CWU's Nick Zentner learns from geologist Skye Cooley near Othello. Second spot: goo.gl/maps/xCKeMT1dZ7wHEG197 Skye's Clastic Dikes video: • Clastic Dikes with Sky...
I love that I have enough background now to grasp not only what an expert like Skye is talking about, but even occasionally what he's hinting at. Nick has opened up a whole world to me. His approachable style makes learning complex topics almost effortless. This lesson from Skye was so interesting and enjoyable. I wish I could be there, even with the cow smell!
Clarification: I think I used Wisconsin instead of Pleistocene or mistakenly said 150,000 yrs - Please excuse, I was very tired after spending more than a week in the field. Also, unconformities Richard Waitt and I observed at the Rulo Site in northern Walla Walla Valley, described by Professors Nick Bader and Pat Spencer of Whitman College (Bader et al., 2016), are likely older than last glacial (>75 ka). My comments were unclear regarding their work. Each of the Rulo unconformities is separated by roughly 100,000 years. Strata there could plausibly correlate to the calcretes near Othello.
I simply enjoy the fact you and nick make all this information public. Living here my whole life there have been so much assumption by myself. The definition you two have given me is absolutely priceless man. Much appreciated
This is such an exciting time for those interested in geology. Thank you Nick. Very few academics are willing to take on areas of their fields that are ambiguous.
The last time I stopped in Othello, I was in high school. It was the mid 70’s and my team was playing against Othello High School in the WIAA state football playoffs. We won the game on the efforts of my neighbor who played fullback and ran for over 200 yards in that game. It was a great game and the kids from the home team were just as enthusiastic as our fans. Truly the best experience a kid can have in high school is playing under those Friday Night Lights!
I really enjoy the field trips and lectures. I wish we had someone, like you Nick, here in the coalfields of southwestern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky to help make some sense of our unique geology; with the many coal seams, sandstone, shale and limestone layers. It’s truly amazing and baffling to me, as a lifelong coal miner and one who always has been in awe of our precious earth and how it all came to be as it is
I am fully convinced that during the 1950's America's top geologist, Professor Zentner (not his real name) was called to area 51 to look at the geology around the area where I was told by someone high up that they ran experiments. Professor Zentner was pulled into a time warp and now spends his days looking at the local geology of Washington but he knows so much more!
I grew up in Yakima and Selah. We had a small ranch with open pastures. We wanted to raise cattle, so fences are pretty important. Easy right, post hole digger - just go for it. 1-2 feet down, hardpan so hard and so thick that building fences almost requires explosives to break up the layer (we did and it worked). Next time, I will use pneumatic or electric jackhammers. Hard getting explosives now days. Funny thing is it just depended where you lived. Some areas had better soil than others. In Yakima, we had river cobble.
Thanks for bringing Skye back ,Nick. We admire him so much, and love his sense of humor . We’re watching this one again right now. It’s a lot to take in.
Lauren Alter>> In high school geology was one of my favorite course but I always got C's and slipped off the honor roll (math grades sucked, too) because each class, I was so incredibly fascinated by learning the deep stories of this planet we live on that come the pop quizzes and tests I blew it because I took lousy notes and blew off all those really important factoids like dates and pHs and things I was supposed to be absorbing. The "romance" and scope of the geologic record was what packed the wallops for me. Now, with Nick and some others, I can just listen and look with no test coming later! Trance time again, right??
To listen to someone so knowledgeable, passionate, and inquisitive about the geologic history is engaging. There is a certain intellectual honesty with a field observer, an ability to be open minded and not over explain the data prematurely , that I appreciate. I always continue to learn with you, Nick, but this was a home run without the gratuitous geological fireworks of volcanism or dramatic fault slips. Well done for your guest.
