38 Geoscience Education and History (Posters)

Monday, 15 March 2010
8:00 AM - 12:05 PM
International ABCDF

"EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: THE GEOLOGY OF BALTIMORE COUNTY, MD: A REVISED GUIDE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS."

Paper number: 38-9
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 12:05 PM

Authors

Abstract

In 1971, Dr. John Bareham, Professor of Physics at what is now Towson University, published “The Geology of Baltimore County – Opportunities for Field Studies in Mineralogy and Petrology” for the Office of Science of the Baltimore County public school system. This guide was used for a number of years as the basis for summer teacher workshops, whose purpose was to educate public school science teachers about the local county geology so that they could, in turn, teach their students. It included descriptions of a total of thirty-eight (38) field sites, ranging from road cuts to parks to quarries. Each description included a brief summary of the site geology and a listing of various rocks and minerals one might find there. The guide also included descriptions of the local and regional geology, the USGS 7 1/2 minute quadrangle map on which the site could be found, and a set of color 35 mm slides (whose whereabouts are unknown). Sometime later, the workshops ceased to run for various reasons.

In 2004, the authors resurrected the guide with the intent to update it. Field checks of all 38 sites during the summers of 2004-2006 revealed that growth and development of the county had destroyed half of those sites. Of the remaining nineteen (19) sites, some are not accessible to groups either due to liability concerns (quarries), extreme weathering of the outcrop, or proximity to busy highways. The revised guide, although shorter, has substantially updated descriptions of the local geology and includes many digital photographs of the remaining sites, along with more accurate directions and locations on USGS topographic maps as well as GPS coordinates. The purpose of the poster is to highlight some interesting aspects of these significant sites. The authors’ goal is to invigorate a new generation of teachers by restarting the summer workshops in the near future once sufficient funding has been obtained.