I am hooked on geology! I am a retired Canadian electrical engineer, 81 and love to watch youtube videos. I am omnivorous, from philosophy to engineering. I now watch Prof Zentner's videos.
Nick, one of your top 5 episodes ever. Skye Cooley is a total natural in front of the camera. Almost as good as yourself!! I could listen him again and again, should you choose to feature him again! You two could do a stand up geology comedy show. I'm laughing as I watch!
My thoughts exactly! Some geology guys should really jump on RU-vid and share their knowledge. This is usually hidden at the lab, but people will be interested to know. I’m far away from geology doing different job, but it fascinates me all these features. It’s just cool to know! 😎
Thanks for the fun day, Nick. I'll read through the comments and post responses on my website (listed in video description), if that's alright with you.
In the small universe of geologists geeking out on recent sedimentary exposures you just followed the Micheal Jordan of geologists and held your ground. Thank you, loved it.
I'm an Aussie that visited WA state briefly in 2011/2012. I was staggered by the range of geologic formation and scenery. Fascinated by all the info you're providing Nick. Skye is a natural educator and presenter. Onion skin cracking?Extreme cold/heat expand and contract. The whole region must be vibrating/moving according to its tectonic history. Massive respect to Skye for his project of recording the Dike Data.
i had to google the term clastic dike after watching just a little bit because i was lost after clicking " play ", i chose to watch this because i thoiught it was a dike to hold back a river or ocean from flooding, but the video taught me a new subject that is very interesting, after viewing some images of clastic dikes i came acroos an image from an alaska dike where a huge intrusion of a dark rockish material split light greay rock on either side of the dark intrusions of the dark rock, it was amazing to learn about this, it reminded me of watching a documentary of the great lakes horizontal rock formations where curves were caused by stress from glaciers i suppose, i am not a geologist as you can tell, but thank you for posting, the subject is very interesting and the video very entertaining for an hour of relaxing learning
Now I need to start hunting for clastic dikes when I am exploring. :). Great episode. I enjoy listening to Skye. He is really exited about his project.
Nothing like a hard work day, cracking a beer, and joining you guys. Fun! Your joking around and enthusiasm is just great. And puzzling over why and how gets us all involved. Again, thanks!
That change in grain size is so intriguing, I wonder if it's the difference of fluidization and subsequent injection of either the bed load or suspended load
Memories of drives Grandma would take us on: stopping by road-way cuts, she pointing out this feature and that. She had worked on the North Cascades highway, brought back barrels of rocks and knew her stuff. Along Lake Crescent, she made up a story about the Indian Princess "Soft Shoulders" and her lover "Rolling Rock". They were pursued by a Lawyer, "Slippery when wet". Signs asking drivers to watch for Rolling Rock were a delight when we first saw them!
I too was told by my engineer dad that somewhere out there was a lost Indian, and that his name was Rolling Rock, and we should keep our eyes peeled..... usually Dad told that story between Trinidad and the opening of Moses Coulee.
The weight of the flood water could have asserted extreme pressure on the underlying formations, potentially causing distributed stress cracking through the depression of the vast areas being flooded. Water weighs roughly 8.34 pounds / gallon. Multiplied by millions of gallons suddenly surging through an area, that’s a tremendous weight for underlying formations to bear, each with its own existing structural defects.
Not a geologist however I can visualise the substructure under the sudden sediment suspended water load mass fracturing the surface then hydraulically "excavating" a crack/dyke, filling with sediment and water. The water is then adsorbed into the wall of the crack, carrying and physically separating suspended particles with the "fines" transferring to the wall of the crack and the less-fines infilling the gap. Next flood or suspension/water load washes over the first filled in crack and interacts with this weakened surface zone and repeats the hydraulic washout process. continuing for each appropriate conditioned flood. I would propose some chemical and/or physical properties be examined within each dykette to see if the various dykettes say in the site examined, can be identified as being from the same event.
