Meet the Trip Leaders

Maribel Benito-Moreno
Dpto. Estratigrafia, Fac CC Geologicas
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Maribel has lead a number of field trips in her native Spain, including trips to many of the same localities we will be stopping at on our trip.  She is a sedimentary geologist with an emphasis on depositional and diagenetic evolution of Cenozoic and Mesozoic sequences.  One of her primary research localities is the Cameros Basin, where will be spending three days on this trip.

Kyger C Lohmann
Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Michigan

Kacey has long history of organizing and leading field trips, in particular the annual departmental soft rock spring trip.  His research focuses on carbonate geochemistry, which utilizes the chemistry and fabric of carbonate minerals to reconstruct the conditions present in ancient environments.

Emma Quijada
Dpto. Estratigrafia, Fac CC Geologicas
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Emma is pursuing a Ph.D at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.  She is working with Maribel on the sedimentaology and depositional environment of the Cameros Basin.

Peter A. Knoop
Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Michigan

An alumnus of the department, Peter has participated in departmental field trips since 1987, when he visited Killin's gravel pit during Bruce Wilkinson's Sedimentology course.  His interests include: applying information technology to enhance field science education (e.g., the Geopad Project), marine geochemistry, paleoceanography, geostatistics, and collaboration software (e.g., the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment, the framework underlying CTools.)

Smartphones and Tablets

This year, in addition to the traditional paper guidebook, trip participants will be able to load a PDF version of the guidebook on their smartphones and tablets. Of course, it all has to be put together first; only eleven days left...

Another treat for those bringing their devices on the trip -- there's no requirement to bring one -- will be access to a collection of GIS data sets from the Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME / Geological and Mining Institute of Spain).  IGME provides free access to a wide variety of geologic and thematic data, and we've selected and customized a useful subset for the trip participants.  They will be able to use GPS to find themselves on geologic maps, click to identify geologic features, pan/zoom/search to view the data from different perspectives, and combine different layers with transparency.  (For more details, see the geopad.org post, Electronic Reference Materials on Field Trips: ArcGIS and iGIS Apps.)

U-M 2004 Spain Geology Field Trip

Near Cap de Creus.

While awaiting the start of this year's field trip to northeastern Spain, I thought I would share some photos from our last departmental trip to Spain. In 2004 our former colleague, Josep Pares, lead us on an exploration of northwestern Spain, with the help of Ben van der Pluijm and former department member, Todd Ehlers. On that trip we focused on structural geology and visited a number of geologic (and a few culturally!) significant locations around Barcelona, Cap de Creus, Riglos, Pico del Aguila, Jaca, Anisa, Ordesa, and along the track of the ECORS section across the southern Pyrenees and Erbo Basin.

Photos from 2004 U-M Pyrenees Geology Field Trip

Post a comment, if you were on that trip! What was your favorite part?

Welcome!

This year's University of Michigan, Earth and Environmental Sciences geology field trip will be to Spain. The anticipated dates are 18-30 June 2012, and will be flying in and out of Madrid from Detroit.  More details will follow...