Canyon lake Gorge, TX & the Glen Rose Formation

 
 

This page is intended to provide links to relevant resources about the field site, primarily for the workshop participants and organizers.  A virtual fieldwork experience, or VFE, is an online re-creation of a field site that is interesting from an Earth systems science perspective.  VFEs are intended to engage learners in genuine inquiry driven by the question: Why does this place look the way it does?


Preliminary Draft of Template-Based VFE

Below are links to an initial draft of a Virtual Fieldwork Experience (VFE) of the Glen Rose Formation.      This draft was created using the VFE Template.  Discussions among the teacher participants have led to the conclusion that the draft should be separated into three VFEs.  In no particular order, those VFEs will be one of Natural Bridge Caverns, a second of Canyon Lake Gorge, and a third of the dinosaur trackways at The Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country. 


We’re not there yet.   The links immediately below are for that initial draft that tried to do too much in one document.  This work, however is a good place to start on creating those more manageable VFEs.  Download either the PowerPoint of the Keynote files to work on developing the site-specific VFEs. 

  1. Initial draft: Glen Rose VFE PowerPoint

  2. Initial draft: Glen Rose VFE Keynote

  3. Initial draft: Glen Rose VFE html

The PowerPoint and the Keynote file are intended for download and editing.  The html version is intended just for online viewing.  Unfortunately, the internal links do not work in the html version, but they do work in both PowerPoint and Keynote. 


Here’s the slide that serves as the graphic organizer and the effective homepage for the (too big) draft VFE:


The Graphic Organizer/Homepage for the initial draft of the Glen Rose VFE.  Click on the image to see the html version of the VFE.  This is slide 11 from the presentation.



The work plan for this is still taking shape, but the basic idea is for teacher participants to select which site’s VFE they wish to work on and then what specific aspects of the site they will focus upon.  The arrows and boxes in the graphic organizer link to slides expanding on the specific topic within those arrows in the PowerPoint and Keynote versions (but not on the image above or in the html version).   Fundamental to the collaborative development of these VFEs is identifying specific slides to create for the specific sites.


A tutorial is in development for customizing the VFE template, but if you can delete and add pictures to a PowerPoint presentation, you’ve mastered the most important technical skill for using the template. 


General Resources:


Gorge Preservation Society

GPS is the nonprofit organization that protects and oversees the gorge and the land encompassing it.  See sections of a guided tour of the Canyon with a docent from GPS by searching for “Canyon Lake Gorge” on youtube.com


Natural Bridge Caverns

Natural Bridge Caverns is the most extensive cavern within the San Antonio area and one of the largest caverns within the state of Texas.  See the geology page of the Natural Bridge Caverns website for a very brief introduction to this aspect of the geology. 


Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country

The Museum features dinosaur trackways that are remarkable in number and quality.  The first image at the top of the page shows two footprints at the site.  Other highlights include aspects of human history and a model of and information about the Canyon Lake Dam. 


USGS Topographic Maps

The USGS Topographic Map of Sattler Quadrangle includes the both Canyon Lake Gorge and the Heritage Museum.  GPS Visualizer is a website that allows you to create Google Earth overlays of USGS topographic maps as well as create other Google Earth materials. 


Comal County Engineer’s Office

The Comal County Engineer’s Office has a treasure trove of pictures and other information related to the flood event, as well as GIS resources for the County and more. 


The picture shown here was taken before South Access Road was reconstructed.  The telephone/power pole above the man shows the location of the road.  He is standing well below the road surface, next to a remnant of the old bridge.  Click the image for a larger version on the CCEE website. 

There are several pages of photos of the flood:

  1. The page labelled “2002 Flood Info” has links to the following photo albums and more.  I’ve added a bit of detail to what is on the page, but I’ve not included all the links available on the page

  2. Aerial photos (taken 7/10/02)

  3. A trek through the Canyon (pictures taken 9/26/02, prior to the reconstruction of South Access Road).

  4. South Access Road reconstruction and reopening.  The earthmoving equipment helps give scale.

Maps and graphics from the Engineer’s Office site:

  1. Canyon Lake’s Rapid Risegraph shows the actual lake level during the flooding event of 2002, with the green line representing the spillway height, water flowed over the spillway at 4:04pm on the 4th of July, and will continue as long as lake levels exceed the 943 elevation.”

  2. Total rainfall from the Flood of 2002 is an isoline map of rainfall for the region for June 30 - July 6, 2002.

  3. Comparing flow and projected flow -- this graph compares the flow during the flood event to the projected flow if Canyon Lake Dam had not been built.



First Draft Google Earth Tour of the Glen Rose Formation

This Google Earth Tour has placemarks for hotel where we’ll be staying and doing our classroom work, our three field sites, overlays of topographic and geologic maps, and a Powers of Ten Tour centered around Canyon Lake Gorge.  This additional file is an overlay of a map of Natural Bridge Caverns.


Geology Resources:

Several of the above resources include geological information along with other information about the field sites.  The workshop included visits to three different sites within the Glen Rose Formation, each highlighting different features of or issues for the formation.  Provided within the list of (linked) resources are those that deal with our specific sites, resources that provide certain kinds of resources  (i.e., maps) for areas around the U.S. and resources about sites or processes analogous to the field sites we visited (i.e., dinosaur footprints at other sites).