As a mining engineer, I understand the fracture/proppant/fluid-injection model. Correlating it with clastic dikes is brilliant. I liked the filter-cake description for the 'skin' too. It's good evidence the fracture/slurry penetrated dry sediment as you can't de-water using wet sediment.
Yep... Me too: I have observed that skin phenomenon... I never knew what it was, until now. I think I understand... one more little piece of an endless puzzle... peace.
Hey.... I truly AM super turned on by ALL this ...and I am just a 63 year old grandma working from home... I have this video on while working from home and I keep pausing my work because it is sooooo captivating and your driven passion is also what just thrills me... what you have done is truly INVALUABLE... your knowledge astounding.... you just pull detail information right out of your memory!!!.... phenomenal!!! I would love to see your reward to you from the Creator of all this... it is going to be a grand reward... thank you for a most enjoyable video!!!!
Wow! I encountered some clastic dikes in central Ontario, Canada during my first field camp in my undergrad... they were the meme of the trip. Those ones were Paleoproterozoic in age, about 2.3 billion years old, so a good bit older than these. Shockingly undeformed despite their age.
@@cacogenicist That was in the Espanola Formation in the Huronian supergroup. The last major metamorphic episode there was 1.9 billion years ago. The whole area was metamorphosed, and all the sediments are steeply dipping, but otherwise they're not very strongly deformed in many areas.
Skye Cooley, is that a romance novel hero's name or what...? Very succinct guy... I visualized these are a dry lake bed of clay w cracks that were filled with stuff by the next flood... anyone see that? Wonder if possible to date sediment vertical cracks v. horizontal bars... So fun I'm catching these when they are fresh.. OMG my heart dropped when they were on pavement and below peak of road, and then came a fast moving car when they were on hillside, gads, stay out of the road, boys!! Another Rock Concert...
Another great one Nick or Ned or whoever. I particularly like the defense of his top down theory for dike formation as well as tying it to ice age floods as opposed to seismic events. The techniques that he uses to characterize these features is also very useful for understanding how science is done. That to me is important when teaching science. When presented with a problem it is key to be able to break up and dissect that problem and be able to characterize the phenomena with data from a variety of sites. His work and thinking shows that process very clearly. Thanks again.
Nick I just found your videos. They are fascinating. Thank you. I am a fellow Badger. The geology of Washington is certainly more complex than north central Wisconsin.
Ever heard the geology fairy tale: Rumpled Silt Skins! Rumpled Silt Skins! Rumpled Silt skins! Haha, that phrase always gets me. This guy is a MACHINE for documenting all those things. Awesome. I love the way this guy operates outside the Ivory Tower. Viewers: definitely check out his blog for more detail. I am trying to understand all the evidence for the "top-down" formation-usually when I hear "clastic dykes" I think "injectite", from the bottom up, from overpressured liquified sediment, either due to seismic liquefication or loading from tons of flood water, or debris flow/turbidity current. In the Brian Atwater video I brought this up as a possibility in a comment, before this video came out and I could see the actual evidence. We saw obviously many of these are top down injected. Until I heard him say there were these dikes in basalt flows, I thought maybe rather than Ice wedging these massive, wet sediments could have been dried out on the surface, after the waters receded, starting cracks, and then the next flood could ream out and propagate the crack into a dike downward. Most ice-wedge structures I've seen are much more wedge shaped, and they are all emplaced in the center of the previous deposit, creating a "concentric" structure. I wonder if they are *all* downward emplaced, or some are also upward emplaced? I've read of examples where there are both in the same system (Hind Sandstone Member injectite complex in the UK). I guess it's weird to me there AREN'T any upward-emplaced dikes, at least that he mentioned, because with that amount of water over wet, unlithified sediment, you would expect some kind of fluid escape and overpressure from the sheer mass of water. Really interesting field trip. One of my favorite injectite clastic dykes is a super rare pseudotachylite injectite complex emplaced upwards from the overpressured, molten base of one of the world's biggest landslides in Utah (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BdhW2PQ_uCg.html), also interesting is the Neoproterozoic Tava sandstone injected into Pikes Peak Granite.
