Geology Commons^™

The Use Of Green Pond Conglomerate As Building Stone In Morris County, New Jersey, Gregory A. Pope

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Green Pond Conglomerate (GPC) is a maroon colored quartzite with white quartz pebbles, a classic “puddingstone”. GPC derives from a NW-SW-trending sliver of Paleozoic sediments, the “Green Pond Outlier”, surrounded by older metamorphic and igneous rocks of Morris and Passaic Counties. Buildings, retaining walls, field fences, and monuments incorporate the durable and attractive stone, in a distinct geographic area of Morris County. Several instances of structures completely constructed or faced with GPC occur in and around Morristown, limited to affluent houses and one prominent church. In these cases, GPC stones were dressed and faced, a labor-intensive effort. Elsewhere in the …

A Sedimentological Record Of Early Miocene Ice Advance And Retreat, And-2a Drill Hole, Mcmurdo Sound, Antarctica, B. D. Field, G. H. Browne, Christopher R. Fielding, Fabio Florindo, David M. Harwood, Shelley Judge, Lawrence Krissek, Kurt S. Panter, Sandra Passchier, Stephen Pekar, Sonia Sandroni, Franco M. Talarico

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The lowest 501 m (∼1139–638 m) of the AND-2A core from southern McMurdo Sound is the most detailed and complete record of early Miocene sediments in Antarctica and indicates substantial variability in Antarctic ice sheet activity during early Miocene time. There are two main pulses of diamictite accumulation recorded in the core, and three significant intervals with almost no coarse clasts. Each diamictite package comprises several sequences consistent with ice advance-retreat episodes.

The oldest phase of diamictite deposition, Composite Sequence 1 (CS1), has evidence for grounded ice at the drill site and has been dated around 20.2–20.1 Ma. It likely …

Morphodynamic Modeling Of Fluvial Channel Fill And Avulsion Time Scales During Early Holocene Transgression, As Substantiated By The Incised Valley Stratigraphy Of The Trinity River, Texas, Kaitlin Moran, Jeffrey Nittrouer, Mauricio Perillo, Jorge Lorenzo Trueba, John Anderson

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The Trinity River system provides a natural laboratory for linking fluvial morphodynamics to stratigraphy produced by sea-level rise, because the sediments occupying the Trinity incised valley are well constrained in terms of timing of deposition and facies distribution. Herein, the Trinity River is modeled for a range of base-level rise rates, avulsion thresholds, and water discharges to explore the effects of backwater-induced in-channel sedimentation on channel avulsion. The findings are compared to observed sediment facies to evaluate the capability of a morphodynamic model to reproduce sediment deposition patterns. Base-level rise produces mobile locations of in-channel sedimentation and deltaic channel avulsions. …

Anthropogenic Controls On Overwash Deposition: Evidence And Consequences, Laura Rogers, Laura Moore, Evan Goldstein, Christopher Hein, Jorge Lorenzo Trueba, Andrew Ashton

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Accelerated sea level rise and the potential for an increase in frequency of the most intense hurricanes due to climate change threaten the vitality and habitability of barrier islands by lowering their relative elevation and altering frequency of overwash. High-density development may further increase island vulnerability by restricting delivery of overwash to the subaerial island. We analyzed pre-Hurricane Sandy and post-Hurricane Sandy (2012) lidar surveys of the New Jersey coast to assess human influence on barrier overwash, comparing natural environments to two developed environments (commercial and residential) using shore-perpendicular topographic profiles. The volumes of overwash delivered to residential and commercial …

Orbitally Paced Shifts In The Particle Size Of Antarctic Continental Shelf Sediments In Response To Ice Dynamics During The Miocene Climatic Optimum, Sandra Passchier, Candice J. Falk, Fabio Florindo

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The AND-2A drill hole (ANDRILL [Antarctic Geological Drilling Program] Southern McMurdo Sound Project), ∼10 km from the East Antarctica coastline, records nearly 6 m.y. of sedimentation across the Miocene climatic optimum at a high-latitude site. Sedimentological studies of bedforms and particle size distributions indicate that the paleoenvironment was strongly affected by waves and currents, consistent with deposition in a glacially influenced neritic environment. We document abrupt shifts in mud percent within glacial-interglacial cycles ca. 17.8 Ma and between ca. 16.7 and 15.7 Ma that we attribute to the hydrodynamic effects of wave stirring tied to episodes of ice growth and …

Exploring The Role Of Organic Matter Accumulation On Delta Evolution, Jorge Lorenzo Trueba, Vaughan Voller, Chris Paola, Robert Twilley, Azure Bevington

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We explore the role of plant matter accumulation in the sediment column in determining the response of fluvial-deltas to base-level rise and simple subsidence profiles. Making the assumption that delta building processes operate to preserve the geometry of the delta plain, we model organic sedimentation in terms of the plant matter accumulation and accommodation (space made for sediment deposition) rates. A spatial integration of the organic sedimentation, added to the known river sediment input, leads to a model of delta evolution that estimates the fraction of organic sediments preserved in the delta. The model predicts that the maximum organic fraction …

Multibeam Sonar Backscatter Lineaments And Anthropogenic Organic Components In Lacustrine Silty Clay, Evidence Of Shipping In Western Lake Ontario, C F Michael Lewis, L A. Mayer, Prasanta K. Mukhopadhyay, Michael A. Kruge, John P. Coakley, M D. Smith

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

A multibeam sonar survey (95 kHz) covering more than 500 km² of western Lake Ontario revealed anomalous lineaments of relatively high backscatter. The lineaments did not align with or parallel the most prominent structural zones beneath the lake as expected. Instead, the principal lineaments lay on lines between ports on opposite sides of the lake, especially between Toronto and Welland Canal, and Toronto and Niagara River mouth. As the lineaments underlie current and historical shipping routes used during the steamship era, they are interpreted as an acoustic response to shipping debris cumulated in the near-surface bottom sediment. An exploratory …

Classification Of Torbanite And Cannel Coal. Ii. Insights From Organic Geochemical And Multivariate Statistical Analysis, Zhiwen Han, Michael A. Kruge

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Petrographic and megascopic criteria have traditionally been used as the basis for the classification of torbanite and cannel coal. For this study, it was hypothesized that modern analytical organic geochemical and multivariate statistical techniques could provide an alternative approach. Towards this end, the demineralized residues of 14 torbanite (rich in Botryococcus-related alginite) and cannel (essentially, rich in organic groundmass and/or sporinite) coal samples were analyzed by pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). Cluster analysis performed on the Py-GC/MS data clearly distinguished the torbanite from the cannel coal, demonstrating a consistency between the chemical properties and the petrographic composition. All the torbanite …

Classification Of Torbanite And Cannel Coal. I. Insights From Petrographic Analysis Of Density Fractions., Zhiwen Han, Michael A. Kruge, John C. Crelling, David F. Bensley

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Torbanite and cannel coal are considered to be coals because of their low mineral content and overall physical morphology. However, the texture and composition of the organic matter in torbanite and cannel coal are similar to the kerogen occurring in oil shales and lacustrine source rocks. Therefore, understanding the nature and origin of organic components in torbanite and cannel coal is of significance in the study of kerogen and petroleum formation. In this research, a set of torbanites and cannel coals from different locations throughout the world were petrographically characterized and processed using a density gradient centrifugation (DGC) technique. Microscopically, …