Calcium carbonate
Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the formula CaCO3. It is a substance found in rocks as the minerals calcite and aragonite and is the main component of pearls and the shells of marine organisms, snails. Calcium carbonate is the ingredient in agricultural lime and is created when calcium ions in hard water react with carbonate ions to create limescale. It is medicinally used as a supplement or as an antacid. Calcium carbonate shares the properties of other carbonates. CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O → Ca2 This reaction is important in the erosion of rock, forming caverns. An unusual form of calcium carbonate is the hexahydrate, ikaite is stable only below 6 °C. The vast majority of calcium used in industry is extracted by mining or quarrying. Pure calcium carbonate, can be produced from a quarried source. Alternatively, calcium carbonate is prepared from calcium oxide, other forms can be prepared, the denser, orthorhombic λ-CaCO3 and μ-CaCO3, occurring as the mineral vaterite. The aragonite form can be prepared by precipitation at temperatures above 85 °C, calcite contains calcium atoms coordinated by 6 oxygen atoms, in aragonite they are coordinated by 9 oxygen atoms.
The vaterite structure is not fully understood, magnesium carbonate MgCO3 has the calcite structure, whereas strontium and barium carbonate adopt the aragonite structure, reflecting their larger ionic radii. Calcite and vaterite are pure calcium carbonate minerals, industrially important source rocks which are predominantly calcium carbonate include limestone, chalk and travertine. Eggshells, snail shells and most seashells are predominantly calcium carbonate, oyster shells have enjoyed recent recognition as a source of dietary calcium, but are a practical industrial source. While not practical as a source, dark green vegetables such as broccoli. Beyond Earth, strong evidence suggests the presence of Calcium carbonate on Mars, signs of Calcium Carbonate have been detected at more than one location. This provides some evidence for the past presence of liquid water, Carbonate is found frequently in geologic settings and constitute an enormous carbon reservoir. Calcium carbonate occurs as aragonite and dolomite, the carbonate minerals form the rock types, chalk, travertine and others
Desert
A desert is a barren area of land where little precipitation occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to the processes of denudation, about one third of the land surface of the world is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the regions where little precipitation occurs. Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation falls, by the temperature that prevails. Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks which consequently break in pieces, although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter and the resulting fragments and this picks up particles of sand and dust and wafts them aloft in sand or dust storms. Wind-blown sand grains striking any solid object in their path can abrade the surface, rocks are smoothed down, and the wind sorts sand into uniform deposits.
The grains end up as level sheets of sand or are piled high in billowing sand dunes, other deserts are flat, stony plains where all the fine material has been blown away and the surface consists of a mosaic of smooth stones. These areas are known as desert pavements and little further erosion takes place, other desert features include rock outcrops, exposed bedrock and clays once deposited by flowing water. Temporary lakes may form and salt pans may be left when waters evaporate, there may be underground sources of water in the form of springs and seepages from aquifers. Where these are found, oases can occur and animals living in the desert need special adaptations to survive in the harsh environment. Plants tend to be tough and wiry with small or no leaves, water-resistant cuticles, some annual plants germinate and die in the course of a few weeks after rainfall while other long-lived plants survive for years and have deep root systems able to tap underground moisture. Animals need to cool and find enough food and water to survive.