This one caught me by surprise. I am learning soooo much and the level of teaching and analysis and discussion of various theories in this episode was just perfect. Dang, it was just good. Thanks!
Not a geologist by any stretch, but I'm inclined to fall into the "frost" camp regarding the formation of these clastic dikes. Considering the area affected by an ice age would certainly be subject to permafrost conditions or at least extreme seasonal freezing conditions between flood releases, I wonder if these dikes could be formed in the same way as the polygonal fractures that occur in Alaska and northern Canada permafrost soils. Maybe a top view instead of side view is necessary. In any case, thank you very much to Nick and Skye for a very entertaining and very interesting hour. Absolutely the best content on the net.
I am enjoying your program so much. I am new to what you are teaching. But I lived in the Tri-Cities, WA. 1988-2004. I did see the Yakima dam outside of Richland, WA the ice was busting and falling over the dam in big sheets. There was also a lot of dead cattle in the river. I don't know if this will help but it is a thought. Keep up the good work. William Pool in Fritch Texas.
I am just a machinist but I lean that you are seeing liquefaction that took place down below you and you have a series of "sand dikes or sand blows". In that area its extremely recent lets use 15 thousand years. so the clastic dikes came up through unconsolidated material without hardly any pressure. We are looking at a huge 5 foot wide one very well defined and just did a small hike with a seizmologist and other geologist in which we viewed a long stretch of cross section liquifaction in what at the time would have been not fully lithified and almost clay like near the area of the huge sand/clastic dike. However its rock now in horse spring formation east of Las Vegas at 10 million years during the extension in which massive quakes were taking place. They are doing a paper on it likely to finish up in the fall.
The same gathering of data as a separate event followed by "spit balling" and assortment of interpretations leading to a a plausible theory that we've come to love in Nick's lectures..
WOW! Great stuff! Really liked the close-up of the composite clastic material. I think possibly the drying out of the Ice Age Flood deposits by the extremely dry air near the glaciers would give you a regional structure much like the surface of the playa in Nevada. The sediment is laid down, dries out, shrinks and cracks over hundreds of years, fills in with the next flood and the silt skin forms over the next hundreds of years and on and on? Again like the playa only on an Ice Age Flood scale. Has there been a layer excavation of a, lets say acre, of dike area? Flooding, drying, cracking, flooding with chocolate milkshakes over and over. Anywho, food for thought. Thanks Nick and Skye!
I was wondering about that myself... and I continue to wonder. I live in Northern California, by Lake Oroville. during times of extremely low water, I have observed cracking in sediments that must have gone down a dozen feet... (the lowest layers of Lake Oroville sediments contain beer cans from I guess the '60s) It seems like these cracks would, in short order, have to create something that would appear similar to what is being discussed here... as various velocities of water carrying various sizes of materials flooded back... And certainly, this process occurs multiple times in a given location, possibly accounting for the way some dikes intersect and crosscut other dikes...
Consider..... Maximum mineral solutions that transects the horizontal plain.... So, the hydro solutions originated from deep earth sources and were over pressured and transected to the surface.... I recommend. ..the the top of the dike will reveal a consolidation of minerals in a localized format.... Therefore, verifying the vertical flow that reaches the surface
Long live enthusiastic grading regimes of Walla Walla! Thanks guys for a YET ANOTHER lesson about my home region. Totally going to be looking for clastic dikes next time I ride on the Africa Twin. And I spotted your calcrete site near Othello as I was riding my FJR last week north past Hunters.
I love the point where Skye talks about a true understanding of this geological phenomenon may need understanding from a basic engineering text. May be that we may need to study many thing to greater understanding of many things. Hello from field archaeology. Peace.
Dedicated (Obsessed?) Dude! Thank you Skye Cooley for your work, and Nick for bringing it to us. Now I've got another you tube channel , website, and Instagram account to watch.
