Geology on 35mm film - Conglomerates

I started going through my old 35mm slide collection representing geological field work from the pre-digital era.  Some of these places I will probably not visit again, at least not anytime soon, so I am bringing them to life with the help of a digital scanner.

The Paleocene rocks in the Southern Carpathians foredeep are represented by poorly sorted, massive, clast-supported conglomerates, which onlap  the crystalline basement.  They consist of angular fragments of schist up to 1m in diameter, as shown in the photo below.

©RomaniaRocks
Calimanesti Conglomerate on Topolog Valley, Southern Carpathians - Romania

The schist fragments are lithologically similar to metamorphic rocks in the Southern Carpathians.  The massive conglomerates grade upward into upward-fining cycles of conglomerate and sandstone, each cycle about 8m thick.

©RomaniaRocks
Upward-fining cycles of conglomerate and sandstone.
Calimanesti Conglomerate, Valsan Valley-Romania.

The upward-fining cycles have a clear erosional base, and the lithology of the clasts are more diverse, consisting not only of crystalline rocks, like lower in the section, but also of sandstone and limestone.

©RomaniaRocks

Calimanesti Conglomearte, Valsan Valley - Romania.

Note the erosional base and fining-upward character.

The sandstone at the upper part of each cycle is medium- to very coarse grained and massive, flat-beddd or cross-laminated.

©RomaniaRocks

Calimanesti Conglomerate, Valsan Valley-Romania. Note the erosional base,  

large fragments of crystalline rocks and the finning-upward character

The conglomerates described above were deposited by overlapping alluvial fans sourced by the Southern Carpathians.  The poorly sorted, angular, coarse textured deposits, with fragments up to one meter in diameter are indicative of debris flow deposits, a common occurrence in alluvial fans.  The Paleocene landscape of Romania was probably not too different than the landscape in the photo below, from the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

©RomaniaRocks

Alluvial fan at the mouth of a canyon in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

A hike on top of the fan in the Rockies reveals the size and complexity of the fan.  I bet a hike in the Paleocene in Romania, on top of the Calimanesti Conglomerate would have been somewhat similar, less the ability to use the humans for scale :)

©RomaniaRocks

Close-up view of the alluvial fan in Rocky Mountain Park, Colorado.

Romanian National Parks

On my to-do list in Romania is to hike all of the National Parks.  As a note to self, and also to entice others to go and visit these beautiful places, this post provides a map and links to some of the parks.  One of the best things about National Parks, in Romania or elsewhere, is the geology associated with the breathtaking views. This post is about some cool places in Romania where you can see awesome geology and experience great landscapes, views and culture.

View Romanian National Parks in a larger map
Apuseni Nature Park (Rom. Parcul Natural Apuseni): best known for the beautiful karst landscape and its numerous caves.
Bicaz Gorge - Hasmas National Park (Rom. Parcul National Cheile Bicazului-Hasmas): best known for the spectacular Bicaz Gorge
Calimani National Park (link in Romanian) (Rom. Parcul National Calimani): located in the Calimani volcanic chain.
Ceahlau National Park (link in Romanian)(Rom. Parcul National Ceahlau): Ceahlau Mountain is also called the Olympus of Romania, because of its significance in the history of the Dacians, the ancestors of the Romanian people.  Ceahlau was considered to be the sacred mountain of Zalmoxis, the ancient deity of the Dacians.
Piatra Craiului National Park (Rom. Parcul National Piatra Craiului): one of my favorite places to hike. Beautiful Mesozoic limestone landscape.
Retezat National Park (link in Romanian)(Rom. Parcul National Retezat): best known for the beautiful landscape sculpted by long gone glaciers, it is the park in Romania with the highest number of mountain peaks over 2000m in height.

Speleology in Romania - Frasin Aven

Speleology is what got me into geosciences in the first place, therefore a series of posts on caves of all sorts in Romania is in order.
An aven in caving is a very steep or vertical section in a cave that needs ladders or ropes to ascend  and descend. The Frasin Aven (link in Romanian) is located in the Obcina Mare Mountains, which are part of the Eastern Carpathians mountain range.

The Frasin Aven is the northern-most pin on this map; zoom out for better viewing.  Locations of other caves in Romania are also indicated on the map.
View Romanian caves in a larger map


The Frasin Aven can be accessed from Frasin village, on the National Highway #71, between Gura Humorului and Campulung Moldovenesc. The aven was discovered in 1975, it has an elevation change of 73.2 meters, which placed it in the 20th place in the world for elevation change for sandstone caves (based on 1989 statistics).

