Let the Sudbury Expedition Begin!

Hello from Canada,

I am Lisha Roubert from the NASA Lunar and Planetary Sciences Academy. Today was the first day of our Sudbury expedition in Canada. With Dr. Paul Lowman and Cynthia Cheung as our guides we embarked on our journey to study the geology of the Sudbury Basin. We stopped in six locations today. Some of our stops involved making observations and listening to the information given to us by Dr. Lowman while other stops involved collecting rock samples and taking measurements. We divided into groups in order to carry out our assigned tasks. Today I was part of the radioactivity team and our job consisted of taking measurements of radiated particles with the use of a Geiger counter.
Of all the stops we made today my favorite was Onaping Falls. We stopped there for a while before heading out to lunch and got a chance to walk around to observe the scenery, the rock formations and the breathtaking waterfalls. The beautiful location was an excellent place to take pictures, which ended up consuming what was left of the batteries on my camera. However, of all the stops we made today the one that I will never forget was near the end of the day. It was late in the afternoon and all of a sudden we found ourselves invaded by a swarm of huge mosquitoes. This made the task of taking measurements very hard, but our team managed to pull together and get the work done. Nice job team!
The first day of our expedition was very exciting as well as exhausting. It reminded me of an Earth Sciences course I took a while ago back at my school, University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. During this course we had a trip that involved going through the whole south region of Puerto Rico to observe faults and take samples/measurements of different rock formations typical of each region. I remember that in certain regions we got to see rocks of volcanic origin such as basalt. In another region we observed rocks with rounded corners and composed of gravel, which suggest that the region used to be part of a river delta. We even got to see rock formations found in oceans, such as lava pillows and a wall of fossilized coral reef. Our expedition at Sudbury today brought back memories of that trip that I enjoyed so much. It was interesting to observe the difference between the rock formations back at home in Puerto Rico and the ones in the Sudbury, Canada. It is fascinating to see how much you can infer of the origin of a place/region just by observing and studying the geologic formations. I hope that we get to see other rock formations during the remaining days of our expedition so I can learn more about the origin of this region. Can’t wait to see all the new things that we will learn tomorrow. I will keep you posted!

Lisha