Cutting the Grand Canyon - Dr. John Douglass
[00:00:00]
Chris Bolhuis: No, I'm not. I'm not. Have you ever come into this like forum where we look at each other and you're like, and I say to you, Jesse, I'm just not having a good day. Does that ever happen?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: no, actually not that I remember. Not that I remember. it's rare that you need to be talked down from something actually. Well, no, that's not true. It's usually over the phone when that happens. [00:00:30] It's, it's not over Zoom.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, that's true. Cause when I was, sometimes I call you like in the middle of the day and I'm upset
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You're upset about something.
or something happened. Or I remember there was one time, what was going on? It was last time you, me, and Andrew DeWitt were together. It was at that regional GSA and there was something you worked. It was with your, was it with your, your
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, my solar panels. I was so
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You were so worked up.
Chris Bolhuis: I'm still upset about
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that.
was funny. That was, that was one of the last times you had to be, uh, calmed down about something, but, [00:01:00] okay. You're, You're, you're,
full of passion. You know what? And your passion needs an outlet. And you know what? That's okay.
Passionate people make
the world
Chris Bolhuis: Well, you know what? That's why we do this podcast,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly.
Chris Bolhuis: It's my
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly. Exactly. Well, I mean, we, so we just got done with an interview with Dr. John Douglas. And this was, um, I think maybe a bit different than many of our other interviews because we really interviewed him about a specific, not just one discovery, but theme of scientific topics, which is about the Grand Canyon.
And, you [00:01:30] know, he's been really a big, force in the spillover theory for how the Grand Canyon formed. Right?
Chris Bolhuis: That's right, because there's a backstory to this, you know, you and I just finished this audio book on the Grand Canyon. And, you know, when we were getting ready researching, doing our stuff and getting ready to do this, I came across, you know, A lot of stuff from John Douglas, a lot of videos that he had, I read his papers and then we get this random email a few weeks ago from this guy named John Douglas.
And he's just like, Hey, I'm a fan [00:02:00] of your podcast. And by the way, if you ever want to talk about the Grand Canyon, I'd love to discuss it with you. And I'm like, wait a second. I, I know this guy. And so I, I couldn't wait. to talk to him. I mean, I've been giddy all day long this was, this was
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely. And so Dr. John Douglas is a professor at Paradise Valley Community College. His work on this spillover theory, which we get into a lot of details about, I mean, Hey, for those of you who want the weeds, this is an episode for the weeds, right? We talk about a lot of stuff and it's [00:02:30] great, but John Douglas has his PhD from Arizona State University, a master's. This is all in geography, by the way, and we kind of discuss the differences here, but. Geoscience, let's say. a master's from Northern Arizona University and has really been working on the problem of how did the Grand Canyon get cut?
How did the canyon itself form for a couple decades now? Um, and has kind of led
the charge on this spillover theory. And his work has been highlighted in National Geographic, History Channel shows, the National Park Service videos, like if you type in how did the Grand [00:03:00] Canyon form, you're going to find a video that is either centrally focused on his work, or at least highlights his work in some way, shape, or form.
Right, Chris?
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And you can see his analogies. I mean, he's built these gigantic sandbox where he creates these lakes and, and tests his theory, you know, and he involves students in this. It's just a, you can see these videos. He's really all over the place. When you talk about how the Grand Canyon was
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Totally. And Chris, you know, we, I must say our Grand Canyon [00:03:30] audiobook, which is available on the Camp Geo app, you can go to the first link in your show notes. There we have the geology of Yellowstone, geology of Grand Canyon. That's a, uh, well, let's say this episode we go much more into the weeds.
We have a chapter in that audiobook on how the Grand Canyon got cut, and this is one of the models that we, discussed. But there are other models out there in the literature. We kind of touch on that in this podcast episode. But, you know, this is a. A compelling one. I know this was one of your favorite models, when we recorded that
chapter before this episode [00:04:00] and, yeah, I can totally see why.
It's a story that makes a lot of sense
and it has this, like, what I really like and I like the way that John kind of phrased this. It's that sense of discovery in the field when he's, like, looking at these rocks and being like, whoa, that's beach sand and it's super high up. I mean, that's, that's just, like, pure geological discovery and that's just cool to
hear from anybody.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I agree. There are a couple of moments in this episode where there are these crucial discoveries that [00:04:30] were found and just listening to the person that actually made these discoveries and, and you get a feel in a sense for his emotion at that time. it's just a, that's a really cool thing.
Uh, you know, Jesse, have you had those experiences in your research? If you had those kind of moments,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, I would say yes and no. I was just thinking through this as we were talking with John. Yes and no. I've had moments of discovery for sure, but because I'm a geochemist and like geochronologist, they often occur [00:05:00] in the lab. You know what I mean? So like the first one I remember was, um, Well, I had one in undergrad, but one in my PhD where it's very, you know, senior professor, I was talking about what data I was going to collect that weekend or that Friday.
And he's like, Oh, if you find those values, you're the luckiest SOB out there. And so I was down in the lab, collecting this data, looking at the numbers coming off. And it was like midnight or something. And these low oxygen isotope values came off, which. meant I was SOB in the world, right? Um, and that was just that [00:05:30] discovery where like, I'm the only one who knew that for that period of time.
Like, I'm the only one who knew that. And that was really, really cool. But that's not the same as like standing in this beautiful plateau mountains around you looking at the rocks in that way that John has. So I don't, I couldn't say I've ever had that experience of like in the field, looking at the rocks.
that's exceptional.
Chris Bolhuis: So my contribution to that discussion would be, two weeks ago, I am getting ready, preparing mentally [00:06:00] to talk about plate tectonics with my upper level geology class. And I wake up at three o'clock in the morning and I just, I had a thought about a way that I wanted to teach about paleomagnetism on the ocean
floor and how I wanted to have my.
Juniors and seniors visualize this. I'd never done it this way before. And it was just, it worked.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh yeah?
Chris Bolhuis: was
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So you got, you were doing it that day. You got to like, see the results of it that day
Oh, that's awesome.
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, [00:06:30] I came home and you know, it's one of those things that I, you know, Jenny and I are sitting on the hot tub after dinner and I'm like, Hey, I gotta tell you about this.
And it's just, it was, it's not at the level of
what you just talked about and what John talked about and so on, but
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It absolutely
is. You're testing, you know, you're testing how this thing works and testing new ideas. I think it's absolutely the exact same thing. Actually, I, and I take back what I said before, I did have one of those feelings of discovery, but it was not actually new discovery.
It was you teaching me about the Snake River Plain. on [00:07:00] Summer Science, when I was, you were, You were quizzing me. I was sitting in front of the bus. We told the story before, but or you were driving the bus. I came up and sat there and you just asked me how the snaker airplane formed.
And I remember that that is a feeling of discovery, even though it's not actually a new discovery. It's new to me. and that,
It's 80 percent of the feeling of discovery that, you know, where no one else knows it.
but it,
it's a substantial feeling. Um, and so, and I think many probably of our listeners can feel that, you know, whether you're listening to this podcast or you're walking around [00:07:30] looking at mountains and you're like, Oh my goodness, that's how that thing formed.
Like, that's amazing. You know, that, that feeling is, that's the feeling we're talking about. So
it's very powerful. Absolutely.
Absolutely. I think, uh, let's just get to it. This is John Douglas coming at you, but before we do that real quick, there are two ways to support us. If you like this podcast, if you like Planet Geo, two ways to support us. You can head over to our website, planetgeocast. com. There you can donate to us, just, you know, You know, send us a few bucks, support the podcast.
The other way, which we almost kind of prefer is [00:08:00] go to our new mobile app, Camp Geo, the mobile app, first link in your show notes. There, you can listen to a bunch of free stuff. you can also purchase access to a couple of audio books that we have there, which that's another way to support us. So just to highlight those.
And one of them is the Grand Canyon, the geology of the Grand Canyon. this is John Douglas, very deep dive into how the Grand Canyon got cut. So let's get to it.
Dr. John Douglas, welcome to Planet Geo and thanks for [00:08:30] joining us. This is, uh, this is very exciting. We're, we're happy to talk to you. Thanks for giving us some of your time.
Dr. John Douglass: Uh, absolutely. I'm really excited to be here. Big fans of the show. Or big fan of the show.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, really appreciate it.
Chris Bolhuis: I've been looking forward to this all day, John.
Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris, more than that, Chris has been giddy for a while now. think Chris is fanboying out a little bit now. He's watched a bunch of the videos following your work about the Grand Canyon, and
he's excited to talk about them,
so
Chris Bolhuis: I really am. Yep, absolutely.
Dr. John Douglass: I just want to say it is mutual. [00:09:00] And Chris, specifically, what you've done being a high school teacher, taking students on those trips that has got to be earth changing to, Those students that you do that for. it's a gift. It's a gift to the people you do that for, it's a gift for the rest of their life.
I just think it's incredible, what you have done with your
Chris Bolhuis: means a lot.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I'll second that. I've been the recipient of that, so I'll second that, absolutely. Now, I'm going to continue,
all that aside, we're going to continue to interrupt you throughout this, despite that, so.
Chris Bolhuis: John, I, I am [00:09:30] very intrigued by the offer that you sent in an email to swap out trips. So, uh, let's, uh, maybe talk about that later on. Hey,
Dr. John Douglass: Absolutely.
