Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Landslides and Lidar - Dr. Phillip Prince @Geomodels

Transcript

Landslides and Lidar - Dr. Phillip Prince @Geomodels · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The one meter resolution is truly the world game changer for structural geology, for landslides, for land use, for cars, caves.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is incredible.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it worked, and why it mattered.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh there we go.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Radio Chris is here.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Excellent.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, he's ready to go.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, that uh that was a fun interview.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Philip Prince.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a high quality geologist, right there.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: That is really I okay.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Here's how I feel.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like really interesting geologists.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think you and I would have a fun time hanging out with him, going looking at some rocks.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: We have definitely uh very different interests, I think.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: But uh but some overlap for sure, right?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like different specialty.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now this is your take, right?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, that's my take.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I kind of like geomorphology, so okay, fair enough.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're a lab rat, you know.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're um I guess the one of the takeaways for me is his he has a unique ability to see things in the field and and then to talk about those things at a level that almost anyone can understand.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and really great educator.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you get that feel when you watch his YouTube videos, um, when you talk to him, um, like like we did, you know.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's just yeah, it's uh I think that's a unique thing is to be able to see the world that way.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I agree and just make sense of it at a different level.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're you're exactly right.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's that he has a really finely tuned, we talked about like what how a geologist thinks in previous episodes.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: He's like the the the type example for that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is the very highly tuned uh person who has a very highly tuned geological intuition and geological understanding.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and his stories about LIDAR, that is cool.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and we're you he talked us through the LIDAR uh uh bit map database, basically, which you could look at, and it's amazing.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's really, really gives you uh a unique insight into the world in the place where you listen, you live.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you go look us up, it's really, really cool.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: It is, it absolutely is.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: You could go to his uh YouTube channel, Geo Models, at the GeoModels, which is really excellent.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I learn a lot from him on YouTube, and it's a really it's an interesting, as you said, combination.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: He can he can start from zero and go really, really deep, and that's a unique skill set.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel deep though, Jesse.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is is when it's all said and done, you you look back and and you're like, wow, you know, I really learned a lot.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel that way, though.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, I it's definitely not skin level.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's deeper than that, you know.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it just doesn't feel that way, and that's an art in and of itself, actually.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: I I I think that's right.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're exactly right on that one.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: So this is Dr.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Philip Prince.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: He's got his PhD um as a really geomorphologist, tectonicist from Virginia Tech.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now works in in several different consulting aspects, works a lot on on um landslide evolution using LIDAR, has an amazing YouTube channel, as we said before, that geo models that talks a lot about Appalachian tectonics.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Really cool the history or the geological history of the Cumberland Gap.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's an episode on that.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's really cool stories about Appalachian geology um and and some other things.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: So check that out there.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: You can find him on several different avenues, but uh Dr.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Philip Prince.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know, Chris.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: What do you say?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Should we just get to it here now?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We should, but one have one more question before we do.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Did you happen to see his Twitter or X handle?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: I did not.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: What is it?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: At all Phil's fault.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty good.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's a good one.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good one.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't look that up.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good one.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: All Phil's fault.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Phil Prince coming at you.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Philip Prince.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Geo models.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're I'm super excited to talk to you.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is uh this is gonna be awesome.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Glad glad to be here under under both under both names, which should probably be one and the same name, but that's we'll we'll get there.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get there.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you gotta work on your your unifying your branding at some point.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: They they tell me.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh geo models at geo models on YouTube, right?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh geomodels, yeah, with it with it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then Dr.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Philip Prince.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm really excited to talk to you.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: You you your channel has taught me um a lot about Appalachian geology.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Just like I don't I I moved to Pennsylvania and not really ever worked in in the Appalachians.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I've learned a lot from your channel.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really I'm excited to talk to you about this.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, me too.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's good to finally see in person um rather than uh uh watching on YouTube all the time.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm in a similar-sized window.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a little bit bigger here.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's reminiscent.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: You just bring up some paint drawings and then we're good to go, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hey, we'll get into that, Jeff.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: You you tell me as I say, you tell me what you need to see and we'll we'll make it we'll make it happen.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Philip, um, I'm gonna go ahead and lead out with the question that we always ask.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, thanks, thanks so much for being with us today.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really look forward to talking to you about um about what you do.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so do you have an aha moment about what got you into geoscience in the first place?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I I grew up uh, you know, doing doing out outdoor things, particularly actually like like trout trout fishing.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So so being in being in in steep, steep creek, sort of in in the Blue Ridge, particularly on the Blue Ridge escarpment, which ended up being the main focus of my PhD at Virginia Tech.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was around those spaces uh and never really thought about them in terms of why they look like they did.