The Elements of Geology Part 10

TRANSPORTATION BY THE WIND

In the desert the finer waste is continually swept to and fro by the ever-shifting wind. Even in quiet weather the air heated by contact with the hot sands rises in whirls, and the dust is lifted in stately columns, sometimes as much as one thousand feet in height, which march slowly across the plain. In storms the sand is driven along the ground in a continuous sheet, while the air is tilled with dust. Explorers tell of sand storms in the deserts of central Asia and Africa, in which the air grows murky and suffocating. Even at midday it may become dark as night, and nothing can be heard except the roar of the blast and the whir of myriads of grains of sand as they fly past the ear.

Sand storms are by no means uncommon in the arid regions of the western United States. In a recent year, six were reported from Yuma, Arizona. Trains on transcontinental railways are occasionally blockaded by drifting sand, and the dust sifts into closed pa.s.senger coaches, covering the seats and floors. After such a storm thirteen car loads of sand were removed from the platform of a station on a western railway.

DUST FALLS. Dust launched by upward-whirling winds on the swift currents of the upper air is often blown for hundreds of miles beyond the arid region from which it was taken. Dust falls from western storms are not unknown even as far east as the Great Lakes. In 1896 a "black snow" fell in Chicago, and in another dust storm in the same decade the amount of dust carried in the air over Rock Island, Ill., was estimated at more than one thousand tons to the cubic mile.

In March, 1901, a cyclonic storm carried vast quant.i.ties of dust from the Sahara northward across the Mediterranean to fall over southern and central Europe. On March 8th dust storms raged in southern Algeria; two days later the dust fell in Italy; and on the 11th it had reached central Germany and Denmark. It is estimated that in these few days one million eight hundred thousand tons of waste were carried from northern Africa and deposited on European soil.

We may see from these examples the importance of the wind as an agent of transportation, and how vast in the aggregate are the loads which it carries. There are striking differences between air and water as carriers of waste. Rivers flow in fixed and narrow channels to definite goals. The channelless streams of the air sweep across broad areas, and, shifting about continually, carry their loads back and forth, now in one direction and now in another.

WIND DEPOSITS

The mantle of waste of deserts is rapidly sorted by the wind. The coa.r.s.er rubbish, too heavy to be lifted into the air, is left to strew wide tracts with residual gravels (Fig. 120). The sand derived from the disintegration of desert rocks gathers in vast fields. About one eighth of the surface of the Sahara is said to be thus covered with drifting sand. In desert mountains, as those of Sinai, it lies like fields of snow in the high valleys below the sharp peaks. On more level tracts it acc.u.mulates in seas of sand, sometimes, as in the deserts of Arabia, two hundred and more feet deep.

DUNES. The sand thus acc.u.mulated by the wind is heaped in wavelike hills called dunes. In the desert of northwestern India, where the prevalent wind is of great strength, the sand is laid in longitudinal dunes, i.e. in stripes running parallel with the direction of the wind; but commonly dunes lie, like ripple marks, transverse to the wind current. On the windward side they show a long, gentle slope, up which grains of sand can readily be moved; while to the lee their slope is frequently as great as the angle of repose (Fig. 122). Dunes whose sands are not fixed by vegetation travel slowly with the wind; for their material is ever shifted forward as the grains are driven up the windward slope and, falling over the crest, are deposited in slanting layers in the quiet of the lee.

Like river deposits, wind-blown sands are stratified, since they are laid by currents of air varying in intensity, and therefore in transporting power, which carry now finer and now coa.r.s.er materials and lay them down where their velocity is checked (Fig.

123). Since the wind varies in direction, the strata dip in various directions. They also dip at various angles, according to the inclination of the surface on which they were laid.

Dunes occur not only in arid regions, but also wherever loose sand lies unprotected by vegetation from the wind. From the beaches of sea and lake sh.o.r.es the wind drives inland the surface sand left dry between tides and after storms, piling it in dunes which may invade forests and fields and bury villages beneath their slowly advancing waves. On flood plains during summer droughts river deposits are often worked over by the wind; the sand is heaped in hummocks and much of the fine silt is caught and held by the forests and gra.s.sy fields of the bordering hills.

The sand of sh.o.r.e dunes differs little in composition and the shape of its grains from that of the beach from which it was derived. But in deserts, by the long wear of grain on grain as they are blown hither and thither by the wind, all soft minerals are ground to powder and the sand comes to consist almost wholly of smooth round grams of hard quartz.

Some marine sandstones, such as the St. Peter sandstone of the upper Mississippi valley, are composed so entirely of polished spherules of quartz that it has been believed by some that their grains were long blown about in ancient deserts before they were deposited in the sea.

