Douglas M Morton

 

Today, 16 Sep 2020, I learned that Douglas M. Morton passed away. We all have our time on Earth, but it never seems fair when it’s time to depart. I am devastated but I know he has gone off to a good place. Doug was such a special person. He was critical in turning my life around and so I want to explain a little bit about what a remarkable man he was. 

Doug spent almost his entire life in nature and geology. As a young boy, growing up in Moreno Valley, California, he would ride his bike all around the countryside looking for rocks and minerals.  At that time, the land was undisturbed. Coastal sage scrub habitat extending as far as the eye could see and further. Little did he know when he was a kid that he would one day become the world’s expert on the geology of the region.

Doug honed his geology skills as a student at UC Riverside, Pomona College and UCLA, where he received his PhD. At Pomona and UCLA, he had the opportunity to work with AO Woodford and Alex Baird and together they began to dissect the geological history of the Peninsular Ranges batholith. He worked with KD Watson and published a paper on lawsonite bearing eclogites from garnet ridge in Arizona in 1969, which to this day, remains one of the most enigmatic rocks in North American geology. With Alex Baird, he jumped on XRF, which at the time was a new analytical tool for quantifying the chemical composition of rocks. Much of this work was motivated by the need to characterize lunar samples, but Doug and Alex decided to map out the compositions of plutons and the northern Peninsular Ranges batholith as a whole. In 1969, Doug also published a two-part series on the chemistry and geology of the Lakeview Mountains pluton. I think he was far ahead of his time because only now are people realizing the importance of his work. In this study, he combined careful structural mapping with geochemistry to reveal a zoned pluton. This remains the most carefully mapped pluton to date. Doug also mapped out the Paloma Ring complex and discovered that the complex represented the eroded remnants of an ancient caldera system. In this work, Doug recognized that highly silicic melts were extracted through fractures to feed a shallow level magmatic system that could have been the precursor to a major eruption. Right now, the issues of how plutons are assembled and how silicic melts are extracted and erupted are all the craze because of recent developments in our understanding of the physics of melt transport. During Doug’s time, the physics of melt transport hadn’t been fleshed out yet, but Doug, based entirely on observations, had somehow developed an intuition that would prove right and serve as the data to test the physical models being proposed today.

Doug wasn’t just interested in igneous rocks. In parallel, Doug was mapping debris flows in southern California, spending much of his time in the San Gabriels. In 1969 and the early 70s, he took advantage of advances in aerial photo imaging to map out landslides. He soon became an expert on the morphology of landslides and quickly saw the connections between earthquakes, landslides and tectonics. Doug was a tectonic geomorphologist, well before geomorphology was even a field, well before tectonic geomorphology became popular, and even before tectonics was fully accepted. Doug saw how geomorphology was intimately linked to the movements of the faults, the composition of the rock substrate and the vegetation. Influenced by his mentor AO Woodford, he was keenly aware of how dynamic the landscape was.

Doug’s greatest love was mapping. He mapped for work and mapped for fun. There were no bounds. He generated exquisite mineralogical, lithological and structural maps of skarns (Riverside). He mapped metamorphic isograds across the suture between the accreted Alisitos arc and the North American plate (Domenigoni Valley). He conducted a detailed study of the metasomatic/metamorphic transformation of stoped metasedimentary rocks in a pluton. He mapped out the Stewart Pegmatite and rewrote the story of its origin. He discovered a nested pluton (Box Springs). He mapped out the Mountain Pass syenite complex at a resolution fine enough that one can see the mingling of immiscible liquids on the map. Doug amassed such a trove of data, but these works did not become papers right away as he had become busy as a branch chief at the USGS in Reston, Virginia.

In the late 80s, he returned to his home in Moreno Valley and set up a small USGS branch at UC Riverside, where he initiated SCAMP, the Southern California Mapping Project. This would become one of his most influential contributions as he embarked on putting together quadrangle maps across southern California. I can only think that this was a dream come true for him. He was back in the Inland Empire, the place where he grew up, and the place he loved. And he could now bring all his years of mapping together. And this he did. Maps by Douglas M Morton carry his distinctive signature. Take a look. You see the overall outcrop geology, but zoom in, you will see more and more detail. In the plutons, the foliations are shown. Even individual dikes are mapped. You will see the debris flows he was so enamored with. And you will see the fault strands that are visible to only the keenest of observers like Doug. Look closely more and you will see that he’s mapped out where the sediments are and estimates of their ages, all from piecing together seemingly unconnected observations. From these maps of sediments, one will find the Paleocene Silverado formation overlying the plutons, indicating that batholith must have subsided, and then of course, come back up. One can even see relics of the Santa Ana river stranded up high on the Perris surface. A Douglas M. Morton map is an adventure like no other.

