This Sunday (January 7th, 2018), GEOL 1035 is headed to Costa Rica! Geology Faculty, Peter Ryan and Kristina Walowski, will be leading 16 Middlebury Geology students on a 3-week excursion.
The trip begins with three days of volcanology in the Cordillera Central near San Jose and the Valle Central. We then drop down to the central coast for two days to study uplifted and obducted marine sediments and rocks. From there we will head northwest to La Fortuna to spend two days studying the eruptive history of the active-dormant Volcán Arenal. We will then work our way a little further northwest to the village of Guayabo on the flanks of Volcán Miravalles to study volcaniclastic hazards, including lahars, one of which caused casualities in 2016. For the final week of the trip, the field station at Parque Nacional Santa Rosa will be our home base, providing an excellent location for a field mapping group exercise, study of obducted peridotite, study of plate margin tectonics and beach processes, and independent projects.
This 2018 Winter Term Course represents the first installment of the newly developed course, GEOL 1035 Field Geology in Active Tectonic Environments. Through alumni donations, the Middlebury Geology Department aims to make this a biennial course that allows students to experience active tectonics through field exploration of different countries and parts of the US!
Stay tuned – over the course of the next few weeks, students and faculty will post regularly to keep you up-to-date on our travels and share the spectacular geology of Costa Rica!
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