Oct. 2022 Update from the National Geologic Trail
I’d like to start by thanking the Ice Age Floods Institute for letting the National Park Service share regular updates on Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail. I’m Justin Radford the Trail’s program manager and I look forward to sharing some of the work we are doing. This summer I had the chance to travel much of the “Trail” from Missoula to Cape Disappointment. Having the opportunity to engage firsthand with the visitor experiences offered by our many partners and the amazing landscapes was certainly the highlight of the summer. Photos and stories from these site visits will bring enhancements to both the NPS App and our website in the future. This summer we also had our second annual Teacher training in Spokane, WA. 43 K-12 Teachers earned credit towards their teaching certificates by learning how to instruct with the story of the Missoula Floods in mind. We are currently working on the calendar for next year with hopes that we will be able to bring our traveling Ice Age Floods NGT and Lake Roosevelt NRA visitor center trailer to more events. Coming up this fall we will engage with the National Park Service’s Service-Wide Comprehensive Call seeking funding and support for future project activities. We will also be working to grow our cultural connections with more groups across trail. Thank you for your support as we continue to grow Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail. More good news to come as we work with the Ice Age Floods Institute and other partners to move the Trail programs forward. Justin P. Radford Program Manager Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail Address: Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area 1008 Crest Drive Coulee Dam WA 99116 Phone: 509-237-9722
Front Porch: Water etches interesting stories on landscape
I have always loved the ocean. I spent my growing-up years in, on or at least somewhere near the Atlantic Ocean and its various bays. The feel of ocean water, its movement, how it smells and all the amazing life that it supports – wonderful. And whenever I looked over the ocean’s horizon, it wasn’t scary, but rather full of potential for what was just beyond what I could see. When I moved to Spokane – clearly, no ocean, but lots and lots of freshwater lakes and rivers. I have spent I can’t tell you how many of my adulthood hours, swimming in Lake Coeur d’Alene, Lake Pend Oreille, Priest Lake, etc. And sailing. And walking along riverbanks. And tossing sticks into whatever body of water, fast moving or still, that was before me, for our dog to fetch. Water is wonderful. As a young bride, newly relocated to Eastern Washington, lo those many years ago, I took my first drive to Seattle with my husband. Heading up the Sunset Hill, passing Four Lakes, then Fishtrap, then … yikes. Where did the water go? There was a long stretch – broken up briefly by Sprague Lake and Moses Lake – of what was the thirstiest landscape I’d encountered. It wasn’t until we crossed the Columbia River and drove up and past the Vantage Grade did I begin to see deciduous trees and bigger leafy plants that suggested the rainfall amounts required to support them. It got lush and humid and wet as we drove west. We were heading to … water! I just endured that unappealing stretch of land between Fishtrap and the Columbia over a number of years driving back and forth to Seattle. Not only was it dry, it was essentially treeless. One friend of like mind said it was best just to drive through there at night because the view would be just as interesting. So much for being young and stupid. It was still kind of dry for my taste, but I began to appreciate how the sunlight hit the terrain at different times of year and in different weather conditions. It still wasn’t water, of course, but it kind of grew on me. It’s hard to live in this neck of the woods and not learn about the wonderful Columbia Basin Project that brought irrigation to east-central Washington (ah, water!), which produces amazing amounts of agricultural products for export and to feed us all. But what really sold me on that, to me, foreign scenery was back when I worked at Eastern Washington University and I met the terrific Bob Quinn, professor of geography, who loved the environs of the state’s east side with a zeal and passion I couldn’t possibly imagine. He gave me some information, and I began to read about this landscape I’d so easily dismissed – land that was scoured by massive floods some 18,000 to 13,000 years ago (the last Ice Age), floods from glacial Lake Missoula that carved out the canyons and created braided waterways now known as the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. The floods were cataclysmic, with estimates indicating that 500 cubic miles of water that was 2,000 feet deep, burst forth at 386 million cubic feet per second – all headed this way, and beyond, in one darn big rushing, gushing explosion. And then it built up and did it over and over again. That’s a lot of water. I began looking at the landscape differently as I drove through, marveling at the magnificence of that creation, and saw that it has its own beauty – not to mention a heck of a back story. How ignorant of me to just have ignored all that geologic magnificence because it didn’t fit into my preferred norm. I thought about that again on our most recent drive to Seattle to visit our son. Clearly, I am no longer a young adult full of not-burdened-by-knowledge opinion and attitude, but an older person with a fair number of miles on her and, I hope, a greater realization that everything deserves a second look – and also, that a little research is also a good thing. Because I read a book and some supporting literature, I discovered things that gave me a different set of eyes with which to see a particular section of the world around me. I’m trying still, even in my old age, to keep doing that. Never too old to read a book and learn something. Or to change a mind. The Spokesman Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net
Redesigned IAFI.org Website
It’s been several years since our IAFI.org website first appeared and website design standards have changed a lot since then. This summer we undertook to completely redesign the website, hoping to make it more useful, interesting and dynamic. Unfortunately when we tried to go “LIVE” the server company messed up the launch and had the website down for a week. That problem is now fixed and the website is LIVE at the same URL (website address) you are used to – https://IAFI.org, though there are still some server problems to be ironed out. If you see something that appears to be broken, or you feel we’ve missed something important, or there’s something we can improve, please email our webmaster at Webmaster@IAFI.org or leave a comment below. In particular, if you have expertise in building and maintaining websites and would like to help with ours, please get in touch with us. Our webmaster is strictly a volunteer who has spent many, many hours developing and maintaining our website for years, learning as he worked at it, and he wouldn’t mind some help.