Frasin Aven sketch, after Giurgiu and Muraru, 1977

From a geologic point of view, the aven is located in the Carpathian Fold and Thrust Belt (Tarcau Nappe), and it is developed in Kliwa Sandstone Formation (Oligocene in age). Kliwa is a deep-water siliceous sandstone (98% silica content), and the aven is thought to have formed within a fracture caused either by extension associated with its position on a crest of an anticline, or via detachment and sliding of the sandstone block along its basal contact (the Kliwa Formation consists of a succession of interbedded sandstone and mudstone).

Trip to the past

I recently returned from a trip to Romania, in Zarnesti-Bran-Piatra Craiului area; this was a trip to the past in a couple of ways: my past, and the geologic past.
Twenty-some years ago I was an aspiring geologist, and while I was waiting to find out if I made it into the Geological Sciences School at the University of Bucharest, I went with a group of friends on the week-long trip to the Piatra Craiului Mountains.  We had a great time and I have great memories, so this year I decided to retrace some of my steps of many years ago.

© RomaniaRocks

We accessed the trails from our home-base in Zarnesti, you can see the town in the distance in this picture.  I took it from the hiking trail  leading to Curmatura cabin, the placed my friends and I used as our base camp on our vacation from the past.  The picture is looking towards ESE, and in it you can also see the Barsa Mare River and, in the distance, the Southern Carpathians.
Piatra Craiului is a spectacular mountain range, its crest is about 25 km long (Google map in my previous post), and it owes its beauty to geology.

© RomaniaRocks

And here comes the trip to the geologic past.  The mountains consist primarily of Jurassic and Cretaceous limestone, with the entire section about 1050 m thick.  The lower 500m consist of a carbonate breccia and conglomerate sourced from Late Jurassic reefs located to the south, in the area of today's Bucegi Mountains.  The rest of the section consists of reef carbonates and these are the rocks that give the area its beauty.  The picture above shows the western versant of the Piatra Craiului and is taken from the Plaiul Foii Chalet , the place where we will stay for sure on our next trip here.

© RomaniaRocks

The mountains  are a dream for spelunking, rock climbing, hiking, or just hanging out.  Dambovicioara Gorge (shown in the picture to the left), a 2 km spectacular narrow, v-shaped canyon with steep sides, is another attraction.
We returned home from the trip to the past driving through the Rucar-Bran corridor.  It was a rainy day, with heavy fog at times, which made the picture taking not an easy task, but the image below gives a good idea of the natural beauty of the area.
Piatra Craiului became a National Park in 1938; a nice post about the park, with info and pictures, came out recently in the True Romania blog here.

© RomaniaRocks

Ada Lovelace Day 2010: Stefania Maracineanu

Today is "Ada Lovelace Day", the international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.   My post recognizes the Romanian physicist, Stefania Maracineanu, a woman whose research impacted the field of radioactivity.  She .... almost received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovering the artificial radioactivity.  She is inspiring because she represents the struggles that women scientists had to face in the early 1900s in order to have an impact and be recognized in their field of research.

Stefania was born in Bucharest, on 18 June 1882. Very little is known about her early life, except that she had an unhappy childhood about which she did not want to talk. She obtained an advanced degree in physical and chemical sciences at age 28, after which she begun teaching at the Royal Boarding School in Bucharest, a public school for girls from the social elite. In 1922 Maracineanu received support from the Romanian Science Minister to pursue graduate research in France with Marie Curie.

Studying in Paris at Curie's Institute must have been a dream come true, and Maracineanu started her first project focusing on determining the precise half-life of Polonium. One of the first observations she made was that Polonium's half-life depends on the metal onto which the Polonium layer has been deposited. Her explanation of the phenomenon was that the alpha-rays of the Polonium must have transformed some of the atoms of the metal into radioactive isotopes. At the time, this was a very important observation and it is unclear why Maracineanu did not pursue the topic in more detail. Further experiments and documentation would have turned this observation into the first documented example of artificial radioactivity.

After receiving her doctorate degree in 1924, and as a result of the research conducted at the Curie's Institute, Stefania stayed for six more years in Paris to study the effect of the solar radiation on the radioactivity of substances. In 1930 she returned to Romania and studied the link between radioactivity and rainfall, and later the relationship between earthquakes and rainfall.

In 1935, the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Frederik Joliot and Irene Joliot-Curie for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. Stefania Maracineanu expressed her dismay at the fact that Irene Joliot-Curie used much of her observations and work dealing with artificial radioactivity without giving proper credit. Maracineanu publicly claimed that she first discovered artificial radioactivity during her research years in Paris.