Chris Bolhuis: that was exciting. Well, Jesse, shall we just jump right in? What do you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's, let's get into
Chris Bolhuis: this is my question. I always ask it.
So I'll lead off. So John, Jesse and I both have, our own little stories and we've shared this several times with our listeners about how and why we got into the geosciences and, you know, what was our moment, so we like to ask our guests that what got you into the [00:10:00] geosciences?
Was there a specific moment that you feel,
Dr. John Douglass: it wasn't a specific moment but, I, I'm incredibly lucky. So, I actually had a Chris Bolhuis as a kid that took students on backpacking trips to the Sierra Nevada mountains. so I started in fifth grade all the way up through high school going on six, eight, or ten day backpacking trips in the Sierra Nevadas, either between Mammoth, California and Yosemite National Park or Yosemite Valley, or the way down to
Dr. Jesse Reimink: this
through, John, [00:10:30] what can
I ask? Was this
through school or was this like Boy Scouts or like some institute
like that? Or
Dr. John Douglass: I think it's like Chris. It was just this crazy teacher. He got a bus license, so we would just take a school bus, he would put speakers in it, and he, you know, there would be other high school kids that were kind of in charge of like four kids, which I eventually did when I became a high school student.
and I learned so much about, being a leader, helping people out, and yeah, totally changed my life.
Chris Bolhuis: was there a geoscience, component to that, John? Or, or was it just a [00:11:00] trip?
Dr. John Douglass: it was just a trip, but
it got into my blood. I, the rocks, Gosh, the first trip I ever did when I was in fifth grade, I remember I was probably crying at some point, and I'm going down a hill, And I look up, and I don't know how familiar you are with the area, but there's two peaks called Banner and Ritter up there in the minarets. And in my mind, it was like a castle. It was like a castle in the sky, that there would have been a dragon right behind this thing. I just like, how is this real? and I could not get enough of it from that point on.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So did that [00:11:30] really get you into the geosciences? Like was a direct path of like, Hey, that's, that's amazing. That mountain, that peak is amazing. I got to learn about it. And like, was this in high school you took these classes or college that you started to kind of have the traditional education in the field?
Dr. John Douglass: I don't know, this was in the 90s. I would read books, but there was no classes. But my goal was to be Basically Chris Bolhuis. I wanted to be a high school teacher teaching geology and then taking people on trips in the summer. That was my dream.
Chris Bolhuis: are you from [00:12:00] California then?
Dr. John Douglass: I grew up in San Diego.
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, wow. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: of the, sort of academic geologists I know, there's a significant fraction that had a Chris Bolhuis in their life. You know, I
had a, an early exposure by a dynamic teacher or somebody in their life, maybe not a traditional teacher, but a mentor or something. There's a lot of, people who go on and end up like yourself getting PhDs in geology.
It's a lot actually, you know, I don't know what the numbers are, but a third or more I would say of people I've met have, have that early exposure and it's just, yeah, like you [00:12:30] said at the outset, it's a testament to, to you, Chris, people and people like you who kind of do this, you know what I mean?
So,
Chris Bolhuis: I don't care what field you're in. I think that that's true pretty much across the board. Don't you think? No matter if you're in business or somebody at some point lit the spark,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah,
Dr. John Douglass: Okay. But I feel like you're selling yourself short in that there's a plenty of other teachers that teach geology and you take it, 500 steps further because people need to see the rocks. Like you need to get out there. You need to, you [00:13:00] need to experience it. You need to wrestle with these concepts, these ideas, wrestle with what is geologic time?
Like that is what gets under my skin When I was a kid, that's how I fell in love with it. I don't think that's something you can do in the classroom anywhere near as much as you can in the field.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I agree completely with that. Okay, so want to come back to sort of latter half of your path a minute, John, but real quick question about this might be a semantic one, but I noticed your degrees are all geography
Dr. John Douglass: And I was, yep, so I have a story
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you're. Yeah, so I wanna [00:13:30] hear about that and I wanna, but could you, could you, in your mind, what is the difference, if any, between geology, geoscience, and geography?
Cause I think there's a lot of people who get massively confused, and I'm one of them, about the differences here, cause I would class you as a geologist or geoscientist, right?
But, so is there a difference in, in what is your, in what's the story, uh, behind that?
Dr. John Douglass: So basically, I went to college and I took an education class. And I just didn't like the education class. And for some reason, I couldn't see myself going through [00:14:00] with the whole education stuff. and then in geology, just the math, the physics, the chemistry. I kind of got overwhelmed with that. I was a kid.
I didn't really know what I was doing. And I just went on this journey. meandering path of trying out different majors. Like I love history. I mean, geology is basically history, but I love history. So I went down that path for a while. and then I ended up in geography because I, my goal was to be by the end, I was going to be a snow scientist.
So I was going to study avalanche paths, uh, snow science, how much water, you know, snow packs are producing that [00:14:30] kind of thing. and I only came back to geology because the last class I took, it was in geomorphology and it was literally on how the Grand Canyon formed. And so when I took that class, man talk about a drug, like an addiction, like it just got into my head.
I, the idea of the, the canyon as a problem, uh, in terms of how it formed, the different ideas, the mechanisms, it's age. I could not get enough of it. And so when the class was over and he told us we don't know how the Grand Canyon formed and I was like, that's [00:15:00] stupid. How can we not know how the Grand Canyon formed?
It's the freaking most popular national park. That's impossible. I, I literally went to my snow scientist professor and I said, I want to get a master's in how the Grand Canyon formed. And don't do that everybody else out there because there's no money in that. And I wasn't qualified. Um, but luckily or unluckily, my, he agreed to do it, and I then had to try to figure out how the, uh, the canyon formed.
[00:15:30] So it was very empirical, very much making up on the fly as I went along.
Chris Bolhuis: So just to get this straight, John, that was geography that then you transitioned for your master's into geology.
Is that
Dr. John Douglass: master's, it was still in Geography, but because Geography has this umbrella where you can have geomorphology, And kind of human geography and climatology, I guess. I was in the geomorphology angle of it. So I took a lot of geology classes. but that was the umbrella I was in.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. That's interesting. that structure is kind of common that there's like a lot of overlap [00:16:00] here. Human geographers, which are much more social science, I would say, than physical science, right?
Can be. In the same department. I mean, in, in the University of Alberta, where I did my PhD, all the human geographers were in the earth and atmospheric sciences department.
And so, you know, but there's kind of a bifurcation between the social sciences and the physical sciences within that like departmental umbrella. So I think that's, that's maybe useful for people to understand that the difference is you're kind of all grouped together in a department, but there's fractures or I don't know,
Dr. John Douglass: Like Jesse, what you do, if I understand [00:16:30] right, do you do petrology? Igneous petrology?
So that is not something any geographer would ever do. We would only ever do stuff on the surface. It would only ever be geomorphology.
And
Chris Bolhuis: Fluvial stuff like that kind of
Dr. John Douglass: Peruvial weathering, hill slope processes, just like how the landscape changes and develops over time.
Chris Bolhuis: So a lot of interactions between geology and humanity, maybe, is that,
Dr. John Douglass: yeah, kind of by definition, yeah, kind of has to be, yeah, because it's all on the surface. It's everything on the surface.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: in our, in the Penn State, you know, hierarchy, in the Geoscience [00:17:00] Department, there's a different department that does the social, like, we don't have human geographers in our department, but our department houses all the landscape evolution people. So we're, they're geologists, you know, by definition.
definition because they're in our department. So there's like a big Venn diagram overlap here. And, uh, uh, yeah, anyway, I just wanted to clarify that. So that that's useful. Okay. So
then, then, so so we're at the point where like, you've got the itch now about the grand Canyon and that's sort of it.
So you did your master's, with the same supervisor sounds like at, um, Northern Arizona university. Is that right? Okay, and then you moved [00:17:30] on to do a PhD in the more, it sounded like
quantitative or landscape evolution a bit.
Dr. John Douglass: it was definitely the real deal. So down at ASU, I worked with Ron Dorn and I had other, Norm Meek, Mark Schmeckly, just really, I don't know, I lucked out. Really good guys, but I had to grow up a lot, so when I did my master's program, My brain had something to do with it, but luck definitely played a part in it, because I found something interesting.
But unfortunately, when I was doing my master's, I was localized, and I [00:18:00] didn't connect myself to everybody else that was working on the similar problems in the world, in the literature, if that makes sense. I
was really isolated, and I didn't know how to be a scholar in terms of how to connect myself and get help from those other sources.
When I went to ASU, that was one of the things my advisor brought to our and he's like, No, you can't. That's not how this works. Like, you have to give credit and understand what everybody else has done before you if you're going to make any steps forward. So, that was a big transition for me, uh, down at ASU.
But then, yes, then I did, I [00:18:30] studied at ASU, not Granite Canyon specifically, but Grand Canyon technically is what is called a transverse drainage, where a river cuts across, you know, a mountain. I studied the four ways rivers cut across mountains, or end up having cut across a mountain.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I
just want
Chris Bolhuis: said, hold on,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: hold on. No, let, let me, I just want to double click on that point. That's a very normal path. Like I find my PhD was the same. It was like, Holy crap. There's this whole wide world and legacy of research.