Hairy Buddies call for Bear Awareness
A near failure of berries and upland food sources has brought the bears into much of the lowlands of the mountainous Pacific NW, including towns and campgrounds. All the area of Lake Missoula is established grizzly habitat now with good numbers outside the parks. Black bears are also doing well now. When you visit the Lake Missoula area this glorious fall keep this in mind. Google Bear Awareness pages from Fish, Wildlife and Parks or National Forests and follow the food and camping instructions. This year is on par for setting new records for encounters and new and unexpected places to find them including downtown in all western Montana. Bearproof coolers and hard side storage are good ideas. Safety Around Bears Mountain bikers, trail runners, and other recreationists take note and read this detailed information on recreating in bear country! When you are on the trails and even in campgrounds, expect bears to be present or nearby. Moving quickly on a trail increases your chance of surprising a bear. Expect bears to be present Carry bear spray attached to you and readily accessible Make noise and slow down Avoid evening/early morning Avoid going alone During a grizzly bear encounter: Stop. Do not run. If on a bike, get off, keeping your bike between you and the bear. If the bear charges—stand your ground, use your bear spray. If the bear makes physical contact—protect your head and neck, play dead, use your bear spray. Visit Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee Bear Safety page for more on recreating in grizzly country.
Ice Age Floods Temporary Lakes – New Map Coming Soon
Since late last year the Ice Age Floods Institute has been working with Eastern Washington University to produce a new map showing the extent of the temporary and semi-permanent lakes associated with the Ice Age Floods. Those efforts are about to bear fruit as the new map is about to be printed to be offered in the IAFI Store. The map is in a format similar to our very popular “Ice Age Floods in the Pacific Northwest” map and will come in two sizes, 11:x17″ and 24″x36″. The depicted extent of the temporary lakes and their maximum elevations are based on the best research evidence of stranded erratics and other indicators. An inset in the map also depicts the elevations and maximum water depths of each of the major temporary lakes. The map also depicts the general extent of the offshore Astoria submarine fan where the bulk of the sediment carried away by the Floods was eventually deposited. The temporary lakes are a critical part of the Floods Story and recognizing their apparent areal extent is an important key to recognizing the size and scope of the Ice Age Floods
Meet Our New IAFI Membership Manager
Our long time IAFI Membership Manager, Sylvia Thompson and her husband Rick (Lower Columbia Chapter Ex-President), retired in early September and are soon moving to Georgia to be closer to family. We greatly appreciate their incredible contributions to IAFI and wish them all the best. Meanwhile a new volunteer, Lorrie DeKay, has stepped up to take this important position. and she has been working with our webmaster (her husband) to streamline and hopefully improve our membership processes. She has spent the last month getting familiar with the membership processes, opening a new online bank account, and helping move the membership data to a secure online area, safe from crashed disks or accidental deletion. The registration forms have also been updated to reflect her new contact information. Lorrie introduced herself on our website saying, “I’ve been fortunate to have an ‘in house’ geologist for over 40 years. Lloyd’s career enabled us to live in and explore much of the US, Africa and Europe. With retirement came one last move, to Washington State, which we chose for many reasons, not the least of which was its geology. Access to diverse ecosystems within a day’s drive of our home in White Salmon makes our expedition logistics a breeze (often gusty). I’ve enjoyed IAFI trips to Missoula, the Palouse, and Dry Falls, and help edit Lloyd’s IAFI work. With my work on the Columbia River Gorge Commission wrapping up after 2 terms, I now look forward to being more participatory in IAFI as Membership Manager.” We’re so thankful to Sylvia for all the years she served so well, and we look forward to many more years with Lorrie at the helm.
