Geology Commons^™

Reconstructing Deglacial And Holocene Climatic And Environmental Change In The Snowy Mountains Of Southeast Australia, Aidan Warner Burdick

WWU Graduate School Collection

Multi-proxy, long-term records of deglacial and Holocene climatic and environmental change in southeast Australia are rare, leaving the region a gap in local and large-scale synoptic climate reconstructions. The Snowy Mountains include the highest and coldest regions of mainland Australia and were the only part of the mainland that was glaciated during the late Pleistocene. Lakes formed by the glaciers have provided continuous sediment traps since glacial retreat following the Last Glacial Maximum. In this report, I reconstruct the maximum ice extents of glaciers during the last glacial period and estimate their equilibrium line altitudes, revising the work of Barrows …

Using Multispectral Imagery To Interrogate Deposition, Alteration, And Weathering Across Curiosity Rover’S Traverse In Gale Crater, Mars, Christina Seeger

WWU Graduate School Collection

Since landing in 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover has explored over 20 kilometers of Gale crater, climbing almost 400 meters in elevation. The fluvio-deltaic, lacustrine, and aeolian sediments in the crater have been well documented by Curiosity’s suite of in situ and remote science instruments. Indeed, they have traced chemical trends that track changes in lithology and diagenesis over the study area—though most instruments only sample individual rock, vein, and soil targets at a very small scale. The Mast Camera (Mastcam) has periodically acquired much larger (meter-scale) multispectral, visible to near-infrared observations of outcrops throughout this stratigraphic …

Validation Of Predicted Tsunami Inundation For The Inland Coast Of The Salish Sea Associated With Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquakes, Paige Morkner

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Cascadia subduction zone is understood to produce large, Mw 9.0, earthquakes every 300-1000 years. As a result of large ruptures along the fault, Washington, Oregon and Northern California, are susceptible large tsunamis along the coast. Hazard modeling and mapping along the Cascadia subduction zone has concluded that large tsunamis are able to travel through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and inundate coastal regions of the Salish Sea and Puget Sound. However, to improve modeling efforts, field validation of models is required. Tsunamis can move material from the near shore and beach and deposit in low-laying coastal marshes and …

Sedimentology, Sedimentary Petrology, And Tectonic Setting Of The Lower Miocene Clallam Formation, Northern Olympic Peninsula, Washington, Kurt Soe Anderson

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Lower Miocene Clallam Formation, located on the northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, is an approximately 800 m thick sequence of sandstone and conglomerate that was deposited in the predominantly marine portion of a prograding delta.

As a whole, the Clallam Formation coarsens and shallows upward, progressing from fossiliferous sandstones deposited below wave base, through storm-dominated deposits characterized by climbing ripples, graded rythmites, and hummocky cross-stratification, to coarse-grained distributary mouth deposits. Within this general progression are several small-scale coarsening- and shallowing-upward cycles that reflect the occupation and subsequent abandonment of distributary channels.

Analysis of lithic and monocrystalline grain …