Field Camp | Geology | SIU

Why take a course in field geology?

Well, maybe your department, a grad school, or a future employer requires you to take one. If not, there are still good reasons to have a summer field course under your academic belt. Field geology offers students the opportunity to apply what has been learned in the classroom to real geological problems. Unless you already have fairly extensive field experience you should emerge from the course with a much deeper and more realistic appreciation of problems related to the collection, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of geological information.

In the field, rocks look different than they do in textbooks or on lab benches. A valuable aspect of the field course is practice in approaching an outcrop and knowing what to do next. Even an incorrect solution to a field problem or a faulty interpretation of a geological event is of value because it prepares the way for a better solution or interpretation next time. As you get better at your job through practice, you gain confidence in your abilities. For this reason, a field course must stress individual effort and personal initiative. Students usually work in teams, primarily for safety, and we all realize that a good deal of learning can be derived from discussing ideas with classmates. But it is your own interpretation of the geology, developed from your own investigation, that will be of the most value.

What are the prerequisites?

Field camp participants must have completed courses in physical and historical geology, igneous and metamorphic petrology, structural geology, and stratigraphy. Course experience in sedimentology and geomorphology is recommended but not required. Most students take our field course between the third and fourth (junior and senior) years or during the final summer prior to graduation.

We work in - and see - a lot of great geology

From our Red Lodge and Dillon headquarters we map in Archean to Cenozoic material ranging from high-rank metasediments and ultramafics to marine and terrestrial sedimentary rocks. Map areas around Red Lodge best illustrate Laramide thick-skinned structural styles, whereas those around Dillon emphasize classic thin-skin tectonic style. We reconstruct Pleistocene glacial events from our own field maps, interpret stream capture sequences along the Beartooth Front, and apply first-hand observation to depositional problems in the Bighorn Basin. On a major excursion from Red Lodge, we travel through Yellowstone National Park, up the west side of the Sawtooth Mountains into Glacier National Park, and return to Red Lodge across the western edge of the northern plains.