Squeezing Power from a Stone: Energy Resources

Energy Resources:
 Major Component: Oil (33%)
 Coal – 30%
 Natural gas 30%
 Nuclear, Hydro, Nuclear
 Huge reliance on fossil fuels
 Human energy needs have greatly increased in the past 150 years, and the mix
of energy resources required to address those needs has changed dramatically
o Today, fossil fuels total more than 75% of energy supplies.
Sources of Energy:
 There are five fundamental sources of energy available to Earth:
o 1) Solar nuclear fusion
o 2) The pull of gravity
o 3) Nuclear fission reactions
o 4) Earth’s internal energy
o 5) Energy in chemical bonds

 All of our energy resources; divided into solar or nuclear

 1) Solar:
o Driven by solar activity: biomass, oil and gas (ancient photosynthase),
coal, hydro (hydrological cycle driven by heating and solar), photovoltaic,
thermal solar, wind
o Energy from the Sun’s nuclear fusion reactor sends heat and light outward
 A tiny portion of the solar output strikes Earth
o Direct solar energy can be used by humans via conversion into electricity
by photovoltaic cells or conversion into heat
o Controlled fusion is currently beyond human technology.

 2) Nuclear:
o Fission, radioactive decay and geothermal gradient
o Certain radioactive atoms can be fragmented, a process called fission, to
yield tremendous quantities of energy
 Fission energy is used to run nuclear power plants.

 3) Tidal – lunar energy (slowdown of the moon)

Oil and Gas:
 Industrial society depends on hydrocarbons from oil and natural gas
 Hydrocarbons are made of hydrogen (H) and carbon (C) and derive from the
material that composed once-living creatures
 There are many types of hydrocarbons, which are found in nature as complex
mixtures
 Pure compounds are separated by refining.

 Hydrocarbons:
o Start off as biomass, but actual compounds follow spectrum
o Spectrum = length of carbon atoms in individual atom
o Natural gas – Methane: Single carbon = C1
o Bottled gas: Propane + butane can be condensed @ high temp =
o Gasoline: aromatic – C5-C10
o Kerosene: C11-C15
o Heating oil: C16- C20
o Lubricating Oil: C21 – C40
o Bitumen: more than C70
  Viscosity increases as you increase number of carbons
Kerogen:
 Production of hydrocarbons:
o Take biomass (simple compound, Carbon oxygen ratio of 1)
o Material gets degraded = remove oxygen and concentrate carbon
 Become hydrocarbons (hydrogen and carbon concentration)
o Marine environment – plankton is most common source of carbon
 Organic debris settles with sediment on an anoxic sea floor
 Sink to bottom as insufficient oxygen in water + get buried
 Through burial they transform = becomes Kerogen material through
pressure and heat transforming the organic matter into solid
kerogen
 Kerogen: solid mass of high carbon chains and rings = very
heterotrophic
 Buried through matrix of black shale
o Continue heating – kerogen is further broken down into oil and gas, which
seep upward into reservoir rocks
o Develop source rock – rich in organics and kerogen
o Start to break down = oil and gas start leaving source rock (black shale)
 viscosity goes up
 to break down, need greater depths bc need heating to be hot
enough

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  Gas window (range to produce degradation of kerogen) is
deeper than oil window
 Black shale is source rock for petroleum hydrocarbons
 1) The process starts when organic debris settles with sediment on an anoxic
sea floor
 2) As burial depth increases to 2–4 km, heat and pressure transform the
sediment into black shale, breaking the organic matter into kerogen, the
precursor to oil
 3) With continued heating, the kerogen is further broken down into oil and gas,
which seep upward
 4) The black shale is the source rock for petroleum hydrocarbons. Source rock is
no good for storing oil
o Kerogen-rich black shale is the source rock for petroleum hydrocarbons
 Shale beds
o Black bc lots of kerogen – hydrogen

Oil and Gas Windows:

 The oil window refers to the depth and temperature conditions necessary for oil
generation
 Burial below the oil window will break down oil to produce natural gas; the gas
window.
Petroleum Source Rock:
 Shale beds rich in kerogen formed in anoxic sedimentary basins – followed by
burial
 Ex: Marcellus Shale outcrop, Ohio
 Black shale below limestone beds

Conventional Reservoirs: - Sandstone + Limestone

 Oil and gas migrate from source rocks and accumulate in reservoir rocks
 Open, connected pores transmit fluid easily
 Porosity can be reduced through cementation during diagenesis
 In order to be utilized, hydrocarbons must migrate away from source rocks and
be trapped in a reservoir rock
 Different rocks have different characteristics of porosity and permeability
o Porosity is open pore space within sedimentary rock
o Permeability is the ease of fluid flow through a rock, which is due to the
degree to which pores are connected.
 Best reservoir rock: rick with high porosity +permeability
 Conventional Reservoirs:

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 o When oil + gas start leaving black shale = accumulate in limestone or
sandstone
 Doesn’t produce, just store gas

Traps and Seals:

 In order for hydrocarbons to accumulate in a reservoir, there must be a seal to
prevent the fluids from flowing back out
 A seal is rock with low permeability, like shale, salt, and unfractured limestone
o Sometimes faults can create seals
 1) Anticlinal Traps:
o formed when rock layers are folded into an anticlinal arch
o The structural arch traps oil.
o Structural arch traps oil – porous phase of the reservoir rock (limestone or
sandstone)
o Why is gas above oil? Gas is less dense than oil
o Seal rock = maintaining the pressure – relatively impermeable
o Start to pump up (from oil well)
 The water will rise along with oil
 2) Salt-domes:
o formed when deeply buried salt flows like a plastic
o Less dense than overlying rock, salt will flow upward and deform overlying
strata.
 3) Fault traps:
o created when displacement creates permeability contrasts on offset strata.
o Structural faults offsets reservoir rock
 4) Stratigraphic traps:
o created when depositional features create changes in permeability and
porosity.
o Sedimentary units pinch of sandstone/limestone
o Stratigraphic “pinch-out”
 How oil is accumulated:
o Oil migrates out of the source rock following a higher permeability
migration pathway
o Migration pathways are created long before oil generation by faulting and
fracturing or variations in strata
o Oil will accumulate in a structural trap as long as a seal rock is in place
o Without a seal, reservoirs can leak to form an oil seep at the surface.

How to find traps?

 Seismic Reflection Profiling!

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 o Seismic reflection is able to create an image of the subsurface by
bouncing sound off of layers
o This permits geologists to look for traps without drilling
o Seismic imaging is conducted both on land and at sea
o Reflected seismic waves define the structure

Where Does Oil Occur?

