Jess Rodysill collecting GPR data

Jess Rodysill from the Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center is collecting ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data from three man-made reservoirs near the epicenter of the 2011 Mineral, Virginia earthquake with colleague Mark Carter. In the photo, Jess Rodysill is connecting power and data cables on the GPR system to set up the equipment for data collection using the canoe and kayak shown in the background.  These field surveys assist the researchers in identifying evidence of soft sediment deformation caused by the recent earthquake and to select targets for sediment core collection. The project is a pilot study aimed to characterize evidence of earthquakes in soft sediments to use as a proxy to identify evidence of large earthquakes preserved in the geologic record in the eastern U.S. The findings of this study will inform future work to identify soft sediment deformation features caused by earthquakes in natural lakes (like Carolina bays) and in quiet-water fluvial geologic settings, such as cut-off meander bends along major rivers, in order to determine the history of large earthquakes in Virginia and elsewhere in the eastern U.S. during the Holocene.