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was not, I'm from upstate South Carolina, went to public school here, great public schools, but earth science was really not a part of it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it wasn't, in fact, till I got to to undergraduate, I went to Furman University here in here in Greenville, South Carolina, my hometown.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and actually the the fall term of my freshman year, first first suite of classes I took in college, uh had a general education requirement and said, I'll I'll take I'll take EES.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was Earth and Environmental Science.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was the the geology department.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the first first field trip, I think, which was in the first couple weeks of classes, was to uh to Jones Gap State Park and and surroundings here in South Carolina, and one of those places I had spent quite a lot of time.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and just hearing hearing about it in terms of why why it looked like it did.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: What what are these different materials?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why is the land laid out like this?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um having having maps incorporated with that, that that was that was kind of the the aha moment.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was just uh seeing a place I had been much of my life and I knew very closely in one way, and it was it was like you can get to know it and you know in another way.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that was it, man.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that that was definitely the the aha moment for sure.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can you paint a picture of what I've never been to that state park before?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: What what did you see when you went there?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's different for you.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it's um it's on it's on the Blue Ridge Escarpment.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So here in here in southern Appalachia, you you've got a you know a four or five hundred meter to to kilometer in places, so you know, fifth 1,500 feet to about 3,500 feet step step up in the landscape from what we call the Piedmont, which slopes out to the Atlantic, up onto this highland plateau that that is the the blue ridge where the highest peaks and the Appalachians are located.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um this step up in the land, which call the escarpment, where I'm from, you see it off in the distance.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: They call it the blue wall.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just looks like a like a line of mountains, but it's a plateau edge.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And due to stream capture processes, it has gorges cut in it where rivers that used to flow on the plateau surface were captured by Atlantic rivers and and pulled off of that Gulf of Mexico draining upland down through these canyons, and they carve their canyons ever larger.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um those canyons are full of waterfalls.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um they have you know, they have steep bedrock streams.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of boulder, boulder accumulation from slope movements as well.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, essentially it's it's it's sort of a a land of waterfalls, I guess.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you walk up through Jones Gap, it used to be a a road from the lower elevation Piedmont up to the top of the plateau.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: You could follow, kind of follow the stream up.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you're walled in by you're walled in by high elevations.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's you know actual free-falling waterfalls that are you know a couple hundred feet high.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's um it's it's a topographically dynamic landscape and it's very sudden, like within within like 15 or 20 minutes from there, you're kind of in rolling rolling farmland, and then all of a sudden you're in a place that I mean it's almost you know, small-scale Yosemite-like features, huge exfoliation uh cliffs and things like that.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a well uh it's an engaging landscape, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's an interesting place to be.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think being introduced to thoughts on why it looked like because I always thought it was a nice place, you know, but I I didn't even really know that you could you could ask about the processes that made it look that way.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I this sounds like a field trip we've got to go on, Chris, and uh have have folks guide us throughout the room.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good one.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have reservations to go.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a state park.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when I was a kid, you could go and you'd be the only car in the parking lot.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You literally have to have a reservation.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's a testament to what a cool place it is.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you gotta have a reservation just to get in now, too?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just or or just to stay?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just to enter, to enter and park.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: To enter and park.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, interesting.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, spectacular.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: So um what were you chasing trout on the fly rod or with spinners?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Or what were you?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I am I am I am a spin fisherman, almost in like a resistance kind of way.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm I'm a I'm a spin fisherman with uh with with repurposed repurposed panfish jigs.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I I get uh I get these little soft plastic hilgramites and things like that from Walmart.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of times, a lot of times in these these streams just go in with a coil of line and tie it on a stick, kind of like a Tinkara kind of thing.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're just dumping it into plunge pools and stuff like that.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it's you know, speaking to the reality of that landscape, you know, it has these huge waterfalls.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Above the waterfalls, there's stream reaches that they still think they're on the plateau flow into the gulf.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they're they're lower gradient, and they have these trout populations that are cut off from the rest of the world by like this vertical 200-foot waterfall.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh it's uh yeah, it was it's really cool.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you climb up a crazy steep trail and you just kind of head off through the rhododendron.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, a lot of a lot of times some of them have some of them have a little bit of of bogginess in their headwaters.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you get like a little bit of tannin in the water.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the the brook trout are very dark in them.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, very cool.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's okay.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: We got all right, I got it's a good place.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can think about nick points.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's good.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, think about nick points.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that that that kind of leads me into my next question, which I want to I want to hear the the rest of the story, like you know, between undergrad inspiration there uh till now.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: But but I want to know what do you what what would you define yourself?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: What ology are you?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I would kind of say you're like a geomorphologist, uh uh uh tectonic geomorphologist, maybe like what what but you do a lot of structure stuff, jack of all trades.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do you what's your what would you class yourself and how did you go from undergrad to that specialty?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Tech tectonic geomorphologist is probably as close as you'll get.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I finished my PhD at tech with with Jim Spatilla, uh, and that that is I think certainly how he would he would describe himself.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of the as tends to happen, you know, with an advisor, I I think a lot of the way I see things today were a product initially of the classes I I I took with him and then the you know the work I did with him.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and what was that preset?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, because you're describing your your your sort of upbringing and realization that like, oh, this is why this this this escarpment's here.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's almost like you're you're pre you're predefined to be a but it it found me.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: It found me.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It found me.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: I did not I did not go looking for it, and I will I will I I will narrate the story in a in in hopefully a timely manner.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um there was no way you were gonna be an igneous petrologist.