Field Stratigraphy in the Guadalupe Mountains
(listed as 8801-10 ‘Seminar in Sedimentology’)
- Instructor: Dr. Derek Sawyer
- Credits: 2
- Day/Time: Weekly meetings during the semester (TBD optimized based on student availability)
- Field Trip Dates: TBD, Approximately 7 days in late April or Early May but again optimized based on student schedules.
- Enrollment: Course will be capped at 10 students for costs/logistics related to the field trip. If you are interested, contact Dr. Derek Sawyer (sawyer.144@osu.edu) as soon as possible and communicate your availability to meet each week during the semester for 1 hr, 50 minutes.
This course is an opportunity to study carbonate and siliciclastic sedimentary systems highlighted by a field trip to the natural laboratory of the Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas. The Guadalupe Mountains provide outstanding continuous exposure of a wide spectrum of carbonate and siliciclastic environments across a shelf-to-basin transect. During the semester, students will lead presentations and discussion of carbonate environments, deepwater siliciclastic environments, and the geology of Guadalupe Mountains. In the field, students will measure sections, interpret depositional environments, and synthesize observations at multiple locations to infer paleogeographic evolution. It will be very helpful if the student has an upper level undergraduate course in sed/strat depositional environments but students from a range of subdisciplines are encouraged to participate. We will develop fundamental field skills and gain a broad understanding of the evolution of an Upper Permian carbonate platform and reef complex in a classic geologic area.
Student Quotes:
- “This trip provided an excellent opportunity to see both the stratal geometry and lithological patterns of depositional sequences in one region (and even at single outcrops!), helping expand my understanding of sequence stratigraphy in mixed clastic-carbonate environments.”
- “The Guadalupe Mts region is a textbook case study of sequence stratigraphy. In locations like Last Chance Canyon, we were able to walk along exposed facies and study the sequence stratigraphy in person, which really helped to illuminate concepts that were harder to grasp in theory.”
- “The best part of this trip is simply being able to put my finger on Sequence Boundaries (SBs). It is just spectacular!”
- “My favorite part of the trip was in Bone Canyon, where we saw amazing angular unconformities, channel scours, breccias, and deformed sandstones in close proximity.”
- “As a professional geologist, continuing to take field courses like this is invaluable to me. The mixed carbonate-siliciclastic deposits exposed in the Guadalupe Mountains provided excellent analogues to rocks that are not as well exposed here in the Midwest. It’s great to bring new knowledge back with me and apply the concepts I studied on this trip to my research in Ohio.
