Smoke in the Air

Fires near Chelen, Yakima, and Wenatchee, WA and Sisters, OR, have made our air downright ugly. I took this picture this morning at 8:00am. 

Compare the photo with the banner photo (the right 1/3) and you have images from approximately the same perspective. Visibility is down to 2-3 miles at best, and the mountains 10 miles distant haven't been seen in days.

Cascade Volcanoes in Spring

We haven't had a lot of time to do geology lately, Sam has been busy playing softball, and in general we have had a typical rainy spring. 

However last weekend we had a gorgeous two days, and as luck would have it, Sam's team played a tournament in central OR. On the trip down Friday night, we had clear shots of Mt. Hood in Silhouette above the Gorge,

Looking west at Mt. Hood down the Columbia George at about sunset

Sunday, I got up early to enjoy a little walk along the Deschutes River Canyon, and I was treated to show as the sun rose, casting its light on Mt. Jefferson.

Mt. Jefferson from near Cline Falls State Park

It was a gorgeous weekend, and Sam's team won the tournament.

Science Fair

Last week I had the opportunity to judge a 5th grade science fair at one of our local grammar schools. We chose winners in three categories, Physical/Geoscience, Applied Science/Engineering, and Biological Sciences. One of my criteria for judging was I wanted to see something original so that ruled out the vinegar volcanoes, Mentos and Coke, and food coloring and carnation experiments; but it certainly left lots of other interesting projects to choose from (unfortunately I didn't take any pictures so I can only describe the winners.

The winner in the Physical/Geoscience category was a young lady who used a balloon and a wool sweater to build up static charge on the balloon. She then tested the strength of the charge by using a key to create "lightning". She wanted to test the strength of the lightning (as measured by how far away the key was when it discharged, to the amount of charge (rubbing) built up.

The winner in the Applied Science/Engineering category was a young man who had heard on a TV show how strong an eggshell was. He created a tripod of raw eggs by gluing 2-liter bottle caps to the ends (so the eggs would stand) and then weighted his eggs. The three eggs supported over 36 pounds of books before the first one cracked.

The winner in the Biological Science category was a young lady who compared caterpillar growth. She bought one of the commercial butterfly kits and put half of the caterpillars in a consistent warm temperature room, and left the other one to fluctuate from warm to cold. The caterpillars in the warm container continued to grow all the way until they built cocoons while the others reached a maximum size (about 1/) and then did not grow any more. Aside from what I thought was a really interesting experiment, when my fellow judge asked her how she thought of the experiment, the response was that she had raised caterpillars before, and it was something she was "curious about."

My honorable mention geology related project was a young lady who built a seismograph. She poke a hole through a dixie cup with a pencil and then filled the dixie cup with marbles. She then hung the dixie cup from a cardboard box so the pencil would trace a line on a roll of calculator paper. Then while someone shook the table, she would pull the strip of paper, and the pencil would record the amplitude of shaking.

Congratulations to all the winners, I was inspired by the kids, and the teachers who took the time to put on this fair.

Terroir

I met Scott Burns at the Pacific Northwest Section NAGT conference last June.

Scott Burns at 2011 PNW NAGT Field Conference in Malheur Count, Oregon

Over some bottles of wine at the conference, it was suggested that I try and have some geology lectures at my community college. Since our berg is located at the edge of two separate viticulture regions,  I invited Scott to come out and talk about Terroir, the relationship between geology/geography and wine. It turns out that this year Scott is on sabbatical having been selected as the AEG Richard Jahns lecturer, he is travelling around the world giving talks on Terroir, Missoula Floods, Landslides, and or the Cascadia Subduction zone.

Washington Viticulture Areas

I do not know much about wine, and I am far from a wine connoisseur (the subtle flavors and bouquets elude me), but the talk answered a couple of questions I had (and some I didn't even know I had). One thing which has vexed me is that when we moved to our current house, I planted a grape vine. In three years, I haven't gotten even a blossom, much less a grape so I have been watering and fertilizing it to try and get it healthy enough to produce grapes. It turns I have it all wrong. not only do vines typically take three years to mature, in order to get them to bear fruit, you have to stress them by withholding nutrients and/or water.

The other misconception I had had was that the reason Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon were prime wine growing regions was because of the volcanic soils. While it is true that many of the Oregon wines are from volcanic soils, that is mostly in the cooler/rainier western part of the state where the lace of soil nutrients can be the stress that promotes fruit growth. Here in the eastern part, it is more likely to be water (or the lack thereof) that stresses the vine into producing grapes, thus most of the vineyards in this area are in richer silty soils deposited by the Missoula Floods.

Most of the main channel flooding occurred north and west of here, but the natural constriction of the Columbia River Gorge caused water to backflow up the John Day and Umatilla drainages (Lake Condon). A similar lake (Lake Lewis) was formed by flood waters backing up the Walla Walla drainage due to the restriction at Wallula Gap.

Missoula Flood transient Lakes created by topographic constrictions

The emplacement of these flood deposit silts answered my final question, which was that despite similar climates, grapes were being grown in the Walla Walla Valley and in the Hermiston Area, but not further up the Umatilla River in the Pendleton or Mission areas. The simple answer is that the soils aren't there because the deposits were constrained to the narrow river valleys. I suspect that if I spend some time along the Umatilla River Valley, I should be able to correlate where the Umatilla river valley constricts near Echo to the deposition of Missoula Flood soils.

In all it was a good talk, it gave me more things to think about regarding the geology of the area, and learning more about terroir is a good reason to stop in some of the local wineries.