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: I just like there's no way.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, that's where the that's where they're going with the story.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um okay, all right, all right.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I you know I finished up at Furman and I had gotten involved in a not an igneous petrology, but uh, but a metamorphic petrology undergrad project that was uh is actually looking at at in in the escarpment area, some of these really unusual plant communities that were were growing on uh uh what were were mapped as amphibolite bedrock or kind of kind of calcsilicate, but um uh you know uh they produce a chemically unusual soil and they made these really incredible forest communities.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if you like being out on the land, you'd walk up into one of these and it's like, oh, where am I?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: So this is different, yeah.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Very different.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and I thought that was was quite interesting.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I finished up at Furman, worked in environmental consulting for a couple years, wasn't really thinking about going to graduate school just because I had I had sort of kept the hammer down academically all through my childhood, and I was kind of you know stepped back for a while.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um worked a couple years.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: I actually I threw hiked the the Appalachian Trail in 2006, did kind of a kind of a quick one right before going to to Virginia Tech, but I was going to Virginia Tech to actually keep going with this like metamorphic petrology and kind of you know kind of plant community kind of kind of a thing.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um got there and when it you know when it came down to just basically sitting with a a microprobe and then doing a bunch of petrography, it it just wasn't at that point in other words, doing what Jesse does every day.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't yeah, no offense.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: None taken, none taken.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I it it was probably the reason I include AT through hike, all that is that it it I had gone in a different direction, basically, in the years the the the couple of years since I finished undergrad.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And sort of a concern like can you can you switch advisors?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is that like you know, and I I was taking some classes with with Jim Spatilla that were from that more big picture uh kind of large-scale material movement idea, like look looking at a moving system like I would draw for you in paint, I guess.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and I like that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there was uh there was actually, you know, like the stream capture idea had come up on a field trip at Furman, and we were out on a trip near near Virginia Tech, and I was like, man, I this this looks like the stream capture back home, and you know, I was talking to him about that, I thought it was pretty cool, and uh, and eventually I just ended up being like, look, like it's not I had a had a fellowship through the you know, through the the college of science, so I wasn't TA issues were not so much of a thing.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: With with me, I did I did TA, but um it was not you know it was not out of out of necessity.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to to to switch to to Jim being a primary advisor with with the late Bob Tracy, who was the the igneous and metamorphic petrologist at Tech, as sort of a co-advisor, and he still contributed significantly to what I did.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think I mean I'm I'm very much a generalist, and that's probably because I spent a lot of time with amphibal geochemistry and then went in in the in the stream captured tectonic geomorph direction.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: But all that to say, when I ended up working with Jim, they had been interested in the Blue Ridge escarpment, and I was kind of like, man, I I used to look at that thing every morning on the way to high school, and I've caught a bunch of trout on it, you know.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in a in a position to kind of think about the layout of the landscape there, think about my own experiences, and it and it translated pretty well in into publishable, into publishable work.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip, what was the plan to what what did you want to do with that then?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Were you did you want to you know go into this kind of morphology and and then teach or or you know go to the teach at the college level?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's not what you do now.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think I think that was initially the plan.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I was I was at tech for about five years after I finished, you know, as kind of the soft money, the soft money instructor or or whatever you want to call it, because I I really did enjoy teaching and had a lot of success with it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I probably am drawn more to to the more applied side of things than I am to the the purely research side of things.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I enjoy participating in and contributing to research efforts, but as as my sole um sort of as the main focus of my job, that's it's just not the best match for me.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I did not know that at the time I was applying for positions.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I presume maybe that was maybe that was something that that folks sensed.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um But I am, you know, I am I am by no means away from from the academic sector and and haven't been since you know since I left tech.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the initial goal would have been, I think my vision was was to to be teaching at a you know at a smaller school at a at a more teaching-focused institution.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean your your channel, uh, you know, it's always you you can reach a lot of people and reach very deeply uh with these these forums that you're making use of, like YouTube.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then in your your passion for teaching comes across like immediately.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well I good.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm natural.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I I genuinely, I genuinely appreciate that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think I think what you just said, I mean, you can you you can reach a lot of people with it.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that has become known to me, and I'm I'm trying to do what I can with it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was it was it was kind of a difficult time when you know when I was you know pursuing academic positions and not and not having success with it.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but much like me ending up in a place where there just happened to be this Blue Ridge escarpment project that people wanted done, but it was just kind of sitting there and suddenly a Blue Ridge escarpment guy had to change advisors.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there you go.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was I guess it was it was sort of like it it was meant to be, I guess, because the you know the work I do now um out outside of YouTube, I mean the actual professional stuff I do now, it it is a better, it's a better fit for my for my personality.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: So what is that?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: You said offline that you know your day job uh you know is not YouTube, the YouTube channel, but um what is are you consulting mostly?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Are you are you working independently or with a group?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: A little a little of both.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you would say that roughly half the time is is done with with landslide work in western North Carolina, and that that's with Appalachian Landslide Consultants, which is a it's a a small group.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: We we don't even have a physical office.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um you would say we're roughly based out of Asheville.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some folks started it uh a number of years ago when uh when in a landslide mapping program in North Carolina was was canceled, it was defunded.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and Jennifer Bauer and Stephen Fimmler, folks that were working on that, started Appalachian Landslide Consultants to try to keep that keep that work going.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I've worked with them since uh the end of 2019, and I still I still do do mapping in Virginia.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I do bedrock mapping in the Valley and Ridge.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's that's as an adjunct at tech.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm paid through tech, but it's for the it's for the state survey.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, I'm you know, I'm a state employee in that in that is the state survey based in in uh Virginia Tech, or based, you know, kind of has their home office at on Virginia Tech.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, interestingly enough, it's it's in Charlottesville.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's at it's a it's at UVA.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um VA.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even at it's not even at UVA.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um they they have a number of offices throughout the state.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: They have a number of them down towards the towards the coal producing part of the state.