An Evening With Reinhard (Bud) Wobus

Join us for an afternoon with Bud Wobus for a discussion of his latest release, The Big Flat.

Reinhard A. (Bud) Wobus is the Edna McConnell Clark Professor of Geology, Emeritus, at Williams College in Massachusetts. During most of his 55-year teaching career there, he conducted research with his students in the southern Front Range of Colorado, as described in this book. In 2016 the National Association of Geoscience Teachers awarded him the Neil Miner Award “for exceptional contributions to the stimulation of interest in the earth sciences.” He also initiated the Williams Alumni Travel Study program in 1981 and for 25 years led hundreds of alumni on week-long field excursions across the Big Flat.

The Big Flat is one of the most remarkable and extensive landscape features in the Colorado Front Range, occurring at an average elevation of 9,000 feet, almost TWO MILES above sea level! It provides an often treeless base above which the snowy mountains on the horizon rise as high as 14,000 feet. It is also an important geologic datum , separating the two-billion -year-old rocks of the Colorado “basement” below from overlying lava flows, fossiliferous lake beds, and mega-boulder deposits “only ” about 30 million years in age. This well illustrated book provides a virtual excursion across this high erosion surface, from Colorado Springs along the base of the Front Range at Pikes Peak west to South Park on the other side. It is also an excursion through geologic history , beginning with the assembly of Colorado and through subsequent episodes of mountain uplift and erosion . Most importantly, it is an account of the author’s half-century of field research in the area, during which he explored and studied it and led scores of his students and others to appreciate it.

Bud will be giving a brief presentation followed by a Q&A and book signing. We hope to see you there!