DUST DEPOSITS. As desert sands are composed almost wholly of quartz, we may ask what has become of the softer minerals of which the rocks whose disintegration has supplied the sand were in part, and often in large part, composed. The softer minerals have been ground to powder, and little by little the quartz sand also is worn by attrition to fine dust. Yet dust deposits are scant and few in great deserts such as the Sahara. The finer waste is blown beyond its limits and laid in adjacent oceans, where it adds to the muds and oozes of their floors, and on bordering steppes and forest lands, where it is bound fast by vegetation and slowly acc.u.mulates in deposits of unstratified loose yellow earth. The fine waste of the Sahara has been identified in dredgings from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, taken hundreds of miles from the coast of Africa.

LOESS. In northern China an area as large as France is deeply covered with a yellow pulverulent earth called loess (German, loose), which many consider a dust deposit blown from the great Mongolian desert lying to the west. Loess mantles the recently uplifted mountains to the height of eight thousand feet and descends on the plains nearly to sea level. Its texture and lack of stratification give it a vertical cleavage; hence it stands in steep cliffs on the sides of the deep and narrow trenches which have been cut in it by streams.

On loess hillsides in China are thousands of villages whose eavelike dwellings have been excavated in this soft, yet firm, dry loam. While dust falls are common at the present time in this region, the loess is now being rapidly denuded by streams, and its yellow silt gives name to the muddy Hw.a.n.g-ho (Yellow River), and to the Yellow Sea, whose waters it discolors for scores of miles from sh.o.r.e.

Wind deposits both of dust and of sand may be expected to contain the remains of land sh.e.l.ls, bits of wood, and bones of land animals, testifying to the fact that they were acc.u.mulated in open air and not in the sea or in bodies of fresh water.

WIND EROSION

Sand-laden currents of air abrade and smooth and polish exposed rock surfaces, acting in much the same way as does the jet of steam fed with sharp sand, which is used in the manufacture of ground gla.s.s. Indeed, in a single storm at Cape Cod a plate gla.s.s of a lighthouse was so ground by flying sand that its transparency was destroyed and its removal made necessary.

Telegraph poles and wires whetted by wind-blown sands are destroyed within a few years. In rocks of unequal resistance the harder parts are left in relief, while the softer are etched away.

Thus in the pa.s.s of San Bernardino, Cal., through which strong winds stream from the west, crystals of garnet are left projecting on delicate rock fingers from the softer rock in which they were imbedded.

Wind-carved pebbles are characteristically planed, the facets meeting along a summit ridge or at a point like that of a pyramid.

We may suppose that these facets were ground by prevalent winds from certain directions, or that from time to time the stone was undermined and rolled over as the sand beneath it was blown away on the windward side, thus exposing fresh surfaces to the driving sand. Such wind-carved pebbles are sometimes found in ancient rocks and may be accepted as evidence that the sands of which the rocks are composed were blown about by the wind.

DEFLATION. In the denudation of an arid region, wind erosion is comparatively ineffective as compared with deflation (Latin, de, from; flare, to blow),--a term by which is meant the constant removal of waste by the wind, leaving the rocks bare to the continuous attack of the weather. In moist climates denudation is continually impeded by the mantle of waste and its cover of vegetation, and the land surface can be lowered no faster than the waste is removed by running water. Deep residual soils come to protect all regions of moderate slope, concealing from view the rock structure, and the various forms of the land are due more to the agencies of erosion and transportation than to differences in the resistance of the underlying rocks.

But in arid regions the mantle is rapidly removed, even from well- nigh level plains and plateaus, by the sweep of the wind and the wash of occasional rains. The geological structure of these regions of naked rock can be read as far as the eye can see, and it is to this structure that the forms of the land are there largely due. In a land ma.s.s of horizontal strata, for example, any softer surface rocks wear down to some underlying, resistant stratum, and this for a while forms the surface of a level plateau (Fig. 129). The edges of the capping layer, together with those of any softer layers beneath it, wear back in steep cliffs, dissected by the valleys of wet-weather streams and often swept bare to the base by the wind. As they are little protected by talus, which commonly is removed about as fast as formed, these escarpments and the walls of the valleys retreat indefinitely, exposing some hard stratum beneath which forms the floor of a widening terrace.

The high plateaus of northern Arizona and southern Utah, north of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, are composed of stratified rocks more than ten thousand feet thick and of very gentle inclination northward. From the broad plat form in which the canyon has been cut rises a series of gigantic stairs, which are often more than one thousand feet high and a score or more of miles in breadth. The retreating escarpments, the cliffs of the mesas and b.u.t.tes which they have left behind as outliers, and the walls of the ravines are carved into n.o.ble architectural forms-- into cathedrals, pyramids, amphitheaters, towers, arches, and colonnades--by the processes of weathering aided by deflation. It is thus by the help of the action of the wind that great plateaus in arid regions are dissected and at last are smoothed away to waterless plains, either composed of naked rock, or strewed with residual gravels, or covered with drifting residual sand.

The specific gravity of air is 1/823 that of water. How does this fact affect the weight of the material which each can carry at the same velocity?

If the rainfall should lessen in your own state to from five to ten inches a year, what changes would take place in the vegetation of the country? in the soil? in the streams? in the erosion of valleys? in the agencies chiefly at work in denuding the land?

