This 3-session class will focus on the following:

• We will set the stage for understanding the amazing story of Pleistocene mega-floods in the Pacific Northwest. We will briefly review the entire history of Earth’s ice ages, then focus on the most recent Ice Age, in which we still live. We’ll then review the history of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville (not a glacial lake) and the Great Salt Lake, the largest remnant of Lake Bonneville.
• We will review the cataclysmic mega-floods of the Northwestern US including those of glacial Lake Missoula (which created the weird and wonderful landscape of the “Channeled Scabland” of eastern Washington) and the Lake Bonneville flood which is considered the single largest flood in the history of the Earth. Evidence of these floods has left an amazing landscape behind. Were humans eyewitnesses to these catastrophic events?!
• This class will be a tour of the geologic map of the US. With seemingly random splashes of multi-colors, geologic maps can be abstract and have no meaning to the casual observer. In this overview of the geologic map and related subsurface geology of the US, you will gain an appreciation for the geologic diversity of our country and hopefully never look at another geology map the same way again. The hope is to give you the tools to look at a geologic map like a geologist!