geologictimepics

It’s about time

It’s about time that I started a blog.  Geology and Geologic time are so visual–they lend themselves beautifully to photography.  And those are things that I feel very passionately about.  So that’s what I plan to do here… post the occasional photo of something geological and discuss geologic time.

Why is an understanding of geologic time important?  Briefly, it’s important because it gives us perspective on resources, environmental degradation, and perhaps most important, what it means to be human.  Resources form at geologic rates, but we humans use them at human rates.  Similarly, environmental degradation will eventually heal… at geologic rates –but we cause the degradation at human rates.  And with respect to our humanity?  Seems to me that to realize human beings have been around for only a tiny fraction of Earth History naturally gives us some humility –something we could all probably use.

I plan to take a visual approach to geologic time… through photographs.  There’s no need to discuss radiometric dating, because one doesn’t radiometric dating to show that the Earth is inconceivably old.  You only need to think about the processes involved in forming a geologic feature and an open mind.  Many of these photos come from my website: marlimillerphoto.com –you can download over a thousand geology images from there for free.

Thousands of feet of sedimentary rock, exposed in the canyons of SE Utah, attest to great lengths of geologic time. This particular canyon is in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.

So when you look down a canyon, like the one in this photo, you’re looking at unmistakeable evidence for great lengths of time… it’s not that the canyon itself took so long to form (maybe 100’s of thousands of years?  More?  Less?), but the rock itself, made of layer upon layer of sediment, deposited in different environments —That’s where we can get a glimpse of geologic time.

More later… thanks for looking!
–Marli