SCAMP itself was way ahead of its times as well. Today, we have maps, even geologic maps at our fingertips, with our apps. But Doug had a vision back in the late 80s. He was at the forefront of GIS and built a team dedicated to digitizing all the maps and placing them in a GIS framework. The goal was then to have you be able to get more and more detail each time one zoomed in. And if you then clicked on a particular formation, you would get the geologic description as well as images of the rock. This is what our community is pursuing now, but Doug had accomplished by the late 90s. When you click on these geologic map apps today in the southern California region, you are using Doug’s maps.

I have lived a life full of privilege because I knew Doug when I was a kid. He was a family friend. During junior high and high school, I was having a lot of trouble in school, mainly because of bullying. I dreaded school and didn’t have any confidence in academics or any school-related activities. I had developed a budding interest in birds. Doug turned out was a hard core birder and somehow he took me under his wing to show me a few birds (birdwatching apparently was a disease that had infected many of USGS geologist). I had also always been interested in geology and birds as I liked to collect rocks and my father is a geophysicist and my mother has a degree in paleontology (though she eventually became a civil engineer). When I was perhaps 10 years old, Doug and another family friend who happened to be a birder and geologist too (John Bolm), took me out on my first real birding trip. I still remember it clearly. It was in April and we started at Whitewater Canyon, near Palm Springs. We got out of the car and I saw cottonwood trees for the first time. And then there it happened. Doug pointed out a bright red Summer Tanager singing in the tree. How could a bird be so beautiful?!  We then drove to Morongo Valley, one of the birding meccas of southern California. At nearby Covington Park, there was a Vermilion Flycatcher and then hidden in the Cottonwood tree was a Long-eared Owl. We walked deep into the riparian area, which was buzzing with warblers. Then Doug stopped, clapped his hands, and we heard a loud grunting coming from the bushes. A few seconds later, a Virginia Rail walked out into the open. It was a magical day and it would change my life forever.

I had always been interested in nature, but from that day on, I became hooked onto birds. Every day I would look for birds. It gave me a much badly needed sense of focus, something I could pursue on my own without worrying about school. The first year in high school, Doug got back into looking for vagrant birds, and so in the fall, he and Robyn would take me with them to search for rare birds all over southern California. School didn’t matter to me. The birds did. A Xantus’s hummingbird, an exceptional vagrant, showed up in someone’s yard in Ventura, so we sped up there to see it. In that same yard was an Orchard Oriole and a Broad-billed Hummingbird, two other birds I could only dream of seeing. We then went over to look for the stake-out Red-headed Woodpecker in Goleta. And we ended our day in Carpinteria by the sewage treatment plant pishing the mule fat stands for kicks. Out popped a Scarlet Tanager and a Chestnut-sided Warbler!  I even remember on the long drive back to Riverside, we passed by a car with Texas license plates. Doug told me to put on his cowboy hat and wave at the driver. Little did I know then, that one day, I would find myself living in Texas, where I am now.

During these long chases, Doug would always talk about the geology and tell birding stories. It was clear, Doug wanted to share all his knowledge about geology, but I just didn’t know enough at that time to fully appreciate the geology. Perhaps some of it sunk in by osmosis. The bird stories sunk in more at that time. Doug told me of the Yellow-throated Vireo he discovered at Morongo when he was young. He told me about the Green Violetear (now known as the Mexican Violetear) he found in the mountains above Ventura. To this day, this is the only record of a violetear for California.  We chased and found so many rare birds during that year. Birds like Yellow-green Vireo, Tropical Kingbird, Ruddy Ground-Dove, Blackpoll Warbler, White-eyed Vireo, Worm-eating Warbler, Bobolink, Golden-winged Warbler – all birds that normally don’t show up in California.

One of my most memorable experiences with Doug and Robyn was a big day the following April. The goal of a big day is to find as many birds as one can in 24 hours. We did this all within Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, starting from Morongo Valley, swinging by the Whitewater River delta at the north end of the Salton sea, up into the San Jacintoes and ending up at the San Jacinto Wildlife Refuge in Lakeview. The diversity of landscapes and wildlife we saw on that one day was amazing. From below sea level at the Salton sea to ponderosa pines at 8,000 feet. From Sanderlings to Pinyon Jays and White-headed Woodpeckers. We amassed a day total of 178 species of birds, not bad for a fully inland big day.  One of the last birds we tallied on that day was a Red-necked Phalarope at the San Jacinto wildlife refuge. Doug helped me make it through high school and beyond by believing in me and giving me the confidence and self-esteem that I had been lacking.