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh I did work, you know, I did work in an office in Charlottesville with them for a couple years after after tech.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm you know, I'm I'm I'm basically 50 50 between between landslides and and valley and ridge structure.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And on top of that, I you know, I still have various academic engagements when when folks ask for you know for a bit of a bit of participation.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that is is geomorph.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that is is actually still kind of kind of fluvial, large-scale fluvial geomorph kind of stuff.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's all over the place, kind of in in in consistent with the difficulty of calling me a particular ologist.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: But hey, you know, that's the that's the fun of it, right?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is to to have your fingers in a whole bunch of different stuff.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like it, you know, it keeps it interesting, keeps you broad, keeps you diverse, and uh not, you know, being super niche has its value.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: It does and it and it works it works better.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: It works better for me.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip, what does your day-to-day look like then?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like are you in the field most of the time?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know what's this?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah what's this look like?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Pick pick pick a day, I guess.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's it's a split there there's a lot of remote sensing.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a tremendous amount of of just our review.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Looking for for past landslides, so trying to understand landslide behavior from looking into the past.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Can you back up a second Philip and talk about what that is?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Chris is perking up here a minute.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I just want to could I want you to like kind of paint a picture for our listeners about what what is LIDAR how's it work and and how do you apply this?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so so LIDAR is an acronym light detection and ranging uh it's a way of imaging the earth's surface and and essentially seeing seeing through the trees.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: So an aircraft flies over, shoots laser light down on the land surface there's receivers and you can process the the stuff that bounces back to the plane and tell what it's bouncing off of.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you you can tease out the bare ground surface.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's in the Appalachians where much of the land is forested it's a really unique way to look at the land because you can actually see the the bare grain of the ground surface with without trees in the way if you're looking for rock outcrops if you're looking for subtle subtle expression of of rock under the surface at the land surface almost like seeing ribs through somebody's shirt or something like that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know you can do that's a really good analogy.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah you can do that with LIDAR uh in a way that is incredible.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you can you can literally see you can see geologic folding that's expressed at the ground surface but but in lidar it really does look like like bones or muscles silhouetted through a shirt or or something like that.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know so you you can also there's there's a variety of ways to to process the imagery I prefer the grayscale um and and you can do it as if what we call a hill shade as if the sun is casting a shadow from one point over the land.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's typically with the sun in the northwest as convention which of course doesn't happen with us in the northern hemisphere but nobody seems to worry about that and like if you looked at lidar with the sun coming from somewhere else you'd be like it's broken.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know you can do a you can do a a style that we call slope shade which is basically it's making flat areas bright and making steep areas dark.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the the effect of slope shade is almost like a bright light is straight above the land.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: The issue with with using what we call the hill shade like with the sun in one place is there can be a bright side of the hill that is is really overexposed and you can't see anything on it.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I use is this I use both of these and I I look for patterns basically I I look to see the the silhouette through the shirt I look for pock marks from old landslides I determine where I'm going to go to evaluate things on the ground and then the other part of the time is actually going to see what the reality of what I see in LIDAR is how often so two questions on that then first of all how sensitive is it detecting actually the soil surface or is it detect or is it does it get dissipated by soil and really reflect like something subsurface is question number one.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: I guess yeah so I'm I am not the processor but as far as I can tell you you're basically getting it it's not penetrating okay it's a light it's a light reflection right so much like the the things you see on the surface you're seeing them because they're reflecting light to you it's kind of that yeah so you can see all the I mean I've seen your videos where you have you know um a boulder that's you know fallen off and you can identify in lidar where it came from the cliff face.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yep and you can these are big boulders but you can see the little divots it made rolling down the hill.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah it's amazing stuff.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: But then that's crazy how often do you ground truth when you ground truth it are you finding your hold on Jesse what do you mean when you say that what do you mean if you're looking at some lidar image then you go to the field you you have some conferences in your head and then you go to the field how often are you wrong?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a really good question.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't mean this to be you but how long how often is lidar misleading maybe is a better way to phrase it um not not that often and particularly at this point just because I have worked daily with LiDAR for oh gosh what uh nine nine years or something at this point it has literally been a daily a daily tool um whether I'm in the field or not it it's something I look at every day.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are features that that you you do misinterpret occasionally um there's details of the land like is this soil is this soil derived from just the weathering of bedrock in place or is or is this a a transported soil?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is this soil that is material that's fallen off the hill slope and piled up here details like that that can be very significant to work you're doing it can be very significant to a user if you're gonna make a cut slope to build a house you don't you don't want to make a big old cut in in a transported soil it's going to be less stable.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so things like that um frequently you can interpret that from LIDAR but but that's the kind of thing that you do need to ground truth and sometimes you'll be surprised you'll be surprised there.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: What about um I've seen some of your videos where you know you're you were talking about how one part of the Shenandoah I think where it has these really regular meander pattern.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah that these these meander really irregular meander pattern um and you were talking if I remember correctly this was a structural thing these were these were the jointing surface in the rock but it how how often do you confuse again just by looking at lidar structural patterns versus like sedimentological especially here in the Ridge and Valley like sediment sedimentological layering differences.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that is that easy to tease apart because then there's like Google Earth imagery even I don't even I don't know if it's LIDAR but some DEM thing where you can actually see the shaley parts have little layers in the shales that are clearly just slightly more resistant layers within a single unit.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah less resistant no it's um you you would you would pull it apart by really with sort of like the pictures I try to draw in in YouTube videos where where it's a the the strike of the strike of the bedrock layering is going to be a product there of the fold structures.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you're looking you're you're looking at at structural architecture at the at the scale of miles basically you're looking you're looking at thrust sheet scale and you can tell from context uh typically because a ridge is is framing it up or a sudden change in in topography if you went uh if you're looking at um say a carbonate unit is thrust onto shale so the the carbonate like limestone or dolomite um it has certain landscape producing properties that are very different from what it from what a shale would have and you would see the boundary between them running through the landscape and that would tell you how the that would tell you how the layering is running.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then if you see linear features cutting across that those are going to be you know joints or fractures.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so it's um okay it's yeah it's being able to see again the reason I like to draw the block diagrams is that's that's sort of how we it's sort of how we think of it.