Listen in by going to KMUZ 88.5FM on Facebook or tweet me @StoutHammer. You can call in by a local Salem phone number to our talk at 503-990-6101.
We will talk about why geology is important to any town or city. The talk will range across some of the topics in my following biographical sketch for the talk show host:
"I have been in business in Geology in Salem since 1992. I have been here since 1985 when I went to work for the Oregon Water Resources Department. I am from a small town in New Jersey where I used to fish for trout in the creeks, sled in the woods and walk the open fields with my dog and shotgun. I had married and gone to Oklahoma by the time my town got built up and all of that changed.
I got very interested in geology while at college at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. The geology department was small like the earth science department, now at Western Oregon University. I know the geologists there and taught Physical Science labs at Western in 2001 and 2002.
When I was a student, I was thrilled by the giant earth processes of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and continental ice sheets. I was shocked by the overwhelming speed and power of these events. Few can outpace a volcanic ashflow. No one can stand its 1000 degree temperature.
What I like about Geology is being outside. You have an office, but you have to get outside to get your information. Geologists are needed for building new office parks and highway bridges. A few are needed for watching our Cascade Volcanoes. Others are needed for building or adding onto water well fields. I work with farmers who have irrigation wells. In Salem, geologists work for the Oregon Department of Transportation, near the Highway. There are geologists at the Oregon Water Resources Department and a few work at the downtown DEQ office, not far from your radio station studio.
Geology is a science, but because it deals with ever changing natural processes it is also storytelling. At their best, our reports are clear storytelling with concise information, lodged in tables of information and scaled drawings. Geologists go on field trips, where a group of them travels around a wide region to look at rocks and to figure them out. You see, valley and mountain shapes are determined by troughs, folds and faults of rock layers, whether these rocks were molten or sedimentary. On some evenings, geologists may gather around campfires and describe their findings, but also share stories about how they climbed a mountain to get a great view.
Geologists may describe a fossil or a mineral specimen. Some of the fossils in a rock, here in the valley, look like the clams and snails that live in the sand of the bays and beaches of the Oregon Coast. Some are a little different, such as the partly uncoiled snails. Geologists can show with their hands how rock layers angle down the west wide of the Cascades into the Willamette Valley and are pushed up around Salem. They can show the side to side jostling of faults coming in from the Pacific Ocean and the up-to-down movement of faults."
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