Chinook Scenic Byway
The Chinook Scenic Byway is recognized as a premier driving tour in Washington State. The byway travels through the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and Mount Rainier National Park. Experience the diverse landscape of the Central Cascades, from Enumclaw and the glacier-fed White River Valley to the west, up and over 5,430′ Chinook Pass, to the fertile valley of Naches to the east.Visitors experiencing the byway can enjoy spectacular views of dense forests, towering peaks, rocky ridges and river canyons dominate this journey. On a clear day the view of Mount Rainier is breathtaking. Pass through basalt flows of the High Cascades and of the Columbia Plateau, old growth forests, lush subalpine meadows, a world-class ski area and numerous streams, lakes and waterfalls. Not only will you find exceptional scenery, but dozens of opportunities for outdoor fun and recreation await. Be sure to download your free copy of the new byway itinerary. The 25-page guide highlights the history, communities, and environment that make this such a unique drive. The new guide features a map and helps making trip planning easy by highlighting where to stay and play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VakH74S6UyI
Remembering Jim Pritchard
We’re sad to report that James “Jim” William Pritchard of Ephrata, WA, passed away on August 3, 2022. Jim was 95 years of age (born: September 4, 1926), was deeply interested in the Ice Age Floods, and was devoted to and involved with the Ice Age Floods Institute. A fond remembrance: In the fall of 2000, Charlie Mason gathered together anyone from the greater Wenatchee Valley with an interest in the Great Missoula Floods. He had taught adult classes at the Community College and led field trips and had quite a following. At that meeting, Charlie being the perfectionist that he was, held elections, called for name suggestions, took votes for the name Wenatchee Valley Erratics, and subsequently filed for 501-C status, knowing these all would be needed to charter the first IAFI chapter. The following spring, he and I attended the IAFI spring meeting (there were 2 board meetings every year back then), held at the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce. Charlie and I presented everything he knew was needed, and the then-IAFI President, Dale Middleton, put to a vote that we would become an interim chapter. Charlie argued there was nothing more our group needed to do to become an actual chapter. It was argued for 20 minutes that we had to be an interim chapter first. After much debate, Jim Pritchard had had enough, quite forcibly told everyone to ‘shut up’, pointed out that Wenatchee was the first to file to be a chapter so set precedent, and put it to a vote. No more argument, and the Wenatchee Valley Erratics Chapter was born. Those of us who worked with Charlie, Dale and Jim over the years, might know that this meeting was much more ‘spirited’ than what I’ve indicated here. When I later joined the board, it was refreshing that Jim, who was treasurer, didn’t mince words, kept the meetings going, and brought a perspective that was down to earth and always well thought out. The Erratics were so lucky when in later years, Jim, and his wife Eula, made the drive from Ephrata to join our chapter meetings.He always brought interesting questions, and wasn’t shy to ask them. Ken and I were lucky to have visited with him last year after the death of Eula. He was still as sharp as ever, and as devoted to the story of the great floods. He will be missed. (by Susan Lacy)
How Galactic Rhythms Helped Form Earth’s Continental Crust
“To see a world in a grain of sand”, the opening sentence of the poem by William Blake, is an oft-used phrase that also captures some of what geologists do. We observe the composition of mineral grains, smaller than the width of a human hair. Then, we extrapolate the chemical processes they suggest to ponder the construction of our planet itself. Now, we’ve taken that minute attention to new heights, connecting tiny grains to Earth’s place in the galactic environment. Looking out to the universe At an even larger scale, astrophysicists seek to understand the universe and our place in it. They use laws of physics to develop models that describe the orbits of astronomical objects. Although we may think of the planet’s surface as something shaped by processes entirely within Earth itself, our planet has undoubtedly felt the effects of its cosmic environment. This includes periodic changes in Earth’s orbit, variations in the Sun’s output, gamma ray bursts, and of course meteorite impacts. Just looking at the Moon and its pockmarked surface should remind us of that, given Earth is more than 80 times more massive than its gray satellite. In fact, recent work has pointed to the importance of meteorite impacts in the production of continental crust on Earth, helping to form buoyant “seeds” that floated on the outermost layer of our planet in its youth. We and our international team of colleagues have now identified a rhythm in the production of this early continental crust, and the tempo points to a truly grand driving mechanism. This work has just been published in the journal Geology. The rhythm of crust production on Earth Many rocks on Earth form from molten or semi-molten magma. This magma is derived either directly from the mantle – the predominantly solid but slowly flowing layer below the planet’s crust – or from recooking even older bits of pre-existing crust. As liquid magma cools, it eventually freezes into solid rock. Through this cooling process of magma crystallization, mineral grains grow and can trap elements such as uranium that decay over time and produce a sort of stopwatch, recording their age. Not only that, but crystals can also trap other elements that track the