Many are nocturnal and stay in the shade or underground during the heat of the day and they tend to be efficient at conserving water, extracting most of their needs from their food and concentrating their urine. Some animals remain in a state of dormancy for long periods and they reproduce rapidly while conditions are favorable before returning to dormancy. People have struggled to live in deserts and the surrounding lands for millennia. Nomads have moved their flocks and herds to wherever grazing is available, the cultivation of semi-arid regions encourages erosion of soil and is one of the causes of increased desertification. Many trade routes have been forged across deserts, especially across the Sahara Desert, large numbers of slaves were taken northwards across the Sahara
Alluvial fan
An alluvial fan is a fan- or cone-shaped deposit of sediment crossed and built up by streams. If a fan is built up by debris flows it is called a debris cone or colluvial fan. These flows come from a point source at the apex of the fan. Fans are typically found where a canyon draining from mountainous terrain emerges out onto a flatter plain, a convergence of neighboring alluvial fans into a single apron of deposits against a slope is called a bajada, or compound alluvial fan. As a streams gradient decreases, it drops coarse-grained material and this reduces the capacity of the channel and forces it to change direction and gradually build up a slightly mounded or shallow conical fan shape. The deposits are poorly sorted. There will be iso-transport energy lines forming concentric arcs about the point at the apex of the fan. Thus the material will tend to be deposited equally about these lines, Alluvial fans are often found in desert areas subject to periodic flash floods from nearby thunderstorms in local hills.
The typical watercourse in an arid climate has a large, funnel-shaped basin at the top, leading to a narrow defile, multiple braided streams are usually present and active during water flows. Phreatophytes are plants that are concentrated at the base of alluvial fans. They have long tap roots 30 to 50 feet to water that has seeped through the fan and hit an impermeable layer, sometimes collecting in springs. These stands of shrubs cling to the soil at their bases, Alluvial fans develop in wetter climates. Along the upper Koshi tributaries, tectonic forces elevate the Himalayas several millimeters annually, uplift is approximately in equilibrium with erosion, so the river annually carries some 100 million cubic meters of sediment as it exits the mountains. Deposition of this magnitude over millions of years is more than sufficient to account for the megafan, despite overpopulation on the plains, this bhabar zone is highly malarial and has remained largely uninhabited. In North America, streams flowing into Californias Central Valley have deposited smaller, such as that of the Kings River flowing out of the Sierra Nevada creates a low divide, turning the south end of the San Joaquin Valley into an endorheic basin without a connection to the ocean.
Alluvial fans are subject to flooding and can be more dangerous than the upstream canyons that feed them. Their slightly convex perpendicular surfaces cause water to spread widely until there is no zone of refuge, if the gradient is steep, active transport of materials down the fan creates a moving substrate that is inhospitable to travel on foot or wheels. But as the gradient diminishes downslope, water comes down from above faster than it can flow away downstream, in the case of the Koshi River, the huge sediment load and megafans slightly convex transverse surface conspire against engineering efforts to contain peak flows inside manmade embankments
Sangre de Cristo Range
The Sangre de Cristo Range rises over 7,000 feet above the valleys and plains to the west and northeast. According to the USGS, the range is the part of the larger Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Usage of the terms Sangre de Cristo Range and Sangre de Cristo Mountains is varied, most of the range is shared by two National Forests, which abut along the range divide. Most of the northeast side is located within the San Isabel National Forest, the central part of the range is designated as the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness. The Great Sand Dunes National Park sits on the flank of the range at the edge of the San Luis Valley. The range divide is traversed by no paved roads, only by four wheel drive and foot trails over Hayden Pass, Hermit Pass, Music Pass, Medano Pass, and Mosca Pass. The highest peak in the range, located in the south, is Blanca Peak, other well-known peaks are the fourteeners of the Crestone group, Kit Carson Mountain, Crestone Peak, Crestone Needle, and Humboldt Peak. Two sub-peaks of Kit Carson Mountain, Challenger Point and Columbia Point, are named in memory of the crews of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the range is home to many high peaks in the 13,000 to 14,000 foot range.