Doug was an observer of nature. Wherever he walked, he noticed everything. He knew the birds and the rocks and even the plants and insects, though he would not admit that. Driving with him through southern California, he would point out the birds on the fly and the geology, pointing to outcrops and then to his geologic map opened up on the dashboard. I can tell you that there's nothing crazier than a birdwatching geologist driving a Suburban down the axis of the San Jacinto fault zone. Doug taught me how to observe a bird, not just look at it. He taught me how to find the birds, how to be aware of different habitats. On our outings, he gradually taught me how to observe the geology. He would point out every landslide though I could only see a fraction of them. He would talk about the granitoids with a compositional precision that only someone with his keen eye could. On the Paloma Ring complex, looking for California Gnatcatchers, he showed me how Black Sage grows on the gabbros and White Sage grows on the felsic dikes. I learned at a very young age that geology and life were connected. Doug didn’t suffer fools. He fundamentally believed that observations were foundation and that if you strayed too far from observations, you were going into dangerous territory.

               Despite birding like my life depended on it, somehow I ended up becoming a geologist after all. I had the privilege of working with the great economic geologist George Brimhall at Berkeley and a true master of geochemistry Roberta Rudnick at Harvard. During those years, Doug and I kept in touch. My formal geologic training was mostly in geochemistry, not so much on field geology. I would return to Riverside often and go birding with Doug, Robyn and sometimes with his son Greg. Doug would talk more and more geology each time, much of it still going above my head. Doug seemed to think I knew more than I really did, but most of the time, I really didn’t know anything. On many occasions though, I would head out on my own or with my father to check out some of the places Doug described to me. I enjoyed just exploring. What I found remarkable was that Doug could remember every outcrop he had ever walked over. And if he said something was there, sure enough, it was there. 

               After I got my PhD, I moved back to California, working as a postdoc at Caltech with Gerald Wasserburg. Doug thought it was a risky move to work with Wasserburg as he had seen the type of behavior that went on between Wasserburg and his rivals at Caltech. It all turned out fine, but perhaps the best thing of coming back to California is that I could spend more time with Doug in the field. That was 2001. We went through all his stomping grounds. They were all familiar to me in some sense as I had been to all of the places before when I was a teenager, looking mostly for birds and occasionally looking at the geology. But now, 15 years later, with a little bit more training, I could finally begin to see a little bit of the geology that Doug had been trying to tell me all these years. I don’t think I’ll ever meet his standards, but I do know now why he fell in love with the Peninsular Ranges.

               After I became faculty at Rice University, Doug and I finally started to do research together. He brought the geology and I brought the geochemistry and we started thinking about continent formation. But perhaps the most exciting thing about finally being able to work with Doug was that we both had a sort of shameless childlike curiosity. These days, everyone tells you to work on important problems if you want to get tenure. That is very good advice. But sometimes, there are some rocks that are just so beautiful or fascinating that you just want to study them, even though there is no immediate broader implication or purpose. I believe a special bond is formed with some of the beautiful things one sees in nature, particularly if they made an impression when one was young. Doug in his later years wanted to go back to all the curiosities he encountered in his days mapping. I too wanted to go back to tonalites that I grew up around.  So we worked a lot on these curiosities – quartz crystals in pegmatites, mafic enclaves, and dikes.

               I don’t think Doug ever directly told me how to do science, but what I learned from him over all these years is that if you find something interesting, just study it. Don’t worry whether others care or not. They will care because if it’s interesting to you and you start to dig, you will always find something, and that will lead you somewhere else and it will be the most unexpected. If you follow nature, everything will be just fine. I think about Doug’s maps now. Those maps are Doug’s attempt to tell us all the beauty that nature offers if only we all take the time to look a little more carefully.

               I come back to this common thread of Doug always being at the forefront or even ahead of the times. He was one of the first to sign up to get a Prius. He and Robyn were really proud of the new hybrid technology. They drove across the country in the early 2000s and stopped by Houston to see us. Doug also loved to get students out into the field and after he officially retired, he continued teaching petrology at UC Riverside. One day, when I was trying to show my student an outcrop through Google Street View, I found that there was a Prius by the outcrop and a group of people. I zoomed in and sure enough, there was Doug showing a group of students the margin of a pluton!  No more Suburbans. Geology by Prius.               

               I am forever grateful for Doug and Robyn coming into my life when I needed it the most. I know that I am not the only one they have so profoundly influenced. There are many more facets of Doug to describe, but I hope this short piece gives you an idea of what a remarkable man Doug was, both scientifically and as a person. I miss him already.

Rest in peace, Doug.