Thanks for this one, Nick! I like that Skye Cooley gravitates towards these kind of “liminal” subjects in geology-it seems like he enjoys working in between and on the edges of the familiar, both expanding and further connecting the body of knowledge of PNW geology. Paleosols and pedology doesn’t get nearly enough attention in geologic education, IMO. Besides calcrete, there are all kinds of hard pans or “duricrusts”, like silcrete (silica rich hardpan/duricrust), gypcrete (gypsum rich), ferricrete (aka laterite), alcrete (basically bauxite), and other “orecretes”, or super gene ore deposits. I’m interested in these Plio-Pleistocene older floods. There were many Ice Ages before the most recent, and the newer floods likely wiped out flood deposits from older floods, which would have traveled along similar paths, so it’s no surprise that evidence is scanty. Besides the Ice-marginal story, with the Missoula floods, there is of course also Lake Bonneville and the Bonneville flood, and many other huge lakes existed in the PNW during Plio-Pleistocene time. I think the idea of the river competing with the volcanic pile is smart, though. Volcanics dam river, river incises volcanic pile, outburst flood results, leaves a fossil surface as a high and dry grassland (or sagebrush land), where it just bakes and accumulates carbonate for hundreds of thousands of years. It would be interesting to correlate these horizons with the glacial cycles and the Milankovich cycles that controlled them, since the formation of these calcretes depends a lot on climatic conditions.
I want to clarify in this earlier comment of mine that by “many ice ages”, what I really meant was “many stadials” or “many glacial advances”. Technically the entire Pleistocene can be considered one Ice Age altogether, within which have been several cycles of stadial (cold period/glacial advance) followed by interstadial (warm period/glacial retreat), and many scientists even push the date of the current overall ice age back from the start of the Pleistocene to around 35 Ma, when the Antarctic ice sheets started to grow. Still some others refer to the Pleistocene ice age and Antarctic ice age as two separate, but consecutive ice ages. But again, my comment relates to the many separate stadials/glacial advances during the Pleistocene…not actual, proper ice ages. The Earth has, however gone through many proper Ice Ages too, also known as “glaciations”, or “icehouse climates”, as opposed to a “greenhouse climate”, in which there is no ice at either pole. Previous ice ages include the Archean Pongola glaciation, Paleoproterozoic Huronian/Makgenyene glaciation, the possible-but-scant-supported Mesoproterozoic King Leopold Glaciation, the controversial Tonian Kaigas glaciation (our own Mike Eddy, who many will be familiar with on this channel has in fact helped to publish the latest supporting evidence for this event, which has been challenged by many Precambrian glaciation experts), the famous Cryogenian Sturtian and Marinoan “snowball earth” glaciations, the Ediacaran Gaskiers and Baikonurian glaciation (the latter extends just into Cambrian time, and may be labeled with the more old-fashioned “Infracambrian” or “Vendian” time periods), the Ordovician Hirnantian/Andean-Saharan glaciation, and of course the Permo-carboniferous Karoo/Late Paleozoic Glaciation. There is also increasing evidence for occasional Mesozoic icehouse events or “cold snaps”, though the scientific community has not gone so far as to label these as proper “Ice Ages” quite yet…these seem to have occurred sporadically throughout the Mesozoic, namely during the Late Pliensbachian, Bajocian-Bathonian, and Tithonian epochs of the Jurassic, and the Valanginian-Hauterivian and Aptian-Albian epochs of the Cretaceous. The evidence includes possible glacial tillites, dropstones, and glendonites (cold water carbonates), nannofossil physiological changes, oxygen isotope data, and even purported glacial scour marks. So, yes-the earth has seen many ice ages, but within an individual ice age, there are many cycles of stadials (cold periods, glacial advances) and interstadials (warm periods/glacial retreats, like the interstadial during which we currently live, even though we still live during an ice age, overall), governed by perturbations in the earth’s orbital characteristics with regard to the sun (see: Milankovitch cycles), and it was to these repeated stadials/glacial advances of our current Ice Age that I was referring in my comment.
Here in Texas we call calcrete Caliche. Had to look that up to see what you meant. Lots of that in north Austin. Cool to hear how it forms. Learn one thing and learn lots more!