 Oil reserves are distributed on all continents—some onshore and some offshore
 Regions bordering the Persian Gulf contain the world’s largest reserves.
 Gulf of Mexico, north of Nunavut, middle east, northern Asia and North Sea
o Basins that have both source rock and reservoir rocks
o Not a lot of central oceanic basins = because too young

Birth of the Oil Industry:

 Petrolia = southern Ontario – Birth of Oil industry
o Drilled deeper = 1858
 Struck an oil deposit in Oil springs while digging shallow well,
sparking the oil drilling industry
 Drilled surface where they saw oil – very shallow
 Realized in sedimentary basins, there’s oil
 Humans have used oil from seeps for millennia
 The first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859
 The Drake well initiated an oil boom
 Within years, thousands of oil wells had been drilled
o Oil soon became the fuel of choice for lighting lamps
o Then came a new invention: the automobile
 Civilization soon began an addiction to oil.

21st Century oil and Gas: - Unconventional Reservoirs in the Source Rocks
 Examples of rocks that would make poor reservoirs:
1) Oil Shale:
 Contains abundant kerogen that has not been subjected to oil window conditions
 Heating can transform some of the kerogen into liquid hydrocarbons that can
then be used like oil
o Burns a lot = lots of hydrocarbons
 Large supplies occur in Estonia, Scotland, China, Russia, and the western United
States
 Major Sedimentary basins and oil shale deposits – lots bottom of Ontario in US
(east coast US)

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Drilling: - Directional and fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing)
 Drilling can proceed in any direction (unconventional)
o Conventional = straight down
 Many wells are now drilled horizontally after reaching a target depth to increase
yields
 Many wells today are artificially stimulated by hydrofracturing
o a process that cracks subsurface rock using high-pressure water with
additives and sand
o rebirth of oil industry

Unconventional Natural Gas:

 Natural gas consists of volatile short-chain hydrocarbons, including methane,
ethane, propane, and butane
o More abundant than oil and cleaner fuel
 Gas floats on top in an oil reservoir; below the oil window, gas occurs without oil
 Utilization requires expensive high-pressure pipelines and ships
 Natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has greatly increased U.S. domestic gas
reserves and has stimulated the economy in the northeastern United States
 This gas is extracted using directional drilling and hydrofracturing, and has
incited controversy due to environmental concerns

Oil Sands:
 Tar sands are deposits of residual petroleum in sand reservoirs that have lost
lighter hydrocarbons by bacterial digestion
 The residual heavy oil, or bitumen, is all that is left of a former oil field
 The remaining hydrocarbon is too viscous to be pumped, so tar sands must be
mined and processed
 Extensive tar sand deposits reside in Alberta (Western Canada) and in
Venezuela.
 Bitumen in sand reservoir, lighter hydrocarbons lost by bacterial digestion and
volatilization
 Mined in open pits with drag lines (20%)
 SAGD – Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (80%)
 Bitumen is mixed with light HC (gasoline) to lower viscosity for pipeline transport
– dilbit.
 Shipped as pure bitumen by rail.

Gas Hydrates:

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  Gas Hydrates:
o Gas hydrate is a material that looks like ice yet consists of methane gas
(CH4) that is held in a cage of water molecules – stabilizes it
o The methane is derived from bacterial decomposition of organic matter
o Gas hydrate forms in cold ocean-bottom sediments at depths exceeding
300 m
o This material may store more carbon than all other reservoirs combined.
o Recovery is not currently feasible.

Coal: Energy from Swamps of the Past:

 Coal is a black, brittle, carbon-rich sedimentary rock made up of the altered
remains of fossil vegetation that grew in swamps
 Coal is a terrestrial carbon deposit (oil and gas is marine)
 Coal is an important global energy source and a dominant CO 2 emitted
 It is only found in rocks younger than 420 Ma (after land plants had evolved).
 2 Types: Lignite and Anthracite
o Lignite = dirty coal, brown, nitrogen, sulfur, iron
o Anthracite = more pure coal
 Coal Swamps:
o Coal swamps formed on top of marine deltas and along tropical coasts
o Sea level fluctuations bury former swamps
o Coal-forming periods include the warm climate and broad epicontinental
seas of the Carboniferous (354–286 Ma) and the tropical deltaic wetlands
of the Cretaceous (144–65 Ma)
 Transgressing ocean (beach) and back water coal swamps get
buried deeper and deeper = transforms
o Forms from plants = terrestrial
Global Coal Regions:
 Vast quantities of coal lie buried in continental sedimentary basins
 Cretaceous and Carboniferous coal-bearing rocks occur in great abundance in
the midwestern United States and Rocky Mountain regions
 Lots of coal deposits in Russia, Asia

Coal Strip Mining:

 Mining type depends on the depth of the coal seam
 Within 100 m, coal is strip mined
 For deeper coal seams, underground mining is required
 Strip mining removes the rock and soil overlying the coal seam using a large
drag-line bucket

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  Spoil is stockpiled nearby for later use during reclamation
 Exposed coal is removed, and the excavation is reclaimed
 Excavation is backfilled with spoil and soil, then replanted.
 Underground mining is much more specialized, expensive, and dangerous
 The coal is removed by tunneling
 Coal mining is hazardous: tunnels can collapse, methane gas can lead to
explosions and asphyxiation, and miners can contract black lung disease.
o If tunnels collapse, methane gas can lead to explosions and asphyxiation
= dangerous setting (½ of energy comes from coal)
Nuclear:
 Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner
 Before: U-fission
o Bombardment of huge nucleus of uranium with neutrons at right every and
split into radioisotopes
o Energy is kinetic – move very fast
 Sustained nuclear energy
How Does a Power Plant Work?
 Nuclear power, as the name indicates, derives energy from breaking apart
atomic nuclei
 Fission splits a large nucleus into smaller fragments, producing enormous
amounts of energy
 Nuclear reactors are high-tech facilities engineered to manage nuclear chain
reactions safely
 A reactor heats water, producing high-pressure steam inside a closed loop
 Heat is transferred to an external water loop that is used to spin electrical
turbines
 Nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases (except water vapor).

