GLG 101 FINAL PROJECT

The Geology of Marathon County

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Objectives and description of the project 

 1. The first objective is to apply the knowledge and understanding you have obtained in this course to reading an account of the geology of the Lake Superior region (including northern Wisconsin).

 The outcome will be a 2-3-page summary of this geology in your own words. The emphasis of the summary will be on the geological history of the Marathon County area. This summary will provide a broad outline of the general sequence of events that might be present and decipherable from the rock record in the county. This reading and summary will provide the background to the second objective.

2. The second objective is to apply the knowledge and understanding you have obtained in this course to field study and laboratory examination of rock outcrops and samples from a number of representative sites (of my choosing) from throughout Marathon County. The field trip will take place during regularly scheduled class time but will likely go over by about two hours.

The outcome of this work will be a personal description and identification of a number of rock types from across the county.

3. These descriptions and identifications will then be compared to the identifications made in the Pre-Cambrian geology report of the county made by the state geological survey. This report will be made available to you after you have completed Step #2. Therefore, in the end, you will all have the "correct" answers together with a detailed map of the rocks to be found elsewhere across the county. I will supply some examples of these other rocks in the lab, but our field trip and collecting will cover the majority of periods and events.

 The final outcome will be a summary account of the geology and geological history of Marathon County using the regional summary and the county geology report, and illustrated with your own account of the rocks you collected. The final report will run to about 4-5 pages. It will be due at the time of the last class.