See the Sangre de Cristo Mountains article for other noteworthy summits in the greater range, in 1719 the Spanish explorer Antonio Valverde y Cosio named the Sangre de Cristo mountains after being impressed by the reddish hue of the snowy peaks at sunrise, alpenglow. Today tourism is the economic activity. The Sangre de Cristos are fault-block mountains similar to the Teton Range in Wyoming, there are major fault lines running along both the east and west sides of the range and, in places, cutting through the range. The mountains were pushed up around 5 million years ago, basically as one mass of rock. The Sangre de Cristo range is still being uplifted today as faults in the area remain active, on the west side is the San Luis Valley, a portion of the Rio Grande Rift. On the southeast side is the Raton Basin, a quiet and these sedimentary rocks originated as sediment eroded from the Ancestral Rocky Mountains
Cambrian
The Cambrian Period was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 mya and its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latinised form of Cymru, the Welsh name for Wales, as a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some periods. The rapid diversification of lifeforms in the Cambrian, known as the Cambrian explosion, most of the continents were probably dry and rocky due to a lack of vegetation. Shallow seas flanked the margins of several continents created during the breakup of the supercontinent Pannotia, the seas were relatively warm, and polar ice was absent for much of the period. The United States Federal Geographic Data Committee uses a barred capital C ⟨Є⟩ character similar to the capital letter Ukrainian Ye ⟨Є⟩ to represent the Cambrian Period, the proper Unicode character is U+A792 Ꞓ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH BAR.
Despite the long recognition of its distinction from younger Ordovician Period rocks and older Supereon Precambrian rocks, the base of the Cambrian lies atop a complex assemblage of trace fossils known as the Treptichnus pedum assemblage. Pedum in Namibia and Newfoundland, and possibly, in the western USA, the stratigraphic range of T. pedum overlaps the range of the Ediacaran fossils in Namibia, and probably in Spain. The Cambrian Period followed the Ediacaran Period and was followed by the Ordovician Period, the Cambrian is divided into four epochs and ten ages. Currently only two series and five stages are named and have a GSSP, because the international stratigraphic subdivision is not yet complete, many local subdivisions are still widely used. In some of these subdivisions the Cambrian is divided into three epochs with locally differing names – the Early Cambrian, Middle Cambrian and Furongian, rocks of these epochs are referred to as belonging to the Lower, Middle, or Upper Cambrian.
Trilobite zones allow biostratigraphic correlation in the Cambrian, each of the local epochs is divided into several stages. The International Commission on Stratigraphy list the Cambrian period as beginning at 541 million years ago, the lower boundary of the Cambrian was originally held to represent the first appearance of complex life, represented by trilobites. The recognition of small shelly fossils before the first trilobites, and Ediacara biota substantially earlier and this formal designation allowed radiometric dates to be obtained from samples across the globe that corresponded to the base of the Cambrian. Early dates of 570 million years ago quickly gained favour, though the used to obtain this number are now considered to be unsuitable. A more precise date using modern radiometric dating yield a date of 541 ±0.3 million years ago, most continental land was clustered in the Southern Hemisphere at this time, but was drifting north. Large, high-velocity rotational movement of Gondwana appears to have occurred in the Early Cambrian, the sea levels fluctuated somewhat, suggesting there were ice ages, associated with pulses of expansion and contraction of a south polar ice cap.
In Baltoscandia a Lower Cambrian transgression transformed large swathes of the Sub-Cambrian peneplain into a epicontinental sea, the Earth was generally cold during the early Cambrian, probably due to the ancient continent of Gondwana covering the South Pole and cutting off polar ocean currents
Clastic rock
Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks by physical weathering. Geologists use the term clastic with reference to sedimentary rocks as well as to particles in sediment transport whether in suspension or as bed load, clastic sedimentary rocks are rocks composed predominantly of broken pieces or clasts of older weathered and eroded rocks. Clastic sediments or sedimentary rocks are classified based on size and cementing material composition. The classification factors are often useful in determining a samples environment of deposition, an example clastic environment would be a river system in which the full range of grains being transported by the moving water consist of pieces eroded from solid rock upstream. Grain size varies from clay in shales and claystones, through silt in siltstones, sand in sandstones, the Krumbein phi scale numerically orders these terms in a logarithmic size scale.