Hey, I have stuff in my area that looks like that. I am in Santa Clarita California. I don't know how to post a picture, but I have fossilized spiral shelled creatures that as far as I have learned are 400 to 300,000,000 years old. The earth that I have found them in is generally light and powdery like this fossil layer. It is located at a huge transition between tectonic plates and geological features. From what I have learned it goes from 10 million years to 400 million years in about 5 miles
Natural Calcrete for ceramic slip has excellent results! Most unusual is the white purity/absence of iron oxide, even less than 1% of FeO stains anything brownish/yellowish after firing, rather firing Calcrete above 1200ºC a pure pale with greenish granular tones emerged. Also shocking how the Othello Calcrete is exactly identical from my local Barcelona: pure white, cracked cemented chunks perforated with roots and insect action, only my road outcrop was several meters high of uninterrupted Calcrete on top of a 177 meter deltaic mountain. Amazing info!👍
@@taleandclawrock2606 smashing, grinding and sieving, two or three different sieves thicknesses to get the fine powder and separate harder stuff, then mixing it with water and apply by bath or brush over fresh clay to even the drying so it sticks well and no more than the layers needed because calcium melts above 1100 C
Hello from NSW Australia. There's a lot of what's called Calcrete in regions of outback Australia. One particular region is being surfaced mined for fertilizer products as the Calcrete there is rich in Phosphate.
I'm gobsmacked to now pile on another area of geology that is even closer to my backyard. I grew up seeing Caliche layers farming Eltopia, lamented digging through it with backhoes, and motorcycling around the region seeing the layers. I understood old stuff basalt, new stuff floods, but wondered about that intermediate history and thinking it might be a 60 foot band of concentrated time gave me an "Aha!" moment. And I swear I could smell the smoke coming off Mr. Cooley's brain as he's trying to sort a complex picture into a paper to publish. Thanks BOTH OF YOU for sharing with a interested geology novice and giving me even more to think about!
I note that there are calcretes exposed in the canyon walls of the Deschutes river, in Deschutes and Crook Counties in Oregon also. They are embedded within the lavas from a complex of flows from the primordial cascade range to tbe west, and lavas from Mt Newberry Caldera.
To find interesting exposures, you guys should take a train ride through all this and stick a go-pro out the window and record all the cuttings. Then find the interesting photos and publish them on a map. Like a Google street view, but for geologists.
Living outside of Othello, I’ve always hated caliche, because it makes digging fence posts and irrigation lines a huge pain. Nice to know there’s something to appreciate about it.
I love this stuff. I grew up there and always thought it was interesting, it is awesome to be leaning so much bout it now. I grew up on the hill between Scooteney and Eagle Lakes, the last piece of the Saddle Mt ridge with flood cuts on all sides. It really is the triple junction.
What shocks me the most, is that there's a man in this field of science from Big Sky Country who works and studies within the coulee formations in Washington has the name Skye Cooley. What a perfect name for a geologist. It'd be like a paleontologist having the name Bones Mcfinder Lol.
You always serve up enough for me to just want to get out into these Drakensberg mountains in South Africa and realy look over the whole scene unfolding befor me, with a new sense of wonder. Slowly but surely, I am beginning to be able to ask what i reckon are some of the right questions. No longer looking at these spectacular cliffs with a cursory glance. Thank you Nick and Skye for such an interesting field trip... Kind regards Keith Fey.. .
I didn't quite follow your interesting side note, "The [Columbia] river was competing with the Simco Volcanic Pile ... manifest up here in the Pasco Basin as those lakes in the Upper Ringold." I picture pooled water from a river struggling against rock, ... yet river incision is your message. Thanks for the great field trip. Really made calcrete come alive ;-).
I'm not sure either. The lakes formed in Pasco Basin at the end of RIngold time probably didn't form by ponding against the Horse Heaven Hills, as has been said for years. The HHH and Wallula Gap appear to be older than 3 Ma. The young Simcoe volcanics near Goldendale may be the culprit. Their eruption may have swamped the Columbia Gorge, forming a dam for a while until the river cut through. Not sure. That story, first proposed a hundred years ago, is being sorted out by others right now.
This is intriguing.. The big, first order actions like the basalt floods and Yakima shifting become enhanced by the nitty gritty of these slower, local processes. Basalt floods and the yakima uplift resulted from the tectonics, but this is more climatic perhaps if loess and ash are brought in by the wind..
I mentioned Skye in your last video's comments before watching this and wha-la , here he is! This stuff is incredible even for an amatuer time traveller as myself. I was so fascinatedly entertained I forgot to have my dinner!
Thanks for asking Sky the question to clarify the difference between limestone and calcrete; you asked for clarification at the exact moment I was wondering about the differences and/or similarlies.
Excellent! I love how your presentations have morphed over time from focus on teaching to focus on discovery and pushing the boundaries of our understanding and knowledge base. Science at it's best and most relatable.