Like, you know.
it's ma I had no idea how big this [00:19:00] actually, how little anybody knows, cause there's so much, such a volume of previous work that you have to sift through, like, don't know.
I think that's a very normal process that people go through anyway. Sorry, Chris.
Chris Bolhuis: now that's totally fine. I know you're not sorry. So John, you said something. You said there are four ways that rivers cut across mountains. Is that correct? Can we talk about that? What are the four ways? that rivers cut across mountains.
Dr. John Douglass: Okay, and I'm gonna say this now. This is another reason why your podcast is amazing. You guys do this all just with [00:19:30] words, and that is a challenge, because every other thing we do with geology You can't do it without a picture
or the landscape, so I'm going to do my best. And I have help. I have help from what other people have done in the literature.
Thank you, Ron Torn. okay. So the first one is, uh, John Wesley Powell, famous, Grand Canyon geologist explorer. is antecedents. So, with antecedents, the river is flowing first, and then the mountain uplifts underneath the flowing river, and if the river has the capacity to cut through that rising rock, you will end up with an antecedent [00:20:00] transverse drainage.
The analogy that John Wesley Powell used is if you put a saw onto a log of wood, You can drop the saw onto the wood or lift the log into the saw and you're going to cut either way,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's a good one. I like that. Lifting the log into the saw. That's a great
one. Ooh, that's a really good one. Okay.
Dr. John Douglass: the second one is superimposition. This one is the most difficult. So I'm going to try my best.
So imagine the log that already exists, right? The mountain is exists probably structurally. but then you have to bury it in something. typically, at least out here in the West, you're going to bury it in some kind of [00:20:30] sediments. uh, silts, clays, marls, just something that's it kind of gets draped across that landscape.
The river flows across that drape, kind of acts like a ramp to allow that river to go across, and then for some reason, once it cuts down, it will cut through the bedrock that's below that soft rock. Then the soft rock gets eroded away, and the bedrock below just emerges, and you're going to end up with a superimposed transverse drainage.
Did that make any sense?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.
that did. [00:21:00] I, I have a question on that, John. So can that be a cycle, a process that cycles over and over? I'm imagining two, like a basin, restricted basins that kind of fill up with sediments over time. and there's this like, I don't know, granite mountain range in between. and the superposition happens over and over, like, The stream gets cut off for some reason, then the basins fill up, or is it kind of a one time and done thing?
And this is kind
Dr. John Douglass: Uh, no, no. I
I think that's a
Dr. Jesse Reimink: but,
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, no. Jesse, I think that's a, a great question. We [00:21:30] unfortunately don't have the ability to get a sense of those cycles just because the rock record gets obliterated. but out here in the Basin of Range, I'm actually working with a very good friend, Brian Gauthier. And we're studying a basin out here.
And we're starting to get a handle on these earlier basins where you would have superimposition and stuff. but it's really tough once you get older than the first one.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: are there examples, like classic examples for antecedents and superimposition that people kind of know this is the way these formed, or not really? Is it kind of up for debate, these [00:22:00] things?
Dr. John Douglass: No, we definitely have good examples. I'm just trying to think what the audience would know. Um, I feel Mostly confident that the Columbia River Gorge is antecedent. So the Columbia River, you know, coming out of that, eastern Washington, Oregon, that area, cutting through the Cascade Mountains, we think that that is antecedent.
It's tough, because the Cascades go back, into the Cretaceous. so I somewhat struggle with that, but I think it is.
Chris Bolhuis: Maybe, Jesse, a different way of asking the question is what geologically are you [00:22:30] looking for, for an antecedent, drainage system versus a superimposition? Like antecedent, I think of, entrenched meanders, right?
Dr. John Douglass: Oh, okay. So typically with antecedents, you actually have, well you have active faulting. Something is causing that mountain to go up, so you'll have evidence that the thing is going up. Uh, oftentimes you're going to have terraces that are abandoned high up in the structure, because as it's going up, you'll have terraces.
This is famous in the Himalayas. The Himalayas have a number of transverse drainages, which is classic stacked terraces, going up the sides of the mountains. The same in [00:23:00] the Andes. So typically, if you have antecedents, you're going to be someplace active.
And so we have a couple here in Arizona, uh, where I work.
Granite Creek, north of Prescott, we know that one's an antecedent drainage. Uh, it's actually in the process of getting captured. It's not going to flow where it's flowing for very long. But, yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: All right. So we have covered two
Dr. John Douglass: Okay.
Chris Bolhuis: and we have two more. Yeah.
Dr. John Douglass: Oh yeah, wait, wait, I apologize. so just real quick, andesite is the superimposition, and in that case, the river is first, the mountain is second, The river is there, the mountain either gets uplifted, or you exhume the [00:23:30] mountain, if
Dr. Jesse Reimink: The river in its path. The river's path as we see it today was there before the mountain was there.
Dr. John Douglass: correct, river first. For these next two, mountains first, river second. So, the mountain is already there, and the river somehow cheats and gets across this mountain, okay?
And so, the coolest one is river piracy, where the river is flowing next to this mountain and going somewhere else. And, in the literature, you're going to read that a lot of headward erosion on the other [00:24:00] side of the mountain will work headward and capture that drainage. which will then cause it to go across the mountain. And once it does, that will be a shortcut, and then boom, it cuts across. You now have a lower base level, it's going to a lower place, and you'll end up with a transverse drainage. in my work, the headward erosion angle, it does happen, but it takes a lot of time.
You need big asymmetry between your upstream drainage and your downstream drainage to allow that headward erosion to occur. it's more common for the upstream drainage to occur. The grating, building up its [00:24:30] bed. So it's starting to flow higher and higher. Rivers We'll do that to gain more energy Cause either the climate is drying out or it gets more sediment or it's just flowing and efficiently. And as it gets higher and higher, eventually it'll take a shortcut and go across your mountain Then it will cut and you got a piracy event.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Good examples, or what do you look for in the rock record for piracy?
Dr. John Douglass: Again, I, I wish I could just feel like this massive river did this for people who are listening.
I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: for small ones, but you know,
people people we've, what we've realized here is that, you [00:25:00] know, we always make jokes about staying out of the weeds. Actually. There's a lot of people who want more weeds. we've
gotten that feedback from people. Uh, so don't be afraid to dive into some weeds here.
Dr. John Douglass: Okay, so locally here in Phoenix, we have the Salt River. So the Salt River flows through our city here in Phoenix, Arizona. At least it used to before it got dammed and all that. the Salt River used to flow south of the city, south of this place called South Mountain. And it did that for, uh, one to two million years.
And then it did exactly what I said. It took a shortcut and went across this gap that existed [00:25:30] between A Mountain on ASU campus, Arizona State University, and Papago Buttes. And when it took that shortcut, it shortened the path that it has to travel, boom, it cut down, it abandoned this huge terrace, most of Phoenix actually sits on an abandoned terrace, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe, that's all an abandoned terrace of the Salt River once it took that shortcut.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow. Yeah. It's
Chris Bolhuis: That's unbelievable.
Dr. John Douglass: It's so cool. Yeah.
Yeah.
and they're more prevalent than I initially thought.
I'll say
that.
Chris Bolhuis: [00:26:00] And the fourth
Dr. John Douglass: Alright, the fourth one. the
fourth one the one I spent the most work on, and is by far the easiest one. or you have a river, gets dammed by that mountain, eventually it fills up, gonna find the lowest spot, pours across. If it's gonna flow to a lower place, a lower base level.
It'll have enough energy, it will cut a canyon, and you have a transverse drainage.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so this is a dam
breaching, or you could call it spillover, but it's, think of a dam breaking kind of an idea?
Dr. John Douglass: No. So, that's where I get it.
Chris Bolhuis: Ha ha.
Dr. John Douglass: of
Dr. Jesse Reimink: ha
Dr. John Douglass: They're
always like
Chris Bolhuis: put [00:26:30] him in his place, John.
Yes. Love
it.
Dr. John Douglass: no, no. It
just is.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think I saw this ques I
think I think I saw this question on a video, uh, uh,
Dr. John Douglass: Okay, it's not a dam breaking, this is a, sorry, that's a big legacy of this whole lake idea, is people hate this idea, basically is what I found out, definitely when I first proposed it. They don't like the idea of a lake pouring across, and they don't like it because it's catastrophic, at least in their mind it's going to be catastrophic, basically because what you said is it's a dam and it [00:27:00] fails.
And that is not the case at all, okay? So, for the Grand Canyon specifically, which I think is the best example, but, we have a ton of examples of overflow out here in the West. you're going to be cutting across the Kaibab Plateau, and that is a 70 mile wide, stack of Paleozoic and Precambrian crystal and rock, like that thing is not going to break.
So it takes a while. once the water goes across, the current will be steep enough. You'll end up with waterfalls. Those waterfalls will work headward just like Niagara Falls, [00:27:30] which is awesome, whoever came up with that question. And those, as those waterfalls go back, when they hit that lake outlet where the water is initially pouring across, Then you can have a big release of water, but I wouldn't say a
collapse, at the nick point.