Siliciclastic rocks are clastic rocks that are composed almost exclusively of silicon. The composition of sedimentary rocks includes the chemical and mineralogical components of the framework as well as the cementing material that make up these rocks. Boggs divides them into four categories, major minerals, accessory minerals, rock fragments, major minerals can be categorized into subdivisions based on their resistance to chemical decomposition. Those that possess a great resistance to decomposition are categorized as stable, while those that do not are considered less stable, the most common stable mineral in siliciclastic sedimentary rocks is quartz. Quartz makes up approximately 65 percent of framework grains present in sandstones, less stable minerals present in this type of rocks are feldspars, including both potassium and plagioclase feldspars. Feldspars comprise a considerably lesser portion of framework grains and minerals and they only make up about 15 percent of framework grains in sandstones and 5% of minerals in shales.
Clay mineral groups are present in mudrocks but can be found in other siliciclastic sedimentary rocks at considerably lower levels. Accessory minerals are associated with those whose presence in the rock are not directly important to the classification of the specimen and these generally occur in smaller amounts in comparison to the quartz, and feldspars. Furthermore, those that do occur are generally heavy minerals or coarse grained micas, rock fragments occur in the composition of siliciclastic sedimentary rocks and are responsible for about 10 -15 percent of the composition of sandstone. They generally make up most of the gravel size particles in conglomerates, though they sometimes are, rock fragments are not always sedimentary in origin. They can be metamorphic or igneous, chemical cements vary in abundance but are predominantly found in sandstones. The two major types, are based and carbonate based
Quartz
Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earths continental crust, behind feldspar. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are semi-precious gemstones, since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia. The word quartz is derived from the German word Quarz and its Middle High German ancestor twarc, the Ancient Greeks referred to quartz as κρύσταλλος derived from the Ancient Greek κρύος meaning icy cold, because some philosophers apparently believed the mineral to be a form of supercooled ice. Today, the rock crystal is sometimes used as an alternative name for the purest form of quartz. Quartz belongs to the crystal system. The ideal crystal shape is a six-sided prism terminating with six-sided pyramids at each end, well-formed crystals typically form in a bed that has unconstrained growth into a void, usually the crystals are attached at the other end to a matrix and only one termination pyramid is present.
However, doubly terminated crystals do occur where they develop freely without attachment, a quartz geode is such a situation where the void is approximately spherical in shape, lined with a bed of crystals pointing inward. α-quartz crystallizes in the crystal system, space group P3121 and P3221 respectively. β-quartz belongs to the system, space group P6222 and P6422. These space groups are truly chiral, both α-quartz and β-quartz are examples of chiral crystal structures composed of achiral building blocks. The transformation between α- and β-quartz only involves a comparatively minor rotation of the tetrahedra with respect to one another, although many of the varietal names historically arose from the color of the mineral, current scientific naming schemes refer primarily to the microstructure of the mineral. Color is an identifier for the cryptocrystalline minerals, although it is a primary identifier for the macrocrystalline varieties. Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent, common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others.
The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties, the cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite. Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, carnelian or sard, heliotrope, amethyst is a form of quartz that ranges from a bright to dark or dull purple color. The worlds largest deposits of amethysts can be found in Brazil, Uruguay, France, sometimes amethyst and citrine are found growing in the same crystal. It is referred to as ametrine, an amethyst is formed when there is iron in the area where it was formed
Crestone, Colorado
The Town of Crestone is a Statutory Town in Saguache County, United States. The town population was 127 at the 2010 United States Census and it is a small village at the foot of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, in the northern part of the San Luis Valley. Crestone was a mining town, but little paying ore was discovered. In the 1970s, a land development, the Baca Grande, was established to the south and west. Crestone is easily accessible to visitors, a National Forest Service campground is about 3/4 of a north of town. Activities in the area include camping, hiking, Crestone is named for the 14, 000-foot peaks that lie just east of the town, Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle. The first settlement in the Crestone area occurred after the American Civil War with the granting of the Luis Maria Baca Grant No.4 to the heirs of the original Baca Grant at Las Vegas, New Mexico. Title to the grant at Las Vegas was clouded by a grant of the same land. The Baca heirs were offered alternative lands from the lands of the United States.
