-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: dirt...@comcast.net > Texas Gulf Coast Faults > Are real faults. The Earth has broken and rocks on either side of them have > moved relative to each other. There are a lot of them.
Yeah, very good, Dwight. But I never considered the subsidence--such as around Baytown to be principally fault related. That's a separate issue, I think. The subsidence comes from localized structural collapse--like a cave or mine collapaes or "caves in"--not slipping or sliding or anything else like fault movement. Only in this case the collapse is grain sized or smaller--as water and oil are removed from the localized (the size of a few city blocks or a small town, say--a few oil wells worth of space only) saturated structure the rock or soil structure and weight bearing capacity is diminished and just shrinks from the weight of other rocks and soils and sediments above it sort of unceremoniously slumping into the void. The whole big column of "stuff" above it just settles into it, much like ice settling to the bottom of a tubular cup as you drink the gin and tonic out of it, causing the surface to settle a few feet along with it, but without anything that would resemble a fault face or scarp, except may be on the order of fingernails or possibly as large as dinner plates but totally in an unconsolidated mish-mash otherwise. More like a disorganized pile of breakdown, but confined to a relatively small area, and of much smaller aggregate. I don't know where I got that idea but that's what the whole concept of "subsidence" has always meant to me--as opposed to faulting, which seems to be a totally different thing. Somebody tell me I'm right or wrong. --Ediger P.S.: This thread has been totally ripped out of it's original context--a really horrible pun. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
