Between the 3rd and the 23rd of June, we stayed in the town of Torio, in the province of Veraguas, Panamá. This field trip was led by Camilo Montes, Ph.D. with the help of geologists Federico Moreno and Camila Vallejo. Guest instructors included Idael Blanco, Ph.D., Carlos Jaramillo, Ph.D., David Farris, Ph.D., Agustin Cardona, Ph.D., Austin Hendy, Ph.D., Aldo Rincón (Ph.D. student), Carlos de Gracia, and Jorge Moreno, M.Sc. All the logistical planning and masterful execution was handled by Carlos Rosero.

With Torio as our operational base, and with three 4x4 vehicles from the CTPA of STRI, we mapped the area around Torio. We had to typically hike upstream to find fresh outcrops, or walk in low tide along the beaches to find wave-cut platforms where fresh rock is also exposed. Weather this time of the year was rainy, with up to four showers every day, but the rivers stayed mostly low and mostly clear despite all the rain.

With the main objective of completing the first 1:25.000 mapping of this part of the Peninsula, and understand its stratigraphy, we assembled five working groups: 1) Mapping and characterization of alteration zones product of intrusive bodies in the mafic basement; 2) Petrology of the mafic basement to discern geochemically the components of the Peninsula; 3) Geophysics, with emphasis in the gravity signature of the Azuero-Sona fault zone; 4) Stratigraphy and Sedimentology with emphasis in characterizing the Cenozoic cover rocks of the Peninsula and also the supra-plateau sequences of probable Cretaceous age; and 5) the structural characterization, history and map expression of the Azuero-Sona fault zone compiling all the above observations.

See the slideshow here

Check out the student’s blog here