The square tract selected is 12.5 miles on a side south of Saguache County Road T south of Crestone, the Bacas deeded the land to their attorney, but it soon passed by tax sale to a third party. The ranch headquarters were on Crestone Creek to the southwest of Crestone, the Baca Grant was one of the first large tracts of land to be fenced in the West and in its heyday was the home of prize Hereford cattle. In addition to ranching there was mining in the area to the east. In 1880 the town of Crestone was platted by George Adams, lacking good ore, the boom was short-lived. A long period of decline followed, by 1948 Crestone had declined to its post-war population of 40, mostly retirees and cowboys who worked on the Grant, as the Baca Grant was called. Many of the old cabins were used as vacation homes, by 1971 the Baca Grant came into the ownership of a corporation which subdivided a portion of the Grant, creating the Baca Grande, a subdivision originally platted for about 10,000 lots. At great expense, underground utilities were installed and roads built, sales lagged and by 1979 the development was considered a liability by the corporation.
Maurice Strong, owner of a controlling interest and his fiancée, Hanne Marstrand, visited the development and they were inspired to create a world spiritual center and began granting parcels of land to traditional spiritual organizations. The population gradually began to increase and by 2006 several hundred homes had been built, Crestone is located near the 38th parallel, in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, high plains, canyons, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan.
Colorado and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, wheat, hay and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator.
Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction and Montrose
Gravel
Gravel /ˈɡrævəl/ is composed of unconsolidated rock fragments that have a general particle size range and include size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. Gravel is categorized by the Udden-Wentworth scale into granular gravel and pebble gravel, one cubic metre of gravel typically weighs about 1,800 kg. Gravel is an important commercial product, with a number of applications, many roadways are surfaced with gravel, especially in rural areas where there is little traffic. Globally, far more roads are surfaced with gravel than with concrete or tarmac, both sand and small gravel are important for the manufacture of concrete. Large gravel deposits are a geological feature, being formed as a result of the weathering. The action of rivers and waves tends to pile up gravel in large accumulations and this can sometimes result in gravel becoming compacted and concreted into the sedimentary rock called conglomerate. Where natural gravel deposits are insufficient for human purposes, gravel is often produced by quarrying and crushing hard-wearing rocks, such as sandstone, quarries where gravel is extracted are known as gravel pits.
Southern England possesses particularly large concentrations of them due to the deposition of gravel in the region during the Ice Ages. As of 2006, the United States is the leading producer and consumer of gravel. The word gravel comes from the Breton language, adding the -el suffix in Breton denotes the component parts of something larger. Thus gravel means the stones which make up such a beach on the coast. Many dictionaries ignore the Breton language, citing Old French gravele or gravelle, Gravel often has the meaning a mixture of different size pieces of stone mixed with sand and possibly some clay. American English allows small stones without sand mixed in known as crushed stone, types of gravel include, Bank gravel, naturally deposited gravel intermixed with sand or clay found in and next to rivers and streams. Also known as Bank run or River run, bench gravel, a bed of gravel located on the side of a valley above the present stream bottom, indicating the former location of the stream bed when it was at a higher level.
Creek rock, this is rounded, semi-polished stones, potentially of a wide range of types. It is used as concrete aggregate and less often as a paving surface. Crushed stone, rock crushed and graded by screens and mixed to a blend of stones and fines and it is widely used as a surfacing for roads and driveways, sometimes with tar applied over it. Crushed stone may be made from granite, dolomite, known as crusher run, DGA QP, and shoulder stone
Barcelona
Founded as a Roman city, in the Middle Ages Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. Barcelona has a cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre. Particularly renowned are the works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean is located in Barcelona, the city is known for hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as world-class conferences and expositions and many international sport tournaments. It is a cultural and economic centre in southwestern Europe, 24th in the world. In 2008 it was the fourth most economically powerful city by GDP in the European Union, in 2012 Barcelona had a GDP of $170 billion, it is leading Spain in both employment rate and GDP per capita change. In 2009 the city was ranked Europes third and one of the worlds most successful as a city brand, since 2011 Barcelona has been a leading smart city in Europe. During the Middle Ages, the city was known as Barchinona, Barçalona, Barchelonaa.
