AUGC - 2010 Field Trips

Join us in exploring some of the fascinating geology in the Wolfville and surrounding area. Choose among three trips, emphasizing various aspects of the local geology:

1. Rocks, mud, and scenery: an introduction to the amazing geology of the Wolfville area.

Trip departs from the Old Orchard Inn at 9.00 a.m.

This field trip is a geological traverse from the Bay of Fundy across the North Mountain Basalt and the Annapolis Valley onto the granite of South Mountain. In between, the trip will integrate bedrock geology, Quaternary geology, and environmental geology. Stops include zeolite and maybe amethyst collecting on the shore of the Bay of Fundy, examining coastal erosion of Triassic redbeds at Kingsport beach, dykelands of the Grand Pre area, Quaternary kame deposits, Cambrian slate of the Halifax Group, and peraluminous granite of the Devonian South Mountain Batholith. A bit of hiking along rocky shorelines will be required at some stops.

2. Economic Geology of the Windsor Basin

Trip departs from the Old Orchard Inn at 8.30 a.m.

This field trip will investigate three mineral deposits and one petroleum play hosted by the Carboniferous sedimentary rocks of the Windsor Basin. The day will include a visit to the Fundy Gypsum Mine, the (closed) Walton Pb-Zn mine, the Three Mile Plains uranium prospect, and a bivalve bioherm that in the subsurface could be a porous host to significant petroleum or water resources. Trip led by Dr. Cliff Stanley

3. Stratigraphic and Structural Enigmas of the Noel Shore

Trip departs from the Old Orchard Inn at 9.30 a.m.

The Carboniferous rocks of the south side of the Minas Basin preserve textbook quality outcrops of severely deformed Horton Group rocks, and an interesting transition into the overlying Windsor Group rocks, including some puzzling stratigraphic relationships. We will visit the wildly folded rocks of the Walton shoreline, the Triassic unconformity at Rainy Cove (you've seen unconformities in your texts, but have you ever put your finger right on one?), the uppermost redbeds of the Horton Group where they are overlain by Windsor Group limestone, an enigmatic limestone breccia with molybdenite mineralization, and mainland Nova Scotia's only coastal gypsum outcrop with petroleum seeping out of it.