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you you have to think of it from a cross sectional standpoint and what would it look like if I took this element in the cross section, took it up to the surface and then ran it out you know ran it out over the surface.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I mean it's it's a really cool thing this realization came to me when I was in graduate school we were doing a lot of secondary electron microscopy work on complicated zircons and the the person at um Des Mosa the professor I was doing it with was really just treating it like really simple cross cutting relationships it was geology 101 type stuff and and you know watching your lidar descriptions and your little block diagrams it's it's reminiscent of that it's like these are the same relatively straightforward principles where we apply in the intro level class all the time just using a different um data set effectively to do that with which is really cool.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I just like that I mean you're you know you're looking you're looking at the consequences of of movements and interactions and and you're you know you're trying to to pull together a narrative out of that so so in you know in a place like the Valley and Ridge you can you can see the elements that are a product of you know that are a product of the of the contraction and folding and then you can see elements that are not that are not associated with that in terms of of the stacked layers but could still be involved with it but they cut across those fold structures.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: It gets really tough out in the Piedmont now in in the metamorphic Piedmont where it's just everything's a rolling hill and and the soil might be 30 feet deep that can be kind of a different that could be kind of a different story.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah yeah yeah Philip if you if you were going to teach a let's say a geomorphology class how often would you want to use LIDAR to teach the person who's in geomorphic good question.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Frequently frequently day one you day one I I bet I was struck by that I was watching one of your more recent ones I think it was on uh dune formation and you made a comment you were using lidar um you made a comment about how looking at these dunes in the satellite image versus the lidar image and how it's good to I'm trying to think of how you phrased it but something like this is a good learning tool um to understand what you can learn from lidar.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and that's that that thought struck me.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah that that would be the approach I would take um I I think the the thing about LIDAR is that when you you take away the it is not to say I I like to see as much forest cover as I can get you know but when you take when you take away the basically the obstruction of like trees and buildings you can see wrinkling of of rock layers you can see how far a canyon has cut its way you can see the the layers of rock exposed where a waterfall is you know you you can really you can get a visual of I I use the word like expression of process.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like if this gets pushed what's going to happen to it.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: You can see those consequences and in an intuitive way like if you uh poured a bunch of sand out on a table you know I like I like analog models and then you just took your hand and you raked that sand up you know you're gonna rake up a wedge of material and likewise if you took that sand and you you know you blew it across the table you would you would sculpt forms and you're not going to make dunes as such but you can see the material reacting to the you know to to some kind of an input and I I think LIDAR lets you see that um and it and it just lets you see what you know what what the the land is made of what mountains are made of that I was actually asked by a student a really interesting guy um he was Haitian he was a guy from Florida played football at Virginia Tech and uh he always had like like the most insightful questions really like fascinating philosophical questions not the guy you would pick when when the students come into the lecture hall like this is not going to be the guy who is obviously thinking about this at the next level but he always was and and he would have these really interesting questions about like what is this made of and if you see this at the surface what does this mean like can can you visually assume that what's up here goes down here and I one time he said you know I I look at that screen I look at that picture and I see what you see but I don't see what you see and it was like okay I I okay I I love that I understand completely um and actually him saying that that's sort of like that was pretty formative because I've I've tried to take the approach of being like look we all we all see these color patterns or shadow patterns but this is what they mean like this is the kind of movement that that you should be or the change if you want to call it that that you should be associating with it.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and I I latched onto lidar because it lets it let you it lets you do that and when I like that student's question or or the I see what you see but I don't really see it it it struck me as a tool for addressing that.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Totally so two questions uh again first one just really simple if people are listening to this and they want to find lidar for their area from their home area to look at where can they get it if anywhere how do you yeah you you you go to Google and and you'll type in national map viewer and you'll you'll get a link that'll come up to a USGS website it's just called the the the national map it may go straight to the viewer today um its format has changed but when you load up this viewer site and I I don't know what kind of tutorial they have there there's a little bar at the top and it you know it will just have like a a layer list and you you can scroll down through it and eventually you'll see one called Hillshade.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and Hillshade is the one you want and that'll show you a lidar overlay of basically the entire code kidding um I'm that's crazy I'm just doing it right now it's uh yeah how that's very cool.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like how how is this I'm trying to how do I phrase this like who who who wanted this done um who how do we have that much slider image question I is as Jesse works on it Jesse you'll you'll you'll scroll down it'll say three dep hillshade and it will have like the eye icon with a line through it.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you I'm seeing uh US national USGS national map imagery topo imagery only USGS shaded relief only I'm guessing um you you gotta keep you got to keep scrolling down um it it should say three depthshade and it has it it'll the default will be it turned off and you have to turn it back on.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh I see okay and everything will turn grey you got to go into a little layers panel thing.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Layers panel okay three depth Jesse are you looking at it right now three depth hill shade yep and it's got the eye turned off yeah so you know the Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Valley and Ridge will look really cool.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's um let's get back to my question then FEMA funded a fair amount of uh at least the higher resolution sets because it's useful for studying big events.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and land use right I would think um you know are you gonna put a development here is this a good idea or not right yeah right yeah I I think um ultimately uh you know it's it's highly federally funded and I think even when states collect sets they're probably doing that off of federal funds that were allocated to the states.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now I don't know that for sure but in Virginia and West Virginia just as an example um if you're pulling down tiles to process this on your own and when I say pulling down tiles I say you're you're downloading blocks of LiDAR data to process on your own.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's different from what Jesse's looking at where he's just streaming it and viewing it.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Typically they're tagged with like it'll be like FEMA 2016 such and so you know so they're often often the data is tagged with what what induced its collection.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: But what what I'm talking about specifically is like one meter resolution which allows you to see incredible detail.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Prior to that the those sets started coming out around 2016 heavily prior to that you were you're about 10 meters or so large scale really cool landslides karst so sink sinkholes cave openings things like that not so good for that the one the one meter resolution is truly the world game changer for structural geology for landslides for land use for karst cave this is incredible i i've i've I've messed around with this in Pennsylvania but so Pennsylvania is obviously cool because we have the I'm in the Valley and Ridge here and right near the Allegheny front uh but Chris I went over to Michigan and and the good news is there is something interesting it's the the till cover is a little bit boring but you can see the dunes the sand dunes are unbelievable along the lake shore and then you can actually see a little uh tractor hole in Chris Bullhouse's property digger out of the tractor dunes in Michigan right now yeah yeah looking at dunes in Michigan it's so cool yeah so like eight you can see the road elo the road's elevated up above uh the the you know the farmland just slight elevation this is crazy if you if you say one meter resolution if you go to effigy mounds in Iowa you can see the the Native American like mega like serpent mound in Ohio you can see that and and really so when you say one meter resolution is that the vertical relief that it's picking up or is that a pixel?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Basically it's it's making it making that elevation model basically from like an array of one meter cubes I guess is how you would how you would describe it.