My daughter and her classmates on occasion volunteered at the refuge. Many local residents had close ties with the director, Sarah Summerville, who recently handed over that position to Veronica van Hof.
Daughter and classmate painting the outhouse in 2007.
Daughter, classmate, and S. Summerville in 2007.
Unexpected’s topography is complex. Its wonderful biodiversity can be attributed to the site’s high geodiversity. Unexpected is also a location of scientific significance. Numerous papers were published on Unexpected’s periglacial features, microtektites, and nanodiamonds. Most of the studied exposures have now been mined away for gravel, fill, and baseball infield mix, but not before hundreds of geology buffs from around the world visited here on various excursions. Active mining provided a unique opportunity to follow complex ground structures in 3-d helping to understand process in feature geomorphology.
A small but important international gathering of palaeocryosol (paleogelisol in US) experts
looking at nondiastrophic thermokarst involutions and a sand-wedge cast.
All agreed to a cold, nonglacial (periglacial) interpretation – past permafrost.
Demitroff M, Nelson FE, Newell WL. 2006. “Relicts of the Late Pleistocene in the New Jersey Pinelands.” United States
Permafrost Association Field Trip, in association with the World Congress of Soil Science, Philadelphia. July 12.
Beaver range into the arctic, so it would not be surprising if the Unexpected population has ancient (Pleistocene?) roots.
S-M