Background Reading

The 2017 Delaware Geosymposium field trip will visit three notable outcrops in New Castle County Delaware:

1. Canby Park, to look at early Paleozoic metamorphic rocks;
2. Brandywine Gorge, to examine the Brandywine Blue Gneiss and the rock units that surround it;
3. The Contractor's Sand and Gravel quarry (Marl Pit) near Odessa, to examine a section of Pleistocene sands and gravels overlying Paleogene greensands.

On this page, we have provided links to previous reports and publications that would be interesting background reading on the geology of the sites ahead of the trip.

Stops 1 & 2: Early Paleozoic metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont

• Delaware Piedmont Geology (DGS SP20) by M. Plank and W. Schenck
• Bedrock Geology of the Piedmont of Delaware and Adjacent Pennsylvania (DGS RI 59) by M. Plank and W. Schenck

Stop 3: Coastal Plain geology

• Geologic Map of New Castle County, Delaware (DGS GM13) by K. Ramsey
• Columbia (Pleistocene) Sediments of Delaware (DGS B12) by R. Jordan