Once that nick point hits the outlet, right, let's say the nick point is 10 feet tall, you have a 10 foot waterfall. If it hits the outlet, now you've just lowered the entire lake by 10 feet. So the entire lake, however big it is, the area, multiply that by 10 feet, all that water will now go downstream. That will generate a [00:28:00] flood, for sure, but I wouldn't say, like, a dam break,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: okay, so I asked this, I asked the damn question, in part, because, a leading question here, because, you said people don't like this idea. maybe what you could do is frame the evidence briefly for this forming the Grand Canyon, and we can, get in the weeds with this too, but like just at a high level, what is the evidence for this that led you to propose this spillover specifically for the Grand Canyon?
I think you just kind of touched on it a little bit just there, but could we kind of double click on that a minute?
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, yeah. So, going back to when I was my [00:28:30] master's student, didn't really know anything, and I was driving out there, looking, I was reading about different gravel deposits, and I would go out there, and I'd look at them, and then I'd pick up the rocks, and I'd be like, This is a gravel! I had no idea what any of it meant.
I made an observation, and the observation was, Just upstream of the Grand Canyon, you have the Colorado River that's flowing in Marble Canyon, flows downhill. You have the Little Colorado River, just upstream of the Grand Canyon, flows downhill, and it meets up with the Colorado River just east of Grand Canyon, just upstream of Grand Canyon.
Where those [00:29:00] two rivers meet, they meet at the top of a hill, a little hill, well it's kind of a big hill, called Cedar Ridge. It's a subtle, anticlinal upwarp that dips towards the Kaibab Plateau. And rivers are not supposed to meet at the top of the hill, right? Water's supposed to flow away from the top of the hill.
So when I recognized that that's what those rivers were doing, I thought to myself, if I could get a handle on how two rivers could meet at the top of the hill, I might have a handle on how the canyon formed. So then it took me two months of thinking about it, [00:29:30] sleeping on it, whatever, whatever. And then finally I was just driving in a van.
I was actually headed on a river trip and it just hit me. It was like, Whoa, if I had a lake up high, that's pouring across and you have the nick points going down, pouring across, and you take out the lake outlet, and allow that lake to lower down, lower down, until it hits that cedar ridge, you would split into two lakes, and then you could end up with Colorado River going off to the north, and Little Colorado River going off to the south, and you could account for the geometry of these two rivers that meet at the top of the hill.
So [00:30:00] that was the first piece of evidence that I had to support it.
Chris Bolhuis: okay, you surmise that if, this is what happened now, now what right now, you got to go find the lake,
Dr. John Douglass: yes, well the first thing I did is I went and so I'm dating my wife now is Megan Kirk, lover to death. And we were boyfriend and girlfriend at this time. And I'm just, you know, fiendish freak about this thing. And I want to build a model. to see if I can demonstrate this just in a pile of dirt.
Like what does this work? If I have a lake and it cuts, will I split? So I [00:30:30] do that, but I'm just laughing because we had to steal. I ended up. We stole some wood from this like little manufacturing plant and I probably shouldn't have, but the wood was sitting there and I was laughing because I went to go pick up the wood I told Meg, I was like, Hey, we just grabbed this wood.
I don't think anybody was using it. She's like, I bet someone's using it. I'm like, well, maybe, but we can just grab it. So then we go over there. And then while we're getting the wood, she's like, do you think we should be doing this? I don't know if we should be getting this wood. And I was
like, no, don't talk about this.
Uh, So then I was able [00:31:00] to demonstrate it in a physical model. but yes, then you need to find the actual rock evidence for the lake. And that led me to the Bidhochi Formation.
Chris Bolhuis: Let's talk about that.
Dr. John Douglass: Okay. Dang. This is a big topic.
Chris Bolhuis: I know it's a big top, but it's fun. This is, and
it's okay. Let's, let's just,
let's get into it.
This is, the heart of your research right here,
Dr. John Douglass: yep. Definitely
now. Yeah. So the Bidhochi Formation is a beautiful rock formation. You guys should go, everybody should go see it. Absolutely beautiful. Although it is on the Navajo reservation. So, you want to collect rocks, you need permission.
But it is a [00:31:30] stack of clays, sands, silts, and marls that sits kind of out in this big open, I mean it still looks like a basin today. It's a giant low angle syncline called a sag, St. John's Sag. the basin started to form about 16 million years ago. We don't know how the basin formed, although John He at U of A just published a paper in Nature on the topic, which is so cool.
I'm so proud of him, if he's listening. I've actually told him this Tuesday night, but respect, that is so cool. The Basin [00:32:00] Forms, Okay, I'm going to do the old idea first, and then I'll do what I think is really going on. So the old idea is, 16 million years ago, we started getting a lake in this basin.
east of the Grand Canyon. What is Grand Canyon today? and as that lake is filling up, about eight million years ago, we get a bunch of Marr volcanoes erupting. You get the Hopi Buttes. So the Hopi Buttes are just volcanoes that when the magma comes up, it hits just wet dirt, basically, causes that water to flash to steam.
And so instead of building a nice cone, like a cinder cone or something, you get a big hole in the [00:32:30] ground Mar Volcano. So we have a bunch of Mar Volcanoes sitting out there. That's the middle member and then the upper member also starts at 8 million years ago and that's where the system transitions into having a lot more sand coming in.
So instead of being mostly silts and clays, we're getting a lot more sand and it covers a much bigger area, higher up in the, on the edge of the basin is the upper member. And the thinking there is the upper member represented the basin drying out, and the [00:33:00] sand was, river systems that basically filled in this lake basin as the basin dried out.
that was the thinking of what was going on up there.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so in that model, is that this is a restricted basin, or is there an outflow somewhere from
Dr. John Douglass: No outflow.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No outflow.
So this is going in and it's drying and
forming evaporites or, or not forming evaporites, but it's,
Dr. John Douglass: good question. Um, we do have some gypsum, but definitely not halite, at least I've never seen any halite. There might have been halite somewhere else that's eroded away. Okay. but, even [00:33:30] based on what I've seen lately, I don't think that's the case. I think it's just two poles up at that elevation.
Maybe, maybe
Chris Bolhuis: So something I'm not clear on John, and if you can clear this up, that'd be a great. So you talked about the lake filling up and then you talked about the lake draining. So you talked about the mid member and the, you know, the clays and so on. And then you went, you transitioned higher up into sand.
What was causing it to go from filling to emptying? Was it spilling over at that point? Is that what you're, is that what you're getting at?
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, no, sorry, so that was the old [00:34:00] model for that formation. So, what, actually, I just gave a talk at the Arizona Geological Society, and so a paper that I'm working on, trying to get published, is I'm trying to change that, that paradigm. that it's actually the opposite, that that early lake was fairly dry, and then over time it actually gets wetter.
So, the volcanism doesn't kick off until the lake starts getting bigger. I don't know if that connection is there, but that is what happened. and then now that sand that we're seeing in the upper member, a lot of it is fluvial, no question, it's [00:34:30] subaerial red beds. But a lot of it is actually beach sand.
And, uh, we have a lot of carbonate in that sand. And that carbonate in places is Tufa, and other places it's Dermatolitic, microbialites, where, you know, get little critters in there, building laminate. it's, it's mind blowing. I cannot tell you how mind blowing it is to be finding this stuff.
And another passion of mine for over the past year, because I'm a freak, I got into ostracods. I don't know, have you guys ever studied ostracods? Okay, I just tried to see if you guys are in the same frame. Yeah, [00:35:00] so ostracods, they're just little millimeter, fossils, little guys, little shell creatures with little, insects and shells go around eating stuff, but they're a really good indicator, for what the lake quality, the water quality was like, if you can figure out what species you're looking at.
I am not an expert on the species. But I collected a bunch of sediment. I was able to process it and find a bunch of these ostracods. And so I'm lucky to have two colleagues, a guy named Jordan up at Northern Arizona University and Andy Cohen at U of A. These guys are like know their stuff.[00:35:30]
And it's incredible. It is so, it is incredible. So the lower member, we've only found one ostracod species. a new species. I'm going to name it after Todd DeLegge. he did his master's there in the late 90s on the Fidoci Formation, and I just want to give him credit because what he did was not a master's thesis, it was like two dissertations, we would not be where we are without Todd.
So, it's going to be called Heterosapistilegiae,
but these these critters are so hardy, they're known they can live anywhere. in the 1950s, a guy was studying these guys. And he went [00:36:00] home, and he came back to his lab on Monday, and he's like, Oh crap, I forgot about my critters!
And he didn't take care of his water correctly, and it had totally depleted of oxygen. So it totally become anoxic. And he thought, Oh, I killed them, they're dead! And he goes in and looks in, and they're fine. They're going around doing their thing. Yeah, so was able to figure out they can handle anoxic conditions, super hardy critters, and it's also weird that we only have one.
We only have the heterocypris, delegii. That's weird too. Typically you have some sort [00:36:30] of, you know, ecosystem of other ostracods, and we don't have any other real fossils either. We don't have fish. I did find one bone. I don't know if it's, I don't think it's a fish bone. If I had to guess, I would say it's an amphibian.
so right now we don't have much, and we have one ostracod, and that ostracod can handle some really funky water. what I think happened is the Colorado River was stuck somewhere farther north on the Colorado Plateau, and then it entered the Bidhochi Basin. And when it entered the Bidhochi Basin, boom, things changed.