CANDU:
 In Canada… CanDU heavy water reactor
o C.J. Mackenzie
o Smuggled heavy water to Canada from Nazi occupied Norway
o D2O can act as a moderator for nuclear fission
 CanDU advantage:
o Heavy water (D2O) = efficient bc doesn’t absorb neutrons that light water
does
o Highly efficient in moderating (slowing) neutrons to sustain fission
o Use natural abundance - no need for uranium enrichment
o 2H or D isotope of H
o Uses natural abundance of 235U

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  1945 ZEEP – Zero Energy Experimental Reactor
 AECL Chalk River Labs, Ontario
Canadian Nuclear Energy Capacity:
 # Reactors MW TWh
Bruce 8 6232 44
Darlington 4 3512 25
Pickering 6 3100 22
(Ontario)
Point Lepreau 1 705 5
(News Brunswick)
Nuclear Safety Record:
 Safety Record
o Deaths per terra watt/hour
o Coal = highest death rate
 Bc of disasters in coal mining
o Oil, gas, hydro, wind and solar = accidents
o Nuclear = best in turns of safety
 High level radioactive waste:
o Over time (thousands of years) – radioactive in end (uranium)
 Waste is deposited in a Deep Geological Repository DGR
o Bruce DGR Site
 Proposed DGR in the Cobourg argillaceous
 3 shale beds of Aquitard

Geothermal Energy:
 Geothermal is energy from Earth's internal heat
 Geothermal plants utilize hot groundwater in places that have a high geothermal
gradient (mostly located in volcanic regions)
 Majority of the active geothermal resources are found along major tectonic plate
boundaries bc magmatism is the most active in these regions
o Useful in nonvolcanic areas
 Groundwater can be used to heat and cool buildings very efficiently with no
wastes, no greenhouse gases, or air pollution
 Water moving through rock and gets converted into geothermal well through
magma heating
 Steam driven turbine energy source
 Frack the well and circulate water through rocks
Ground Loop Geothermal Energy:
 Group loop = use temperature of the ground for heating and cooling

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  Ambient geothermal energy, using a geothermal heat pump, can reduce home
heating and cooling costs
Hydroelectric:
 Positive aspects:
o dams reduce the risk of floods, impound water for drinking, irrigation and
recreation and provide renewable energy without creating wastes.
 Negative aspects:
o dams destroy valued landscapes and alter ecosystems, trap sediment that
requires expensive dreging, and accelerate erosion downstream

 Canada’s Electrical Mix Total = 652 TWh

o Canada is 81.5% Green
o Lots of hydro, some nuclear
 Canada’s Energy Mix:
o Electrical = 16%
o Combustion = 84%
 Transportation, heating, industrial, residential
 Canada’s Zero C Energy Mix:
o If nuclear… need 40 new stations (340 reactors), $1.5 Trillion dollars
 Wind is problematic = tremendous amount of structure + base has pad of
concrete that takes a long time to produce, and doesn’t last live time

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CHAPTER 15: RICHES IN ROCKS – MINEARL
RESOURCES

Major Categories of Mineral Resources:

 Major metals:
o Iron, Copper, Lead, Nickel, Zinc, Aluminum, Titanium, Tungsten, Lithium
 Precious metals:
o Sold, silver, platinum, palladium and PGEs
 Rare earth metals:
o Neodymium, dysprosium, europium, ytterbium, and yttrium
 Nonmetallic mineral resources:
o Sand, gravel, crushed rock, gypsum, halite, gems

Most common metals used today:

 We mine most abundantly…
o A) Copper:
o B) Iron:
 Superior to copper or bronze – stronger, harder, and is the crusts’
4th most abundant element
 The 1st is oxygen, 2nd is silica
 Principle atom in steel – carbon bonded with iron
o C) Aluminum:

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  Light + strong
 ½ the weight of iron, but critical to many industries
 Crust’s 3rd most abundant element
 Concentrated by weathering processes
 Where is the aluminum is crust (most abundance) = feldspar
 Lead and zinc:
o Deposited by ground water
 ZnS, PbS
o Pb-acid batteries (88%)
o Radiation shielding ammunition
o Zn for galvanizing (protective coating) steel + Zn alloys

 Metal Physical Properties:

o A) Lustrous (shiny)
 Good conductors of heat + electricity
 High melting point
 High density (heavy for their size)
 Malleable (can be hammered)
o B) Ductile (drawn into wires)
 Usually solid @ room temp. – (exception; mercury)
 Opaque as a thin sheet (can’t see through metals)

Rare Earth Elements (REEs):

 Tri-valent cations following lanthanum (the lanthanides) with atomic numbers
from 57-71
o Very high mass
o All same outer valence + tr-valent state = all relatively the same
 Metals found in essential for high-tech applications
 China is most import of REEs
o Ex: Neodymium for magnets
o 500 kg Nd, 80 kg Dy per turbine

 Lithium: essential for batteries

o Alkali metal – unstable = wants to be monovalent
o Mining in the Atacama Desert, Chile
o Highly soluble (light mass – leached out of volcanoes + leek on rocks) +
mined by evaporating brine
o Mined from minerals like spodumene (LiAl(SIO3)2) and clays + brine
o

Native Metals:

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  Gold, copper, silver, iron
o Odd to be in metal state for metals
o Gold – always mined as a native metal
 Occur naturally in pure form
o Most copper + iron are mined as minerals though… not native metals

Ore Minerals:
 Metal cations are mostly complexed as oxides, sulphides + carbonates
 Most metals are mined from deposits of different ore minerals
 Each mineral type has a typical mechanism of formation in the crust
 Ex: Chalcopyrite (CuFeS2)
 Ore is rock with concentrated, metal-rich minerals
Smelting – releasing metals from ore minerals
 Smelting is process that releases metals from ore minerals
o High temperature geochemistry for reduction of metal cations to zero
valence
o Different minerals require diff. smelting techniques at diff. temp
 1) Cooper from chalcopyrite: CuFeS2
o Copper has high electromotive potential and can be reduced by sulphides

 2) Iron Smelting (Fe2O3)

o Iron has lower electromotive potential + requires the strong reducing
capacity of carbon monoxide to reduce Fe+3 to zero valence iron, Fe0

 3) Aluminum electrolysis (Al(OH)3)

o Aluminum reduction requires significant electricity for electrolysis and so
aluminum production plants are usually situated with a hydroelectric
generating station – near electricity + river (water) – hydroelectric power

How Do Ore Deposits Form?