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay gotcha.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah um there's different resolutions of data set that are constantly coming.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you're like imagine kind of stacking those cubes up and I guess kind of interpolating the edges off of it.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah so with with one with one meter you can see tension cracks at the top of a landslide say the landslide is starting to slide at the top end you can actually see where the ground is cracking and pulling apart you may not be that that may be very subtle if you're out in the forest you can see it brilliantly with with the one meter lidar in North Carolina we use half meter so you can wow you can see everything everything.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wow that's so yeah hold on Jessica too excited this is very exciting stuff I love yeah we're doing a horrible job of moving this along Jesse but well you know we need to do a little bit of lidar that's the problem I know I know well the first time that's what I wanted to talk to you about the first time I really um was hit with how important lidar can be was back in 2014 with the Oso mudslide in Washington do you remember that you know and and then just looking at using lidar to look at all of these other like covered scarps it was shocking and lidar just just lit it right up um so that just amazing yeah yeah it it it is and that just exactly what you described is is a big part of the North Carolina work um where are old failures in the landscape that could reactivate they're particularly prone to that if they're modified in any way and so documenting that and making that available as a way of of informing land use development very important and you can't do it without LIDAR.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh it's spectacular it's so so interesting Jesse you're gonna join the conversation again here you're done pulling lidar in lidar space I'm up as it happens to the don't let it iron's tongue I mean it is so good I found my neighbor's retention pond that protects our whole neighborhood from flooding and you know it's just amazing he's gone he's he's he's lost he's lost he's down the rabbit hole that's right so so I wait I know we're kind of running up against some time constraints here Phil but um I want to you you you taught me Appalachian geology or at least you you know you you definitely helped me along to kind of get into it what's your favorite part of of Appalachian geology both your favorite like story and your favorite place to go look at it for people who that's you know are interested I have a follow-up to this one as well okay now I think you know I would say the the Valley and Ridge collectively is is and and that's it's hard to say as someone from the Piedmont who spent a lot of time in the Blue Ridge.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I I enjoy the Valley and Ridge because you can look at it and you can see the thrust belt architecture.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can literally see my Thick sheets of sedimentary rock that have been stacked on top of each other and eroded.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you you can physically you can look at it on a map, you can see that structure, you can go up to an outcrop and see the tilted layers, and then drive a mile or two and see them tilt the other way, and and that that picture comes together.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um expanding that a little bit, actually being around Blacksburg, around Virginia Tech, because you can go from the Blue Ridge Thrust, which puts the metamorphic rock up on top of the sedimentary rock, drive across the Valley and Ridge, and then into West Virginia and the Appalachian Plateau where the layers aren't folded, you can do that in about an hour there, and you can see the really profound differences in what the rocks look like, what they do to the landscape.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can almost kind of sketch out in your mind how they are stacked and shingled on top of each other.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that is that's that's what sort of steered me in the direction I am today, just to be able to see that that huge pattern in an accessible way, right?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the Valley and Ridge in Tennessee is wider in Pennsylvania, it's it's wider, it's quite brilliant in Pennsylvania, but but just the the the ability to hit it all in a in an afternoon, like you can in Blacksburg.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um the story would probably come along with that.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple of them, and and strangely enough, though I don't work in it, they're they're like oil and gas drilling stories.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they actually relate to uh to to drilling in the valley and ridge and going down through the the repeating rock sequences, and that causing a lot of confusion in the 40s and 50s and 60s before plate tectonics as we know it today was really uh a widely accepted, still call it a theory paradigm, whatever.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um there there was one in particular in in West Virginia, right on the Virginia line, is the the the Ray Sponogle well, and they they were trying to drill down into the the Cambrian quartzites.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what you would see um on the east side of the Great Valley in Pennsylvania, um like like South Mountain as it comes up out of Maryland into Pennsylvania, chill Chilhoe quartzite.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: So they thought they could drill down 10,000 feet in this big anacline where the the rock layers are are bent upwards into an upward fold.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: They thought they would get down at 10,000 feet into this rock layer.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: They drilled 13,000 feet and stopped in the same layer that they started in.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: So my gosh.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they they they pierced the same rock layer three times, and if they had actually drilled far enough to get to their goal layer, they would have hit it a fourth.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because the uh the the seat the the fold pattern, the stacking pattern was so complex there.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh uh a guy wrote a paper about it, and he was like, the way he worded it was basically we ended up right where we started.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And no, you know, no one really knew what to think of that, but now it makes perfect sense.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's your expectation.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, drilling into fold thrust belts around the world is proved.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: And just the the the patterns of of folding and stacking that you get in that kind of geology are they're very beautiful and interesting to me.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the there are other stories like that in Appalachia where um they did it, they drilled all the way through this the folded sedimentary rocks in Virginia down to what we call the basement, down to the continental crust, down underneath it.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it it was 17,000 feet below the current land surface.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And doing that one, I think they went through one layer four times because it was stacked.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just uh to me, it's a magnificent way of thinking about it.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: When you go to the Valiant Ridge, you you can see the top of that and kind of visualize that the that is stacked up under you.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my follow-up question, Philip.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: We got to get this straight.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've got it.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: We I can't let you go without talking about this.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jess Jesse always says Appalachian.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I knew it was coming.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it was coming.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's go.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's the story?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is it a regional thing, like more southern as Appalachia, more northern as Appalachia.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, generally speaking, and I've actually seen I've actually seen a map of that.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like people have studied that.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they they've studied that.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think like in Alabama, there's a pocket of of Appalachia.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know a guy from from Northern Alabama that says that.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm from South Carolina, so my my parents are from Northeast Georgia.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and everyone regionally here, Western North Carolina, northeast Georgia, South Carolina, I've always heard Appalachia.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like like short kind of short vowels tend to be pretty popular in this case.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so is the line is the line northern North Carolina then?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where it is.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where it is, actually.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've never looked up this video, but I tell you what, you want to get you want to get some hot YouTube comments, you know.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: You will get some people telling you you need to, you know, remove remove yourself from geology broadcasting because you said Appalachia, not Appalachian.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: People are like really, really tied to this.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like over in the plateau, you know, in Kentucky, West Virginia.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I really don't know.