And it didn't change too much. Like crazy, [00:37:00] crazy. If you go out there and look at it, like the contact is sharp in places, but it's not crazy. But in terms of life, everything changes. Like, we have like tons of mammals, tons of amphibians, tons of reptiles,
tons of fish.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I interrupt and ask you a quick question, Jonathan? So at this, so, I'm trying to visualize the previous. Explanation of the Bidhochi, um, how do you pronounce it? Bidhochi. Okay, that, uh, the, uh, the previous explanation of the formation was it that there was a lake there and it [00:37:30] was, and this is forming the lower member, but the lake dried out.
It eventually got dried out and then it was a bunch of river, like, kind of rivers meandering back and forth across this plain. That's the previous model. you're saying, no, that's not what happened. The lake is getting deeper and the grand, the upper crust. Colorado River entered?
Is this entering and forming the lake? Or is it entering like midway? Is the lake there when the river enters? Like where,
where in this sequence of sediments is this happening?
This event?
Chris Bolhuis: question. Yep.
Dr. John Douglass: so the lake [00:38:00] before the river gets there before the Colorado gets there It's fairly small But if you go out there and look at the rocks and sometimes you can't tell you can't tell that the Colorado has arrived like it's The same green clay we can tell because of strontium We have a chemical signature that can tell us but you don't you can't tell just by looking at the rocks but once that hose of the Colorado starts going into that basin, the lake does get deeper over time.
and then as you move into the upper member, that's where things change. So, we start getting more species of ostracods. But these guys, instead of being like [00:38:30] heterocypris, they can handle more alkaline water. So, out here in the west we have Pyramid Lake. Uh, the Sierras go into Nevada and it's a closed lake basin, and you can go swimming in it.
It's nice, but it's hard water, alkaline, moderate salinity, nothing like ocean levels, but it's a little bit funky. that's what our lake is like. and then recently, fairly high in this section, I can't believe this happened. I was out there, I was helping a PhD student who's working out there, who works at University of Washington, Emma Heitman.
and I'm [00:39:00] supposed to be digging a trench so she can measure sections for her research. She's going to be doing clumped isotope research. And my daughter is out there with me because she's crazy and gets bored and wants to go see Bidhochi too. And finally I look at her, I'm like, I'm sick of digging a trench.
Let's go look for fossils because I know we're on a side of a hill that has fossils, like we'll go fossil hunting. So we leave and we start finding, we find awesome fossils, giant gastropods, but all the stuff that people had known about. But at the really high end of the section where no one had looked, just by dumb [00:39:30] luck, we found a bone bed of fish bones.
And in those fish bones, we have an ostracod species known as Cithrissa lacustris. the species part, it's probably a new species because this is so old, about five and a half million years old. but that guy is it is known for very, very fresh, deep lakes, is what it's
known
for,
And it's up there in the sand, which was used as the evidence before for it being rivers, ostraca that only lives deep, cold lakes.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And this is upper member. This is after the Colorado River. And you're the sort of [00:40:00] revised interpretation, your argument is that this is after the Colorado River arrives and we got to, now the lake's getting bigger and
cleaner. Okay. And this sand is, is beach sand, not, you know, sort of drying out sand.
Dr. John Douglass: At this location, it's beach sand. In other places, you do have fluvial sands that are going into the lake, and those sands get preserved, but the sediments associated with the lake were not,
at other locations.
Chris Bolhuis: John, how prolific is this organism in that upper layer that only thrives in freshwater lakes?
Dr. John Douglass: so I've only found it in one bed, but [00:40:30] in that bed, it's the dominant ostracod. and then I reached out to an expert, Allison Smith, but she's been incredibly gracious. She actually sent me a book on ostracods from Lake Baikal in Russia,
because
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Very cool.
Dr. John Douglass: that's where these ostracods are famous from, is Lake Baikal.
that is thought to have been the cradle for when these species formed. when Lake Baikal became fully oxygenated sometime in the late Miocene.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Very cool. Okay, so difference between the two models for forming this transverse drainage that is the Grand Canyon of like, Overflow [00:41:00] versus piracy.
It's really all in the lake. The story is like the difference is in that the fact that we had this lake here. And so that's why we're focusing on the lake upstream.
Dr. John Douglass: Absolutely. I don't even know if piracy is still considered for the Grand Canyon. I don't know what people actually are thinking on that, but the old model for the Beta Hochi was, uh, wet lake, boom, you get the volcanism, and then you dry out. And the new model that I'm giving is dry, boom, wet.
So you have this kind of dry lake, boom, you get the volcanism, and then we get this wet lake. That's kind of [00:41:30] the transition, and so, and what we have is the highest sediment that we have in the basin is at 2, 250 meters. That's the highest upper member stuff we have. The spillover point for the Grand Canyon is thought to be about 2, So, we're 50 meters off.
That's not very far off. And you cannot be over it, because it doesn't work. A lake can't be higher than its sill. And so, you're going to lose stuff from erosion. And you're going to have tectonic, who knows what, jostling will occur.
but that highest stuff, like, no, no joke, man. I went, I went there with my daughter [00:42:00] guys, I study how rivers get across these things.
I don't actually study lacustrine sediments. So I'm looking at these rocks and I'm like, I don't know what this is. And my daughter's out there and she's with me and she's having a great, she's not worried about her friends. She's just looking at rocks, doesn't care. I like have
sweats pouring off of me.
And she's like, Hey dad, check out this rock. It has lines on it. And a lion, so I pick it up and I look at it, and she hands me a stromatolite,
and it was just like, what? How do we have a stromatolite at 2, 250 meters? Like, you look around, there's, there's no water, we're up on [00:42:30] Balacay Mesa, there's, there hasn't been a stream in here for millions of years, So it was just changed everything.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So it was that, like that day revolutionized your thinking and how the grand Canyon was cut, right?
Dr. John Douglass: I have always thought it was a lake, but it I was like, this lake was really here, this lake was here and it was big. Like this thing is huge. That's the part, it still slaps me in the face. Like, it's just like, ah, I struggle with that.
Chris Bolhuis: I think I read somewhere or saw you, maybe you said it's bigger than Lake Michigan,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Which
Chris [00:43:00] got really offended about, I must say. He
Dr. John Douglass: I don't blame you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: off about that.
Dr. John Douglass: I,
you're probably proud. You're probably
Dr. Jesse Reimink: be better than
Dr. John Douglass: how old is that lake? About, 000, 10, I'm kidding,
that was a joke.
I'm just kidding, I'm kidding. Uh, I work with Andy Cohen at, uh, University of Arizona, and he's a lake specialist, and he studies Lake Tanganyika in Africa, and Andy is so awesome.
You guys, I'll see if I can get him on your guys show. I love Andy to death. He's funny, he's just great. And Lake Tanganyika, he studies rift lakes out in Africa. [00:43:30] It is the second biggest lake in the world. It is the second oldest lake in the world. And then there's like five other things that it's the second on.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.
Dr. John Douglass: And number one is Lake Baikal. And so, whenever I'm with Andy, I always try and bring up Lake Baikal just to kind of rough it up a little bit. Like, like, I'm not saying your lake's not cool, but I gotta tell you, Lake Baikal is like
huge here.
Um,
Chris Bolhuis: right. So,
John. So take us then to the next step. So we have this really deep Lake. you're close to [00:44:00] the, to the top. Okay. Now what, what happens? We still haven't talked about cutting the canyon.
Dr. John Douglass: so at that point, I mean, the whole reason the canyon itself is gonna cut and look the way it does is because the, the way I visualize the plateau, least the Southern Colorado Plateau, like imagine if you had a pool in your backyard, like a real shallow pool, like a cheap Las Vegas motel pool, and it's sitting in your backyard, but you lift it up, and it's sitting up above your house, and it's kind of weird, and as that thing fills up with water, you're like, oh man, that's crazy, like what's gonna happen when the water pours out of that thing?
That's what this lake [00:44:30] was like. It's this giant lake on this elevated basin, right at its edge is the boundary between the Colorado Plateau and the basin and range. When that water is going to leave the plateau and go into the basin and range, you're going to cut a canyon. Doesn't matter where it ended up flowing.
The difference in base level is, 000 vertical feet? 3, 500 vertical feet?
that's why Grand Canyon is as amazing as it is, is it's that difference in base level
is having that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I want to sort of visualize this. So we got this big lake that fills up to the rim of, let's be simple about it. The rim of the Kaibab [00:45:00] plateau
or the Kaibab uplift basically. And then it starts to trickle across You know, there's a stream then that, that, that starts to flow outwards, but it has, you're saying this huge base level difference.
So there's a amazing ability to down cut. there's like waterfalls in here. Presumably is there one waterfall? How, how does this work? How does it evolve like, get us to now from there. and I'm
guess what I'm wondering is how quick does that happen? I can imagine a term called spillover theory being interpreted, [00:45:30] as having happened very, very quickly, like flood sort of level of quickness and I, and that's not the model.
Dr. John Douglass: so, what was the rate of the cutting? Not, I would say
not quick at all.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: not quick at all. So, okay.
Dr. John Douglass: Because you have about 200 miles from Cabo Plateau to the edge of the Colorado Plateau before you drop down to where Las Vegas is today. That's a lot of rock. That's a lot, a lot of area for waterfalls to have to retreat across.
and now it's not well understood either. So, I'm not doing this, but there [00:46:00] are, there's a grad student at University of Arizona, Nitsan, and he is working with a guy named, Jay Quade, and he is doing, clumped isotope analysis of that high, tufa, the highest deposit, the beach rock, and uh, that's associated with the beach sand, and when he looks at those clumped isotopes, the water is very fresh, so the water is really close to being like rainwater.