Stefania Maracineanu is often considered an "ignored Romanian scientist". Was this because of the challenges that women faced in the scientific community in the early 1900s ? Because she did not have a proper network of scientists with which to discuss ideas, and as a result lost focus and pursued research topics on the fringe of science? Was she marginalized in favor of bigger names and interests? Were her scientific methods and observations not careful or focused enough? We may never find an answer to these questions, or the answer may be a combination of all of the above, and then some...

Other references:

Stefania Maracieneanu: ignored Romanian Scientist

Bulletin of the National Research Council, v.10, 1925-1926, The National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC

Martisor - the Spring is here!

On the 1st of March Romanians celebrate the arrival of spring. Many other countries have some sort of spring celebration, but as far as I know, "Martisor" (Romanian pronunciation: [mərt͡siˈʃor])  is a Romanian custom.  A "martisor" is a little object attached to a red-and-white string and is worn pinned to the blouse, or sweater, or whatever you are wearing.  It may look something like this (I received it from my brother last year):

Nowdays it is worn by women and children during the first couple of weeks in March.  It is a symbol of the nature coming back to life after a long winter and it is supposed to brings good luck.  In some parts of Romania, during the first weeks of March the young women used to wear necklaces made of round pebbles collected from a river bed, which they pained red and white.
I don't have the red-white pebbles, but I made my own geology-related "martisor".  It may be too heavy to pin on to my blouse, but it matches the "Romania Rocks" theme.  Happy Spring everyone!

Getic Basin, Romania

The Getic basin, also known as the Southern Carpathians foredeep, is a geologic province located in south-central Romania, between the crystalline belt of the Southern Carpathians and the Moesian Platform.

© RomaniaRocks

Pictures from Salatruc,  Topolog River valley, Curtea de Arges, Corbi village, give a feel for how this part of Romania looks like.

The basin formed during Late Cretaceous time (more than 70 million years ago) by flexure of the lithosphere in response to thrusting and crustal thickening in the adjacent mountain belt. During Early Tertiary time (or about 60 million years ago), the Getic basin was an elongated and asymmetrical foredeep, with an axis oriented parallel to the Southern Carpathians orogenic belt, a steeply dipping flank on the orogen side, and a gently dipping flank overlying the platform.
Thrusting in the Southern Carpathians resulted from the interaction between two plate fragments, the Rhodopian and Moesian fragments.

© RomaniaRocks

This interaction had important consequences for the development of the Getic basin and was characterized by continental collision and subduction during the Late Cretaceous, and compression with a component of dextral wrenching during the Paleogene.
The Paleogene-Lower Miocene basin fill consists of siliciclastic, continental to shallow marine rocks in the northern part of the basin, grading basinward (southward) into deep marine deposits. The sediment source area was the Southern Carpathians orogenic belt.

Geology and wine #3

In a previous post, I mentioned that for a country its size, Romania has an amazingly varied geology.  A geologic map, courtesy of the Romanian Geological Institute website shows this complexity.  

And for the third installment of the geology and wine, here it is, side by side, a geological map and a map of the wine regions of Romania, (the later from the Romanian wine website).


I will talk in more detail, in a future post, about the geology of Romania and what the bright colors on the map mean, but for now, it is worth observing the relationship between the two maps.  The Carpathian mountains certainly stand out on the geologic map and they influence the wine regions in many ways.  I already talked about  how geology (and the resulting topography) influences present-day climate, and more specifically how the Foehn-type wind influence the wine making in the Cotnari region.  Geology also has a lot to do with the other elements of terroir, such as soil type and topography.  So when you have the next sip of your favorite wine, try to imagine the tumultuous geologic history that permeates every drop and gives in its "earthy minerality" (yes, that is a common sensory descriptor used in wine tasting).

Romanian-born German wins 2009 Nobel Prize

Herta Müller, the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist won the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature.  She grew up in communist Romania and lived part of her adult life there. I relate to that experience, I left Romania when I was 25-years old.  My circumstances were different, and my adopted country was different, but I recognize many of my experiences in her writings. Ms. Muller's modesty and down-to-earth attitude when interviewed after she learned of the award stuck with me:

"I am the person that I am, I am now nothing better and I’m nothing worse. It’s O.K., it’s nice, but it won’t change anything for me. My inner thing is writing. That I can hold on to."

This is a great!  The typical news from Romania these days are not great, usually "no news is good news".  This is truly extraordinary, and makes me very happy and proud.