This is Part 2 of 2 parts to the PowerPoint presentation covering soils and severe weather

Soil TaxonomyAllred’s summary

Young often volcanic or post-quake or riverine

Mature stable, aged, well-developed horizons

Oldoxidized, leached, too much heat & water

Page 249

Entisols, Inceptisols, Andisols – weak horizons, new minerals

Vertisols – includes swelling clays

Aridosols – dry country, under-developed

Mollisols & Alfisols – strong horizons or profiles, world’s best farm soil

Spodosols – acid, wet, sandyUltisols, Oxisols – too hot/wet

Histosols – too cold/wet

Key for general educationWhat does all this mean?

1. What soils are best for agriculture? (humans eat grains and/or animals

that eat grains, so we want grasslands)Goldilocks porridge – not too hot, not too wet, not

too cold, not too hot

2. What soils are best for buildings?

Soils for buildingspage 249-250

Particle size

The largest are boulders or even bedrock

The smallest are clays that shrink or swell with water availability

Subsidence – vertical deformation

by pressure on clay or wet soilsby gaps caused by removal mining,

pumping or dissolving

Freeze-thaw, shrink-swelland Karst

Karst – limestone that is dissolved by entry of slightly acid, carbonic water

(H20 + CO2)

Page 251 references Coke or Pepsi – bedrock may be dissolving at a rate of about 0.4 inches per year (page 250)

Another “three” = AciditypH – ‘potential hydrogen’

Acid – neutral – basic (alkaline)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Battery acid

Mother’s milk, blood, saliva

Calcium, sodium, caustics

Sinkholes

Can be caused by Karst action, removal of water, or underground

erosion – water flowing underground

Thermokarst

Frost heaving lifts soils, leaving voids

Some buildings in Alaska are being kept ‘refrigerated’ so the soil never thaws and

collapsed. The building rests on hard ice mixed with soil – permafrost

Can also be called ‘gelisol’.

Why?

“Ratchet” effect at ski resorts

In cold season, water expands as it freezes into ice, then collapses, lifting rocks and then letting them fall when ice is gone during summer.

Scott Lake – Floridapage 254

Weight of water caused ‘plug’ to break, allowing the lake to drain out. As lake

debris flowed into an underground ‘river’, a new plug was created,

allowing the lake to re-fill.

The key is understanding the underground channels by which water moves. Channels may expand by erosion

and chemical dissolution (such as Karst limestone)

Source: Diane Lacey, “The Ledger”.com, July 15, 2006

What if people had chosen to build houses in the lake area during a dry-weather period, or when the sinkholes were fully open and draining well?

Page 256 – Collapsible Soils

Windblown dust, loess, loosely bound with clay. Can be stable, even in steep slopes . . . . Unless

water and shaking persist.

Coastal uplift in some places, coastal subsidence in others (New

Orleans, Venice, Italy)

Vertical deformation at about 0.3 inches per year (page 265-266)

Organic Soils

Prone to bio-degradation, water absorption --- collapse

Magmatic and Tectonic UpliftLateral or vertical pressure

page 257

Expansive Soils

Shrink and/or swell due to water entry and/or exit

Hydraulic power of . . . . Water

In freezing, water expands by 9% in converting from liquid to ice, exerting enough

force to fracture hard metal and concrete.

In absorbing water, swelling soils can exert a force of 10,000 pounds per square foot,

enough to lift an office building.

Page 260

Why is Taylorsville cobbles and clay?Regolith exposed near the surface – big blocks of fractured bedrock.

Stream bed cobbles from eroded, broken regolith

The stream bed became ‘armor-plated’ - pavement

Over time, the hillsides eroded away, leaving the ‘armored’ stream bed as the new top of the hill. The stream bed outlasted the hills.

The new stream beds filled with even smaller material: sand, silt, clay.

Coal seam fires – page 269

Some in Utah, thousands in China

Started by lightning or mining activity or wildfires

Pennsylvania communities abandoned as earth turned hot and gooey, and

gases choked the air

Billions of tons of good Utah coal may never be brought to market, because it either has a little too

much sulfur (acid rain) or is under/overlain with other coal

seams that have been mined out. So, either the floor or the ceiling is

vulnerable to collapse.