Canyon Lake Gorge from the Canyon Lake Texas Information Guide

This page gives a brief overview  of the site with some nice pictures and short videos.  Be sure to watch the two videos.  The first is a general overview of how the gorge formed.  The second is an interview with a retired geologist, discussing the newly exposed geology. 


The Southwest Research Institute

SwRI is an independent, nonprofit applied research and development organization based in San Antonio, Texas.  Search the site for “ Canyon Lake Gorge” to find a number of publications and websites addressing the geology of Canyon Lake Gorge.  SwRI produced the image below. 




The Moyeni tracksite in Lesotho, southern Africa.

This site is an annotated slideshow of a set of dinosaur footprints in which dinosaurs travelled across different types of surfaces and changed their gates to compensate.


The National Geologic Map Database

As the name indicates, this USGS site includes geologic maps from all over the United States.  Relevant maps and reports for Canyon Lake Gorge include Geologic map of the Edwards aquifer recharge zone, south-central Texas and the Geologic Map of the State of Texas.  The Edwards aquifer is an important aquifer, and geology is very important to the Texas economy, so there are many more relevant publications, though many are more technical than is needed for our work.


Digital Geologic Maps of US States

This site allows you to either view interactive maps in your browser window or download them as kml or kmz files for use in virtual globes like NASA’s Worldwind and Google Earth.  Click on a rock unit and you will be taken to a web page with a detailed description of the unit. 


Environmental Resources:


USGS Earthshots page on San Antonio:


Earthshots introduces remote sensing by showing examples of how environmental changes look from space.  This is a Landsat image of San Antonio from 1974.






Southern Forests for the Future

This site from the World Resources Institute has an impressive array of data visualizations related to forests and how they are changing.  “WRI’s Southern Forests for the Future project seeks to raise awareness of the threats facing the forests of the southern United States and lay the foundation for increasing the acreage that is conserved or managed in a sustainable manner.


Workshop Presentations:

Richard Kissel’s overview PowerPoint (as a ppt file).



See also the VFE Resources page!


Suggested additions and corrections are welcome.

Please email Don Duggan-Haas at [email protected]




























Draft VFE Components:

The following links allow you to download the resources created thus far for the Bolles Harbor & Sterling State Park Virtual Fieldwork Experience.  They are still under development and review.  Please send comments to Don Duggan-Haas.


Google Earth Tour of the Glen Rose Formation .  This includes several embedded photographs, many with questions, as well as overlays of topographic maps and a map of Natural Bridge Caverns.  And more.  For best viewing, turn on and off individual overlays.  There are several overlays within the file and if they are checked on simultaneously, the maps are very difficult to read.


Site Specific Materials:

For a (too large) VFE of all three field sites (also linked above) see:

  1. Initial draft: Glen Rose VFE PowerPoint

  2. Initial draft: Glen Rose VFE Keynote

  3. Initial draft: Glen Rose VFE html

The PowerPoint and the Keynote file are intended for download and editing.  The html version is intended just for online viewing.  Unfortunately, the internal links do not work in the html version, but they do work in both PowerPoint and Keynote. 


Charlotte’s Natural Bridge Caverns VFE.  (large ppt file)


 

Resources for Developing a VFE

  1. Download our first draft Google Earth Tour for our exploration of the Glen Rose Formation.  This file includes the field site locations, a Powers of Ten tour focused on Canyon Lake Gorge, and several maps.

  2. See it as a Google Map here (or embedded below).


Workshop Presentation Materials:


Wednesday’s Slides:

  1. Intro (ppt)

  2. ReaLly Big Ideas (Don)  (ppt) (key)

  3. TFG of the South Central US (Richard) (ppt)


Some full-sized images (all pdfs) from Richard’s presentation:

  1. Dino Tracks Diagram

  2. Glen Rose Invertebrate Fossils

  3. Early Cretaceous Globe

  4. Texas Dino Tracks Map

  5. Texas Geologic Map

  6. Balcones Fault System (TX) Map


Thursday’s Slides:

  1. Day Two PowerPoint


Friday’s Slides:

  1. Day Three PowerPoint

A brief introduction

In early July of 2002, 35 inches of rain fell in eight days and Canyon Lake overcame its spillway.  Seven feet of water flowed over the 1,247 foot wide spillway -- 70,000 cubic feet/second.  The rush scrubbed the narrow valley clean of vegetation and carved a 70-foot-deep gorge in a matter of days.  The water exposed much of geologic interest, including dinosaur footprints (one is pictured above) and the Hidden Valley Fault.  To further our exploration of the Glen Rose Formation and the Edwards Aquifer, we also were granted a special tour at Natural Bridge Caverns and visited the dinosaur trackways at the Heritage Museum of Texas Hill Country.


The science revealed at Canyon Lake Gorge is described in June 20, 2010 Web Edition of Science News.  See the article here or click the image at left from the article.


In June of 2010, staff from the Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth began a teacher professional development program at the site.  Our group is pictured below. 


















The work will continue over the 2010 - 2011 academic year.


Last update: July  13, 2010.