73rd Annual Tri-State Geologic Field Conference

The University of Iowa is pleased to announce that the 73rd Annual Tri-State Geologic Field Conference will be hosted by the University of Iowa in Iowa City on September 30 thru October 2, 2011. The meeting headquarters will be the Clarion Highlander Hotel and Convention Center , 2525 North Dodge Street (I-80 & Hwy 1at exit 246) Iowa City, Iowa 52245.

Friday (Sept 30) registration and icebreaker will be from 6:00 – 9:00 pm at the Highlander

Saturday (Oct.1) the field trip will be by bus, departing the Highlander at 8:00 am and returning about 5:00 pm Stops will include:

Stop 1: River Products Corporation Klein Quarry . The geology displayed at the Klein Quarry includes a suite of Middle Devonian limestones which have yielded spectacular fossil and mineral specimens, cut by a Pennsylvanian estuarine channel which preserves a variety of plant fossils. The Quaternary section includes the Peoria and Pisgah loesses, with the intervening Farmdale Geosol and multiple Pre-Illinoian diamictons and geosols as well as the late Sangamon geosol.

Stop 2: Lake Macbride State Park Spillway. At this stop we will visit the spillway for Lake Macbride. Cut into Middle Devonian bedrock of the Little Cedar Formation, this spillway exposes a pronounced thrust fault and five steep fracture zones, including three displaying normal displacement and three with no apparent offset.

Stop 3: Devonian Fossil Gorge . An extensive area of Middle Devonian limestone bedding plane surfaces was exposed by flooding in the emergency spillway of the Coralville dam in 1993 and 2008. The rocks of the Cedar Valley Group at the spillway display a wide variety of fossils, faults, folds, and dissolution features.

The field trip will be followed by a 6:00 pm social hour, a 7:00 pm banquet dinner, and a banquet speaker at the Highlander.

Sunday (Oct. 2) an optional field trip stop (by personal car) is planned for the morning

Stop 4: Wendling Stone Products' Moscow Quarry. The stop at the Moscow Quarry, located immediately west of the Illinoian till boundary in eastern Iowa, will focus on the Quaternary section. Highlights include a last glacial dune and sand sheet buried by Peoria Loess, a sequence of early and middle Wisconsinan alluvial fills and paleosols, multiple Pre-Illinoian tills and associated paleosols.

For more information of the 2011 Tri-State Geologic Field Conference see our web site - http://geoscience.clas.uiowa.edu/news-and-info/tri-state-geological-field-conference/.

More details on the field trips, banquet speaker, and registration information will be posted on the web site soon.

For additional information contact Ray Anderson (Raymond-Anderson@uiowa.edu).

Registration Deadline - September 16, 2011