First day of field work in Undirhlíðar Quarry

mpollock July 1, 2011 6:33 pm

HAFNARFJORDUR, ICELAND: Guest Blogger: Lindsey Bowman

Today Travis, Dr. Pollock and I started our field work in Undirhlíðar Quarry. It was cold, windy and rainy- perfect for our new rain gear!

Geochemists at work

We started mapping the quarry walls in detail where Becky Alcorn ’11 left off, and made it along the East wall in about six hours. We observed some gorgeous pillow lavas, the most abundant formation in the quarry.

Pillow from the East wall

Undirhlíðar is much larger than I had originally imagined it (certainly a  grander scale than Estonian quarries). Here’s a great picture taken by Travis:

Undirhlíðar quarry wall under consideration by Dr. Pollock and Lindsey Bowman

To brighten up this post, I’d like to nod to the colorful and abundant flora of Iceland. Barren? I think not.

Nootka Lupin outside Undirhlithar

Wood crane's bill

The only fauna that we’ve seen besides seagulls are these unfortunate fish- species unknown.

Dried fish- yummy!

Finally, below is a video taken by Travis today to give you an idea of Undirhlíðar in 3D-

Tomorrow we head to Vatnsskarth to continue our field work!

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Tiny bit of wildlife on Hiiumaa

Mark Wilson July 1, 2011 10:12 am

KÄINA, ESTONIA–This is a shout-out to our Wooster Geology colleagues currently working on the barren volcanic island of Iceland. We thought they might want a break from the bleak expanses of black basalt for a little color of wildlife from Estonia. The creature above, of course, is a grasshopper we found in our quarry today.

This colorful moth seems to specialize in the nectar of a common thistle here. It is a Six-Spot Burnet (Zygaena filipendulae).

A native bee on a daisy.

And delicious wild strawberries every day!

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Quarry time on Hiiumaa

Mark Wilson July 1, 2011 10:00 am

KÄINA, ESTONIA–Rachel, Nick and I worked today in our lonely quarry on Hiiumaa measuring and describing this section of Lower Silurian (Llandovery, Rhuddanian) rocks and fossils. This is the fieldwork for Rachel’s Senior Independent Study.

One of the dilemmas is the nature of the lower interbedded limestones and shales. In places they show gently sloping beds and curved tops as here. Does this indicate some sort of mud mound or bioherm? Or is it a function of slumping in the quarry itself? (I'm leaning toward the latter.)

The fossils here are excellent, including corals and bryozoans. (Just because I could I expanded the image of the mite!)

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Cafe Hopping in Reykjavik

mpollock June 30, 2011 12:58 pm

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND – [Guest bloggers Travis and Lindsey] So we made it to Reykjavik at around 0930 GST. Myself and Lindsey had about maybe 30 minutes of sleep on the plane and were subsequently exhausted. After checking into our guesthouse and shopping for our meals we decided to head into Reykjavik, the capitol city of Iceland. As soon as we parked we headed straight for the nearest cafe to grab a strongly caffeinated beverage. So now we are moving down the main drag moving from cafe to cafe drinking latte after latte. It’s not working too well:

Long flight-no sleep!

Our “inn” is much more like a hostel and we were surprised when we saw the size of our room! It’s basically an octagonal auditorium with vaulted ceilings. We are lucky enough to have the giant space to ourselves; our hostess told us that usually there are many more guests. We will be practicing our I.S. presentations on our very own projector screen in our “guest room” of sorts. The setting of the inn is gorgeous, right near the small harbor in Hafnarfjordur and with some small basalt outcrops in the front yard to remind us of why we’re here.

Travis shows the scale of our giant auditorium/room!

Tomorrow, we start field work in the pillow quarries. Stay tuned!

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A second new Senior Independent Study project begins in Estonia

Mark Wilson June 30, 2011 10:51 am

KÄINA, ESTONIA–Today we moved our geological investigations from Saaremaa to the island to the north: Hiiumaa. Our friend Olev Vinn of Tartu University then led us to an abandoned quarry in the Hilliste Formation (Lower Silurian). This made Rachel Matt very happy as it is the place she has been studying as the potential site for her Senior Independent Study project. First, it is not filled with water; second, it is easy to get to; third and most important, it has a diverse mix of fossils and rocks crying out for her attention. She is shown above in front of what looks like an ancient mud mound.

The rocks and fossils are so good that the students quickly accumulated a pile of cool specimens. I had to stop them from picking up fossils because we’ve not even started to sort out the stratigraphy. A good sign!

Our friend Bill Ausich at Ohio State University will be pleased to hear that there is much crinoid debris, as shown here in this image. It is a calyx plate in the center, with stem fragments around it. Hiiumaa is the island on the Euro to the right of the top star.

There is much I can’t identify here, at least not immediately. Another good sign!

The only thing that I don’t like is that we’re on yet another island, and this one smaller than the last. So much water around so little land, and no way off except by these little ferries. Our car is the brown one in the front on the right. I’ll endure for science!

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A few of the wildflowers on the alvars of Saaremaa Island, Estonia

Mark Wilson June 30, 2011 7:21 am

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–We have gotten to know the western coastline of Saaremaa very well and would like to simply share some of the gorgeous flowers found there. All of these grow in alvars, which are environments on limestone bedrock with thin and nutrient poor soils. They often dry out completely in the summer, so they tend to host endemic species well adapted to these specific conditions and generally out-competed elsewhere.
Saaremaa is especially blessed with plant diversity. There are 1200 species of vascular plants on the island, about 80% of all the vascular plant species in Estonia. About 10% of these species are rare and protected

I don’t have any identifications for these flowers. They are here for their beauty and as a break from all the rocks!

