- See an erupting volcano
- See a glacier
- See an active geyser
- Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary
- Observe a river whose discharge is above bankfull stage
- Explore a limestone cave
- Tour an open pit mine
- Explore a subsurface mine
- See an ophiolite
- An anorthosite complex
- A slot canyon
- Varves
- An exfoliation dome
- A large layered igneous intrusion
- Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate
- See the out of place palm trees of Palm Valley, Northern Territory
- Stromatolites
- A field of glacial erratics
- A caldera (no the Mount Warning “erosion caldera” does not count)
- A sand dune more than 100metres high
- Visit a fjord
- A recently formed fault scarp
- A megabreccia
- An actively accreting river delta
- A natural bridge
- A large sinkhole
- A glacial outwash plain
- A sea stack either an active one or a preserved one
- A house-sized glacial erratic
- An underground lake or river
- The Great Dividing Range
- Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals
- Petrified trees standing in place
- Lava tubes
- The Grand Canyon
- See a meteor impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible
- Swim on the Great Barrier Reef
- The Bay of Fundy, to see the highest tides in the world
- See a preserved sedimentary dyke (preserved liquefaction from an earth quake)
- Banded Iron Formations, in the Pilbara, to better appreciate the air you breathe.
- The snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
- Lake Baikal, Siberia, deepest lake in the world with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water
- Ayers Rock (Uluru), the classic inselberg.
- See a cliff face of classic columnar jointed lava
- The Swiss Alps
- Seeing rock cores being drilled
- The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
- The Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, to see the original karst
- The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge
- Visit Antarctica
- Climb Mount Warning, one of the most imposing volcanic ‘plugs’
- Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, with fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist
- Tierra del Fuego, to see the Straits of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America
- Visit an active stratovolcano
- The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows
- The Great Rift Valley in Africa
- The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn"
- Visited the Coorong and the lakes at the mouth of the Murray River
- Stood on the fossils of Maria Island, Tasmania
- Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
- The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
- See a lava lake
- See some the twelve apostles (well, some of them)
- The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
- The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
- See the Pinnacles in Western Australia (or even better, visited Cappadocia in Turkey)
- Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone National Park
- Visited (or lived) in an underground house in Coober Pedy
- The San Andreas fault
- The dinosaur footprints in Lark Quarry, Winton Queensland
- The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
- The Pyrenees Mountains
- The Moeraki Boulders on the East Coast of Southern New Zealand
- Denali (an orogeny in progress)
- A catastrophic mass wasting event
- Stood at the base of the Bread-Knife, Warrumbungle Mountains
- The black sand or the green sand-olivine beaches beaches in Hawaii
- Walk or climb through an Aa lava flow
- Looked inside The Superpit at Kalgoorlie
- Visited a waterhole in the Macdonnell Ranges
- The Tunguska impact site in Siberia
- Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0
- See dinosaur footprints in situ
- Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil)
- Find gold, however small the flake
- Find a meteorite fragment
- Experience a volcanic ashfall
- Experience a sandstorm
- See a tsunami
- Witness a total solar eclipse
- Witness a tornado firsthand
- Witness a meteor storm, a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
- View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope
- See the aurora borealis or Aurora Australis, otherwise known as the northern and southern lights
- View a great naked-eye comet
- See a lunar eclipse
- View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
- Experience a cyclone
- Burn your shoes on not-quite-cooled lava
- See the green flash
A view of the geology of the Northern Rivers of New England, New South Wales. Includes thoughts on the formation of the regions volcanoes (Mount Warning, Ebor and others), groundwater, the Clarence Moreton Basin, recent sedimentation, gas (including coal seam gas), mineralization in the eastern part of the southern New England Orogen and more. What is the geological influence in the Northern Rivers and New England areas of Australia that provide us with the beauty and diversity we see today?
Friday, 4 January 2013
A geological top 100
There seems to be a proliferation of variation to the theme of 100 things to see before you die. Geotripper did a geologists version back in 2008, it can be found here. Andrew Alden did a review of the list on 1 January which can be found here. I thought they were a little to USA centric so I've modifed theirs to include famous natural features that have a bit more of an Australian favour while maintaining the best ones from around the world. The ones I've managed to do are in bold text 40/100 - what is your score... or what do you want your score to be? Those that you can see in the northern rivers or very close by are underlined.
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I can't tick off as many as you but I have been to the Giants Causeway. Some I don't even know, what's the Green Flash?
ReplyDeleteThey are a little tricky eh! I didn't know what the Green Flash was either. I don't usually use wikipedia but it has a good explanation.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash
It is to do with sunrise and sunset apparently.
Perhaps a short piece of reference for each may be helpful. I couldn't find an explanation or identify ''a river whose discharge is above bankfull stage ''
ReplyDeleteGiven the instinctive illogicality of meaning an explanation would be more than useful.
Tracked you down when I came across the Glenugie excitement and needed to know the underlying geology. Well explained and understood, my thanks.
Johnb
Hi JohnB,
DeleteThanks for visiting. I started to put a quick comment after each one but then I realised how huge this post was going to be! When I first went to university I realised that most of what you learn first up is nomenclature - essentially the language of the science! There is always an easy translation, for example bankful really just refers to major regional flooding.
There is a lot of excitement at Glenugie at the moment I agree! Although I have not specifically posted one on how gas drilling operations work and the different techniques that are applied for different purposes but it is quite complex. Either way, I hope you found the information you are looking for.
Feel free to come back and comment on anything I write. You are most welcome.
Cheers,