SARtastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Frazden

This is part II of the tale of two prehistoric oceans and the chosen rock. Aaranya has already found three eclogite sites, so she needs to leave Yukon's Quiet Lake study area and return to the Frazden school in Lapland.

She is reviewing some research papers and a 1969 Whitehorse Star article to prepare a draft about the second SARtastic beast. This is an unwieldly beast because it manifests as an unfathomable problem as well as an ongoing field solution. It belongs to the MeriMies and MeriMetso houses, which makes its provenance as difficult to nail as the protolith of the eclogites that Aaranya is learning about.

From the last episode, we know that Paracelsus switched a key ingredient of the resurrection stone before handing over the clues about the deathly hallows to his friend, the founder of the Leaky Cauldron.

Aaranya figured out this switch in the last episode, but she cannot seem to understand why she must review the geology of the Frank Slide in southern Alberta when her study site is in the Yukon. What can the permanent scatterers in SAR interferometry reveal about the eclogite protolith?

Aaranya is thinking about her best friend of 16 years, whom she last saw at the Mission Ridge Animal Hospital in Alberta. She is listening to her favorite singer-songwriter (Kate Wolf) to ease the pain and continue with her research on the second SARtastic beast.

Aaranya is referring to the following resources:


Geology of Quiet Lake and Finlayson Lake map areas (Tempelman-Kluit, 2012)
Fires Ravage The Yukon - Faro Gone, Maybe Pelly (Whitehorse Star, 1969)
Frank Slide: One of Canada’s Largest Modern Rockslides (Alberta Energy Regulator)
An excerpt in French about the Frank Slide on page 438 (chapter 17) from the book Notions de géologie (4 ed.) by Bruno Landry
Monitoring landslides and volcanic deformation from InSAR techniques (Singhroy, Ohkura, Molch, and Couture, 2004)
Characterizing and monitoring rockslides from SAR techniques (Singhroy and Molch, 2004)
Frank Slide a century later: The Turtle Mountain Monitoring Project (2005)
Mapping Millimetre-Scale Ground Deformation over Frank Slide, Turtle Mountain, Alberta Using Spaceborne InSAR Technology (Mei, Poncos, and Froese, 2008)

Note: This is a work of fiction, so everything herein is imaginary with some dangling facts. To use Kate Wolf's songs, see Using a Kate Wolf song. In this episode, Aaranya is listening to Streets of Calgary (1985) by Kate Wolf.

This episode is dedicated to Letty's friends at Fort Nelson and an ex-colleague who was the first Finnish person she met.

In scene 8, Aaranya informs Prof. Scamander that she will leave the Quiet Lake study area only after she finds an eclogite site. She found three.

She is reading the abstract and some snippets from a few research papers based on the eclogites found in the Canadian Cordillera (Rose Mountain, Last Peak, and St. Cyr Klippe).

About midway through the episode, you will learn how these Yukon eclogites are connected to a prehistoric ocean and the resurrection stone (one of the deathly hallows). Another ocean is briefly mentioned and will be covered in a future episode in the hope that Aaranya gets better at French.

Aaranya is referring to the following resources:


An occurrence of eclogite near Tintina Trench, Yukon (Tempelman-Kluit, 1970)
Eclogite from Central Yukon: A record of subduction at the western margin of ancient North America (Erdmer and Helmstaedt, 1983)
The exotic nature of the Last Peak eclogite in the Teslin zone, south-central Yukon Territory (de Keijzer and Williams, 1999)
Geologic setting of eclogite-facies assemblages in the St. Cyr Klippe, Yukon - Tanana Terrane, Yukon, Canada (Petrie, Gilotti, McCelland, van Staal, and Isard, 2015)
Northern Cordilleran terranes and their interactions through time (Colpron, Nelson, and Murphy, 2007)
The Slide Mountain ophiolite, Big Salmon Range, south-central Yukon: Preliminary results from fieldwork (Parsons, Ryan, Coleman, and van Staal, 2016)
Late Permian cold subduction in the Yukon-Tanana Terrane, Yukon Territory, Canada: Progressive elcogitization in the lawsonite stability field recorded by lawsonite and garnet inclusions in garnet (Rowe and Faber, 2019)
First para of section 23.4 on page 608 from the book Notions de géologie (4 ed.) by Bruno Landry

Note: This is a work of fiction, so everything herein is imaginary with some dangling facts. Also, this is a MeriMetso episode (a Frazden house that loves the unfathomable), but you will NOT hear a few seconds of the house song (Isä) by Vesterinen Yhtyeineen because Aaranya revealed Paracelsus' gemstone switch in this episode.



248 days since Frazer enfolded...

[Some content in French] Scene 7 starts with one side of a conversation between Prof. Tahtiavain and Ogilvie. It’s a tough year for Ogilvie because he is grieving the loss of his youngest son, who died in Jan 1895. Despite the pain, Ogilvie must return to the Yukon in Oct 1895. Will he be able to travel with Prof. Tahtiavain in Dec?

Fast forward to 1976 where Aaranya is reading an 1898 report by Ogilvie that’s written in French. She had read an 1899 report by Arthur St. Cyr, but that was an easy read because the paper was in English. Aaranya is obviously struggling and mispronouncing so many words that native French speakers probably want her to stop reading.

Before Ogilvie’s report, she had started reading Les Anciens Canadiens par Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, but she was able to get to only some part of a verse on the title page – that’s what you hear at the start of this episode. She will read this book someday.