Internationally, Barcelonas name is abbreviated to Barça. However, this refers only to FC Barcelona, the football club. The common abbreviated form used by locals is Barna, another common abbreviation is BCN, which is the IATA airport code of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport. The city is referred to as the Ciutat Comtal in Catalan. The origin of the earliest settlement at the site of present-day Barcelona is unclear, the ruins of an early settlement have been excavated in the El Raval neighbourhood, including different tombs and dwellings dating to earlier than 5000 BC. The founding of Barcelona is the subject of two different legends, the first attributes the founding of the city to the mythological Hercules. In about 15 BC, the Romans redrew the town as a castrum centred on the Mons Taber, under the Romans, it was a colony with the surname of Faventia, or, in full, Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino or Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino. It enjoyed immunity from imperial burdens, the city minted its own coins, some from the era of Galba survive.
Some remaining fragments of the Roman walls have incorporated into the cathedral. The cathedral, known as the Basilica La Seu, is said to have founded in 343
Debris flow
Debris flows descending steep channels commonly attain speeds that surpass 10 meters per second, although some large flows can reach speeds that are much greater. Debris flows with volumes ranging up to about 100,000 cubic meters occur frequently in mountainous regions worldwide, the largest prehistoric flows have had volumes exceeding 1 billion cubic meters. As a result of their high sediment concentrations and mobility, debris flows can be very destructive, notable debris-flow disasters of the twentieth century involved more than 20,000 fatalities in Armero, Colombia in 1985 and tens of thousands in Vargas State, Venezuela in 1999. Debris flows have volumetric sediment concentrations exceeding about 40 to 50%, by definition, “debris” includes sediment grains with diverse shapes and sizes, commonly ranging from microscopic clay particles to great boulders. Media reports often use the term mudflow to describe debris flows, on Earths land surface, mudflows are far less common than debris flows.
However, underwater mudflows are prevalent on submarine continental margins, where they may spawn turbidity currents, Debris flows in forested regions can contain large quantities of woody debris such as logs and tree stumps. Sediment-rich water floods with solid concentrations ranging from about 10 to 40% behave somewhat differently from debris flows and are known as hyperconcentrated floods, normal stream flows contain even lower concentrations of sediment. Debris flows can be triggered by rainfall or snowmelt, by dam-break or glacial outburst floods. Debris flows can be more frequent following forest and brush fires, in Japan a large debris flow or landslide is called yamatsunami, literally mountain tsunami. Debris flows are accelerated downhill by gravity and tend to follow steep mountain channels that debouche onto alluvial fans or floodplains, the front, or head of a debris-flow surge often contains an abundance of coarse material such as boulders and logs that impart a great deal of friction.
Trailing behind the high-friction flow head is a lower-friction, mostly liquefied flow body that contains a percentage of sand, silt. These fine sediments help retain high pore-fluid pressures that enhance debris-flow mobility, in some cases the flow body is followed by a more watery tail that transitions into a hyperconcentrated stream flow. Debris flows tend to move in a series of pulses, or discrete surges, wherein each pulse or surge has a head, body. Debris-flow deposits are readily recognizable in the field and they make up significant percentages of many alluvial fans and debris cones along steep mountain fronts. Lateral levees can confine the paths of ensuing debris flows, through dating of trees growing on such deposits, the approximate frequency of destructive debris flows can be estimated. This is important information for development in areas where debris flows are common. Ancient debris-flow deposits that are exposed only in outcrops are more difficult to recognize and this poor sorting of sediment grains distinguishes debris-flow deposits from most water-laid sediments.
Other geological flows that can be described as debris flows are typically given more specific names, the word lahar is of Indonesian origin, but is now routinely used by geologists worldwide to describe volcanogenic debris flows
