Jun 27, 2019
An Introduction to Glacial Geology & Deer Processing
with Special Guest Dr. Brian Bird
We're having a great conversation this week with geologist Dr.
Brian Bird from Whitehall, New York. Brian has an extensive
background in GIS mapping & glacial geology and currently manages
the Local Butcher Shop. We're talking about Glacial Lake Iroquois &
how glaciers impacted Pleistocene animals & hunters. Brian walks us
through New York's glacial footprints, finding muskox remains in
the Adirondacks and more. he then provides his deer butchering &
processing advice from a lifetime of processing over 3,500
deer.
Background
Brian Bird earned his PhD in geology from Western Michigan U
in Kalamazoo, MI with a focus on on glacial geology. He is
originally from New York and moved back here in 2004. Brian was an
adjunct at Skidmore in Saratoga for a few years, then started
working at the NYS Museum in 2011.
He left the museum a year ago and became manager of the Local
Butcher Shop in Whitehall. While at the museum, Brian focused on
GIS and mapping the glacial sediments and structures in the Finger
Lakes Region, specifically, Cayuga County. One aspect he focused on
was identifying and dating the retreat of glaciers across NY.
He's worked on projects like the Great Gully, a deep canyon
like gully that runs east-west from Cayuga Lake near Union Springs,
NY. His team found a moraine where the glacier stopped during
a re-advance about 12,800 years ago. To their surprise, they
found wood and peat that was radiocarbon dead - meaning that it was
so old the radioactive carbon 14 had basically all decayed. It
takes about 50,000 years to do so.
Brian worked extensively on recreating the shoreline of
glacial Lake Iroquois. As ice retreated north it restricted water
flow to the east through the Mohawk River until it retreated north
of the Adirondacks. During this time glacial Lake Iroquois flooded
the lowlands along Lake Ontario all the way to Cayuga Lake. This
covered much of the lowlands along the St Lawrence seaway. Using
high resolution LIDAR elevation maps, he recreated the lake shore
taking into account the subsidence of the earth imposed by the
massive weight of the glaciers.
For more background about Adirondack glaciation, check out the
paper "Late Quaternary History of Northeastern NY and Adjacent
Parts of Vermont and Quebec
HERE