 Ore-forming geologic processes (all involve liquids to move and concentrate
metals):
o Magmatic activity, hydrothermal fluids, secondary enrichment,
groundwater transport, sedimentary processes, residual weathering,
hydraulic sorting
 1) Magmatic intrusions – ex: Copper porphyry deposits

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 o Crystallizing magma releases water + gas
o Volatiles (water vapor, CO2, H2S, Cl) released upward from intrusion
o Metals partition into volatile phases, complexed with Cl- as they are
incompatible with the crystallizing silicate minerals
o Cooling and condensation as metal-rich chloride + sulphides brines
o Below 350 C metals precipitate as sulphide minerals: MoS, CuS, ZnS,
PbS
o Tectonic environment: subduction zone + decompression melting
 Rock melts bc it has water in it as it gets close to magma
 Moving up through crust bc buoyant + liquid to shallow depth
 Placing pluton up (shallow) and colds + crystalizes
 2) Hydrothermal Alteration
o Surface water + shallow source of heat
o Driven by heat but originate by fresh water (sea water)
o Hydrothermal deposits – formed by action of hot water
 Hot water = chemically reactive + leach metals + deposit them in
cooler zones
 Heated water cools = minerals precipitate – form veins or in pluton
 Ex: Volcanogenic Massive Sulphides
o Black smokers @ spreading ridges – Ocean water
o Mid-oceanic ridge sulphides in the past form major base metal deposits
o Seawater circulates through the basalts leaching metals
o Seawater sulphate (SO42-) is reduced to sulphides (S2-) which
precipitates the metals
 Reach surface – condense into sulphide minerals – smoke smokers
o Ex: Kidd Creek in Timmins is a giant VMS that extends 3 km underground
o Volcanogenic Massive sulphides are formed on ocean floors at spreading
ridges, from the reduction of seawater sulphate + from the Precambrian to
today
 3) Groundwater Transport
o No intrusion or steep geothermal gradients
o Ex: Groundwater transport creates Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) Pb and
Zn ores
 4) Sedimentary Processes
o Banded iron formations (BIFs) consist of alternating layers of gray
hematite (Fe2O3) and iron-rich red chert (jasper)
o BIGs formed from 2.5-1.8 Ga and record the onset of oxygen buildup in
Earth’s atmosphere from photosynthesis
o Manganese nodules grow slowly on the sea flow and are rich in MbO2
and trace elements
 5) Residual Weathering
o Deposits associated with weathering

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  Residual enrichment – concentrating metals into economically
valuable concentrations
 Laterite (enriched in Fe, Al, Ni) forms by deep weathering of the
parents rock and leaching out elements such as silica
 forms in rainy, tropical climates; not found in glaciated regions
 all of the very large bauxite deposits formed in the last 25 million
years
 ex: Bauxite – aluminum Ore

 6) Hydraulic Sorting
o Panning for gold uses hydraulic sorting
o South Africa’s fossil placer deposits
o The largest concentration of gold in Earth is in the ancient placer deposits
of the Witwatersrand Basin
o Conglomerates deposited about 2.7 Ga

Ore Exploration and Production:

 1) Geophysical surveys:
o Magnetism, gravity, radioactivity
o Water, sediment, soil and biota
 2) Core drilling
o Helps determine the extent of an ore deposit
o Open-pit mining is less expensive and less dangerous than underground
mining, but leaves lots of waste rock…
o Underground mining is more expensive + dangerous
 But… can get a deeper deposit
 Tunnel collapses + presence of poisonous and explosive gases

Nonmetallic Rock + Mineral Resources = aggregages

 Sand, gravel + crushed rock
 Diamonds:
o Most diamonds are found in rare ultramafic igneous rocks called
kimberlites
o Kimberlite magma originates at great depth (>150 km) and rises quickly to
the surface, picking up diamonds from the upper mantle

Environmental Impacts of Mining:

 Waste rock:
o Barren country rock removed to access ore – particularly open pit mining

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 o Chemically reactive, leaching blasting residues (nitrate) and containing
pyrite which can produce acid drainage
 Tailings:
o Residual mineral waste from ore processing by separation and smelting
o Very reactive, often producing acid drainage
 Milling and smelting:
o Creates huge volumes of tailings – residual ore after metals are removed
o Highly reactive, with residual sulphide (pyrite, FeS2)

 Smelting stack emission

o Ex: Sudbury super stack (SO2) producing acid rain
o Scrubbers using lime (Ca-OH) slurry are now remove the acid-generating
gases

Chapter 16: Unsafe Ground-Landslides and Other Mass

Movements

Introduction:
 Mass movement (or mass wasting) is the downslope motion of rock, regolith
(soil, sediment, and debris), snow, and ice.
o Driven by gravity acting on any sloping surface
o Important component of rock cycle

Mudflow in Yungay, Peru:

 On May 31, 1970 - earthquake broke a huge mass of ice off the glacier on
Nevado Huascarán
 Ice rushed downhill, fragmented, and tore up boulders and soil
o Ice melted and created a slurry of mud carrying huge boulders.
 The resulting mudflow buried Yungay, Peru, entombing 18,000 people.

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Types of Mass Movements:
 1) Solifluction + Creep (Slowest)
 2) Slumping
 3) Lahars and Mudflows
 4) Debris Flows
 5) Rockfalls and Rockslides (Fastest)

1) Creep: - slowest mass movement

 Mechanism:
o Creep is the slow downhill movement of regolith due to seasonal
expansion and contraction of regolith.
o Wetting and drying and freezing and thawing are contributing factors.
o Creep operates as grains are moved perpendicular to the slope as regolith
expands and vertically downward by gravity as regolith contracts.
 Evidence: evident from tilting of landscape features
Solifluction: slow downhill movement of tundra. Melted permafrost slowly flows over
deeper frozen soil.
 Process:
o Permafrost terrains
o Seasonally melted active layer over permafrost slowly flows over deeper
frozen soil
o Have to have unconsolidated soil – mobile material o see movement
Rock Glaciers
 Rock glaciers are mixtures of rock fragments in a matrix of ice.
 They only exist above the elevation of perennial freezing
 Below the freezing elevation, rock glaciers are relic and no longer moving.
 Less about melting and freezing, more about plastic behavior of ice matrix

2) Slumping:
 Slumping is mass movement by sliding of regolith as
coherent block
 Slip occurs along a spoon-shaped “failure surface.”
o Rotational slumping occurs along curved failure surface
 Body of the slump may be further subdivided into discrete blocks, each bounded
by faults.
 Variety of sizes and have highly variable rates of motion
 Have characteristics:
o Head scarp = exposed upper part of the failure surface

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 o Bulging toe = where material piles up
 Ex: Ensenada, Baja California in 2013
 Head scarp: Incipient slump along a highway in Utah displaying a developing
head scarp.
o Slump will continue to develop unless remedial stabilization is applied
 Cut Bank Slumping:
o Exposed slump failure surface along a river in Costa Rica
o Slump blocks that fall into water are often removed quickly by erosion
o Slumping is a common process along the outer (cut bank) bend of a
meandering river.

