
A Personal Re-evaluation of the "Big One"
A small outcrop on an obscure knoll in the Santa Cruz Mountains (Coast Range) of California led Dr. Beaulieu to plate tectonic issues in Oregon. This strange rock catapulted him into an ever-widening career of geologic enlightenment. Over the years, he was fortunate to glean meaningful insights from otherwise drab studies. He came to understand that knowing plate tectonics in a general way as a geologist is one thing, but developing and presenting plate tectonic information to policy people guiding the future was a broader and more challenging task. It is there where we must really think as geologists. We must challenge ourselves anew with a truly wide-angle lens. We must look at all the geologic data and all the insights at our disposal. We must also recognize the limits of our data. In his opinion, there is now a need to pin down more exactly what really may have happened to Oregon on January 26, 1700.
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Speaker Bio:
Dr. John Beaulieu was born at Hanford, Washington during the War. He cut his teeth early on geology by sneaking into the Reservation to collect fossils, and by taking a college level geology course at the age of 14. Later he was employed as the second leading geologist on the reservation in 1965. He notes there were only two geologists at the time! He graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors at the University of Washington (1966) and received a PhD in Geology shortly thereafter (1970) from Stanford University. After a short stint as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, he progressed at DOGAMI to become Deputy Director in 1977 and Director from 1999 to 2003 when he retired. He produced numerous publications on various aspects of the geology of Oregon. He was part of the US/United Nations Team dispatched to Japan to advise on earthquake mitigation after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Over the years, additional attention has been given to core aspects of the geology of Oregon.