Welcome to North Jersey Resource Conservation & Development (RC&D) Council

200 Million Year Old lava flows surround River Friendly Farm!

When she met with North Jersey RC&D’s Agricultural Outreach Specialist after Thanksgiving, River-Friendly Farmer Julie Gerow gave an extensive history of her property. She mentioned the unique placement of the house by the original settler, a design decision made over 200 years ago, and how the neighboring hills acted as a sound-collector that focused distant sounds to be audible at the house. Her admiration for the environmental awareness of the builder was deep.
The River-Friendly Farm program manager, Bernie Isaacson, tucked this information away at the time, but the idea kept nagging him. Using information he learned from Rutgers University ecology and geology professors, he found an explanation for the phenomenon in century-old documents and contemporary data curated by the US Geological Survey.

As the supercontinent Pangea broke up 200 million years ago, and the crust of Africa and North America stretched apart, the landscape of New Jersey looked like the rift valley of east Africa today. This feature, known as the Newark rift basin, stretched from eastern Pennsylvania to southern New York. As the blocks of the continent slid apart, the thinned, cracked crust burst forth with molten lava, spilling several hundred feet of the material across the surface over time. As rifting continued, this lava flow was tilted up, shallow surface water covered the lava and deposited soft, sedimentary rock, and the process repeated itself (three times!). Since the Triassic period, the sedimentary rocks eroded much faster than the hard, volcanic rocks of the lava, leaving the ancient lava to rise above the neighboring land. New Jersey was left with one of its signature landscape features, the Watchung mountains, the northwestern edge of which marks the fault line of the rift basin.

But the story doesn’t stop there! At other spots along the rift’s edge, lava boiled through the fault line, producing similar, smaller hills to the Watchungs. These are called “outliers” by geologists, because they were created by the same forces that made the larger, more obvious mountains.

It turns out that the ring around the house is one of these outliers, the remains of an ancient lava flow, shaped perfectly to collect and amplify reflected sound waves (this outlier is called the “Sand Brook Outlier”). It is, in effect, a large parabolic reflector, like the ones used along the sidelines in football games to capture detailed sounds of the field, like hard hits and players crashing together! In Julie’s case, the special landscape feature can additionally capture sounds from multiple directions, as the ridge to the northwest can reflect sound into the parabolic lava ridge, making it louder.

Anthony Cordasco, Julie’s husband and River-Friendly Farm Program advocate, remarked that there are days where he can clearly hear agricultural equipment operating in Ringoes – two miles away. Thankfully, Anthony and Julie don’t mind the sound, and neither do their Romney sheep, which they raise through River-Friendly farming techniques.

Take a look at these illustrations that show this phenomena:

River Friendly Farm Geology – Location

River Friendly Farm Geology – Rock Formations

For more information on the River-Friendly Farm Certification Program, see:
www.northjerseyrcd.org/rff

For more information on this unique geology, see:
“Lewis, Volney J. Annual Report of the State Geologist of New Jersey for the Year 1907 – Part IV: Petrography of the Newark Igneous Rocks of New Jersey.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=dQ68AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA166#v=onepage&q&f=false

“Kummel, Henry B. Annual Report of the State Geologist of New Jersey for the Year 1897 – Part II: The Newark System.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=9-EQAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q&f=false

USGS. 2013. “Geology of National Parks.”
http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/mesozoic/newarkbasin.htm

Our Mission:

To facilitate the transition to sustainable use and protection of the region’s human and natural resources through partnerships, education, and innovation.

Our Strategy:

North Jersey RC&D Council is advancing natural resource conservation and building partnerships throughout the region by focusing on the following aspects:

1. Agricultural Sustainability
2. Water Resource Protection
3. Community Development

Our Vision:

North Jersey RC&D will be a universally recognized and respected leader in advancing the natural resource conservation and building partnerships throughout the region.