In other cases, Utah coal seams are too near lakes (Electric Lake),

roadways, power lines, surface streams, major fault lines or

buildings.

Page 273

Consider the importance of mapping hazards and cataloging

“best practices” to allow best use of land. Even today, many

buildings do not take into account ground/soil hazards.

Timber Lakes Estates – 1980 to present

We did not look at all at underground geology, only at general ‘carrying

capacity’ of the area. The developer argued successfully for higher-density

development, more units per acre.

Many dangerous landslides are occurring.

Sometimes testing is very expensive, sometimes as much as

$50,000 per building site.

Ground-penetrating radar is cool, but for gamblers it is more likely to

disappoint than to please.

U.S. Strategic Petroleum ReservePage 270)

700,000,000 barrels of crude oil stored in rinsed-out salt domes in

the Texas, Louisiana region.

Would not last the USA for more than about a month

Chapter 9 Atmosphere and Severe Weather

Note: The remainder of Chapter 9 will be sent in a new PowerPoint.

Solar energy is the most important motive force for humans.

Solar budget: for every 100 photons coming IN:

31 are reflected out69 are absorbed, so

69 must radiate back out at night, during winter, etc.

Where would we be without the atmosphere?

World average 5°F instead of 59°Fand extreme variability:

500 degree change from shade to sun, inch to inch every minute

Which of the gases below is helping create border-line hazardous air quality in Salt Lake County this

week?

N2 = 79%

O2 = 21%

O3 = ozone

Ch4 = methane

CO = carbon monoxideCO2 = carbon monoxide (rising from 280 pm to about 400 ppm

PM = particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10)

H2O = water vapor (1-4 percent by volume)

Oxides of Nitrogen and Sulfur (and others)

Permanent gases

Variable gases

Ch4

Radiation IN (mostly short wave)

ReflectionAbsorption

Convection ConductionRadiation

Re-radiation OUT (mostly longer wave)

The BIG Six:Which comes first?

• #3. Wind (heated air moves by having been pressurized)

• #2. Pressure (heated molecules vibrate more, expanding and pushing outward)

• #1. Temperature (solar energy converts to thermal energy we can feel)

• #5. Cloudiness (condensation) (when humid air cools, clouds form)

• #4. Humidity (heated, blowing air easily evaporates water)

• #6. Precipitation (if cloudy air cools further, rain and snow may fall)

Step-wise process of heating the atmosphere and water:

Step 1 -- Solar energy reaches atmosphereStep 2 -- Reflection (31%) and absorption (69%)Step 3 – Absorbed energy converts to sensible heat (IR and other thermal states)Step 4 -- Transfer by Convection, Conduction and Re-radiationStep 5 -- Re-radiation to outer space – about 99.99%?

- A little is stored as green plant growth (hydrocarbon)- Are we also storing a little bit more as “global warming”?

6. Change in temperature means change in pressure (higher temp, more vigorous molecule movement).7. Change in pressure creates wind.8. Heat and wind help evaporate water:

- creating humidity as water vapor- condensing humidity back into liquid (cloud) water (precipitation)

9. Wind transfers:- heat and cold (energy transfer by moving the

substances that are holding the energy - - mostly in water)

Hadley Cells

Ordinary Cumulus Clouds(rising air cools and condenses hidden heat comes back out with the water)

Cumulus – emerging ‘congestus’

Strato-cumulus

Layered cumulus clouds

Consistent bottom, consistent

top, but still driven by heat-

releasing condensation

Cumulus cloud building as rising air speeds up by re-heating itself.

Notice where things went front ordinary surface heating to genuinely unstable – Mikey likes it.

So far, only a simple half-hour air-mass thunderstorm.

Massive amounts of hidden heat come back out as air rises quickly

Potentially deadly storm as vast heat comes out of ‘hiding’ – high wind as air rises very quickly. Tornadoes can result.

Super cells and meso-cyclones

Compare to simple Utah air mass thunderstorms

A hurricane, cyclone or typhoon could have hundreds of these.

Cloud Types – Which is the most prone to violence?

Putting “dirt” (silver iodide) into the air

Why?

Virga – rainfall that never hits the ground. Why?