University of South Dakota
ESCI-396 Geology Field Trip
Spring Break 2007
New Mexico and West Texas
Led by: Dr. Brennan Jordan
Course information: ESCI-396 is the Department of Earth Sciences annual spring break field trip. The faculty rotate responsibility of leading the field trip and run trips to varied destinations that are generally much warmer than South Dakota in March. The course can be taken for 1 or 2 credits, with the latter requiring additional responsibilities (writing a paper in 2007).
2007 Field Trip: We will start making stops along the Colorado Front Range, transect the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, drive south along the Rio Grande Rift, cut east to Carrizozo and White Sands, and then southeast to finish up at Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks (see the route map below). Along the way we will see volcanic and intrusive igneous rocks, compressional structures of the Laramide and Sevier orogenies, tensional structures of the Rio Grande Rift and Basin & Range, the KT boundary at Raton, regional unconformities, and a well preserved Pennsylvania reef (seen from the inside at Carlsbad Caverns). Diverse geology spectacularly exposed!
Route:
