PORT TOWNSEND — A former college professor will offer a visual presentation on submerged and buried forests and the events that moved the land into those positions during a lecture at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Pat Pringle, professor emeritus of Earth Sciences at Centralia College, will present an illustrated lecture on “Buried and Submerged Forests of the Pacific Northwest — Witnesses to Ancient Earthquakes, Landslides and Volcanic Eruptions.”
The one-hour presentation will be at the First Baptist Church, 1202 Lawrence St.
Admission is free to the lecture sponsored by the Quimper Geological Society (QGS), an Earth Science affiliate of Jefferson Land Trust, however, the group would appreciate a $5 donation to help with expenses.
Pringle specializes in the study of volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, debris flow, radiocarbon and tree-ring analysis to establish the history of past geologic events.
His presentation will focus on those forests in Washington that have been submerged or buried due to landslides, tectonic forces, drowned by flooding and more, according to the QGS event page.
The presentation is described as a “snapshot tour” of the different forests in Washington.
“We’ll get a picture of the scale of some of the dramatic post-glacial landscape changes,” QGS said, “such as the episodic disturbances caused by volcanism — changes that the pre-Euro-American settlement peoples experienced and adapted to, and that early explorers, like Lewis and Clark, described vividly in their journals.”
Some of the areas the presentation will include are the Washington Coast, the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, the Puget Lowland, the Columbia Gorge (with a special focus on the Bonneville landslide), Mount Rainier and Mount Hood volcanoes.
More information on the presentation and the Quimper Geological Society can be found at tinyurl.com/PDN-quimpergeological event.