3) Mudflows, Debris Flows, Lahars:

 These mass movements are faster with more water or steeper slope
 They follow river channels down a valley and spread out into a broad lobe when
they reach the base of the slope
o Able to carry huge boulders, houses, and cars and are extremely
dangerous to people.
Effect of Water:
 Unsaturated conditions: surface tension holds unconsolidated material together
 Saturated soils: reduces friction between grains and acts by buoying up the
weight of slope material, reduces shear strength and leads to failure
o More water = more saturated

Marine Sediments + Quick Clays

 These sensitive glacial clays are deposited in marine waters during deglaciation.
 Have high water content and high salinity
o causes electrostatic interaction between ions and clay particles creating
metastable configuration
 with uplift + exposure, the saline porewater becomes freshened with circulation of
groundwater = destabilize clay structure
 triggering events such as earthquakes and down-cutting erosion by rivers and
streams can lead to sudden liquefaction and flow of the material.
 Characteristics: clay size sediments, Leda sensitive clay, marine (saline
porewater), Rissa slide – 1978
 Ex: Gatineau: River downcutting into Champlain Sea sediments
o Landslides in Leda clay of the Champlain sea
o In Nicolet Quebec + Lemieux, Ontario
o St-Jean-Vianney, Quebec in 1971 – 31 deaths, 40 houses destroyed
o Liquefaction of quick clay is commonly found in Ottawa-Gatineau

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Mudflow:
 Common in tropical settings with deep weathering of soils + abundant rainfall
o Especially tropical storms + hurricanes
o Ex: Oso, WA; March 22nd, 2014
Lahars:
 Volcanic ash from recent or ongoing eruptions mixes with water from heavy rains
or melted glacial ice.
 Ex: Case history of Lahar – Nevado del Ruiz Volcano in the Colombian Andes
o The eruption melted some of the mountain’s snowcap
o Melt water mixed with ash and raced down river valleys
o Armero was buried, killing 20,000 residents in their sleep
o The volcano erupted the night of November 13, 1985.
4) Rock Debris Slide:
 Movement down the failure surface is sudden and deadly
 Slide debris can move at 300 km per hour on a cushion of air.
 Fastest moving rockslides, sudden and deadly
 Not water that facilitates = but cushion of AIR
 Ex: Blackhawk event, California, 17,000 years ago
o huge rock fall in San Bernardino Mountains flowed out into Mojave Desert
– flowed 7.5 times farther than fell, speed estimated up to 120 km/hr
 Ex: Frank slide (Alberta) – 1903
o A rock avalanche (30 M m3) slid off the eastern face of Turtle Mountain,
covering 3 km in under 2 minutes.
 Boulders and debris moved on a cushion of air
o The section that broke was 1,000 metres wide, 425 metres high and 150
metres deep
 traveled at a speed of about 110 kph and covered 3 km 2 to a depth
of 14 m
 Enough material to build a 6 m tall wall from Vancouver to Halifax.
o Unstable anticline structure with increasing water infiltration (and coal
mining) as a trigger.
o The avalanche buried the outskirts of the mining town of Frank
 90 people died, making this the deadliest natural disaster in North
America.
 Ex: Fraser Canyon, BC, 2008
o Changed river + interfered with salmon runs
 Ex: Hope slide, SW BC – 1965
o Canada’s largest rock avalanche in the historic period, 46 M m 3 of rock
debris avalanched down a the side of a mountain forming a fan up to 80 m
thick and 3 km wide

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 o Four people driving on the Hope-Princeton Highway were killed. There is
no known triggering event for this slide.

Avalanches:
 Avalanche: a turbulent cloud of debris and air
 Snow avalanche = thick mass of over steepened snow that detaches from a
mountain peak
 Avalanches are usually lethal to people caught in the way
 Moves downhill with enormous force sufficient to flatten forests and buildings
 Tend to reoccur in clearly defined avalanche chutes that are devoid of trees
 Wet vs Dry Avalanches:
o Wet avalanches
 Behave like a viscous slurry, hugging the slope and entraining little
air
 Move relatively slowly (usually <30 km per hour).
o Dry avalanches
 Move cold, powdery snow
 Move above the ground surface on a layer of pressurized air
 Move rapidly (up to 250 km per hour).

5) Rockfalls + debris falls:

 Free falling rock debris from unstable terrain
 Create a talus pile at the foot of the cliff or slope
 Rockfalls and debris falls vertical freefall of mass
 Bedrock or regolith falls rapidly downward
 When blocks impact, they fragment and continue moving.

Gigantic Submarine Mass Movements:

 important process for shaping land in tectonic settings
 Mass movements are tied to catastrophic tsunamis from the geologic past
 Many slumps have been mapped on the sea floor surrounding the Hawaiian
Islands
o The steep cliffs (above) are the head scarps of huge slumps.
 Ex: Storegga Slide
o One of the largest submarine landslides
o Occurred just of the Norwegian coast several thousand years
ago
o Tsunami deposits from the slide are shown as red dots.

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Initiating Mass Movements:
 Why slopes fail: loose ground, groundwater pressure, steep slope, planes of
weakness, sinkholes
 Mass movements occur when Earth materials are subjected to topographic
(slope) forces and are weakened or loosened from their attachments
 Mass movement occurs on material that has been weakened by fragmentation
and weathering
o Chemical and physical weathering produce regolith
o Surface material is much weaker than solid crustal rock.
Sinkholes:
 caves occur in limestone from dissolution from carbonic acid in groundwater from
recharge through soils
o dissolution of calcite by carbonic acid – produced in soil
o CaCO3 + H2CO3  Ca+2 + 2HCO3–
 Catastrophic subsidence: when…
o A) groundwater levels drop
o B) roofs collapse, forming sinkholes

Factors Reducing Slope Strength:

 Relief – steep terrain
 Material – unconsolidated sediments, weathered or fractured bedrock
 Groundwater – porewater pressure reduces grain to grain contact
 Deforesting – trees dewater sediments, roots reinforce sediments
 Climate – rainfall
Triggers for Mass Movements:
 Seismic events – tectonic or human induced
 Heavy rain
 Construction, excavation projects creating slope instability
 River undercutting banks

Landslide Potential Mapping:

 Uses computer modeling to identify areas of potential risk that may not show
obvious signs of mass movement.
 It assesses multiple factors:

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 o Slope steepness
o Strength of substrate
o Hydrology – drainage + climate
o Seismicity
o Degree of water saturation
o Orientation of planar features
o Bedding
o Joints
o Foliation
o Vegetation cover
o Heavy rain potential
o Undercutting potential
o Earthquake probability

Preventing Mass Movements:

 1) Revegetation:
o Roots stabilize the potential failure plane
o Revegetation has two positive effects
 A) it removes water by evapotranspiration
 B) the roots help to bind and anchor regolith
 Roots absorbs infiltrating water + roots stabilize the soil
 2) Regrading:
o Terrace steps – remove load and catch debris
o Redistributing a slope by terracing removes some of the mass loading and
catches debris.
 3) Reducing Undercutting:
o Filled channel (stream had been undercutting cliff)
o Diverted new channel (stream is away from cliff)
o Undercutting – riprap absorbs wave energy + slows undercutting
o Diverting a steam channel can prevent undercutting
 4) Stabilizing faces:
o Shotcrete: concrete polymer to stabilize surface, often with drainage
lateral drilled into the face
o Shotcrete and Retaining walls = barriers that pin the base and trap rock.
Fencing or coating can be used to cover an outcrop that has loose rocks.
o Engineered structures—safety structures can be built to improve slope
stability or to reduce movement hazards
 5) Rock bolts, mesh
o Holding rocks in place with wire mesh nets
o Using fence to catch fallen rocks
o Rock staples are rods drilled into rock to hold loose facing

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 o Avalanche sheds are structures that shunt avalanche snow.
 6) Dewatering + depressurization
o Steering flow by building walls (gabions) and digging channels
o Removing rock and decreasing slope angle

- Which condition would NOT increase the risk of mass movement?

o Depressurization of groundwater, deforestation, heavy rainfall or
steepness of a slope

Streams and Floods: The Geology of Running Water

Hydrological Cycle:
 Combination of surface runoff (73 cubic kilo
m/day) + groundwater discharge
 Major components of cycle: evaporation +
evapotranspiration (usually transpiration)
 10x more contribution than runoff

 Biggest river in the world = amazon river

o Amazon beats by longshot
o 18 km3 /day discharge
o Discharge (water going into receiving
water (ocean)) – flowing down a river

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  Amazon river is increasing:
o Deforestation of amazon is changing weather patterns –transpiration has
decreased

Drainage Networks:

Forming Streams:
 Sheet surface flow erodes substrate and creates rills
 Headward erosion occurs via intense scouring where sheet flow enters the
uppermost part of a channel
 Smaller tributaries join a larger trunk stream
 The array of linked channels forms a drainage network
 Drainage networks evolve over time.
 Sheet wash erodes the substrate and creates tiny rill channels that coalesce,
deepen, and downcut, eventually concentrating flow in a single channel.
 Stream channel is lengthened by: headward erosion

Drainage Divides:
 A continental divide separates flow to different oceans

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  Watersheds are defined on a variety of scales. Tiny tributaries—tiny watersheds;
large continental rivers have large watersheds.
 Amazon Watershed – largest in the world
o Precipitation falling in the highlighted region makes its way through
tributaries to the Amazon.

Permanent Streams:
 Permanent streams are defined by water flowing all year.
 These streams are common where there is abundant rainfall,
groundwater discharge, and low rates of evaporation.
 Regular groundwater supply
 Water table flows upward and downward into river
 Won’t go dry bc always connected to groundwater
Ephemeral Streams:
 Ephemeral streams do not flow all year
 They are common in places with low annual rainfall, a low
water table, and high rates of evaporation.
 Dry streams much of the year
 Only flow when have enough surface water - shallow
 Water table is underneath the river + discharge will remain dry
unless there is flooding events (melting or storm etc.)
Hyporheic Zone:
 Since streambeds are permeable, water from a permanent
stream mixes with groundwater in a region beneath the
streambed called the hyporheic zone
 Water in this zone flows in the same direction as the stream, but not as fast.
 Zone of ground water and surface water mixing within sediments
 Flow with sustain rivers “wetness” + constant flow

Measuring Discharge:
 Discharge is the amount of water flowing in a channel
 Discharge = Width X Depth X Velocity
 Measure discharge for a number of times of year (variation of water level) =
develop rating curve
o With rating curve (discharge given water level) + water level recorder =
height can be calibrated into discharge
Stream Shape and Velocity:
 The more the friction, the wider the stream is

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  Shallower = less friction
Thalweg:
 The deepest part of the channel (and usually the highest current velocity) is
called the thalweg.
 Deposition in inner bank – building outward + shallower

Erosional Processes:
 The kinetic energy of moving water can cause erosion in four ways
o 1) Scouring – running water can remove loose fragments
o 2) Breaking and Lifting – running water can lift blocks out of a material
o 3) Abrasion – pure (clean) water has little erosive effect, but sand-laden
water acts like sandpaper and grinds away the channel wall
o 4) Dissolution – Running water can dissolve soluble minerals
 Streamflow does work by converting potential energy into kinetic energy
 The energy imparted to streamflow is derived from gravity, which acts upon water
that was transported by the action of the Sun

1) Bank Erosion
 River meander cutting into older terrace sediments. Continuing the overall
process of moving sediment down gradient.

2) Potholes
 Potholes are formed by the sand and gravel swirled by turbulent eddies
 This abrasive material drills holes in the bedrock.

- Valley + canyon shapes depend on the bedrock + sediment

V-Shaped Valleys:
 V-shaped valleys form as rivers downcut through soft sediments. Andes of Peru.
 U-shape is glacier erosion
 Soft sediments from v-shaped valleys
Slot Canyons:
 Form when rivers cut through hard rock
 Bedrock form vertical joints
 Hard sediments form slot canyons
Valleys AND Canyons:
 Stronger rocks produce vertical cliffs, while weaker rock produce slopped walls

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Alluvium – fluvial sediment
 A rise in the base level or a decrease in discharge causes the valley to fill with
alluvium.
 Later, if the base level falls or the discharge increases, the stream downcuts
through the alluvium and a new, lower floodplain develops
 The remnants of the original alluvial plain remain as a pair of terraces.
 Sediment transported by river along its channel usually in low levels (areas of
lower gradient)
 Sediment's accumulation – alluvium
o Form different terrains
o Evolution of river system in valley at base level + collecting sediments =
reflect different episodes of generation of valley (time stamps)
Sediment Transport:
 Velocity vs grains size
 Saltation – lift and material moves down stream – bedload movement of
sediments
 Suspended – clay size particles and fine materials = turbulence of water itself
Sediment Deposition:
 High competence – high capacity to transport sediment
o Gravel in the bed of a mountain stream in Denali National Park, Alaska.
The large clasts were carried during floods. This stream has high
competence.
 Low competence – low capacity to transport sediment
o Competence decreases with velocity
o Mud deposited along a gentle, slowly moving stream in Brazil
 This stream has low competence
 Sudden decreases in velocity can result in sediment deposition by streams
 alluvial fan: steep mountain stream enters a flat valley
 Change in gradient
o Decrease in velocity + decrease in gradient in river channel = alluvial fan
o Amount of material =” chocking” material + difficult for river to carry as it
enters flat valley
Braided Streams:
 Braided streams form where channels are choked by sediment
 Flow is forced around sediment obstructions, and the diverging and converging
flow creates sand and gravel bars.
Sediment Deposition:
 Changes in velocity along a river channel result in sequential erosion (bank
erosion) and deposition on point bars.

