2020 NEBRASKA GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY FIELD TRIP
PHOTO JOURNAL by Douglas Hallum
PHOTO JOURNAL by Douglas Hallum
From October 18-20, 2020, NGS field trip participants spent two days traveling by motor caravan through central Nebraska with Paul Hanson, Shane Tucker and Doug Hallum to explore the geology and hydrogeology of the upper Platte, Lower South Platte and Lower North Platte rivers.
Day 1: Exploring the Pleistocene geology from Gothenburg to Moran Canyon. Above: Paul Hanson talks about the alluvial fan exposed in the escarpment left by the canal excavation below Jeffrey Hydro. Below: View of the hydro facility and canal illustrating the ~100’ of hydraulic head drop into the excavation.
Day 1: Field trip participants can’t get enough of the outdoors, so a few gather at Doug’s house to end the day with social distancing, liquid refreshment, and a bonfire.
Day 2: CNPPID engineer Cory Steinke joins the group for a cold morning at the Tri-County diversion dam to share the inside scoop on the Tri-County power and irrigation project.
Day 2: TPNRD Manager Kent Miller (above) and N-CORPE General Manager Kyle Shepherd (below) talk about the significance of Natural Resources Districts and the role of N-CORPE as a water management tool for the Platte basin at the N-CORPE pipeline discharge to the NPPD supply canal.
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Day 2: Sutherland Reservoir (left). Jim and Shawn pepper NPPD engineer Max Fischer with questions at the Gerald Gentleman Station heat dissipation structure (right).
Day 2: Doug Hallum talks about the Overland Trail, Alkali Station, and Alkali Lake from a nearby overlook. Interstate 80 follows much the same route as the historic trails in this part of Nebraska.
Dam foreman Nate Nielsen leads the NGS group onto the bridge to the spillway at Kingsley Dam.
Day 2: Participants peer into the Lake McConaughy spillway.
Day 2: Shane Tucker finishes the second day with a lesson and tour of geology exposed at Cedar Point Biological Station (3 images).
Day 3: Shane Tucker leads the tour into a more detailed look at Ash Hollow Formation outcrop.
Day 3: Doug Hallum and Shane Tucker discuss the geology and hydrogeology of the Nebraska Sandhills margin at the Spring Creek headwater (2 images).
Day 3: Participants examine the Brule Formation up close, and step back to see the contact between the Brule and Ash Hollow Formations. Note the darker palesols in the basal part of the Whitney Member of the Brule Formation (the basal third of the exposure), the irregular basal contact between the top of the Whitney and the base of the “Brown Siltstone beds” that contain concretions like those seen at Cedar Point Geology Stop 1, and the basal Ash Hollow Formation that is cut into the “Brown Siltstone (middle center of image).
Day 3: Field trip participants discuss provenance of source material after examining Broadwater Formation along Highway 30 near Big Springs.
Day 3: Doug Hallum wraps up the field trip with a discussion of his stream-groundwater monitoring network along the South Platte River.