Coming down to that area
that I was not I
did not expect that.
Chris Bolhuis: John, real quick. Can [00:46:30] we back up a second to, can you explain what Tufa is? Jesse and I love Tufa. We
love it a lot, but a lot of our listeners might not know what Tufa is because it's kind of a niche kind of thing.
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, Well, there's a variety of tufa in tufa you get Carbonates that are going to form around the shore of a lake or at least the one that I'm talking about You can't get it in Springs. You can't get in the rivers The ones I'm talking about in our lake But it's basically when the water goes through a chemical change where you're going to get Calcium carbonate to combine and you're going to rain carbonate onto either the [00:47:00] lake floor, if it's a lake, or you can have it start collecting in rocks, in a river or stream, or in a spring.
there's a number of different types of tufa, well tufa is supposed to be cold water, travertine is supposed to be hot water. you can have porous, so it has a bunch of holes in it as it forms, it could be the gas bubbles from the, carbon dioxide. and other times it can be pretty, pretty warm.
Resistant, pretty strong, but it is a type of limestone.
Chris Bolhuis: So
Where are we, John? Okay. We've, we got the Nick point. We've spilled over. [00:47:30] You have a lot of relief.
down to the base level.
Dr. John Douglass: Oh, can I finish what I was saying about the fresh
water?
Chris Bolhuis: absolutely.
Dr. John Douglass: what's fascinating about that fresh water is The lake is probably overflowing at that point. So the idea with lakes is that they're really fresh. You're, you have constantly water coming in and constantly water leaving, and it has a very low residence time before it's going downstream.
that's telling you that A, it was already cutting and B, it's going to be a long process for us
to have rocks that are recording. that signature [00:48:00] of the cutting taking place because the water is going across.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, absolutely. Cause you, you got water leaving now. It's not just, the lake's not just filling up.
It's, it's also flowing out.
Dr. John Douglass: to being open, yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: So John, I'm really interested in something that you said at the top of the interview. You said that like, you've met a lot of resistance, you put it a little bit differently.
So can we talk about that? I'm really interested in this. you know, Jesse and I go back and forth on, what, You doctors are supposed to have figured out at this point. And, you know, there's just [00:48:30] so much debate here. So, I really want to explore that aspect of it. why the resistance?
And then maybe we'll transition into some of the other theories on, on how the canyon got cut.
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, great. so I would say big picture, the resistance is, in geology, We have this lag of uniformitarianism. So uniformitarianism, ever since Charles Lyell, this concept of the present is the key to the past, and if you want to understand something, if you want to understand a beach deposit, go look at a beach, [00:49:00] watch the process work, and then you can go understand the rocks.
And it's very powerful. it's a definitely good tool. it's just that, It isn't the only thing that happens. we have plenty of evidence in the geologic record where you have things that you're not going to go find it happening today. I mean, a big example is a meteorite hitting our planet, killing off the dinosaurs, but in a variety of levels, we got to start embracing, that there can be sudden change that occurs in our landscapes.
we have to give our planet more credit that it is more dynamic than maybe the uniformitarianists [00:49:30] would have wanted. So, from that angle, I think the problem was, when you had a lake, and you have a lake spilling across, everybody instantly goes, big lake, dam failure, you know, massive flood, and we don't see evidence for that, so it doesn't work.
And, logic, those logic steps, would block people's minds from understanding, it's actually a very simple process, it happens all over the west out here. So right now, we're studying all the rivers out here, Salt, Gila, The Verde River, all of these rivers have examples of an overflowing [00:50:00] event, a spillover event, which is the term that's more commonly used.
so I think it's part of our hangover of having to deal with uniformitarianism. But I will say, I did shoot myself in the foot. And I think this is a cautionary tale
Dr. Jesse Reimink: John, could I interrupt real quick on this before, before you go to this cautionary tale? Because this is, I think it's a really interesting, I think a very important point that you just made about uniformitarianism. and I, we deal with this in Igneous Petrology too, like there is, there are hangovers about, Aspects.
I mean, the timescales are different and longer, but I think [00:50:30] uniformitarianism is kind of the, I think of it as like the slow, gradual process makes big change over long times, right?
Like something happening slowly
over long times makes big changes. And that's not the earth operates. I know the, the paleontologists I think are the ones who use this punctuated equilibrium term to think Big change rapidly and then kind of stasis for a while. And your meteorite impact analogy is a great one. but we deal with this in, petrology too. Like, we think of subduction zone systems as having just [00:51:00] gradual magnetism for hundreds of millions of years on some margin, but actually there's big pulses in this.
There's like big pulses of magnetism. There's flare ups all the time.
And it's
not a, not, a slow constant process. It's, it's punctuated with lots of drama. And that's different than like cat, you know, I hesitate a little bit because the terms, there's like a big gradient between that and like, everything happens just by only catastrophe.
Like there are really important things that happen over slow processes, like you said. So I just wanted to highlight that, that I think that that's a great point. And I, I think we deal with that [00:51:30] hangover in, in a lot of the sub fields in the geosciences. So
Dr. John Douglass: Awesome. Thank you. okay. So here's the cautionary tale. In 2000, I just got my master's thesis. I finished my master's and they're having a symposium at Grand Canyon National Park. And the symposium is how the Grand Canyon formed. And there's going to be 100 geologists there. And I'm going to go there and I have my talk.
And I'm going to be giving a talk with one of my advisors, uh, Norm Meek at Cal State San Bernardino. And he has an analogy of the overflow process from, uh, Mojave River. out in [00:52:00] California. And we're going to say that there was this, this idea for this lake. Okay. So when I give that talk, how do you think the audience responds?
Chris Bolhuis: Well, I've been to a couple GSA meetings and, and, uh, somebody stands up there and
Yeah.
Dr. John Douglass: I did not. So this is what's crazy. Yeah. I had a Disney moment. I literally had people raising their hands, like, this is awesome. This is so cool. You're kind of addressing these different problems. And I also was dumbfounded. I was terrified. this, this has a dark [00:52:30] side, so just wait.
this is the cautionary tale.
What I didn't realize is that symposium was held for people to talk how the Grand Canyon formed. But the people who put it on, the reason they're putting that effort in is because they have an idea they want out there, or at least acknowledged. So the person that was putting on the talk was sitting in the front row when I was having this Disney moment.
And so he stands up, walks towards me, And, uh, shakes my hand and turns and looks at the audience and he says, You know what? This is really cool. I bet your idea and my idea can work [00:53:00] together and explain how the Grand Canyon formed.
Everybody's listening. This is what you do. This is what I should have said. I should have said, man, you are a luminary in the field. Thank you so much for that consideration. Absolutely. I would love to work with you on this. I'm speechless. What a fantastic opportunity. This is what I actually did.
I'm still paying for it to this day, but not anywhere near as much as I did back then. In my mind, when I heard your idea and my idea are going to get along to explain the canyon, I was like, that's not how this works. Like, I know what your [00:53:30] idea is, and they are actually mutually exclusive.
Like, it doesn't work.
And then I should have picked my words better, but what I said was, Thank you, I appreciate that, but Lake Overflow can stand on its own. ha!
Dr. Jesse Reimink: okay,
Chris Bolhuis: Alright.
Dr. John Douglass: so from that point on, I walked back to my seat, and then by the next day, I am getting, was a rough next day.
And then it was a rough Ten years, ten years later we have another conference, I get heckled at that conference. So, there are ways that you do this politically, then [00:54:00] there's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah,
Dr. John Douglass: do it politically.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, that's a really, I mean, it's a, it's a shitty experience, frankly. it's especially, It's especially, You know, when students are involved who rightfully don't really know how the system works or don't, you know, are young and vigorous and interested and engaged and, either offend or get offended by senior people.
It's always just a terrible situation to be in, but it is a good lesson. Like politics, we think this academic thing and it's like ideas live on their own benefits,
but no, life is all politics. And
Dr. John Douglass: absolutely, absolutely.
Chris Bolhuis: [00:54:30] Yeah. I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about how I would have responded to this, you
know? And I'm, I'm, trying to like, well, I don't know. So I'm 52 right now. And I would probably have been more diplomatic now.
Back as a young, you know, right on, that's what I'm saying. As a, as a young, young person, just, you know, working on their PhD right now or finish up their masters.
I probably would have gone your way. I, you know, I don't know. I. I'm not very political. I, I don't like to play that [00:55:00] way. I just kind of say things the way they are. And I probably would have said what you did. Jesse, what about you? what
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well,
I,
Chris Bolhuis: situation before?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: not in a talk at the, like, relatively junior stage, um, but I, you know, I, I've experienced this in review, John, I'm sure, like, you have. Where you get, really aggressive reviews. And I get really hot under the collar quickly about that. And luckily I've had mentors who are like, no, you're not writing that in a response.
you can't say that in a response. This is a very senior person.
Like you,
Dr. John Douglass: your system. [00:55:30]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah. So, You know, I learned from, I had good advice, good mentors around, and it wasn't like in a talk where I was going, I had to respond in some way, I've had that a little bit more frequently, but I, There's a level of maturity that comes, you know, from
a couple,
even just a couple years in the system. Yeah, right. I mean, but you probably wouldn't have done it in year two of your PhD
either. that learning ramps up pretty quickly, I think. But it's a tough
one. It's a, and it ha, it happens.
