Kick off the holidays with your GSOC friends!  Registration is now available.  The event is free, but we'd like to know how many folks will be there.

GSOC will celebrate the holidays with a potluck dinner, a slide show, and music at West Hills Unitarian Fellowship at 8470 SW Oleson Rd, Portland 97223 in Southwest Portland.

Meat and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided by GSOC. You are welcome to bring along your favorite beverage (including wine if you'd like). 

Attendees should bring the following types of dishes for serving about 6 people:

Last name ending in A-L: dessert

Last name ending in M-Z: salad, vegetable or vegetarian dish

There is no fee for the party (other than bringing a dish) although donations to the Bev Vogt PSU Geology Student Fund are always encouraged.

Understanding Multitemporal Lidar to Better Understand Landslide and Debris Flow Hazards in Western Oregon

In 2017, the Eagle Creek fire scorched the western portion of the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. In 2021 and 2022, atmospheric river type storms triggered many post-fire debris flows. This presentation highlights the work done to evaluate pre- and post-2017 Eagle Creek fire debris flows in the study area using multitemporal bare earth LIDAR digital elevation models. To understand the difference between pre-fire and post-fire debris flows, multiple sources of data were collected and analyzed. The primary datasets were field data collected after storms, orthophotos, and the multitemporal LIDAR datasets used to map the debris flows.

Register for Zoom event here.

Speaker Bio:

Bill Burns is an engineering geologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI). He earned his bachelor's degree in Geology at Florida State University and his master's degree in Geology at Portland State University. He is the principal investigator at DOGAMI on landslide hazards and has authored many publications on landslide hazard mapping methodology, risk analysis, and maps. He has spent the last 30 years helping communities in Oregon understand and reduce risk from landslide, earthquake, and volcano hazards.

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.

Register to watch the event via Zoom here.

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.

tHE 2025 GSOC fIELD TRIP SEASON IS COMPLETED

STAY TUNED FOR INFO ABOUT THE 2026 FIELD TRIP SEASON

CONTACT GSOC Field Trip Director Carol Hasenberg