Faults in the Field:
Expedition to California

After a quick breakfast, we drove up to University High School and worked in their theatre on our PowerPoint presentations in three groups that we presented at noon to the students in the deaf and hard of hearing program at the high school. Each group focused on a different topic. Group A focused on landslides, explaining which regions are most prone and should be avoided and how to reduce the hazards. Group B focused on the San Andreas and other active faults in southern California, covering the hazards, vulnerability, and risks as well. Group C focused on shaking from faults, the difference between large and small earthquakes, and what other factors are involved.


Students responded to questions following their presentations. After the presentations, Bob DeGroot from the Southern California Earthquake Center, a sponsor of the trip, gave a talk on the effect of active faults in “earthquake country” around Los Angeles. He talked about who is involved in earthquake research and preparedness and gave out a booklet on the best ways individuals and families can prepare. He announced a mock earthquake event that will be happening in November 2008 to prepare people for responding in the event of a major earthquake. More information can be found on their website at: http://www.earthquakecountry.info.

We returned to our original rendezvous of the field trip in Riverside and summed up our entire experience in an interview with William Snyder, an educator researcher studying how the information from sandbox experiments is transferred to on site learning during the Faults in the Field trips.



Then in our best clothes, we headed to a fancy dinner at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel nearby. There we held a heartwarming ceremony in honor and gratitude for Dr. Michele Cooke and for those whom without this expedition would have never been possible. Cooke received M&M's candy, each etched with "Thank You Michele", or "Michele Rocks", by every student to thank her personally. She also received a quilt made by one of the teachers showing a road cut scene of a fault formation seen on the Utah Faults in the Field trip. There were words sewn into the quilt, “It’s Your Fault We Dig Geology.” Every teacher and student signed the quilt and names of past participants in the other two trips were added. Dr. Cooke and Mary Ellsworth from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf honored science teacher Teresa Huckleberry from Indiana School for the Deaf by sharing the documentation of the materials they submitted in nomination of Mrs. Huckleberry for the Outstanding Teacher Award given by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. Mary read out some of Ms. Huckleberry many accomplishments so far in life to honor her impeccable reputation, concluding in wishing her satisfying retirement. We all applauded and left knowing that this week in California will be a week we will never forget.

Delia Kimmel, a student from University High School added her own personal summary:
“Most of the time, I learn more when I experience something for myself. Many things I have learned and many friendships I have made are based on experiences. This earth science trip has provided me with many experiences that I will never forget. The things I learn are always changing. I learned that the Earth itself is changing, such as through earthquakes and landslides. One experience I had on the trip was going through underbrush, then coming out into a beautiful open area where I saw a river with many small rocks. Because I experienced that place and learned about debris flow causing rocks to end up in that river, I understand earth science better by learning to think of the Earth in 3-D. I will not forget the things I have seen and learned on this trip.”

We asked the teachers what was most important to them and their students about the Faults in the Field Expedition to California. Here are their responses:

Chris Gonzales from University High School – “The ability to match what we learned in the classroom and what happens in real life – I can make the fault in class room but small, but it helps my students recognize and match when they see in the real mountains.”

Nancy Frazier from Kansas School for the Deaf – “To make the connection of what happens in the classroom, especially the sandbox experiment, to the real live lab.”

Michael George from Iowa School for the Deaf – “Since I taught in the Midwest, my students hadn’t really the bigger picture of the faults and landslides because they don’t have it around Iowa. Since the students observed the sandbox experiment, they can get the idea of what the inactive and active faults look like. They also learned how faults cause earthquakes.”

Jana Lollis from North Carolina School for the Deaf – “I would have to say that the perfect example of how you see science in the real world—you know how I explain in the classroom to the students, but it helps them and me to see in the real world, it makes us understand science better. For me, I’m not mainly a geologist, but I learned from these geologists and when I come back, I know it will improve how I teach. I learned a lot about earthquakes and that the San Andreas Fault is not the only fault in town.”

Mary Ellsworth from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf – “I think it’s cool for students to be exposed to the scientists' culture, to see science working and to see how it requires hard work, getting up early and work long hours, but the learning is fun! Students see how scientists think and analyze, they see how science tries to explain the world, and the scientist's critical thinking skills. Students have been exposed to aspects of scientific field work. Too much science teaching is only in textbooks ('read chapters 1 to 7, for example), but this is real science: being outside and observing and analyzing and trying to understand what is happening. It’s unusual for high school students to get this kind of experience and I’m glad that all the students could be involved with this trip.”

Students Amy Martin and Laura Akelyte from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf contributed to today’s blog.

Portuguese Bend Landslide

Students Meg Katter and Ben Polstra from Indiana School for the Deaf and Ameena Patterson from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf contributed to today’s blog.

