UConn and National University of Taiwan students at the Yehliu Geopark in northern Taiwan

December 31st–January 13th Ammonite Managing Partner Skip Hobbs participated in a geological field trip to Taiwan that was organized by the University of Connecticut Department of Earth Sciences, and the National University of Taiwan Geosciences Department. Hobbs went as an adjunct instructor in his capacity as an external advisor to the UConn Earth Science Department. The trip was led by UConn professor Tim Byrne who is an expert on the Taiwanese mountains and the plate tectonic dynamics that have created them. There were five students from UConn, another adjunct instructor who got her PhD with Dr. Byrne about 10 years ago, Hobbs, and 16 undergrad and grad students and two professors from the Taiwanese university. Ammonite Resources provided scholarships to help pay the travel expenses of two UConn students who would otherwise not have been able to make the trip.

Skip said that the 10 days traveling the length and breadth of Taiwan was one of the most interesting geological, cultural, and geopolitical trips he has ever experienced, and the food was fabulous. The collision of the Philippine and Asian tectonic plates has resulted in steep mountains that are over 12,000 feet high in Central Taiwan. Intense monsoon rains have carved deep canyons in the rain-forested mountains. The students visited Taiwan’s lone producing oil and gas field at the Chuhuangkeng surface anticline, and a gas seep that is believed to result for the disassociation of methane hydrates in the deep marine sediments that have been uplifted by the tectonism. Hobbs gave a lecture about petroleum systems when the group visited the oilfield.