Geoscience course takes students to western edge of Wisconsin

Nine students from the Geoscience 421/621 course recently took a three day camping trip to the western edge of Wisconsin and Minnesota (from the St. Croix River Valley to the Mississippi River Valley at La Crosse) with professors Shawn Malone and John Luczaj. The goal of this course is to get students into the field to see larger rock outcrops and landscape features that cannot be observed in the laboratory. Students kept a field journal of the 22 different localities they visited on their 800 mile journey. Two stops in particular were unique on this trip. They included Interstate State Park, to study the ancient giant erosional potholes that were carved into volcanic bedrock along the St. Croix River from the drainage of Glacial Lake Duluth at the end of the last Ice Age, and a 6-kilometer-wide meteorite impact crater preserved in Ordovician age bedrock from Pierce County, Wisconsin. The group looked at some of the deformed rocks and sediment that filled in the crater. This is a one-credit course that can be taken by both graduate and undergraduate students. This course travels to different parts of the western Great Lakes region each semester so the course can be repeated for credit.