Another intriguing presentation, thank you Skye and Nick! New thoughts to consider, and await more information. It's always exciting to learn! (And to see cicada tunnels!)
I like this guy! He seems like a great person to have a conversation with! Another great video Nick, thanks! Are these calcretes representing stable times for the ice sheet? That tumult zone in the middle fairly clearly demonstrates a melting period for the ice sheet, preceded and followed by a period of minimal water shedding, or 'stability'.
26:58 "The smell of money". That's exactly what I have said to my wife when visiting my former hometown of Tulare, CA. on vacation. Lots of dairies around there. LOL.
I submit that calcium carbonates can form over much more rapid time periods than people realize. Many claim that stalactites of a certain size for one example, take roughly a hundred thousand years. But stalactites of similar size have been proven to form in 60 to 80 years. A VERY large stalagmite in Texas formed outdoors from a single artesian spring exiting a pipe that was practically non-existent in 1912. Now its as huge as any seen in any cave. An 1840's built limestone fort on the St Lawrence river has stalactites hanging from certain spots in the ceiling which if they were in a limestone cave in New York State would be cited at something like 9000 years. But that fort was built in the 1840's.
I’ve watched this three times. I just really enjoy listening and seeing how time and materials creates the surface we live on. I really like Skye. He does an excellent job at explaining what we are seeing. Would like to hear more of him and what he’s up to. Thank you Nick. Love these videos so very good. 🥳
I love it ! Cutting edge discovery straight from where it’s at. So great to hear the formulation of new interpretations as they are being initially presented. It may be filling in the blanks but so important in the overall scheme of the area. Many thanks to Skye Cooley for sharing his thoughts with us and to Nick for bringing him to us. Great stuff !
If you fly the drone, are there any scales you can place before flight,; and any post production edits you could do to enhance a published illustration? It would need to be lightweight for field work. Perhaps inflatable.
I have no idea what he’s talking about so I got out a dictionary and a science book because I was following your questions, which were closer to what I could understand but still over my head lol. Whew! Great video dude. Fun.
Are you parked on W Herman RD for the second location, north on the tracks? I think I have found the exposure. edit: Never mind. I just found your second site map link.
Yes sir, I remember that dude and he is so damn cool. Right on your level brother. Passionate aficionados of geology and frankly, I'll say it… Born educators.✊ put that in your pipe and smoke it. I thank you both for being beautiful educators, and it is some thing that I aspire to and I'm excited to do when somebody knows a little less than I do. I am Notorious for my exuberance about knowledge, RU-vid videos like yours, podcasts, etc. I love to preach the word of Science, and human passion that goes along with it! I have that core passion just like you guys, without the Pedegree. No matter… I learned from folks like you and share it with every single person I know! As such, your dedication to education and passion spreads… Dare I say… Like a noble religion. The differences every fact is subject to the scientific method!❤️✊👍
Fascinating gentlemen thank you just riveting to me. I have watched this twice today. Such a nice pairing with yesterdays visit to Saddle Mountain! I think I took a left when I could have taken a right back in time.. I love this country and grew up in it never knowing all this raw beauty was hidden in the hillsides. Now then I looked up Skye in a search and found his website. This is one impressive talented individual aside from his credentials in field geology. Skye is an accomplished Artist on canvas with stunning work; and a fine Woodworker of beautiful furniture. I am feeling more blessed with every deposit you make in this video adventure with you Nick. Just a whole hidden world opens up at a time when the world at large seems overburdened with ugliness this is a great escape to GOD's Creation!
All you needed to do is wave at me on the end of Frenchman hills. I have a quarry on top and it is a salad bowl of interesting layers and colors of geology. Plus it’s got a great view of the drumheller.
Looking at the LIDAR imagery of Western Canada on Google Maps, I see floods beneath glaciers flowing north and south, which to me dispel the Missoula Flood theory. I'm not saying Missoula Lake didn't exist, but the hydraulic pressure at the base of the ice dam was a factor. (.43 psi per foot). BC Canada has volcanic evidence and possibly an impactor site.
Being from South Eastern New Mexico, the Kalcrete(?) Looks a heck of a lot like the Caprock (Ogalala formation's edge) around Maljamar, NM... (We just don't have all that green stuff in the background valley...)
