Field Trip Leaders: Georgia Pe-Piper, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia & David Piper, Geological Survey of Canada, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Trip Full
The Lower Cretaceous Chaswood Formation of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is a fluvial succession up to 200 m thick that is the chronologic equivalent of the Missisauga and Logan Canyon reservoir sandstones of the Scotian basin. The formation was deposited in fault-bound basins that show the same phases of deformation as the offshore Orpheus graben, Laurentian subbasin and Jeanne d’Arc basin along tectonic strike. The Chaswood Formation preserves a record of:
• indirectly, the climate and hinterland relief that supplied sediment to the Scotian basin;
• the importance of syn-depositional strike-slip deformation;
• the style of diagenesis in the proximal parts of the Scotian basin;
• the detrital petrography (gravel through clay fraction) supplied to the western part of the Scotian basin;
• the thermal evolution of the proximal part of the Scotian basin.
This one day field trip will visit the only sizeable outcrop of the Chaswood Formation in Nova Scotia. At this site multiple phases of deformation are visible as well as a varied detrital petrography preserved in the gravel fraction. A complex tectonic and diagenetic history is revealed by high-resolution seismic-reflection profiles and diamond drill-holes that will be used to illustrate selected examples of Chaswood Formation lithofacies.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR ALL FIELD TRIP PARTICIPANTS
- All Participants must have their own health & travel Insurance
- All Participants must read, complete, and sign the following attached documents:
- Field Trip Participant Medical Information and Emergency Contact Information
- Completed / Signed documents MUST be placed in a sealed envelope and passed in to the Field Trip Leader prior to departing on the field trip. Please print your name clearly on the envelope.
We look forward to seeing you on this one-day field trip. The field trip will depart from in front of the Student Union Building, 6136 University Avenue, Dalhousie University at 0800 sharp on Monday August 11th. If you experience any problems, please call us at (902) 223-1220. We will be travelling in three 7-seater vans. We will drive to the Shaw Resources office at Nine Mile River and from there to the West Indian Road pit. We will provide a sandwich lunch, weather permitting at the pit. After lunch, we will drive back to Halifax through the subsurface site of the Chaswood type section (time and enthusiasm permitting) to the Geology Department at Saint Mary’s University, where we will examine core from the Elmsvale basin, Brierley Brook, Belmont and Vinegar Hill outliers. You will then be returned to Dalhousie at the end of the day.
The West Indian Road pit is a working pit and all visitors are required to wear safety footwear (steel-toed boots), safety glasses, hard hat and fluorescent vest. We will have some safety footwear to loan to those who do not have it, but the number of boots and the available sizes are limited. If you have your own safety footwear and are able to bring it, please do so. You will find it more comfortable to have your own than flopping around in boots several sizes too large. We will provide safety glasses, hard hat and fluorescent vest, although if you prefer your own, please bring them. Please let us know by email if you are bringing your own boots or other safety gear, as that would help with trip logistics.
Summer weather in Nova Scotia is unpredictable. It may be a beautiful sunny day so that all you need is sunscreen and a hat to protect you from the hole in the ozone layer over Canada. There is a possibility it will rain all day, in which case wet gear and a small umbrella would be useful in the pit. Most likely it will be sunny with cloudy periods. The temperature is likely to be between 20E and 30EC.
If you have any questions about the trip itself, email dpiper@nrcan.gc.ca For questions about finances, registration or other conference issues, email Trudy.Lewis@lewisconferences.com
Georgia Pe-Piper & David J.W. Piper
