The geology lecture series at Southwestern Oregon Community College continues on Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 7:00 pm with Dr. Joel Pederson (Utah State University) presenting “Hot Archeology/Cool Geology: New Approaches for Dating Rock Art”. This free lecture is at the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on Southwestern’s Coos campus and is open to all members of the community. Dr. Pederson’s research focus is on geomorphology and landscape evolution, specifically using fieldwork, geochronology and GIS to investigate landscape response to tectonics and climate change. He earned his BA at Gustavus Adolphus, an MS at Northern Arizona University and PhD at University of New Mexico. In addition to being a Professor in the Geology Department Utah State, Joel also serves as Graduate Student Director and is the Executive Director of the Luminescence Lab. Dr. Pederson’s talk will focus on the geologic dating of the pictographs in Horseshoe Canyon (a.k.a. Barrier Canyon) near Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah. In addition to the talk, representatives of the Coquille Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians will be present in the lobby before and after the lecture to display and discuss some of their extensive cultural history along Oregon’s south coast. All of the talks are free and are in the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on the SWOCC Campus. For those not able to attend in person, all lectures are Livestreamed and archived, with access from the college website at www.socc.edu. Continuing sponsors of the lecture series include the Southwestern Foundation and the College. The final talk scheduled this year will be by Dr. David Montgomery (University of Washington) at 7:00 pm on May 16, 2015 with “The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood”. For additional information contact Ron Metzger at 541-888-7216.