In what way can a wind-carved pebble be distinguished from a river-worn pebble? from a glaciated pebble?

CHAPTER VII

THE SEA AND ITS Sh.o.r.eS

We have already seen that the ocean is the goal at which the waste of the land arrives. The mantle of rock waste, creeping down slopes, is washed to the sea by streams, together with the material which the streams have worn from their beds and that dissolved by underground waters. In arid regions the winds sweep waste either into bordering oceans or into more humid regions where rivers take it up and carry it on to the sea. Glaciers deliver the load of their moraines either directly to the sea or leave it for streams to transport to the same goal. All deposits made on the land, such as the flood plains of rivers, the silts of lake beds, dune sands, and sheets of glacial drift, mark but pauses in the process which is to bring all the materials of the land now above sea level to rest upon the ocean bed.

But the sea is also at work along all its sh.o.r.es as an agent of destruction, and we must first take up its work in erosion before we consider how it transports and deposits the waste of the land.

SEA EROSION

THE SEA CLIFF AND THE ROCK BENCH. On many coasts the land fronts the ocean in a line of cliffs. To the edge of the cliffs there lead down valleys and ridges, carved by running water, which, if extended, would meet the water surface some way out from sh.o.r.e.

Evidently they are now abruptly cut short at the present sh.o.r.e line because the land has been cut back.

Along the foot of the cliff lies a gently shelving bench of rock, more or less thickly veneered with sand and shingle. At low tide its inner margin is laid bare, but at high tide it is covered wholly, and the sea washes the base of the cliffs. A notch, of which the SEA CLIFF and the ROCK BENCH are the two sides, has been cut along the sh.o.r.e.

WAVES. The position of the rock bench, with its inner margin slightly above low tide, shows that it has been cut by some agent which acts like a horizontal saw set at about sea level. This agent is clearly the surface agitation of the water; it is the wind-raised wave.

As a wave comes up the shelving bench the crest topples forward and the wave "breaks," striking a blow whose force is measured by the momentum of all its tons of falling water. On the coast of Scotland the force of the blows struck by the waves of the heaviest storms has sometimes exceeded three tons to the square foot. But even a calm sea constantly chafes the sh.o.r.e. It heaves in gentle undulations known as the ground swell, the result of storms perhaps a thousand miles distant, and breaks on the sh.o.r.e in surf.

The blows of the waves are not struck with clear water only, else they would have little effect on cliffs of solid rock. Storm waves arm themselves with the sand and gravel, the cobbles, and even the large bowlders which lie at the base of the cliff, and beat against it with these hammers of stone.

Where a precipice descends sheer into deep water, waves swash up and down the face of the rocks but cannot break and strike effective blows. They therefore erode but little until the talus fallen from the cliff is gradually built up beneath the sea to the level at which the waves drag bottom upon it and break.

Compare the ways in which different agents abrade. The wind lightly brushes sand and dust over exposed surfaces of rock.

Running water sweeps fragments of various sizes along its channels, holding them with a loose hand. Glacial ice grinds the stones of its ground moraine against the underlying rock with the pressure of its enormous weight. The wave hurls fragments of rock against the sea cliff, bruising and battering it by the blow. It also rasps the bench as it drags sand and gravel to and fro upon it.

WEATHERING OF SEA CLIFFS. The sea cliff furnishes the weapons for its own destruction. They are broken from it not only by the wave but also by the weather. Indeed the sea cliff weathers more rapidly, as a rule, than do rock ledges inland. It is abundantly wet with spray. Along its base the ground water of the neighboring land finds its natural outlet in springs which under mine it.

Moreover, it is unprotected by any shield of talus. Fragments of rock as they fall from its face are battered to pieces by the waves and swept out to sea. The cliff is thus left exposed to the attack of the weather, and its retreat would be comparatively rapid for this reason alone.

Sea cliffs seldom overhang, but commonly, as in Figure 134, slope seaward, showing that the upper portion has retreated at a more rapid rate than has the base. Which do you infer is on the whole the more destructive agent, weathering or the wave?

Draw a section of a sea cliff cut in well jointed rocks whose joints dip toward the land. Draw a diagram of a sea cliff where the joints dip toward the sea.

SEA CAVES. The wave does not merely batter the face of the cliff.

Like a skillful quarryman it inserts wedges in all natural fissures, such as joints, and uses explosive forces. As a wave flaps against a crevice it compresses the air within with the sudden stroke; as it falls back the air as suddenly expands. On lighthouses heavily barred doors have been burst outward by the explosive force of the air within, as it was released from pressure when a partial vacuum was formed by the refluence of the wave. Where a crevice is filled with water the entire force of the blow of the wave is transmitted by hydraulic pressure to the sides of the fissure. Thus storm waves little by little pry and suck the rock loose, and in this way, and by the blows which they strike with the stones of the beach, they quarry out about a joint, or wherever the rock may be weak, a recess known as a SEA CAVE, provided that the rock above is coherent enough to form a roof.

Otherwise an open chasm results.