This was an excellent, informative video. If this was 2 years ago, you have probably done even better ones recently, but I want to thank you both for taking the time to do all of this work. I was just bitten by the geology bug a year ago, so I am clearly an ammature. Thanks for the education.
I saw a video about dikes in the area around St. Louis. The geologist was doing some excavations in an open farmer's field to determine the depth and age of the dikes and how they related to the New Madrid earthquakes. I don't know if the silt was driven up or settled down from the top.
I really love your geological region ! I'm from Quebec and there's a lot of geological formation here but unfortunately almost no information on internet. I'm waiting for you sir 👨🏫👍
I have been binge watching, to catch up and what you been doing.I had no idea you were doing an online series like this. Anyway I used to live in Moses lake as well as I've lived in Idaho falls so I really like your series. I wonder if you have ever entertained for crack and shield eruptions as well as plate tectonics on antipacle(sp) points to meteorite impacts. Right after it was reported that there was like a 300 mile wide one down in Antarctica, my professor, (showing my age here) in a casual forum remarked that that meteorite crater was an antipical point to the Balkan shield eruptions. Just wondering if you ever heard or did any correlations on it. I know it's kind of off the Wall subject but would be interesting to hear your view on it.
Outstanding. Thank you Skye Cooley. Thank you Nick for a very different perspective on a topic relating to the floods. I didn't think I was that interested in it at first but I hung in there and I got it. Wow, just good, good stuff.
Outstanding Skye. So glad to see this almost 30 years after being exposed to Starbuck beds by an EVIL WITCH (love my old sed strat teacher). I want to ask about the common angle of repose seen in some of the sheet crack fills....
I had never heard of clastic dikes before this video. I'm certain I've seen these formations around and wondered what they were and how they formed (I'm always spotting interesting geology alongside the road). After watching this video, I now wanna go out and collect some of that data for Skye, lol. Seriously. If he could get a group of interested amateurs and train them, they could spread out across WA and OR and collect some of that data on his behalf, especially in the TriCities where rampant home-building/environmental destruction is fast occurring.
Im so glad that you do this Nick. You tube just started showing me your shows last week. Lol i been bing watching since then and cant get enough and im not even from the northwest. So thank you sir.
Great to see you out and about Nick and your guest Skye is a natural. Always am fascinated by these videos.. keep up the great work. I MUST get over to see one of your legendary presentations…
These guys know their stuff ! The amount of commitment and constant work is virtuous with little reward for now just accumulating infoNice 👍 thanks for taking us along NED!! …lol .
The shot at 1:44 tweaked my bumpkin subconscious, because you were standing in the right lane. Then I figured my cornfield-trained instincts didn’t apply here, and I was being paranoid. Then 3:30 comes barreling along and I felt justified 🙃 Thanks for taking the time to make these videos for all of us laynerds to enjoy! I hope all the baby geologists you inspire get in touch over the years, as there's gonna be a fair number of them.
Does anyone know what caused all those large holes in the basalt cutting? The holes at the sedimentary side are much smaller. Apologies in advance for my woeful ignorance of all things geological.
Im in nw montana and my yard at 2600 ft was a beach, in the mountains! And when i dig i cannot believe the hundreds of varieties of rocks, shapes,shells geometrical shapes,just beneath the 1st layer of sand and tiny rocks,really facinating,i saw a couple colors in washington mostly round but this is really different with the layers im like 100 miles from dinosour valley! If ever in area drop in, Respond or save if interested.
I am not into these topics usually but this hour was spent very well. Lots of insights and a huge level of explorative energy. Great guy(s). I learned a lot. Made my day. Thanks a lot and i shall be back again soon.
I think your idea is brilliant. Forgive me if you mentioned this in the video, but these Dikes must be part of an earlier era ground water system. Do you have elevations of the sites you gather your data from?
Clearly eye opening story about these Highway cuts many people pass by with no idea. Can't wait to see the ones in the cuts along the Heppner Highway 74 around Cecil.
