Jennifer Godwin-Wyer
Jennifer Godwin-Wyer received her degree in geology from UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she met her husband, Dr. Paul Wyer, a geophysicist. At Duke University she worked in nuclear physics and her name appears on several journal articles about the energy levels of light nuclei: “Energy Levels of Light Nuclei, A=5,6,7,” Nucl. Phys. A708 (2002) 3–163; “Energy Levels of Light Nuclei, A=8,9,10″ Nucl. Phys. A745 (2004) 155–362; and online data sources for Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data Files, A=2 and A=7). Jennifer also worked on a research grant for the U.S. Army and co-authored a journal article from that research titled “Search for Nuclear Isotopes for Use in a Nuclear Battery”, Journal of Propulsion and Power (2001) 17:3; 540–546.
Jennifer worked with the late Dirk Frankenberg, who was a professor of marine sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, on the first editions of the Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations field trips, and has worked closely with LEARN NC to republish the field trips and to complete the project. She currently works at Washington University as a website designer and newsletter editor.
Resources created by Jennifer Godwin-Wyer
Records 1–20 of 20 displayed
- A boulder of Roan Mountain gneiss
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 7
- Figure 5 shows a boulder of Roan Mountain gneiss quarried out of the mountainside and doing duty now as a persuasive "No Entry" signal to those thinking of using an off-limits Forest Service road. The bands of quartz show up nicely in this recently exposed...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Climate on north- and south-facing slopes
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 16
- Figure 14 shows the interior of a higher elevation forest showing the abundance of birches and beeches that typify the northern hardwoods community. This photo also shows and interesting feature of climate differences on north and south facing slopes. The...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- A creek at middle elevations
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 18
- Figure 16 shows the same creek as that in Figure 15, but at an elevation about 1000 feet closer to sea level. Note the almost uniform roundness of the boulder edges when compared to those in Figure 15. The boulders here are also smaller than those in Figure...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- A creek at the base of Roan Highlands
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 19
- Figure 17 shows some of the downstream damage wrought by the January 1998 flood. I regret it is not easy to make out, but the creek is, at this low flow stage, the narrow water body flowing from upper left to lower right at the base of the steep bank from...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Estuaries in North Carolina: A primer
- Estuaries are places near the coast where freshwater and saltwater mix. Influenced by ocean forces yet partly sheltered from them, estuaries have unique and fascinating ecologies. This article explains what estuaries are, their geology and role in the larger...
- By Waverly Harrell and Jennifer Godwin-Wyer.
- Forest and bald
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 11
- Figure 9 shows a patch of spruce-fir forest in the grassy bald on top of Round Knob. This patch suggests that the forest has found a way to invade the bald. That assumption is correct, but doesn't help solve the ecological mystery because we know that this...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Gneiss and gabbro
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 9
- Figure 7 shows a close-up of the contact between the gneiss and the intruded gabbro. The gneiss is at the top. It is light colored and its surface is pocked by erosion. The gabbro is on the bottom, is darker and has a much smoother surface. The knife (shown...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- A grassy bald
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 4
- Figure 2 shows the grassy bald on Round Bald with ancient gneiss exposed in the foreground, and other grassy balds on high ridge crests in the background. The gneiss here looks pretty dull because its separation of minerals is masked by weathering and lichen...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Grassy bald community
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 5
- Figure 3 shows another close-up view of the grassy bald community. The nearby Roan High Knob with its spruce/fir forest is in the background. Taken together, Figures 1–3 are designed to give you a sense of how the major plant communities of the Roan...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Grassy bald with spruce and rhododendron
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 10
- Figure 8 shows the grassy bald at the crest of the Roan with spruce-fir forest and rhododendron. Figure 8 also signals a change in this fieldtrip's focus from geology to ecology. The grassy bald mystery deepens with views like the one shown here. The bald...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- A high-elevation creek
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 17
- Figure 15 shows another view of the high-elevation northern hardwoods community with the headwaters of a typical mountain drainage creek. Note the relatively large size and square shape of the stones in the creek. This is what we would expect in small headwater...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Interior of spruce-fir forest
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 13
- Figure 11 shows an interior view of the spruce-fir forest on Roan High Knob. Note that trees of all sizes occur here, that they are crowded together so densely that some even grow on top of boulders as is the case in the foreground. Note also that dead trees...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Mature spruce-fir forest
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 12
- Figure 10 shows a fully developed spruce-fir forest on the flanks of Roan High Knob. The road is the access to the Forest Service Fee area at Rhododendron Gardens and the site of the Cloudland Hotel which once stood on the North Carolina-Tennessee state line...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Northern hardwood community
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 15
- Figure 13 shows a view of the northern hardwoods forest type that dominates the flanks of the Roan Highlands. As its name suggests, this is a forest type of mixed composition. The major tree species are the three Bs — beech, birch, and buckeye —...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- The oldest rock in North Carolina
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 6
- Figure 4 is a close-up of the oldest rock in North Carolina. This gneiss is definitely older than all other rocks that have been analyzed in the state, and its age has been dated in one test at 1.8 billion years. Single tests are rarely considered the final...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Plutonic gabbro
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 8
- Figure 6 shows the other major rock type at the crest of Roan Mountain. The dark rock in the foreground is the Bakersville gabbro described in the Introduction. It formed as a molten intrusion into the gneiss about 750 million years ago, and was carried upward...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- Roan massif
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 3
- We begin the fieldtrip during our approach to the Roan massif as shown in Figure 1. Geologists call an elevated mass of the earth's surface a massif if it is large and has several separate peaks along its crest. The Roan Mountain highlands meet...
- By Dirk Frankenberg and Jennifer Godwin-Wyer.
- Snow in the forest
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 14
- Figure 12 shows another view of the interior of a spruce-fir forest. This photograph was taken on November 5, 1999, and shows remnants of the first snow of the year. Many of the photographs of the grassy balds in this fieldtrip were taken on the same day and...
- By Jennifer Godwin-Wyer and Dirk Frankenberg.
- The unique beauty of the Roan Highlands
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 1
- The natural beauty of the Roan Mountain Highlands has been recognized since they were first visited by Europeans in the eighteenth century. The first naturalist to report on this site was John Fraser (for whom the Fraser fir is named) in 1787. Other reports...
- By Dirk Frankenberg and Jennifer Godwin-Wyer.
- Why are the rocks and plant communities of Roan Mountain interesting to natural scientists?
- In Roan Mountain Highlands, page 2
- The rocks of Roan Mountain are interesting because of their age, their mineralogy, and the evidence they provide about the geological processes that formed them. The plant communities are interesting because they are southern examples of communities usually...
- By Dirk Frankenberg and Jennifer Godwin-Wyer.