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A little something for igneous petrologists

Mark Wilson June 29, 2011 8:44 am

Like a lonely little onion in a petunia patch, a boulder of red granite sits on the cobblestone beach off Soeginina Cliff, western Saaremaa, Estonia.

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Hard-rock geologists sometimes complain that I flood this blog with too many sedimentary rocks and fossils (and just wait until I get to the Estonian wildflowers!). There are actually quite a few igneous and metamorphic rocks on Estonia — just like there are in Ohio — in the Pleistocene glacial till. They show up well on the beaches here in contrast to the sedimentary rocks around them.

A closer view of the above rock, just to show it really is granite.

Granite in action! A granitic vein through some unfortunate rock.

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Saaremaa Silurian stromatolites studied

Mark Wilson June 29, 2011 8:22 am

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Our fieldwork today at the Soeginina Cliff locality ended with an examination of a sequence of stromatolites near the top of the exposed Ludlow section. Stromatolites are layers of sediment accumulated by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. They are the earliest fossils known, some 3.5 billion years old, and these structures are still being formed today. Bacteria were present at the beginning and no doubt will be the only surviving life at the end.

In the image above, the stromatolitic portion of the outcrop begins at Nick’s upraised arm and goes almost to the top of the exposure. It is a complicated story because they seem to be sitting on an erosional surface cut into the dolomite underneath. There are also patches of what appears to be gravel under some of the stromatolite domes. A dolomitic sand fills the spaces between the stromatolite heads. Stromatolites can tell us a lot about the paleoenvironment of this area during the Silurian.

Closer view of the stromatolites at Soeginina Cliff.

Top view of the Soeginina stromatolites showing the fine layering produced by cyanobacteria. (Note the clever use for scale of a Euro with the map of Estonia on it. You can easily pick out the island of Saaremaa!)

I don’t usually come across stromatolites in my work. The last time I saw a few was with Matthew James on a great field trip to British Columbia. Part of the joy of supervising student research is that I must learn alongside them!

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Thriving in the shingle: the story of Sea Kale

Mark Wilson June 29, 2011 7:15 am

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–A very common perennial plant at the foot of the cliffs we are studying in Estonia is Sea Kale (Crambe maritima Linnaeus). It is beautiful with large, thick leaves and central stalks with bursts of white flowers, each with a purplish throat and yellow pistil. Turns out there is a bit of geological context and history of this edible plant in Western Europe.

Sea kale lives in a place where few other plants can survive. Shingle and cobblestone beaches have very little soil and are usually saturated at depth with brackish water from rain mixed with seawater. If the cobbles are mostly calcareous, as they are on Saaremaa, nutrient levels are low. Sea kale does well in this place because it is halophytic (tolerant of higher salinity than most terrestrial plants) and can collect enough nutrients because it has so few competitors. Its seeds float and so the plant can disperse via coastal sea currents. It is pollinated by numerous species of flies, beetles and bees, so it has no dependence on a particular pollen vector.

Sea kale was a popular vegetable in Europe during the 19th Century and before, but it fell out of favor as more easily cultivated plants became marketable. The new geological angle on sea kale is its ability to grow nutritious tissues in salty water. As freshwater resources become more scarce, biologists are looking at more ways to cultivate sea kale in marginal marine environments, and geologists are helping identify and preserve limestone shingle and cobble beaches for its continued growth. One of those places is Vilsandi National Park in western Saaremaa where we’ve been working this week.

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Independent Study fieldwork begins in Estonia … with a little unexpected canine companionship

Mark Wilson June 28, 2011 2:05 pm

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–Nick Fedorchuk began his fieldwork today at the Soeginina Cliff site we visited two days ago. The first thing we did was scout out the best place to measure the most complete section possible, and then we started the slow process of sampling and describing the rocks and fossils. On average we did about a meter an hour.

The above image shows one of the curious oncoids in the Soeginina limestones. Oncoids are usually almost spherical because they rolled around as bacteria formed layers around a nucleus. The oncoids in the lowermost Ludlow (Paadla Stage) here show an initial formation as spheroids and then they sat still on the seafloor and grew upwards to make little layered caps. The oncoid was knocked over occasionally and a new cap grew on top of the sideways oncoid. This finally made oncoids with multiple growth directions visible in cross-section.

Above is a bedding plane view of an oncoid-rich layer with shelly fossils. Some of the oncoids have formed around gastropod shells.

The trace fossils (evidence of organism behavior) are especially interesting because we can see them in bedding plane view (as above) and also in cross-sections. We will look at their distribution using various ichnofabric indices.

At the start of our day on the outcrop this happy Estonian dog joined the party. It stayed with us the whole time. It liked to splash around in the ocean and then joyfully jump on us — not conducive for taking notes or whacking rock samples, but fun nevertheless. Wolf (maybe the name we gave him was too easy) loves to gnaw on the carcasses of large, long-dead seabirds, bringing them to us as we worked. Wolf was sometimes a bit too exuberant, but he was a good friend for the day. We hope to see him tomorrow at the same place!

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