composition of their parental magma, like how a surname might track a person’s family. With these two pieces of information – age and composition – we can then reconstruct a timeline of crust production. Then, we can decode its main frequencies, using the mathematical wizardry of the Fourier transform. This tool basically decodes the frequency of events, much like unscrambling ingredients that have gone into the blender for a cake. Our results from this approach suggest an approximate 200-million-year rhythm to crust production on the early Earth. Our place in the cosmos But there is another process with a similar rhythm. Our Solar System and the four spiral arms of the Milky Way are both spinning around the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, yet they are moving at different speeds. The spiral arms orbit at 210 kilometers per second, while the Sun is speeding along at 240km per second, meaning our Solar System is surfing into and out of the galaxy’s arms. You can think of the spiral arms as dense regions that slow the passage of stars much like a traffic jam, which only clears further down the road (or through the arm). This model results in approximately 200 million years between each entry our Solar System makes into a spiral arm of the galaxy. So, there seems to be a possible connection between the timing of crust production on Earth and the length of time it takes to orbit the galactic spiral arms – but why? Strikes from the cloud In the distant reaches of our Solar System, a cloud of icy rocky debris named the Oort cloud is thought to orbit our Sun. As the Solar System periodically moves into a spiral arm, interaction between it and the Oort cloud is proposed to dislodge material from the cloud, sending it closer to the inner Solar System. Some of this material may even strike Earth. Earth experiences relatively frequent impacts from the rocky bodies of the asteroid belt, which on average arrive at speeds of 15km per second. But comets ejected from the Oort cloud arrive much faster, on average 52km per second. We argue it is these periodic high-energy impacts that are tracked by the record of crust production preserved in tiny mineral grains. Comet impacts excavate huge volumes of Earth’s surface, leading to decompression melting of the mantle, not too dissimilar from popping a cork on a bottle of fizz. This molten rock, enriched in light elements such as silicon, aluminum, sodium, and potassium, effectively floats on the denser mantle. While there are many other ways to generate continental crust, it’s likely that impacting on our early planet formed buoyant seeds of crust. Magma produced from later geological processes would adhere to those early seeds. Harbingers of doom, or gardeners for terrestrial life? Continental crust is vital in most of Earth’s natural cycles – it interacts with water and oxygen, forming new weathered products, hosting most metals and biological carbon. Large meteorite impacts are cataclysmic events that can obliterate life. Yet, impacts may very well have been key to the development of the continental crust we live on. With the recent passage of interstellar asteroids through the Solar System, some have even gone so far as to suggest they ferried life across the cosmos. However we came to be here, it is awe-inspiring on a clear night to look up at the sky and see the stars and the structure they trace, and then look down at your feet and feel the mineral grains, rock, and continental crust below – all linked through a very grand rhythm indeed. By Chris Kirkland and Phil Sutton, THE CONVERSATION – from Science Alert
Kummakivi, Finland’s Balancing Rock, Seems to Defy the Laws of Physics
Our brains are pretty good at physics. For instance, you can watch somebody kick a soccer ball in front of you, and you can run to the spot where you and that soccer ball will intersect, taking into consideration the speed of both you and the ball — so smart! Not only that, we can look at one object balancing on another and tell how sturdy it is without so much as touching it. But sometimes our brains make uneducated mathematical guesses, and one of these is Kummakivi, the balancing rock in Ruokolahti, Finland. If it was up to your brain, Kummakivi — which means “strange rock” in Finnish — wouldn’t exist. It’s a boulder resting on a lump of rock in a position that, to our monkey engineer brains, appears impossible, or at least dicey. Extremely slap-dash and temporary work, at best. And yet Kummakivi sits quietly in its Scandinavian forest, racking up the centuries. Millennia, even. Kummakivi is huge — about 23 feet (7 meters) long. It rests on the tiny, steeply pitched footprint of a smaller mound of rock that rises from the forest floor. The balancing boulder appears to be about to slide right off its perch, but it can’t be moved — at least by human muscles. The reason for this isn’t as mysterious as it might appear: Kummakivi is large, but large things aren’t necessarily more likely to be affected by gravity than small ones. Kummakivi is very rough, which helps it stick in place, and it’s not the same density throughout. The center of gravity looks off when you inspect the balancing rock with your eyes, but it’s actually doing exactly what physics would have it do. But the real question is, how did it get there? People have probably always wondered that, but we’ll never know because it has been there approximately 12,000 years — way before we started recording anything. However, Finnish folklore says that some giants or trolls carried the rock to the forest and balanced it on its plinth. These days geologists say it was deposited by a retreating glacier at the end of the last ice age — and as we know, a glacier is basically the only thing as strong as a giant or a troll. By: Jesslyn Shields | Aug 24, 2022 reprinted from How Stuff Works