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: But but certainly, you know, norther the northeast, you know, it would it would be predominantly Appalachia there for sure.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, well we're gonna have to do a follow-up and follow up and follow up and follow up and talking about the however you want to pronounce these boundaries that we live in.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have seen a map with like zones colored on it.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: It exists.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we'll we'll have to oh wow, I'm gonna do it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: Someone's done it.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's done it.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's done it.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip, Philip, can you what like what's the origin story of your YouTube channel, or what do you what do you really want to do with this?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's your goal?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the the the origin story just lay out your plan.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: Quick, you know?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: The the origin story is entertaining.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it goes back to about 2013 or so.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I in in the first floor of Daring Hall, Virginia Tech, you know, I was was teaching, you know, big had some big lectures at that time, and and I was I was starting to put um you know some physical models in them, just to just to show what we've been talking about.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: The this idea of like pushing and and stacking sequences of material.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: Had some undergrads working on it with me.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: We thought the you know, the visuals were kind of cool.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, YouTube was a very different place, and it was like, oh, we'll put them on YouTube, you know?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that was where the channel began.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's why it's called the Geo Models, because they were geo models.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's what the thumbnail image is from, which is which is a physical model ironically made made out of cornmeal.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's why it's yellow.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: Any any frictional, you know, any frictional material will will, if it, if it's not cohesive and sticky, it'll it'll give you that that form of columbic behavior that's good for modeling how the earth's crust behaves, right?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be sand, it can be other, it can be other media.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and we did a lot of those because because with um for whatever reason with the with the cornmeal, with the the apparatus we had, you you could do interesting things with it just because of its its frictional properties.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I was just using it almost as like a holding place for things I'd use in classes.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: Subsequent to that, I was I was writing blogs for AGU for American Geophysical Union.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I used it similarly as kind of a holding place for just references that that I would write about.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've got a friend I grew up with that has done a lot with YouTube for his business, and and probably just two years ago or something, he's saying, Man, I know you're on YouTube, like you got to start doing something with it.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's like, okay, I'll try it.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I I you know I made videos where I, you know, I used the physical models and you know, kind of talked about them and narrated them.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you just there there was no traction of several hundred views to maybe a couple thousand views.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then last summer, uh last summer, someone asked a question in a comment on one, and I was like, man, I'm gonna draw a picture in Microsoft Paint for this.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was an immediate order of magnitude increase in traffic, so it was from to maybe even two orders of magnitude, so it was from a few hundred to maybe a thousand views.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Immediately that one got you know, quickly like 80,000 views or something like that.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, I'll draw another diagram in paint, and that that seemed that seemed to resonate.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, actually, as you see it today, um I know it has videos, videos that are nearing a million views.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean many, many, many, many, many dozens of videos that have several hundreds of thousands of views.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: It appears if you don't have it it it's it comes back to to the con to drawing the diagram in it.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I obviously know I I enjoy teaching.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy the challenge of trying to like you've got this limited amount of time and kind of limited tools, like can you can you distill that into a usable into a usable block here that people will get something out of?
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I I have I have fun doing that, and I'm glad that people, you know, that people are seeing seeing geology maybe communicated in a different way, or or that idea, like my you know, like my student that you know always had the good questions, it was like this idea that you know what you're seeing on the surface really is sort of like you know, it's an expression of what's below there, kind of like just barely, you know, poking out or whatever, like that way of seeing mountains.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like mountains are particularly in Appalachia, mountains are where hard rock is sticking out at the surface, and that hard rock is kind of bent up into these structures.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that showing that idea to people to me is significant because you don't hear it everywhere, and then when you when you have an event like a Helene, uh like the earthquake we had in East Tennessee pretty recently, just being able to put context on that.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I use I use the channel for that reason as well for sure.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you're really good at it.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I uh you know, I I watch your your channel and and I like watching you walk up the you know, the debris flow from Helene on the mountainside.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: And just the things I was struck by what I've always felt about geology is we look at the world through a different lens, and you know, and people can't think about words they don't know.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can't think about thoughts that never would occur to you.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you were just you were pointing out little things, walking up that draw that was it was just uh I was struck by that again.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: It w it was really, really good.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was really, really cool.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you're I don't know, I love it.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was what I was hoping to do with it.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think uh as as you just said, like it goes back to like I see what you see, but I don't see it.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's that ability to recognize um relevant details that that may not be in your language that you use day to day.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm trying to I'm trying to introduce that language as I'm as I'm making it.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: Philip, one thing I I really appreciate about your videos, and I think the response is is telling and is similar to a response that or so similar to something Chris and I have picked up on, I think, is that you you go in you you have no fear of going deep and taking people deep.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you have great talent for I'm serious, like you have great talent for taking people from zero, from literally like starting with zero geology knowledge and taking them to a really deep story of the Middlesbrough impact crater and the Cumberland Gap.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, I mean it's unbelievable.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a great talent, and I think what Chris and I have always been really impressed by uh uh by people is they have an appetite for it.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's a a really deep appetite for being in the weeds in this subject matter, and I think that's it's represented by you know uh the people who you know how how many views your channel gets, because it's great, because it's it's weeds, it's deep, deep knowledge.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: You've got a PhD, I have a CIA.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I actually am I I'm very you you have made me feel very good by by saying all of that for sure.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because it's great, because this is effectively, I mean, your channel is is if if you you saw okay, you you don't just talk about Appalachia, but you're getting almost like a graduate level class in an Appalachian Geology just by watching your channel.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like I honestly believe that.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's true.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's it's it's an interesting and I and I can see that.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I try to do with it is I try to take it back to like basic physical relationships, you know what I mean?
