Abstract The Southwest Carbon Partnership (SWP), one of seven United States Department of Energy-funded Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships, has been tasked with assessing the CO 2 sequestration potential within the southwestern United States. Carbon dioxide is considered a ‘greenhouse’ gas and is emitted, in large volumes, by the burning of fossil fuels and other industrial processes. CO 2 capture from point source emitters and subsequent geological sequestration is being considered as a viable short- to intermediate-range mitigation option to combat the phenomena of global warming. Significant fossil fuel reserves and consumers exist within the seven member states of the SWP and, as such, the Partnership is dedicating a large amount of resources to the challenges posed by large-scale CO 2 sequestration. Three distinct phases of work have been or will be performed by the SWP: a Characterization Phase to identify carbon capture and sequestration potential; a Validation Phase to test small-scale field injection of CO 2 ; and a Deployment Phase to test commercial-scale field injection of CO 2 . Each phase presents challenges and opportunities to the refinement of the best approach to safe and efficient geological storage of CO 2 within the SW region of the United States.

Abstract Even though West Virginia is the state where the anticlinal theory received its earliest practical application, later developments have proved that the state also contains the outstanding examples of synclinal oil pools. This is especially true in the southern part of the state, where such important synclinal pools as the Tanner Creek field of Gilmer County, the Rouzer pool and the recent Granny's Creek pool of Clay County, a part of the Blue Creek and Clendenin pools of Roane and Kanawha counties, and the Big Creek pool of Lincoln County are located. In the central part of the state the Copley field of Lewis County and the Wolf Summit fields are the major synclinal fields. Some of the synclines are closed structures; others are open. The following are the important sands which produce oil from synclines: Maxon, Keener, Berea, Big Injun, Weir, and Gordon.

Abstract The focus of this field trip is the complex lithologic, metamorphic and structural transition between high-grade infrastructural and low-grade suprastructural terranes that define the accreted peri-Gondwanan Neoproterozoic-Cambrian Carolina Zone, an island-arc superterrane in the north-central Piedmont of North Carolina. This transition is now exposed across a metamorphic suite of amphibolite facies layered gneiss plus kyanite-sillimanite zone pelitic schist, and another metamorphic suite of greenschist facies mylonitic and phyllonitic metagranitoids and their undeformed equivalents. A variety of mineral assemblages, fabric elements, and structures within the transition zone may be linked into a progressive sequence recording (1) the transpressional buildup of an Alleghanian collision zone between Laurentia, the Carolina Zone, and Gondwana during Pangean continental amalgamation, and (2) its extensional collapse during the Permo-Triassic through Jurassic rifting and breakup of Pangea. We will observe the effects of Alleghanian ductile strain superposed on this infrastructural-suprastructural terrane transition, including the interplay between dextral transpression and the generation of syn- to post-kinematic granitic plutons. Metamorphosed volcanogenic and syn-kinematic granitoid rocks record the effects of ductile dextral-slip deformation associated with at least four major fault zones. These fault zones are combined as the Nutbush Creek–Lake Gordon fault system, an integral member of the Eastern Piedmont fault system. Finally, the trip highlights the ductile-brittle effects of Late Permian to Triassic normal-slip faulting, uplift and rift sedimentation in the northern Durham sub-basin of the Triassic Deep River rift basin, as well as crosscutting Jurassic intrusive rocks.

Abstract The architecture of the critical zone—the distribution of mobile regolith, the thickness of weathered rock, and their characteristics, as well as the topography of the land surface—is shaped by erosion and weathering processes that depend upon both lithology and climate. In this trip we explore the Boulder Creek watershed, a landscape that juxtaposes uplifted Precambrian crystalline rocks of Colorado’s Front Range against Mesozoic marine sedimentary rocks underpinning the western edge of the High Plains. The landscape is strongly shaped by Quaternary climate cycles operating on this template inherited from the Laramide orogeny. Stop 1 will provide an overview of the abrupt topographic step at the Front Range–High Plains join, where we will discuss fluvial strath terraces on the Plains. At Stop 2 in Betasso Preserve, we will discuss the impact of the canyon cutting set off by late Cenozoic exhumation of the High Plains on the hillslopes and groundwater systems lining the master stream. At Stop 3, we will hike 2 miles down Gordon Gulch, a focus site in the Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory. At stops on the hike, we will discuss exhumation rates, climate-modulated weathering, hillslope hydrology and hillslope sediment transport, and the influence of slope aspect on these processes. Our goal is to focus on the history of climate-driven erosion and weathering processes, and how to incorporate these processes into quantitative models of landscape evolution.