Downtown Houston, Texas
The Department of Geology and Environmental Sciences brought 7 Hartwick students to Houston, Texas, for the annual Geological Society of America Meeting held on October 5-9, 2008.

GSA Meeting
Dr. Eric Johnson is seen presenting his paper The Ottawan-Aged Carthage-Colton Shear Zone: An Ancient Analog for Death Valley? at a GSA session honoring Adirondack geologist and Colgate professor James McLelland (in foreground). Eric and Dr. David Griffing also presented The "New" Focus on Experiential Learning: Colleges and Universities Are Finally Catching Up with What Geology Departments Have Always Been Doing at a geo-education session. In addition, Griff presented Visualizing the Effects of Pleistocene to Holocene Climate Changes in the Bahamas: An Education Project Based on Research Conducted at the Gerace Research Centre in a session honoring field station founder Don Gerace. Griff also co-authored a paper with Dr. Martha (Missy) Eppes and Hartwick alumnus Matt Daigneault '08 entitled New Field Data Supporting the Role of Insolation in Physical Weathering at a session honoring soil researcher Dan Yaalon.

GSA Meeting
Dr. Zsuzsanna Balogh-Brunstad also presented a poster entitled Carbon Allocation and Cation Uptake Affected by Ectomycorrhizal Fungus in Nutrient Poor Settings, Using 13CO2 Pulse Labeling at GSA. Zsu also co-authored another paper entitled Effect of Mycorrhizospheric Fungal/bacterial/root/mineral Interactions on Chemical Weathering and Nutrient Partitioning in Pine Growth Experiments.

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
On October 9th, the group departed downtown Houston for the NASA facilities in Webster, Texas. First stop was NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where astronauts train in a giant pool with space suits and tools engineered to closely simulate weightless conditions. The pool measures 102x202x40 feet and holds 6.2 million gallons of water.

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
In this view, International Space Station modules and an exact copy of the Space Shuttle arm are in current use for astronaut training. Modules are made to the exact dimensions of the components of the actual craft, but use materials compatible with pool water.

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
Kurt Otten, NBL Critical Systems Specialist and step-father to Stephanie Toungate '09, provided an extensive "behind-the-scenes" tour of the facility for the group.

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
Video monitors around the pool show the two astronauts (David Wolf and Tim Kopra) training in full space suits that morning.

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
Kurt shows the group the interior of a training module replicating a portion of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
The Group at NBL, from left to right: (1st Row) Lexy Fowler '09, Matt Caldwell '10, Skylar Haas '11, Sarah Timm '10, Addie Partrick '09 and Dr. Balogh-Brunstad; (2nd Row) Tim "Mookie" Young '09, Drs. Johnson and Griffing, David Hutchison (Professor Emeritus), Will French '09, and Keith Brunstad.

Johnson Space Center
Zsu, Griff, Matt Caldwell '10, Hutch and Eric (left to right) ride the tram to Johnson Space Center for a tour.

Johnson Space Center
An unused Saturn V rocket is on display at Johnson Space Center. The 363 foot (110.6 m) tall Saturn V rockets carried the Apollo spacecraft as their payload. The group also toured the original Mission Control facilities and a giant bay of life-sized training modules (including a Space Shuttle).

Space Center Houston
The Space Center Houston museum attached to Johnson Space Center also displays a collection of actual Moon rocks.

Downtown Llano, Texas
After leaving the Houston area, the group examined some of the local geology as well. Although a coastal trip was originally planned, the group traveled inland (away from Hurricane Ike damage) to the Llano Uplift, an area of Precambrian and early Paleozoic rocks pushed up during the Pennsylvanian Period...part of the same mountain building event that formed the Appalachians Mountains and the ancient supercontinent Pangaea.

Enchanted Rock State Park
The group visited the Town Mountain Granite at Enchanted Rock State Park. This granite formed ~1070 million years ago, approximately the same time as the metamorphic rocks of the Adirondacks formed. It now provides an excellent example of exfoliation - weathering and erosion into "onion-like" layers.

Roadside Geology
The group also examined the rare igneous rock llanite; a fine-grained granite-like rock with large crystals of blue quartz and red microcline feldspar. This unusual rock formed in dike intrusions that invaded metamorphic rocks about 1 billion years ago.

Roadside Geology
Griff shows the group depositional structures in the Cambrian-aged Hickory Sandstone of the Riley Formation, which was also pushed up as part of the Llano Uplift event.

Roadside Geology
Geologist Keith Brunstad points to burrows and skeletal fossils in the Cretaceous-aged Glen Rose Limestone exposed on the outskirts of Austin, Texas.