Chris Bolhuis: that's just not a fair situation to be put in
either. you totally [00:56:00] got blindsided there and you
know, it's just,
Dr. John Douglass: that is not what I
Chris Bolhuis: that's very, yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, I think that's a completely unfair position to put a student in when you're on stage and give a good talk and then go up and, and, you know, say, put any sort of, um, decision making system in front of somebody who's giving one of I mean, frankly, I gave a talk at GSA when I was, yeah, like right away in graduate school and I don't remember it.
I blanked. Like, I have no idea what happened. I like, I
was so nervous. I was [00:56:30] so nervous. I have no idea. I know I got a couple of questions, no idea what they were, how I answered them. Nothing is in the memory bank about it. Like,
Chris Bolhuis: This was Jesse, was this at a GSA?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, uh,
is that a GSA or?
Chris Bolhuis: are you watching the light go from green to yellow to red, you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah,
no, exactly. And I'm like,
I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to get the words right that are on my slides, you know, and like, and then I get a question about something and then something to the effect of, oh, okay, you maybe misidentified this thing. I was like, no idea what I said in response. [00:57:00] Luckily, it wasn't on a hot button topic like the Grand, how did the Grand Canyon form?
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So that was a pivotal moment because that, you made some enemies, you burned a bridge,
Dr. John Douglass: Like I almost lost the publication. So we were going to publish a publication. I lost first authorship. They tried to kick us out. my co author who took first authorship did the work to get it done by basically citing all those people a lot. And then even the section that they put us in the book, if I can show you guys the book, is the book.
And the section [00:57:30] that we're in is basically speculation and other ideas on how the canyon formed or something. But
it was like,
really subtly
kind of you know digging at us.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah,
yeah.
Dr. John Douglass: we go. Selected theories and Speculation
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Speculation.
Oh,
Chris Bolhuis: not exactly what you were looking for,
huh?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, no, that's right.
Dr. John Douglass: it in there. We got it
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, yeah. Well,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: but, but now, now, but, let me just say that you, now you've been, your work has been highlighted, by the History Channel and National Park Service and all these cool videos [00:58:00] that you've, you've been in. Discovery Channel, National Geographic, all that interesting stuff, that's really, might take a while to get in there, but good ideas do prevail over long term time periods.
Dr. John Douglass: yeah, honestly, like my main goal now is I'm just trying to get other people involved. I want to, you know, Chris Bolhuis this. So I've, I gave a talk at GSA, not last year, but the year before. basically was a sales pitch on the Bedahoshie Formation, like, guys, this place is awesome, nobody is studying this thing.
The upper member that I talked about has never been studied outside of petroleum geologists [00:58:30] in right? And then one dissertation out of the U of A in the 50s. For the youngest deposit right next to the Grand Canyon? how is that possible? It's unbelievable. So that is changing and we now have students, uh, PhD students out of U of A and, uh, University of Washington that are working on it.
And hopefully more. I want more. There's plenty of work to be done.
Chris Bolhuis: John, to that point, so what's next for you? you know, where are you taking this now?
Dr. John Douglass: so we have two grants, two NSF grants, which is so funny because I've never been on an NSF grant. Everything that I've done is out of the back pocket. This is all guerrilla [00:59:00] geomorphology. This is, you
know, stealing wood out of a, but kind of like, it's very low
key. Um, But now there's two NSF grants.
One of them is at the University of Washington they're looking at the clumped isotopes to try and figure out when the Colorado Plateau got uplifted. And then, uh, University of Arizona, just submitted one, and that one is looking at Pliocene climate change. So, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is similar to what it was in the Pliocene, although it is rising very fast today.
and the models that we have for our climate here in the [00:59:30] southwest indicate that we really dry off. But if we look at the rocks The rocks are saying we have a lot of lakes down here in Arizona, you know, around the Myopliocene boundary, even up to the Pliocene boundary. And so there's a disconnect there between why do we have these lakes, yet these models are saying we're drying off.
And so that's what this other grant is about, is to try and get a handle on that. But for me personally, I just submitted for a permit because it's going to be drying off here. So in March, I'm hunting for more ostracods. So I'll be going out there with my daughter. I [01:00:00] want to find more of these, uh, called Sithrissa lacustris.
They're the ones from Lake Baikal. that's my
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Very
Chris Bolhuis: Okay.
about those organisms. Are you going to different locations within that same level? Okay.
To look.
Dr. John Douglass: Absolutely. So, I, I found them by dumb luck. Now that I know kind of where they are, I want to go
there and then, and then hire. and it's so beautiful out there. Like, it's, it's just a win win. Like, any time you get to
spend out there is a, just a win.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So I have one, maybe final question about the, the Grand Canyon. So the time, I'm trying to remember what numbers you put on this, but if I [01:00:30] remember correctly, cause Chris and I just, you know, recorded a little audio book, this is way deeper than that. We have like maybe a 15 minute conversation about the forming of the canyon.
But, and I must say Chris was a big fan of of your spillover model before this interview as
well.
So,
so,
Dr. John Douglass: get
it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah,
we get it. Um, but, uh, If I remember the, the geochronology, the thermochronology from the different segments of the canyon, the youngest was like 6 million years maybe or something, and I think that matches up with what you [01:01:00] said, is that right?
Like when, when, of the ostracod record, is that right? And can you, does that match up with how long it would take to, kind of have, incision across the plateau before the lake kind of drains out? I'm just trying to understand how long between the lake. Bridging over and the canyon being cut to the depth.
It is is your model testable with more geochronology, thermochronology from the canyon itself, or not really because the timeframe, so is it like 10, 000 years or I don't know,
a [01:01:30] hundred
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah. So there's a, I mean, there's a big kind of, maybe controversy is the word for it. So the geochronology that came out of the canyon by doing the epitope vision track dating, there was a lot of the Grand Canyon is old papers that were published. Um, and I disagree with those papers.
I'd already, you know, had said that it was a lake and it was. cut about six to five million years ago. And some of them were saying the canyon goes back to the Cretaceous. that they have this thing, incredibly old. so I struggle with the appetite fission. So this is how [01:02:00] I, I view that is. It's a great tool.
We can use these tools to help us understand, the rate at which these rocks get exposed as they were lifted. But those models that they're coming up with, those numbers, need to be put in the framework of the rocks as they exist today. You gotta go out in the field and look at what's there. And if you look at the canyon, it's roughly the same width all the way across.
Well, canyons retreat over time because you have resistant rocks, then weaker rocks, resistant rocks. So you get canyon retreat. If this thing had cut multiple [01:02:30] stages, it would look different. If it was even 15 million years old, it would be much wider, because these canyons are going to age. it's a young feature.
downstream of the Grand Canyon, the Baos Formation, a tremendous amount of work has been done on the Baos Formation, but that is all about the arrival of the Colorado, coming out of, Lake Bittahochi, It comes down, hits Lake Mead, and then four other lakes, and it does this lake overflow process all the way down to the Gulf of California.
The timing that we have downstream matches up with what we have upstream currently in the Biddehochi. Although I will [01:03:00] say, we need more work done on the timing. The timing up in the
Biddehochi needs more work. but yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And what does that work look like? Is
that, is that, is that, ostracod work? Is it dating these mar deposits or the, the volcano, the ashes that are in there?
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, great question. Um, so Osher guides won't help us, but, uh, ashes, we have ashes up there that need to be dated. we're trying to do uranium, dating.
we did try to do it on a, uh, micrite. This micrite that we found, it's crazy. All a micrite is, is just little tiny crystals of calcium carbonate that [01:03:30] rained out of the lake water when the chemistry was right.
And this micrite that we found, I mean, it was like, it was soft, you could just pick it up in your hand, and I made a thin section of it. And when you look at it, I mean, this is the most boring thing in the world. It was just this cloud of carbonate just rained out of this lake, onto the ocean floor, and then piled up, and then a beach sand went across it.
really pure. I've never seen something that pure before or since. And so we tried to date that, and it just didn't have enough uranium to actually get a solid date. So, it's still a work in progress. Uh, we also have zircons, so there's a lot [01:04:00] of sand up there. You know, zircons, they have uranium in their mineralogy.
so we'll get there, for sure, but,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.
That's just,
I
mean, we, we,
Dr. John Douglass: well.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: okay. That, yeah, that, I guess that was my question. We're kind of getting this similar, like 6 million year kind of signal across the, apart from some of the really old, Thermochronology that you referred to in the canyon. I mean, we've been working on, phosphorite geochronology uh, some phosphorites you can get decent uranium lead ages.
I'm not sure if the resolution would be as precise as you would need it to be. Like, I mean, does a, what kind [01:04:30] of geochronology do you need? Do you need plus or minus a hundred thousand year ages?
Or was it like, if it's,
Dr. John Douglass: we would take that on a heartbeat now, because
now,
like, all we have
is,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: plus or minus a million years or something, is that useful or not
Dr. John Douglass: uh, I would say
that's
two cores.
like, right now we have one zircon, about halfway up the upper member. And it's a six million year old zircon. But we still have half the number going up that we don't, we don't know. And that
six is just a maximum age, we, we, Who knows what happened after that six.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: uh, we should stay in touch because our lab we're sort of working on [01:05:00] these calcite dating and phosphorite dating methods we've not done anything this young so it would be interesting to see if it's possible or useful or not. So anyway,
Chris Bolhuis: I'm surprised, though, that you'd think that you'd be able to get a pretty good date from the ash layers.
