Geo 365: August 9, Day 221: The Modern Terrace

I'm not really sure where these next two were actually shot. We looped through Cape Arago State Park after the sea lion viewpoint, and stopped at a cove south of Sunset Bay briefly, so the above may have either been taken at the viewpoint or the latter stop. Either way, it shows a good view of the development of a modern marine terrace (as opposed to an uplifted, prehistoric, terrace). This is also a good illustration of strike, the compass orientation of a series of beds' intersection with a normally imaginary horizontal plane. In most cases, a geologist has to use a level- often, the bubble level in a Brunton Compass- to determine precisely where "horizontal" is. In this case, at least to a good approximation, the rocks are beveled horizontally flat, so the lineations of the bedding planes show up as lines. The compass orientations of those lines would be strike.

Photo unmodified. March 8, 2012. Location uncertain; somewhere in the vicinity of Cape Arago/Shore Acres/Sunset Bay State Parks, Oregon.