RE: [Texascavers] Terra Rossa, anyone? 2
When I was going to school at West Virginia University back in the late 70's, Greg Adamson. and I went to check out a particular nasty crawl he knew about. It was a low west grim sticky mud clay and water crawl. Back then, we wore cotton coveralls to protect our wool shirts and pants. Now laying in 54 degree water and mud wasn't any fun but we pushed it to the bitter end and we were ( or wanted to be) hard men. We came out covered head to toe with mud. After the trip, we went to the laundry mat, found an open washer, and washed our clothes, boots, cave packs, etc. We than took the clothes and threw them into the dryer, went around the corner to get a can of Huddipal in a brown bag (great stuff Huddie) and set around drinking and watching the dryer spin. A number of other folks had come and gone from the laundry when someone started yelling and cussing over by the washers. Seems that he had brought down his and his girl friends clothes to wash and had thrown all of their white clothes into one of the washers where someone had previously washed some very dirty clothes covered with fine red clay. Anyway, all of his and his girl friends nice underwear was now pretty much crap brown. No amount of bleach was going to fix that. Anyway, the dryer buzzed and we got our coveralls, boots, and pants out of the dryer, beat the dust off them and loaded them into our bags and headed out, wishing the guy well, hiding our mud covered faces with our hats and cussing the no good SOBs that would have soiled a washing machine like that. Geary - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
RE: [Texascavers] Terra Rossa, anyone? 2
-- Original message -- From: Geary Schindel gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org This definition doesn't necessarily state that it's derived from limestone but we may be nitpicking. Anyway, I've always thought that they are mostly found on limestones so you would think that they would be associated with the limestone weathering process. However, I've had some pretty extensive discussions on the matter of Terra Rosa's in the Mammoth Cave area with Jim Quinlan, former Mammoth Cave Park Geologist about the soils and was surprised when he said that they were most likely derived from overlying material as there was insufficient insoluble material in the St. Genevieve Limestone to form the soils. If that's the case, why are they red like every other limestone soil. That all seems good up front. It seems that most (certainly not all) terra rossa has traditionally been associated with limestone by various sources. But perhaps their experience on a world scale is limited. Certainly not all limestone areas contain terra rossa--or at least it is not all red. Quinlan's assertion that its primary constituents came from the former overburden (some of it miles thick) seems to be too simple to have been missed by others. I would futher suggest that it could as easily have been transported hundreds of miles to the limestone either on the surface or underground where it was more or less trapped (lay in situ, at least) for some time within voids and was later exposed (and intensified or concentrated) through weathering. Or that the chemical composition of a particular limestone was capable of altering the chemical composition of a particular soil deposited on top of it--or vice versa. (I'm not proposing that, just suggesting that it could be as likely as any other speculation.) Further still, the shades and tones of redness (or lack of it) in the various soils and areas would almost certainly be attributed to impurities from the same or subsequent or even previous sources, in effect mechanically watering down or thinning of what is in some places very strikingly red soil--obvious terra rossa. The blackish clays and other sediments within most Texas caves definitely have enough or a red tint within them to leave white shirts pink, not gray, when washed after a caving trip. But a lot of the caves in Texas do have red mud--just not brilliantly red mud--and red soils can be found in non-limestone areas. Again, this is business too tricky for us mere dabblers to be dabbling in with any authority. --Ediger - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
Re: [Texascavers] Terra Rossa, anyone? 2
gi...@att.net writes: Again, this is business too tricky for us mere dabblers to be dabbling in with any authority. I agree, certainly as far as with any authority goes. But it probably does little harm as long as the dabblers like me are taken with a large enough grain of salt that we don't spread serious misinformation. It's fun to sit back, watch, and learn something when the real authorities like Geary or Lee (who is indeed probably at Convention) take the discussion. David Locklear, take your Blackberry, go find Lee, and get us some answers! (Just kidding, David. Thanks for raising some interesting questions as well as giving the Convention blow-by-blow coverage!) Roger ** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
