This talk will focus on how the fascinating bedrock geology of Vermont was formed some 500 million years ago during plate tectonic movements, continental collisions, and mountain building.
A great synopsis of VT geology! I am a UVM geology grad from long ago, still working in the field. As a young farm kid east of Castleton I became interested in all this rock stuff simply by picking up the chunks blasted during the making of Rt 4. Not so much the rock picking out of fields and gardens! It has been a wild ride and a pretty lucrative one! Any updates on economic geology in VT wrt things like lithium, cobalt, and nuclear ores? I know oil and gas are off the table, but I would be interested to hear about modern thoughts on hydrocarbon potential as well.
Thanks so much for recording this lecture, this was exactly the starting point I needed in understanding our geography. Special shout out to your mention of Vermont Green, I was wondering what the origin of that was, both in formations and in stones I see in my local stream. Very clear presentation, great questions. Postscript, I can't believe no one suggested the whale skeleton found in Charlotte 🤔
How wonderful that this professor is sharing his knowledge not just with his students, but with an adult audience. The subject matter is fascinating to me because geology affects ecology: different bedrocks have different mineral contents, and erode at different rates, affecting the soils above them, and what grows in those soils.
I think Ascutney is just a remnant Monadnock from the Vermont Piedmont. Voclanic chains in our area stretch from Montreal in southwest line out into the ocean (Azores)
7 months latter, comment #2... Billions and Billions of yeas ago!!! Other than that, thanks. In addition, this guy is a geologist but, doesn't know for sure If or Where there may have been volcanoes in VT? Am I the only one who finds this to be odd?
The problem is the volcano deposits probably happened while those land masses were not yet part of the continental crust. He said most of the known volcanic deposits occurred while out int he various oceans that converged and diverged, and the cooled island remnants were attached tot he landmass later. So most of the rocks were spewed out and cooled well outside Vermont. The bedrock shists and gniess is an ever crazier story, as they are much older and were subjected after forming and cooling, which is why they're different. All we have evidence of, is volcanic rocks, which through various kinds of analysis can tell us when and to a lesser degree where the rocks were formed, but they all crashed into the continent, at very different times and places, so you can't really trace their specific origins. So, to try to address your issue, as to why geologists don't know where the volcanoes were, it's because very few of the rock remnants we see today match modeling which would tell us where they formed. It was too long ago, and too much has happened at too many different places, to tease out the specific answers given geologist's current tools and understanding. The only way to know for sure where a volcano was, is finding granitic rocks, specifically the large domes that turn into batholiths,as that is magma that stays under the surface, cools and hardens, then is uplifted by tectonic forces and eroded the rest of the material around it away. Since there is not really any large batholiths in Vermont, or at least that was discussed by this fella int his lecture, we can't really say for certain where any of the rest of the volcanic rock formed, only when it did and where it was in relation to the equator (or more accurately poles) when it cooled.
