from Lawrence to western Wisconsin, and then through central and northeastern Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, and cross into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie, continuing eastward to Sudbury and vicinity. We usually visit (a) granite, gneiss, metasediments, and metavolcanics of a typical Archean granite-greenstone terrane in the Canadian shield north of Sault Ste. Marie (Wawa area), (b) Early Proterozoic supracrustal rocks of Upper Michigan (Marquette Range Supergroup) and Ontario (Huronian Supergroup), including banded iron formations and the Gowganda tillite, (c) Keweenawan volcanic and sedimentary rocks on the east shore of Lake Superior, (d) Grenville gneisses east of Sudbury, (e) the Sudbury impact structure, and (f) Penokean orogenic rocks and the Wolf River batholith in Wisconsin. We spend most of our evenings in campgrounds, so warm and dry camping gear is essential; however, several campground used have showers and laundry facilities.
Cretaceous Carbonates of Mexico
Steep-sided, isolated carbonate platforms analogous to the Great Bahama Banks develoded in Mexico during the Middle Cretaceous (Albian-Cenomanian). Platform-interior, reef, slope, and basinal limestones are wonderfully preserved in exceptional exposures in the Sierra El Abra and the Sierra Madre Oriental. These rocks have been a research focus of KU faculty and students since 1983 and have been studied by many other geologists since the 1920Ěs. A week-long field trip also includes Lower Cretaceous carbonates in the Monterrey area where low-relief platforms prograded many kilometers over shallow basinal limestones.
Oil-stained cyclic limestones
Exotic reef block embedded in basinal limestones
Rudist reef with marine cement
Lower Cretaceous platform limestones on the flank of a gypsum cored fold
