This week our students went on a field trip with Dr. Whittecar to explore the local geology and impacts of sea level in Hampton Roads. The whole Hampton Roads area and shape of the Chesapeake Bay is influenced from the rising and falling of sea level over the past 100,00 years. The first stop was to Willoughby spit to learn about how the beaches area formed and maintained. Along the way around the area the students learned about local sea level rise and post glacial rebound /subsidence. We next went to the Yorktown Battlefield, where Cornwallis hid during the revolutionary war. The students could see the exposed bedding and examined the composition of the rock face, along with the ways the layers were tilted. One of our REU students Troy Parish is a geology student interested in the stratigraphy and was in his element (no pun intended)!
A great stop was to see Jamestown Island, one of the first colonies popularly known for the stories of John Smith and Pocahontas. Here we saw shells that have been stacked up for millennia and all took the ferry across the James River to drive over to Chippokes Plantation State Park for older shells and fossils. We scoured the beach looking for fossils within the Yorktown Formation. The REUs were able to find the Virginia state fossil – Chesapecten Jeffersonius (the Chesapeake Jefferson scallop). They also found multiple other species of scallops and clams. It was very hot and humid so on the way back to campus we all stopped in Smithfield for some Ice-cream to cool off. Once again, we made it just back in time to miss our regular summer thunderstorms.