Journey through San Jacinto Valley

This morning we got on the bus and drove to San Jacinto Valley where Dr. Doug Morton and Dr. Michele Cooke told us about the San Jacinto Valley. They told us that the faults have certain shapes that are often not flat and that they can even curve. Another thing they taught us was there is a geological structure where the sediments and rocks are deposited in a called landslide. We also saw an alluvial fan where a river drops its sediments. Before we got back on the bus they reminded us that a fault can be segmented in different sections instead of one continuous fault. If the fault pulls apart it can cause a depression that usually fills in with water like Lost Lake, the sag pond we saw yesterday.

Hot Springs Fault

We then got back on the bus and headed off to the San Jacinto River near the town of San Jacinto to look at the man-made river levees. The river bed was dry because the water only flows in the winter and early spring. The students drew cross sections of the river to visualize the 3-D aspects of the river bed. Laura Dair, a graduate student from University of Massachusetts, explained how the river bed is higher within the walls of the levee than the base of the town. She told us that there was a difference in the levels because the sediments cannot escape outside the levee and it builds in higher and higher levels. Eventually the sediment level will become almost even with the levees and will cause the town to flood. Even now, if the river becomes very high during the rainy season, it could overflow the levees and flood the town.

Dr. Doug Morton then talked about why the alluvial fan on the San Jacinto fault got bigger every year. We learned the alluvial fan gets bigger due to erosion bringing more sediments to the bottom of the fan. Dr. Scott Marshall asked the group why we thought the San Jacinto River had no big rocks and then he explained the currents from the river were not very strong so the river could not carry big rocks. Instead, it only carries small rocks. Michele explained that the river flows on the mountain side of the valley because of the low area caused by the fault. The fault is lower, making the valley floor, so the river flows in the valley along the fault line hugging the base mountain instead of the typical position of running down the center of a valley

Dr. Cooke told us there are several hot springs located along the base of the mountain. The hot springs were trapped and created by a fault and the heat from magma. When the fault sides grind together, the force is so strong that the rock in between gets ground into fine powder, called gouge. Water heated deep in the Earth flows up through the gouge and comes out on the surface making hot springs.

Thousand Palms Oasis

We left the cool, breezy weather of the San Jacinto Valley and arrived in the dry heat of
Palm Springs Desert, a dry, sandy landscape with scrub bushes. We stopped to have our picnic lunch in the Thousand Palms Oasis, an amazing site of giant palm trees. We walked into the desert to view the oasis, which actually is a sag pond, created by water seeping into the cracks of a fault. Drs. Cooke and Marshall introduced us to the important geologist skill of plotting location on a topographical map and challenged us to find our present location on a topographical map of the Oasis area. We also had a contest to see who could draw the direction of two segments of the San Andreas Fault looked like in this area, then we walked further into the desert to another smaller oasis passing by some desert sand dune formations. It was hot and breezy. Everyone had to use sunscreen and drink plenty of water. We walked to another site with tall palm trees and were surprised to find a beautiful pond right in the middle of the desert! There were fish in the pond, bright orange dragonflies buzzed over the water, and one teacher was even surprised when a California King Snake crossed the trail in front of her.

Laura Dair, a graduate student from University of Massachusetts, told us that sand dunes have a shallow slope on one side and a steep slope on the other side. We learned that the reason was because the wind picks up sand one side and drops it on the other. When the sand is picked up it forms the shallow angle, but when it is dropped it forms a steep drop. She told us when a layer of sediments is solidified on top of a sand dune then another dune begins forming. This process continues over many years. She also told us about the Desert Pupfish. She told us that most geologists believe those are an ancient and endangered species that descended from fish living in the area after the Ice Age.

Mary D'Angelo, an Emergency Medical Technician, and Roy McCrory explained the procedures for preparing for and what to do after a severe earthquake. They told us if there was a severe earthquake, the important thing was to stay put and protect yourself. They told us it was important to have a supply kit with enough supplies for at least 72 hours. They also told us a disappointing fact was that less than 10% of the population has an emergency plan. Some people asked about standing under a doorway for safety, but Roy told us that it was a myth that was a safe thing to do.

Palm Springs Aerial Tram Ride

We took the tram ride up the San Jacinto Mountain to an elevation of almost 11,000 feet to a restaurant on the top of the mountain where patches of snow could be seen and the temperature dropped to around 50 degrees. The top of the mountain was awesome! After dinner we descended the mountain, dropped our California School for the Deaf Riverside guests back, and drove on to Long Beach on the coast in preparation for our next day’s travels.

Students Zach Engstler from Iowa School for the Deaf and Delia Kimmel from University High School contributed writing and photography respectively to today's blog.