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  Great decrease in velocity + create flood plane
o Periodically river will flood and bring material to flood plane
Meandering Streams:
 Channels form intricately looping meanders along the lower gradient portion of
the longitudinal profile.
 Starve a channel + break channel =create oxbow lake
Cut Bank and Point Bar:
 Erosion accentuates the cut bank
 High-velocity flow scours the base of the cut bank, which collapses into the
channel
 Fallen cut bank material is transported away by flow
 Deposition builds the point bar
 Slower-current velocity causes sediment to accumulate inside the meander bend.
 The point bar grows toward the channel.
 Ex: Whitewater River, Richmond, Indiana
Deltas:
 On top of a delta, the stream divides into a fan of distributary channels.
 Deltas consist of sediment deposited at the mouth of a stream
 When a stream enters standing water, the current slows, loses competence, and
sediments drop out.
 Falls of suspension and provide gravel responses
 Sediment Deposition:
o Sudden decreases in velocity where rivers discharge into a body of
standing water produce a delta
o delta: stream enters a standing body of water
 Evolution:
o Deltas evolve over time
o The main channel feeding a delta may jump to a new location, a process
called avulsion, to establish a steeper, shorter path to the basin
o The Mississippi River has undergone avulsion several times in the past
7,500 years, as preserved in remnant delta lobes.
 Subsidence at Deltas:
o Abandoned delta lobes, starved of sediment, slowly compact, dewater,
and subside
o Abandoned delta lobes are eventually submerged
o Subsidence is a problem for cities built on deltas
o Subsidence near (or below) sea level magnifies flooding risks
o New Orleans is a prime example.
o Sediments get deposited + water content in sediments is high
 Over time they compact + produce subsidence

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  City is sinking relative to sea level
Flood Plains:
 Periodic flooding and sediment delivery
 Low gradient, base level deposition
o Sudden decrease in velocity results in sediment deposition by streams
from headwaters
o Sediments accumulate at the base level as a flood plain with periodic
flooding and sediment delivery
o faster River = higher competence = carry more sediment
 Natural Process of flood plain construction:
o Discharge and velocity increase and flow spills out of the stream channel,
immersing adjacent land
 Water scours floodplains, altering the landscape and destroying
structures
o High sediment load carried in river channels is deposited in the slow-
moving flood waters over the flood plain.
o Addition of minerals and nutrients is essential to the health of the flood
plain ecosystem.
 Flood plains are fertile and ideal for agriculture and for urbanization, but the flood
risk is always present.
o Ex: Indus Plain, Pakistan
 Hazard of Urbanization on a flood plain:
o Floodwaters are devastating to people and property
o Discharge and velocity increase and flow spills out of the stream channel,
immersing adjacent land and destroying structures.

Causes of Flooding:
 Floods occur when…
o A) Abrupt, heavy rains dump large volumes of water quickly.
o B) Long, continuous rains and saturated soils
o C) Abrupt warm weather rapidly melts winter snow, discharge over frozen
soil.
o D) A natural or artificial dam breaks, catastrophically releasing water.

Seasonal Floods:
 Seasonal floods take time—hours or days—allowing for evacuation.
 Seasonal floods recur on an annual basis.
 Monsoons, the tropical rains of the Indian subcontinent, generate long periods of
rain and severe flooding.
 In 1990, a monsoon killed 100,000 people in Bangladesh.

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Ottawa-Gatineau Floods – 2017-2019
 Solar Connection:
o Always getting peak events at low solar activity
o Weak solar cycle = discharge events
Flash Floods:
 Flash floodwaters rise so quickly that they may be impossible to escape
 Typified by a rapidly moving wall of debris-laden water
 Flash floods occur from unusually intense rainfall, a dam collapse, or a levee
failure. They strike with little warning and may be very destructive
 In 1889, a flash flood from a dam failure claimed 2,300 lives in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania.
 Typical in arid regions when cyclonic storms hit.
 Ex: Big Thompson River, Estes Park, Colorado – 1976
o July 31, 1976, rising moist air drenched the Rockies with 19 cm (7.5
inches) of rain in a hour
o Discharge in the Big Thompson River swelled to four times the largest
recorded maximum
o Rock and soil, stripped from the landscape, were added to the flow
o Houses, bridges, and roads vanished, claiming 144 lives.

Catastrophic Ice-Age Floods:

 The Great Missoula Floods
 When ice dams broke, glacial torrents from Glacial Lake Missoula scoured
portions of the Columbia River plateau.

Runoff:
 Runoff: Precipitation – infiltration – interception – evaporation
 extent of water saturation of the soil
 vegetation cover
 soil types
 frozen ground
 human construction
Recurrence Intervals:
 Flood risks are calculated as probabilities
 Discharges plotted on semi-logarithmic paper against recurrence intervals yield a
straight line

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  the probability of a given discharge, as % chance of occurrence, can be
determined by graph inspection.

Urban Development: Hardened Landscapes

 Left : before urbanization
o Drawn out over time – smaller lag time
 Now: Urbanized – lost interception, transporation etc.
o Discharge increase dramatically + shorter raintime = flash discharge
 Dams, Canals and Urbanization
o Very few untamed rivers left
o What are the impacts of such extensive drainage control?
o Humans have extensively dammed natural waterways, with both positive
and negative consequences.

Oceans and Coasts

Earth’s Oceans:
 Oceans cover 70.8% of the planet – world ocean dominates the globe
 Oceans are the basis for life on Earth = life began in oceans
o Hosted ALL live on Earth for 3 Billion years
 Oceans regulate energy and climate
o Thermal capacity is so huge – lots of energy in ocean + regulate our
climate

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  Oceans recycle mass – through erosion, subduction
 Around 60% of humans live near coasts
 Tectonic processes constantly change the configuration of the continents and
ocean basins
 The Pacific covers almost half the planet
 Arctic region: ocean covered by a thin coating of ice
 Antarctic region: continent covered by an ice cap.

Introduction:
 First ocean science expedition, from 1872 to 1876.
 Gathered data at 362 oceanographic stations
 Recorded data on temperature, currents, water chemistry, and ocean floor
deposits
 Humans have explored the ocean for tens of centuries, yet our knowledge of the
depths, until recently, has been very limited
 Challenger made the first ocean research cruise
o collected information on water depths, biota, geology, and water
chemistry.

