Tripping from the Fall Line: Field Excursions for the GSA Annual Meeting, Baltimore, 2015

Prepared in conjunction with the 2015 GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, this volume contains guides to field trips in this historic region. Emanating from the Fall Line city of Baltimore, these trips reflect the diversity of geological features in the mid-Atlantic region including the Piedmont, Appalachian Mountains, and Coastal Plain, and the importance of geology on the development and construction of the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Trips to the core of the Appalachian orogen concern themselves with the tectonic and metamorphic history, early Paleozoic carbonate platform development, Devonian paleoclimate, and coal-mine fire hazards. Excursions to the Coastal Plain examine various aspects of Cenozoic stratigraphy, structure, barrier island formation, and wetland and ecosystem development. A variety of trips also explore urban geology, including building and monument stones of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., urban hydrogeology, and Civil War battlefield geology.
A billion years of deformation in the central Appalachians: Orogenic processes and products
-
Published:January 01, 2015
-
CiteCitation
Steven J. Whitmeyer, Christopher M. Bailey, David B. Spears, 2015. "A billion years of deformation in the central Appalachians: Orogenic processes and products", Tripping from the Fall Line: Field Excursions for the GSA Annual Meeting, Baltimore, 2015, David K. Brezinski, Jeffrey P. Halka, Richard A. Ortt, Jr.
Download citation file:
- Share
-
Tools
Abstract
The central Appalachians form a classic orogen whose structural architecture developed during episodes of contractional, extensional, and transpressional deformation from the Proterozoic to the Mesozoic. These episodes include components of the Grenville orogenic cycle, the eastern breakup of Rodinia, Appalachian orogenic cycles, the breakup of Pangea, and the opening of the Atlantic Ocean basin. This field trip examines an array of rocks deformed via both ductile and brittle processes from the deep crust to the near-surface environment, and from the Mesoproterozoic to the present day.
The trip commences in suspect terranes of the eastern Piedmont in central Virginia, and...
- Appalachians
- Blue Ridge Province
- Cambrian
- Central Appalachians
- deformation
- Devonian
- faults
- field trips
- folds
- high-grade metamorphism
- metamorphism
- North America
- Ordovician
- orogeny
- paleogeography
- Paleozoic
- Piedmont
- road log
- Silurian
- tectonics
- terranes
- transpression
- United States
- Valley and Ridge Province
- Virginia