Evolution of a Holocene delta driven by episodic sediment delivery and coseismic deformation, Puget Sound, Washington, USA

This paper is not subject to U.S. copyright. The definitive version was published in Sedimentology 53 (2006): 1211-1228, doi:10.1111/j.1365-3091.2006.00809.x.Episodic, large-volume pulses of volcaniclastic sediment and coseismic subsidence of the coast have influenced the development of a late Holocene delta at southern Puget Sound. Multibeam bathymetry, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and vibracores were used to investigate the morphologic and stratigraphic evolution of the Nisqually River delta. Two fluvial–deltaic facies are recognized on the basis of GPR data and sedimentary characteristics in cores, which suggest partial emplacement from sediment-rich floods that originated on Mount Rainier. Facies S consists of stacked, sheet-like deposits of andesitic sand up to 4 m thick that are continuous across the entire width of the delta. Flat-lying, highly reflective surfaces separate the sand sheets and comprise important facies boundaries. Beds of massive, pumice- and charcoal-rich sand overlie one of the buried surfaces. Organic-rich material from that surface, beneath the massive sand, yielded a radiocarbon age that is time-correlative with a series of known eruptive events that generated lahars in the upper Nisqually River valley. Facies CF consists of linear sandbodies or palaeochannels incised into facies S on the lower delta plain. Radiocarbon ages of wood fragments in the sandy channel-fill deposits also correlate in time to lahar deposits in upstream areas. Intrusive, sand-filled dikes and sills indicate liquefaction caused by post-depositional ground shaking related to earthquakes. Continued progradation of the delta into Puget Sound is currently balanced by tidal-current reworking, which redistributes sediment into large fields of ebb- and flood-oriented bedforms.This study was supported by the Coastal and Marine Geology Program, and the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey

Deleuze-inspired action research in the university: Mobilising Deleuzian concepts to rethink research on the reflective writing practices of student teachers

This article offers an insight into the process and potential of Deleuze-inspired action research. It draws on a classroom action research (CAR) project that critically reconceptualises practices of reflective writing in teacher education, including the widespread use of the ‘professional learning journal’ as a resource to facilitate reflection on practice. Students following a teacher education programme in England took part in an innovative mode of engagement with texts, including their learning journals, drawing on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of the text as an agent that acts outside of itself. The process was called ‘implicated reading’. An example of a teaching and learning intervention, in the form of a seminar transcript, is offered as an illustration of how Deleuzian theory and philosophy can inspire and shape innovations in practice. The transcript also serves as an opportunity to reimagine the ways in which data and data analysis are conceptualised and practiced in action research (AR) projects. Data is (re)conceptualised as agentic, rather than inert or indifferent. Synthesis is privileged over analysis so that the transcript acts as a provocation to rethink the relation between theory and data, asking what is made possible when these are ‘plugged into’ one another to raise questions that otherwise would have remained unthought. Ultimately, the article offers a worked example of what happens when action researchers take up the challenge of working and thinking within a Deleuzian ontology that seeks to maintain the plurality and potentialities of AR in practice