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and from that foundation, you that's where you can go out in the weeds, but you always have a way back to to something familiar.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's I guess that's how I structure it in my in my mind.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I you know, I when I think back on it, I did not start to hear about thinking about that idea of like structural architecture and what you see at the surface.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't start hearing about that till grad school.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's true, and I you know, you're for me, it's um I'm a geology professor, I have a deep knowledge of geology.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of geology online content that I don't consume because I don't learn I don't, you know, I don't it's not for me.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um your channel I learn from a lot, and and I really like I consider myself an active.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: I really I appreciate that.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's I'm trying to be sure there's something in it for somebody in in your in your capacity as well as somebody that just kind of walked in and is like, man, like why is that mountain there?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: No, and I think you do that really well.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: You you you you you uh bridge that divide really well, I think.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Philip, I now now we can finally get to our last question.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: Last question.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm ready.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: I've got an answer.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: So go ahead and ask.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, what's what's been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: It will cap this interview off with probably more more strangeness and in yet another direction.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was actually it was in Jamaica of of all places.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I wound up, I had been always been interested in in big, I like big big islands because of what they represent.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you say Jamaica's a small island, yeah, but it's got a few mountain ranges, pretty good sized rivers.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's a large enough landmass, you know.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: I uh islands are cool for what they represent tectonically in many cases.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I didn't up going to Jamaica actually looking to scout whitewater paddling.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it has some some really interesting rivers.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was doing that, it was when I was in graduate school, some of what I saw there geologically was like, oh, it's really unexpected.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it probably took me back to that first field trip from Furman where I went to this place and saw saw it in a new way or whatever.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I was telling telling Jim Spatilla, Mel Advisor, about it.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he wound up with a grad student years later that had funding, or like, why don't why don't you do a uh an exhumation study?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: So like a study of of how quickly rock is basically being squeezed up out of the ground in Jamaica, because that's what the island of Jamaica is.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's kind of a kind of a pinch in the crust along a big fault, and and quite literally the crust is being sort of squeezed up to produce the island.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so we uh we went down there.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Jim didn't Jim didn't go, so I got I I was sent as sort of a I guess a temporary advisor or whatever.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: And plus I'd just been around, you know, been around the area and kind of knew where we were going to get our samples.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: And one day we uh we got up at like two in the morning and hiked to the top of Blue Mountain Peaks, like the highest mountain on Jamaica, sampled rock samples from the top of it, and basically walked our way down and and sampled over a mile of topographic relief.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a huge, ridiculous long day, like backpacks full of rocks.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then we like rode in the back of this pickup back to where we were staying on the side of the mountain.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was just kind of a I I get it is it is the only exhumation rock uplift rate study I think done in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just like very cool.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: The setting, the kind of rocks you see there.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I, you know, I always think about Caribbean Islands like I'm gonna see limestone or like an uplifted coral reef, and and they're beautiful granites and grano-diorites, they look like rocks that you would see in uh in the Sierras in California.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's um something something about the nature of those rocks in that place and just like the culture around you, and and and pulling this huge day, you know, sampling these things up.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a cool paper.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the guy's name is Joe Joe Cochrane, did his PhD with uh with with Jim.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um did a great paper about it.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was just like an awesome Jamaica of all places, you know.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was just like, but it was um to circle it all back and like pull it all together.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: That it's probably a video I'll do at some point, but just like what um why why is there an island there?
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you can you can distill that down pretty quickly, and you can talk about why it has huge earthquakes, and and you can also think about why if you go to the mountains there, you might you might see something that you know is reminiscent almost of other places, but it it actually has a really logical explanation just in in in movement, you know.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, it was that that was there was a lot of good days on on that trip, but I think that one in particular was like that was a high point.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's an exceptional one.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, all right, that we're way over time.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Philip, thanks so much for uh this has been a real pleasure talking to you.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: I I I always I enjoy talking to you even more than than watching your video.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I'm something.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad we'll try to we'll try to keep video video traffic video traffic going, but no, I would I would enjoy a follow-up.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if if you're in the Pennsylvania Valley and Ridge, man, I don't know.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: That that needs a video itself.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe we can absolutely well we've been talking for a long time about doing something on the Appalachians, and it's just you know, something huge that's it it's almost too big to kind of sink our teeth into at the moment for a series like uh or an audiobook on the app or whatever.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: But uh we we should we should get together and brainstorm.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think we could come up with something really cool to do.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: You should do it uh collaboratively about it.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: That'd be super fun.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if it has field trips and maybe a little trout fishing, then there's nothing wrong with that.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's pretty good.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty good way to spend time.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, cool.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks so much, though.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it, and we'll uh we'll talk again soon.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: All right, great.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for looking at a wrap.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can follow us on social media.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: We're at Plant GeoCast.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: Download our Camp GeoMobile app first link in your show notes.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: You can you can get a continuous mind on the Camp GeoMobile app just uh listening to all of our content when we have their video podcast series.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_02: You can leave us a like, review, comment, subscribe, follow us on YouTube or Spotify, and choose an email.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: We have a contact us link on our website, plantgeocasty.com.