Landslides and Fault Slips

We started our day with an early morning gathering at the conference room at California School for the Deaf in Riverside. Dr. Michele Cooke, the tour leader, welcomed everyone and introduced our guests for the day, Dr. Katherine Kendrick, from University of California; Dr. Doug Morton U.S. Geological Survey, retired, Donald Burnes, science teacher from CSDR and students from CSDR who are joining our trip today and tomorrow. Cooke shared how her ultimate goal in her National Science Foundation grant was to see how secondary school students could conduct similar experiments to the ones she uses in her geological research lab. Cooke said there is a natural connection between the visualization skills a geologist needs and the visual skills of a deaf learner using American Sign Language.


At our morning meeting we divided up into teams for group activities on recognition of landslides and active faults. Cooke drew symbols on the white board, using arrows and layers to display how anything in the path of a landslide would be impacted. Some students suggested a landslide could result from a situation where diverse rocks could result in a mixture at the bottom of a slope, or how a slump would develop into the hill itself. Among other ideas, we listed how landslides could include dead vegetation and result in the collapse of homes. Then we moved on to how to recognize an active fault. The groups suggested causes such as collapse of any construction, signs of disrupted ground, or bent and mangled pipe, fence, and walls. We will see if our ideas about landslides and active faults match what we see on our road trips this week.



Canyon Town of Forest Falls

In the morning we drove through the San Bernardino Valley to the canyon town of Forest Falls. Dr. Morton showed us where a massive rock debris flow in 1999 caused great damage to houses, trees, and vegetation. The debris flow is a kind of erosion in the earth where many boulders and shards of stone laid waste all the rocks under our feet as we walked over on the steep hillside Burnes explained how a landslide can travel up from sixty to seventy miles per hour. The ravaged path we hiked along was lined with huge boulders, some the size of small cars. A landslide can destroy anything; it comes in “slugs,” masses of mud and rocks sliding like the rapids, and can shatter across barriers into new directions. Twelve homes were destroyed and one life was claimed in the 1999 incident. Every two years Forest Falls has a landslide, more often than anywhere else in California, in a random selection, either following the same path it made prior or carving another one. Dr. Morton called it the “most hazardous town in the U.S.” The rocks were both gneiss, with wavy dark lines, and chalky white granite. The color depends on how the layers of minerals, and also how temperature and pressure change. Giant cedar trees played an important factor in diverting the rocks in the debris flow; we saw tree which had its bark eaten through by the debris flow and it had nicks from the ricocheting stones, and one that had fallen determining the path of the rock flow. We noted it was a home to many nested spiders and enormous dropped pine cones. As we descended, we saw that one neighbor had built a wall of the stones left in the flow and cemented over them in order to divert impact– only it will hit the other houses, proving that it doesn’t help the problem at all.



San Andreas Fault and the Lost Lake

We had a picnic in the mountains for lunch. Passing the mountain town of Devore, where the San Andreas Fault runs, Cooke stated an interesting fact about the law in California that it is legal to build single homes directly on the fault line, but over four houses would not be permitted.

In the afternoon, we arrived to view a sag pond called Lost Lake that was surrounded by mountains that led down a straight series of valleys. The area where we were walking is directly on top of the San Andreas Fault between the edge of the Pacific plate and the North American Plate. We listened to geologist Dr. Scott Marshall explain how two faults would stretch and sink a region of land, which the rain filled in leading to the creation of a sag pond. One student compared the sag pond to a swimming pool because there isn’t a direction or flow for the water to flow out. Using colored pencils, a ruler, and mathematical skills with a map and graph, we measured how fast the fault would slip and determined whether it was left or right-lateral, which the concept was compared to a doorknob where your fingers and thumb would end up. And after a long and incredible learning experience in a day, we returned to California School for the Deaf in Riverside for dinner.



We posted some more pictures at Flickr. To see these pixs, go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26322601@N03/

Welcome to the Faults in the Field: Expedition to California blog! During our trip we have posted daily summaries and photos from our geoscience activities. We hope you will enjoy reading about our adventures and that you will post a comment to our blog.

The expedition is over now and we are all headed back to our down schools. We have learned many things durimg our week long study. We want to thank the following people for their part in making this experience possible:

Dr. Michele Cooke - Geoscientist, UMass Amherst, Faults in the Field Project Leader
Dr. Scott Marshall - Geoscientist, Appalchain State University
Laura Dair, MS candidate, Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst
Erin Dominov, MS student, Univ of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Doug Morton, USGS
Dr. Katherine Kendrick, University of California Riverside
Dr James Dolan, University of Southern California
Suzzana Sullivan - undergradate student in geology, University of Massachusets, Amherst
Will Snyder, education researcher, University of Massachusetts
Bob Degroot, Southern California Earthquake Center