A Transcontinental Course

Princeton geosciences professor Lincoln Hollister splits his time between the comfortable confines of his Guyot Hall office and the mountain ranges and freezing winds of British Columbia, where he teaches Canadian high school students about the geology of the land on which they live.

According to Hollister — a world-renowned expert on the formation of mountains — his students from north of the boarder ask, "Don't you have rocks in New Jersey?"

To these questions he replies: Not rocks like these.

And so he makes the 3,000-mile trip to the other coast every year.

Hollister began his research on the west coast of Canada in the early 1990s as part of an interdisciplinary research project called ACCRETE. ACCRETE included scientists from 11 universities and at least five disciplines, including geology, geochemistry, nuclear physics, paleomagnetism and seismology. It was formed to study the accretion of continents, or addition of new earth materials.

The research took place in the Western Canadian Cordilleras, a section of a long chain of mountain ranges. The coastal area's many fjords allowed the scientists to sail a research ship between the mountains and study how the continental crust is made.

Every 20 seconds, the scientists fired an array of air guns into the water. The blast of compressed air would travel through the water and hit the earth beneath. "Essentially we were making a small earthquake every 20 seconds for 10 days," said Hollister. Shipboard instruments, five miles of hydrophones trailing behind the ship and on-shore portable seismometers recorded the results.

Not surprisingly, the idea of people firing guns — never mind that they were air guns — into the waters disturbed some residents of British Columbia, a number of whom are First Nations people, as Canadian native people are called.

"They were afraid that we were going to kill all the fish or deafen the whales," Hollister said.

Hollister and the other researchers began the process of obtaining permits for the experiment in 1992. Hollister made numerous trips to the area to talk with residents, small groups and politicians.

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"I could run for mayor in Port Rupert, [British Columbia]," he joked. Permits for land use, marine shipping and marine mammal protection from the provincial government, the national government and even from an American submarine base in the area slowly were all approved.

But some First Nations groups were still suspicious. Fishing was a large part of their livelihood and their permission was critical if the research was to take place.

"They needed to know why the airguns were not going to do what dynamite does," said Hollister. "The issue was 'Are you going to kill fish?' "

It wasn't until he and Glenn Woods-worth, a Canadian researcher, met with the Nishga'a Nation tribal council that Hollister knew that the ACCRETE experiments had a chance.

Hollister and Woodsworth were nervous as they walked in to meet the Nishga'a Nation chiefs. The 35 chiefs who filled the room had the power to drastically limit or even shut down the ACCRETE research. The tribal council had done its research as well. One member had even contacted South African Arch-bishop Desmond Tutu for advice on what questions the First Nations people should ask a geologist who wanted to do research on their lands.

Hollister recounted the tense meeting. "What you're doing is disturbing the work of God," one First Nations man said during the meeting. The seismological research would hurt fish and disrupt the natural order of things.

"We're working on the product of God," Hollister replied. By examining the way in which God created the earth, the research would be in line with divine intentions. "We're discussing the power of God," he added.

"So you get closer to God by studying the world around you?" another First Nations man asked.

The tribal council began to realize the scientists respected the natural environment and would not conduct an experiment that would in any way harm it, Hollister said.

He and Woodsworth felt the tension in the room dissipate. "You could feel then that the project would [go forward]," said Hollister.

The ACCRETE scientists analyzed the data from the instruments on ship and shore to create a three-dimensional image of the fjords' coastlines. It was like creating a three-dimensional sonogram of the geological forms hidden beneath the water, Hollister said.

Though the original experiment took place in 1994, numerous conferences to discuss the results subsequently have been held. Plans to conduct a similar experiment in other fjords are in the works. "There is so much data and it is so good and we're still working on it," said Hollister.

One finding was that a 3,000 kilometer long piece of British Columbia's coast was originally part of Baja, California, Hollister said.

The data may also show that a large area of the continental crust along Canada's western coast has undergone a thinning process, he added. Scientists know that specific regions of the earth's crust began to thin 50 to 55 million years ago. But the information from the ACCRETE experiment has vastly expanded the scope of this process from particular regions to a large area of the coast. "You're using geological history to study a general phenomenon," Hollister noted.

The hard-won results from the 1994 expedition are still being analyzed and discussed in 2001. This February, Hollister attended an ACCRETE conference in British Columbia.

And afterwards, he went to meet with a high school science class.

When he traveled to western Canada to prepare and carry out the seismological experiments in the early 1990s, a few high school science teachers "latched onto" him, according to Hollister. He took a few classes on field trips and had some students on board the research ship. One of the teachers built on what her students had learned from Hollister and encouraged the students to present what they had learned to First Nations villages throughout the area.

Now Hollister has a grant from the National Science Foundation to bring the results of the original research to the people who live in the area where the research was done. In part, this means taking buses full of high school students on field trips to areas of geological interest — or "Oh wow places," as Hollister calls them.

"You give them a hammer and they go 'Oh, wow. That's neat,' " Hollister explained.

The field trips teach students about the scientific method and help show them how the land they live on retained its characteristics. They help the students see what is special about the land they call home.

This year, the students and Hollister are working together to produce an audio guide to the geology of the area so that they can share their knowledge with a wider audience, including the many tourists who come to British Columbia.

Educating people who are not professional scientists is important to Hollister and to other researchers at Princeton. According to Hollister, looking at a towering mountain range or a gorgeous garnet in the rough and discussing how it became such an awesome structure is an important educational experience.

"Dinosaurs get people interested in science," said Hollister. "People are attracted first into the sciences from what they can see."

In his geological research, Hollister looks 50 million years into the past. In his classes with high school students, he looks 50 years into the future — and then some.

He is hopeful that the field trips and educational outreach programs he leads in British Columbia will have a lasting impact on students and on the future of the scientific community.

"I'm hoping to increase the interest in the observational sciences with the idea that some of the people might turn out to be scientists," Hollister said.