Scene 8 is a brief conversation between Prof. Scamander
and Aaranya. After this conversation, Aaranya takes a break from French by revisiting two papers by Tempelman-Kluit (1979 and 2012) before her trek to Mount St. Cyr, northwest of Quiet Lake.

Aaranya is referring to the following resources:


Evidence of arc-continent collision (Tempelman-Kluit, 1979)
Geology of quiet lake and Finlayson lake map areas
(Tempelman-Kluit, 2012)
Guide officiel du Klondike: Le grand
champ d'or du Canada, le district du Yukon (Ogilvie, 1898)
Les anciens canadiens par Philippe Aubert de Gaspé (1877)


Note: This is a work of fiction, so everything herein is imaginary with some dangling facts. This is a MeriPelle episode, so you will hear a few seconds of the house song (Pohjola by Olli Halonen). As always, expect Aaranya to croak again - background help from this YouTube video (O Canada in French)



Almost six months since Frazer enfolded...

In Prof. Long's notes, Aaranya finds a reference to an 1899 report that describes the topography of the Teslin-Quiet Lake area. She's back on Canol road near Sidney Lake (south of Quiet Lake) that is a tributary of the Nisutlin river. She will be here for two weeks, traversing the same routes taken by Arthur Saint Cyr during his 1898 exploration of the Nisutlin and Big Salmon rivers.

As Canada switched from the Imperial to the Metric system in 1975, Aaranya is converting all the measurements indicated in Arthur's report before she heads out the following morning.

Scene 6 opens with a conversation between Prof. Abbott and Prof. Scamander at the Frazden school in Lapland. Hannah is concerned about Aaranya's field trip to this secluded part of the Yukon, but Prof. Scamander assures her that Aaranya is safe and happy to help.

You will hear your host give you some context throughout this episode, which includes an excerpt from Wolves of the Yukon by Bob Hayes.

Aaranya will howl - nothing new. You will also hear her read aloud quite a lot of this 1899 report because she is placing markers on her maps for her upcoming study.

References in this episode are as follows:


Wolves of the Yukon by Bob Hayes (2010)
Geology of Teslin-Quiet Lake area, Yukon (1936)
Exploration of the country east of Teslin Lake (1899)
The Yukon Connection (an episode from your host's other podcast - Arctic HOWLs)

Note: This podcast is a work of fiction, so everything herein is imaginary with some dangling facts. Aaranya is attempting to sing O Canada in French, and here's the YouTube video she used for practice.

A bone-chilling cold snap below minus 43 degrees Celsius kept Aaranya away from her field site near the Quiet Lake batholith. Canada switched from the Imperial to the Metric system only a few months ago on April 01, 1975. So, Aaranya is keeping track of both the systems during her January 1976 field trip. She is still studying the Yukon-Tanana terrane for clues about the deathly hallows.

Prof. Scamander is back at the Frazden school in Lapland, so Aaranya has no valid reason to ignore the textbook she is commissioned to write.

It is time to start thinking about the first SARtastic beast and the first paper that Aaranya had read when she started her research on radar imaging. This beast is from the MeriKotka house, so the episode starts with a brief mention of DJ Bohm (its founder).

Aaranya reads some content from a 1999 paper on a near-field 3-D synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging algorithm. As she is thinking aloud and this is a crude draft, you will hear her talk about how this paper led her down a certain path and led her to other research papers from 2001, 2015, 2021, and 2022.

As this beast is from the MeriKotka house, you will hear how the founder of the house inspired Aaranya over the years and how a dialogue between DJ Bohm and a biologist helped Aaranya finally understand what the 1975 song (Kuinka Voit by Hector) from scene 3 was telling her about the formative field.

Aaranya is referring to the following papers:


Historical roots of gauge invariance (2001)
3-D radar imaging using range migration techniques (1999)
Deep learning and quantum annealing methods in synthetic aperture radar (2021)
A Review of Synthetic-Aperture Radar Image Formation Algorithms and Implementations: A Computational Perspective (2022)
Overcoming polar-format issues in synthetic aperture radar multichannel autofocus (2015-2016)

Note: As this podcast is a work of fiction, everything herein is imaginary with some random facts. You will hear a few seconds of the MeriKotka house song (Kaikista maailman maista by Petri Laaksonen) because our first SARtastic beast belongs to MeriKotka. Aaranya will croak again.


153 days since Frazer enfolded...

In this episode of season 2, Prof. Scamander is curious how Aaranya knew where to find the next clue related to the deathly hallows. She thanks Prof. Longbottom and Ted Irving for this paleomagnetic clue near the Quiet Lake batholith and the Yukon-Tanana terrane.

Aaranya reads a 1976 paper to get a sense of the stratigraphy of the area and start exploring the anomalies in the Pelly mountains.

As this is a fictional setup, expect Aaranya to go on a tangent to set the stage for the next few episodes. Also, this is a MeriPelle episode, so you will hear a few seconds of the house song (Pohjola by Olli Halonen).

Aaranya is referring to the following papers:


Whence British Columbia by Ted Irving (1985)
Yellowstone in Yukon⁠ by Prof. Johnston (1996)
The Baja BC series by Prof. Nick Zentner (2022 - 2023)
Geological Survey of Canada (Report 1A, 1976)⁠ | See page 112 for the paper on the Pelly mountains | Tempelman-Kluit, D. J., Gordey, S. P. & Read, B. C. (1976). Stratigraphic and structural studies in the Pelly Mountains, Yukon Territory. Geological Survey of Canada, Paper, 76-1A, 97-106. https://doi.org/10.4095/104174