James A. Dockal, Ph.D.

Professor of Geology

North Carolina Licensed Geologist #298

B.Sc. (geology) Iowa State University, 1970

M.Sc. (geology) Iowa State University, 1973

Ph.D. (geology) University of Iowa, 1980

Office Telephone 910-962-3494

FAX 910-962-7077

E-mail: dockal <at> uncw.edu
  Field work in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, Colorado, 2004  

I am a geologist who specializes in natural resource exploration associated with carbonate rocks including the traditional sedimentary rocks, marble, and carbonate bearing igneous rocks. I currently am conducting geologic studies in the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, North Carolina; Yavapai County, Arizona; Dubuque County, Iowa; Gunnison  and Grand counties Colorado; and Searcy County, Arkansas. My two graduate students, Kelley Kaltenback and Jason Millington are working on marble deposits in the mountains of North Carolina. Kelley is specifically studying the Fletcher Quarry marble near Fletcher, NC which is intimately associated with the Brevard Structural Zone. Jason is studying the Bandana Marble near Spruce Pine, NC. That marble seems to be a product of contact metamorphism. I teach a variety of courses including Principles of Geology, Historical Geology, Advanced Mineralogy, Sedimentary Petrology, and Carbonate Petrology. I am an avid bicycle racer, both road (USCF) and mountain (NORBA) and I am the faculty advisor for the UNCW Cycling Club.

Some Current Research Projects

My current primary research effort is the geologic mapping, structural analysis, economic geology, and petrology of the Pisgah 30 Minute by 30 Minute Quadrangle, North Carolina and South Carolina. The area is very rugged and for the most part accessible best by mountain bike and backpacking. I have been concentrating my efforts in the Pisgah Forest and Shining Rock 7.5-minute quadrangles where I have found a large shear/fault zone which is now named the Cradle-of-Forestry-in-America Fault. I have also found evidence of a contact aureole associated with the Looking Glass pluton and discovered that the pluton has a rather odd architecture.  In order to post the geologic information on digital maps I created a new TrueType font, Geopoetry. This font of symbols consists of most of the structural symbols and they have been formatted such that they can easily be posted and rotated in ArcView or other graphics programs. You can also use this font: jump to Geopoetry Download Page for a free download.
 
My second area of research interest, and really a long term project, is examining the relationship between Paleozoic stratigraphy of North America and the orogenic events that happened along the margins of the North American Craton. I am in particular interested in the nature of the lower to middle Ordovician unconformity, the upper Silurian to lower Devonian unconformity and the Mississippian to Pennsylvanian unconformity. Each are associated with paleokarst development. I am in particular trying to answer the question: are these unconfromities the consequence of the orogenic processes at the craton margins. I have been looking at the distribution of depositional facies across these unconformities in the hopes of quantifying the magnitude of regional sea level change associated with the orogenic events.
View near Gunnison, Colorado. Outcrop within the trees in foreground is a karst tower of Mississippian limestone that rest unconformable upon Cambrian Strata. Some of this work was presented at the Salt Lake GSA meeting in 1997: Dockal, J. A (1997). Deposition of Mississippian Strata in the Uinita Mountains of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and its Relationship to North American Paleogeography and Historical Geology. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, vol. 29, no. 6.
History and geology of the Lead and Zinc Deposits (sorry these links are currently only partially working) of the Upper Mississippi Valley has been a hobby of mine since I was in high school. I am especially interested in those deposits in the Dubuque, Iowa area where I grew up. Few people realize that the lead mines there predate the American Revolution by at least 100 years. The French were actively engaged in mining lead there as early as 1658 and they were probably preceded by Native American peoples. 
16th or 17th century mine located in the Faldorf-Dockal Wild Flower Preserve, south of Dubuque, Iowa. Lead and Zinc Mining in the Dubuque Area by Greg A. Ludvigson and James A. Dockal

Another Mississippi Valley type sulfide mineralization that I am working with is the zinc mineralization in the area of Rush, Arkansas in the Buffalo National River. These mines date primarily from the first half of the 20th century. They produced principally smithsonite (turkeyfat) and sphalerite (jack). Some really excellent examples of these deposits and their associated geology and cultural features can be observed while hiking the foot paths in the Rush Creek valley portion of the park.
Gated entrance to an abandoned zinc mine at Rush, Arkansas Suzanne Liles of the National Park Service and myself are building a series of web pages documenting the Zinc Mines of Rush, Arkansas 

 

Selected Publications

 

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This page has been created and is maintained by James A. Dockal

Jim Dockal --