Spending a lot of time wondering, why have these guys brought us here? But Zentnerds have faith in Nick, this will lead somewhere :-) .. Love it when Nick makes noises that indicate his brain is interpreting and rushing ahead!
If the calcrete is "only" from ~ 1mya, does that mean the Saddle Mtn. fault/uplift/upthrust is < 2 million years old? Doesn't the calcrete show us that the top of Saddle Mountain was at the same elevation of the Crab Creek/Columbia/Snake/Missoula Flood valley floor and that the upthrust is just recent? Layers from bottom being Grande Ronde and Priest River Lava flows, 30 feet of Yellowstone hotspot ash, Ringgold Lava flow, with calcrete from the long stable period and Ice age flood deposits on the very top? Is that the proper concept? And THEN the uplift occurred to create the Saddle Mountain? Jimminey. Planetary evolution.
Calcretes developed atop a low-relief, low-elevation surface formed after a base level drop of the Columbia River system at ~3.2 Ma, possibly a result of the river defeating the Simcoe volcanic pile. The calcrete-armored surface has since been folded and faulted by Yakima Fold Belt structures. So calcretes would be younger than the base level drop (and post-Ringold unconformity). They are no older than ~3 Ma and no younger than ~50 ka. Young uplift of some YFB ridges seems quite possible, though they may have developed in stages. Some anticlines may have begun to form 10-15 million years ago. Pulses of uplift? Also, the Cougar Point Tuff (~11 Ma) that Nick showed us in a previous video sits today atop the Saddle Mts ridge. It was deposited and thickened in a lowland setting. The Saddle Mts ridge - at least the Sentinel Gap portion - must not have been there at 11 Ma.
The impressive north face of Saddle Mts only drops 600m to Crab Creek, a flood-scoured coulee. Calcrete-armored benches on the south side of Frenchman Hills match up well with the Smyrna Bench surface. A great view can be had along Rd 15 SW off Beverly-Burke Rd. The alluvial fill that used to span the Crab Creek valley (prior to ice age flooding) looked a lot like it does on the gently-sweeping south slope of Saddle Mts, between the crest and White Bluffs. Structurally and topographically, the wrinkle ridges are not that big. But that hike up the north face is still pretty darn tiring.
this was a very cool i will call it a presentation. it definitely will have me looking at my local geology a bit more open mindedly, and maybe spot something of interest to someone. i need to find some people who know a lot more about my area so i can be of more help. northern Utah, almost Idaho.
There is a retired u of u geologist just this last year did three u tube vids on breaching of red rock pass by tsunami from quake in saltlake vall6 by little cottonwood canyon and bell canyon. He started with Gilbert's trench thought to be a Groban but he proposes and I thinkproves it was actually an underwater land slide . Also by bells canyon
@@jeffbybee5207 I believe i saw that one, or one similar. I might just go up to USU which is 3 minutes away from me and see who i can chat with. if i can find the time during the day.
Milwaukee RR grade? My Dad worked for them! I’ve always thought the flood features of the scablands took many floods to create more than the most recent floods?
There are white deposits at the Surface of wet soils at the base of the north side of the saddle mountains. Are these the conditions for the development of calcretes? Or are they created subsurface through water seeping through loess?
If I wasn't paying attention to both these videos today (this and the Saddle Mtn) and watching without the volume up, I would think the white layers from both videos were caused by the same events, both having a red layer on top of each. Though one redder than the other. Yes, I did have the volume up and heard the difference. Just saying.
Pleistocene cicada burrows. If you're interested in learning more, researchers at Washington State University have written about them extensively. Search for this article online: O'Geen, McDaniel, and Busacca (2002) "Cicada burrows as indicators of paleosols in the inland Pacific Northwest", Soil Science Society of America Journal v. 66.
Guessing steam moving up and out of the wet ash bed was responsible for red discoloration at the base of the basalt flow. A slight chemistry change occurred during eruption and was later highlighted by weathering (oxidation). I bet Dr. Shamloo knows.
I don't know where Othello is, but I know where the state routes meet. 😂 My brain just did this like supersonic flyover from both directions, and crashed over where Othello would be. :50 the white rock in the middle of the screen looks exactly like what's in the exposed cliffs over East Wenatchee.
