David S. Powars | |
---|---|
Known for | principal discoverer of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater. [1] [2] |
Awards | Virginia Museum of Natural History’s Thomas Jefferson Award for outstanding contributions to science in Virginia. |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Geology |
David S. Powars is a Research Geologist with the United States Geological Survey at the Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center, in Reston, Virginia. [2]
He is credited as a principal discoverer of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater. [1] [2] He is the task leader of geological investigation of Coastal Plain (CP) deposits in Chesapeake Bay Region (as part of the Atlantic Watershed Project). [2]
He received the Virginia Museum of Natural History’s Thomas Jefferson Award for outstanding contributions to science in Virginia.[ citation needed ]
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula, including parts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and the state of Delaware. The mouth of the Bay at its southern point is located between Cape Henry and Cape Charles. With its northern portion in Maryland and the southern part in Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay is a very important feature for the ecology and economy of those two states, as well as others surrounding within its watershed. More than 150 major rivers and streams flow into the Bay's 64,299-square-mile (166,534 km2) drainage basin, which covers parts of six states, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, and all of Washington, D.C.
Cape Charles is a town / municipal corporation in Northampton County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,009 as of the 2010 Census.
The Chesapeake Bay impact crater is a buried impact crater, located beneath the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, United States. It was formed by a bolide that struck the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 ± 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" impact craters in the world.
The Ellsworth Mountains are the highest mountain ranges in Antarctica, forming a 350 km (217 mi) long and 48 km (30 mi) wide chain of mountains in a north to south configuration on the western margin of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Marie Byrd Land. They are bisected by Minnesota Glacier to form the Sentinel Range to the north and the Heritage Range to the south. The former is by far the higher and more spectacular with Mount Vinson constituting the highest point on the continent. The mountains are located within the Chilean Antarctic territorial claim but outside of the Argentinian and British ones.
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The Aquia Formation is a geologic sandstone formation that extends from the upper Chesapeake Bay to the James River near Hopewell, Virginia. It consists of clayey, silty, very shelly, glauconitic sand. Fossil records indicate that this stratigraphic unit was created during the Paleocene.
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The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) is one of the largest marine research and education centers in the United States. Founded in 1940, VIMS is unique among marine science institutions in its legal mandate to provide research, education, and advisory services to government, citizens, and industry. Funding for VIMS comes from the Commonwealth of Virginia, grants and contracts from federal and state agencies, and private giving. The School of Marine Science (SMS) at VIMS is the graduate school in marine science for the College of William & Mary. VIMS offers M.S., Ph.D., and professional M.A. degrees in marine science. The school has 52 faculty members, an enrollment of 80-100 students, and includes 4 academic departments. VIMS' main campus is located in Gloucester Point, Virginia.
The Great Wicomico River is a 15.2-mile-long (24.5 km) river in the U.S. state of Virginia, located approximately 60 miles (97 km) northeast of Richmond. In 1864, during the American Civil War, one of the torpedo boats of Admiral David Dixon Porter's fleet ran into the Great Wicomico River and was captured.
Mining in the United States has been active since the beginning of colonial times, but became a major industry in the 19th century with a number of new mineral discoveries causing a series of mining rushes. In 2015, the value of coal, metals, and industrial minerals mined in the United States was US $109.6 billion. 158,000 workers were directly employed by the mining industry.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the United States government whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March 3, 1879, to study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The agency also makes maps of extraterrestrial planets and moons based on data from U.S. space probes.
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In the Antarctic, the Allen Rocks are a small but distinctive group of rocks 2.2 nautical miles (4.1 km) east-northeast of Slattery Peak in the Kyle Hills on Ross Island. The feature includes a central nunatak that in outline resembles the letter 'A'. A low ridge encloses the nunatak except on the south. The group was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 2000 after Robert J. Allen of the U.S. Antarctic Resource Center, United States Geological Survey (USGS), Reston, Virginia, a cartographer and expert on aerial photography of Antarctica, who was closely involved in USGS mapping of the continent, 1950–2000.
The Salisbury Embayment was an arm of the Atlantic Ocean which covered what is now Delaware, southern and eastern Maryland, the Virginia Peninsula and parts of southern New Jersey during Paleogene and Neogene times, from about 65 million to 5 million years ago. Sea level throughout most of this period stood several hundred feet higher than at present, and deposition of sediments draining off the continent possibly caused the underlying rocks to sink down, creating the embayment. The shore of the embayment lay inland at the present-day Fall Line in the region. Throughout the Paleogene and Neogene times, sediment accumulated on the floor of the Salisbury Embayment during pulses of high sea level, forming the Paleocene Aquia and Brightseat Formations, the Eocene Pamunkey Group, and the Miocene Chesapeake Group. There are no deposits from the Oligocene epoch due to a drop in sea level, however, a 2- to 3- mile diameter meteorite or asteroid is thought to have left a 50-mile diameter crater upon impact in the southern Chesapeake Bay.
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