Dr. John Douglass: You would think.
Um,
Chris Bolhuis: the problem?
Dr. John Douglass: it's a learning in process. So, you get the ashes, like we, we understand how the ashes work, right? The rocks are fresh, you have sanadines, but the problem is, is that when you collect the ash, it was just a disconnect. So us in the field, when we collect it, we thought you had to get a Ziploc bag and you [01:05:30] were good to go.
And then we would send our Ziploc bag off to the lab and they'd be like, bro, we didn't find anything. And there's no, we can't date it. And then we were just like, oh, that sucks. It literally took us, this is embarrassing, but probably 15 years before someone finally said, well, that's because you need to give them five bags.
And if you give them five bags, they're going to find it. And it's not a problem. So right now. They're all downstream of Grand Canyon in the Baos Formation. They're collecting ashes now of the five bag variety to redate everything downstream. And we're going up to the Biddehochi this May. [01:06:00] This is with the Arizona Geological Survey and the U.
S. Geological Survey. And we're going to go to these ash deposits that we have tried to date in the past. And we're going to get, you know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Huge samples. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
Dr. John Douglass: it,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the thing is, is these zircons that you're after are dense. They're super dense stuff. So actually the ones you, you get in far flung ashes are tiny and really hard to separate and hard to date. that's a difficult ask. I mean,
there's a lot of labs who do it really well now, but,
um,
Chris Bolhuis: Jesse, this five bag thing makes sense to you then?
Like this is, you're like,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [01:06:30] you know, I mean, back in the day they'd collect a, you know, five gallon bucket full of sample to get zircons out of it, you know, to
do this stuff. So that, and then you get, you know, if you don't perfectly sample it, you get reworked, like detrital stuff down in, cause the ash is kind of reworked and,
uh, you know, you can see how this would be pain in the butt.
Dr. John Douglass: Well they also, and they can also look at the,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: weeks to do, like, you know.
Dr. John Douglass: and they can also look at the geochemistry of it, and then you can maybe
line it up with a specific, volcanic event.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.
Yeah, totally. Interesting.
Dr. John Douglass: it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Interesting. Okay. Well, [01:07:00] uh, uh, my, my geochronology hat, obviously my radar is going off like, hey, is this, this is interesting. It's a, it's an interesting chronology
problem as well.
Dr. John Douglass: I will take you out here no problem. But
I want
Dr. Jesse Reimink: totally cool.
Dr. John Douglass: field sites. Listen
to your stories, man. Oh my
god. Ah,
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: know. It's not, it's not, it's maybe as cool as, no, no, it's not even close to as cool as figuring out when the Grand Canyon was cut. I mean, that's just a cool problem
to know, even if the landscape sucked, but the landscape's amazing. So.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, John, [01:07:30] we're to the point where we are at our last question that we typically ask, so I already know. I already know, I think, I think I do anyway, what your worst day as a geoscientist was. So let's, let's flip the table. Can you tell us about your absolute best day as a geoscientist?
Dr. John Douglass: so it actually was just recently, I was up on Balakai Mesa in this upper member looking at these sands and it's hard to put in words how [01:08:00] lonely it is doing this work because I'm not at a university, I'm not part of a research group, it's just this kind of weirdo amateur guy that does this as a hobby.
And I'm really into it, and I think I'm doing good work, but it's always very isolating. but then when I got Andy Cohen out of U of A, this famous lake guy, he's standing with me up at this, really nice exposure of sand. the upper member of the Bitter Hochi, and very high in this section. And when I'm standing there with him, he looks at it, and he goes, [01:08:30] Holy shit!
That is one of the best examples of beach sand I've ever seen.
He goes, the tabular stacking that you have of the beds, and the size, the dip of these beds, the size of the grains, not only is that beach sand, but that is a big lake. That is not something that a small lake would produce. You have a tremendous fetch wind is blowing a long ways across this lake to get good size waves to make this stack of sand that we're looking at.
And, uh, just, I don't know. it's one thing to have something in your mind, and then to have somebody else [01:09:00] who's, he's not, I'm not gonna say he's not biased, but he's not, he just loves the rocks, he loves the experience, he loves trying to understand these things that he's looking at, and to him, it was just like, dude, this is a textbook example of beach sand, but it just happened to be at this, 200 meter plus spot,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So that's at the top,
that's at the top of the, the bid ho formation here that you were
Dr. John Douglass: yeah, mm hmm,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow. So cool.
Dr. John Douglass: it was just funny though, so I tell him, like, man, that is crazy, because I, he doesn't, he knows a little bit about the canyon, but I started, like, we have a big lake really high in the section, and he's like, well, how high [01:09:30] does that have to be? I'm like, well, the spillover point was 2, and where we were at was 2, 250.
And just straight face, he looks at me and he's like, we got 50 meters to go. What are you doing? Why are you talking to me? Like, get out there and find it. I'm like, no, you don't understand. Like, you have erosion. We are at the highest. There is no other highest. Uh, but it was just so awesome. It felt like I was becoming a part of a community and not Just kind of isolated out there by myself,
that I had been for kind of a long, long time.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I get it. that's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's cool. And I think there's [01:10:00] nothing like, I mean, I don't live in this world. Most of the discovery feelings are in the lab when you're like looking at data after you've collected it, but that, I don't know, there's something about your field or the sedimentology, geomorphology, where you can look at the rock and be like, this is how it happened.
have that, that moment of discovery while you're out there in the field looking at it and looking around you. That's, that must be totally cool.
Um,
Dr. John Douglass: it is addictive. It is so, yeah,
it was
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, Absolutely.
Oh, that's
Chris Bolhuis: I mean every everybody needs [01:10:30] that at some point, you know to be you know, what you're doing You know what you're doing is right and to be told that by somebody else that you know what you're on the right track You know, that's really affirming.
Dr. John Douglass: Absolutely.
Um, And it was more than I ever thought would happen. I thought, you know, you know, putzing around, just kind of doing my thing. I never, I never thought we would find beach sand up that high. And I didn't think it was beach sand. When I looked at it, I was like, ah, it could be a Aeolian.
I was like, the beds aren't right. And this isn't right, but it's not my specialty. and I'm trying to play it safe. I don't want to say it's beach [01:11:00] sand. Cause if it comes from me, it's going to be like, well, of course you think it's beach sand, you know? So I was like, ah, you know, it could be, this could be that, but to have him
just stand there and be like,
Textbook
example.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's so
cool.
what a good day. Well, John, we want to have an update after this summer's work, after you're out
there, uh, collecting and looking at more stuff and finding more ostracods, we should, uh, we should definitely do this again. And thank you so much for spending, I don't know, close to an hour and a half with us and giving some of your time to us here to talk about this totally cool story.
We super appreciate it. It's been totally fun to talk to you.
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah, absolutely. And I love everything that you [01:11:30] guys are doing. I love this podcast. I love the
energy that you bring to this. I feel like you guys talk in the way that I talk it's I don't know It's just like it's a way people talk when they've actually been there and seen the rocks that the love of it comes out It's not this dry boring like it's just something that I don't know your passion really rings true and
uh
and I
think,
I think more people would understand why we do what we do when they hear that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, we appreciate that. And, uh, Chris is Mr. Passion over there. I try and I try and make it nice and dry and boring. And [01:12:00] Chris is just always making
Chris Bolhuis: You do a pretty good job,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I
Chris Bolhuis: You do a pretty good job of that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: try my
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and all this nonsense, right?
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah. no way, that You both bring the passion, like, it is both of
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, I know. I just give him a hard time. He just, he needs that. He's gotta be, you gotta knock him down a
peg
or
two
Dr. John Douglass: I take it back.
I take it back.
Chris Bolhuis: Otherwise he gets all doctor y on us
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah,
Chris Bolhuis: wants that, you know?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and uh, you know, when you and Chris exchange field trips, I, uh, I might [01:12:30] tag along. I'm good at carrying
rocks, so, you know, if
you need anybody to carry
the
five bags of Yeah, I'm pretty good at that. It's one of the few things in life I'm good at is carrying stuff. So I'll come and uh, carry some ashfall deposits for you.
Uh, that'd be great. Super fun.
Dr. John Douglass: us, so that helps.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. That's right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes. Excellent. All right, John, thank you very much. We super appreciate it. And uh, we'll have you on again and after the, see what you discovered this, this summer.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.
Thank you so much for your time, John.
Dr. John Douglass: Yeah. Thank you so much. I super appreciate it. You're [01:13:00] amazing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey, thanks for listening. We always appreciate it. If you have questions, send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail. com. You can also, as we said before, support us. You can head over to our website, planetgeocast. com and just support us by just sending us a donation.
Otherwise, what we prefer actually is if you go to our Camp Geo mobile app, there you can learn a lot about the basics of geoscience with our Camp Geo video audiobook, you can also purchase access to some of our other audiobooks like the Geology of Yellowstone National Park and the Geology of the Grand [01:13:30] Canyon, so head over there if you want to support us.
We appreciate it.
Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Peace.
