STUDENT’S VOICE
Development of 3D Geologic Models in Europe
Franklin Wolfe, SA-4334
wolfef16@mail.wlu.edu
The Glarus Thrust.
I set out with Stephen Ball (WLU ’16) on an amazing journey this summer to gather data for creating 3D geologic models of famous rock outcrops at the Montserrat Mountain in Spain and the Glarus Thrust in Switzerland and to understand the cultural diversity of visitors to these locations. Our journey began at Montserrat Mountain, a serrated, multi-peak moun- tain near Barcelona that is famous for the majestic Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, perched a thousand meters above the valley. Montserrat Mountain is part of the Catalan Pre-Coastal range and was formed during the Eocene from an accumulation of gravels, sands, and clays deposited as a delta in an inland sea. During the Oligocene, the Catalano- Balearic massif collapsed, creating a structure that lifted the conglomerate to its present elevation. Since this time, rainwater has infiltrated the joints of the conglomerate and weathered them into their ‘rounded-pillar-like’ appearance.
Each morning started with a breathtakingly beautiful, and equally terrifying, cable car ride from the valley floor to the monastery. A typical day included hiking the monastery’s grounds on pathways that snaked around the side of the mountain, lined with countless religious statues, engravings, and iconographic images. Through our treks, we took over 500 photos of the monastery and the mountain to use back at W&L (Washington and Lee University) in developing our 3D geologic models.
We learned from interviews with visitors that people world- wide converge on Montserrat. At the basilica’s entrance, we met a man from South Korea who had come to pray at Our Lady of Montserrat, a landmark statue of the Virgin Mary and infant Christ. My most moving experience happened on the last day. As I entered the basilica, a family rushed up
Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey.
behind me, breathing heavily and franticly, and immediately began weeping and praying when they saw the statue. This demonstration of such raw emotion made the importance of Montserrat extremely real for me.
Next, we journeyed to Zurich, Switzerland where we faced an unexpected challenge on our first day. If you have learned to drive a manual transmission vehicle, I am sure you can relate to this experience: turn the key in the ignition…Press down the clutch…Shift into first gear…Slowly apply pressure to the gas pedal, while releasing pressure from the clutch… Stall out…Start over… Stall out again. However, I bet your experience did not land you in the back of a Swiss police car. After stalling out many times and creating a 10-car traffic jam (including an 18-wheeler) at an inclined intersection, blue lights flashed in our rearview mirror. Stephen from the left-side passenger seat said exactly what I was thinking, “I knew we shouldn’t have rented the manual.” Thankfully, the two Swiss police officers were not there to arrest us. Instead, they commandeered our vehicle, put us in the back of their police car, drove us to a nearby parking lot, and gave us a 15-minute driving lesson. After this rocky start, and having “mastered” driving our manual car, we traveled the winding Alpine roads to the Glarus Thrust in the eastern Swiss Alps.
The Glarus Thrust is defined by a razor-sharp fault plane that cannot be missed by the naked eye. The thrust developed as the European and African continents collided in the Eocene, causing a kilometer-thick layer of rock to be translated 40 kilo- meters and pushing much older rocks (250-300 Ma) on top of younger rocks (35-50 Ma). At the Glarus Thrust, we collected photos to use in developing another 3D geologic model. The biggest challenge we faced at this location was that we were
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