Deep Sea Exploration:

 Since the 1950s, new manned submersibles greatly expanded our ability to
collect data on the oceans.
 1960 Challenger Deep to 10,915 m depth in Mariana Trench
o Mariana Trench = subduction zone
 Oceanic crust is subducted underneath continental crust
 Alvin goes regularly down to pressures of 250 atmospheres (2500 m depth)
 Autonomous submersibles and satellites have improved remote sensing of the
oceans.
o Sea level, temperature, chemistry
Ocean Networks Canada:
 Earthquake monitoring
 Abyssal ecosystems
 Methane and gas hydrates
 Ocean chemistry
 Monitoring off of Vancouver Island
Landscapes Beneath the Sea:
 Aleutian trench, South of Alaska
 A seismic reflection profile shows the structure of an accretionary prism and
sediment layers of the Pacific floor

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  The colored stripes are sediment layers, and the black lines are faults.

 Oceans exist because of differences in lithosphere

o Continental lithosphere “floats higher” on the mantle
 Less dense = silica and aluminum – relatively light
o Oceanic lithosphere “floats deeper” in the mantle
o Ocean basins collect water because they are lower.

Continental Margins:
 2 types: Passive or Dynamic (Active)
 The formation of a passive-margin basin (PMB)
 Active Continental Margin:
o Marianna’s Trench – deepest point on Earth – 10,994 km
o Active margins border the Caribbean and the western coast of South
America.
 Passive Margin: Continental Shelves and Slopes
o The top surface of the PMB is the continental shelf.
o The sea floor exhibits highly varied bathymetry
o Passive margins occur on both sides of the Atlantic.
o 3 parts: Shelf, slope, rise
 Continental shelf—shallow (0 to 500 m), gently sloping (0.3 o).
 Continental slope—descends from >200 m to about 4 km at an
angle of ~4o
 Lots of erosional channels under water + sediments shelf off
o Submarine landslides like
 Why so much sediment on continental shelf?
 Continental rise—transition zone from 4 to 4.5 km.
o Abyssal plain—flat, low-relief bottom below 4.5 km.

Abyssal Plains:
 Sediment is thicker on the older lithosphere, having had more time to accumulate
 The thinnest sediment covers the newest crust near the mid-ocean ridge axis.
 Abyssal plain strata are horizontally bedded
 The surface of the abyssal plain is muddy with sparse organism
 Mapping of the seafloor shows a fracture zone linking two segments of a mid-
ocean ridge.

Ocean Water: Composition:

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  Salinity - salts dissolved in water
o (Na+ ~30%, Cl- ~55%)
 Salinity - usually measured ppt
 Average ocean salinity: 35 ppt*
o River water salinity: 0.5 ppt often less
o *35 grams of salt /1000 grams of seawater
 Salinity changes with depth, governed by latitude-related evaporation vs.
freshwater input
 Regional variations in salinity reflect differences in freshwater addition vs.
elevated rates of evaporation.
 Rivers bring calcium, potassium, sulfate, magnesium which compose sea salts,
back into ocean
 Na+ and Cl- ions in the ocean are mainly sourced from: river discharge,
volcanoes, mid-ocean ridge circulation

Ocean Water: Temperature:

 Temperature changes with depth equilibrate more rapidly than salinity changes
with depth
 Oceanic bottom waters are close to the freezing point of freshwater
 Regional variations in sea surface temperature are clearly linked to the
temperature variation between the tropics and the poles.
 Warmer in equator and colder near poles

Thermohaline Circulation:
 Thermohaline circulation results in a global-scale conveyor belt that circulates
water throughout the entire ocean system
 Because of this circulation, the ocean mixes entirely in a 1,500-year period
 Gulf Stream = body of warm water that flows north
o Goes north and cools (heating England, Norway etc.)
 Evaporates and becomes more saline = denser and thus sinks
 Shallow current (warm and less salty + less dense)
 Deep current (cold and salt + denser)
Coriolis Effect:
 Rotation deflects prevailing winds and currents
 The sense of deflection depends upon the initial direction of motion and the
position relative to the equator
 Northern hemisphere:
 A projectile shot from the North Pole to the equator deflects to the west.
o Winds and currents moving north to south are likewise deflected west

34
  A projectile shot from the equator to the North Pole deflects to the east
o Winds and currents moving from south to north are likewise deflected to
the east
 In the southern hemisphere, the response is a mirror image
o North-moving winds and currents are deflected to the west
o South-moving winds and currents are deflected to the east.
 The Coriolis effect occurs because the velocity of a point at the equator, in the
direction of the Earth’s spin, is greater than that of a point near the pole
 Due to the Coriolis effect, currents deflect clockwise, relative to the wind in the
northern hemisphere
 Currents spiral by Coriolis deflection into large gyres.
 Angular velocity = earth is turning and every point on earth turns same number of
degrees (radian)
o But circle it is turning at north is smaller than circle turning at equator
o Wind or parcel of water at equator moves faster (higher angular velocity)
than the north pole
 North Hemisphere = High to low angular velocity and veer off to
the right (west to east) – clockwise

Upwelling:
 A longshore wind (parallel to coast) pushes water
away from the shore in the northern hemisphere
due to the Coriolis effect. This pulls water up from
the depths—upwelling.
 Northern hemisphere northerly winds on the west
coast drives upwelling of nutrient-rich bottom waters
o Upwelling coastal margins have high rates of
biological productivity
o Brings up iron, algae + key nutrients
 The reverse (downwelling) occurs when the wind direction is opposite
o An offshore wind pushes water away from the shore
o Loss source of nutrient rich waters

35
  The water must be replaced, and it is, by water pulled up from the depths—
upwelling
 Northerly winds produce an offshore Ekman transport, which drives upwelling of
nutrient-rich bottom waters
 Upwelling coastal margins have high rates of biological productivity.
Downwelling:
 Due to variations in density, derived from differences in temperature and salinity,
the oceans are stratified into distinct water masses.
El Nino:
 Lots of heating in western pacific basin
 As it heats up = slowly shifts + water migrates east-ward and change the air
circulation pattern and brings heat to central west coast

Tides:
 A broad tidal flat is exposed at low tide around Mont-Saint-Michel, on the coast of
France
 This large tidal bore, entering the mouth of a river along the coast of China, is a
tourist attraction.
 Ex: Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia = Largest tides in the world.
o 3.5 m to 16 m
 The larger (sublunar) tidal bulge always faces the Moon
 The smaller tidal bulge is always on the opposite side of the Earth from the
sublunar bulge
 Viewed from the side, the sublunar bulge does not align with the equator
 How tides form:
o 1) Lunar effect
 Greater effect bc body that is closer to us
 Pulling the water envelope in gravitational pull and cause bulge
 Impact on shallow and adjacent to large body of water
 High tides = shift of small movement in body of water causes huge
impact on shallow area without volume to accommodate it
o 2) Solar effect
 All depths and parts of the ocean are influenced by tide-generating forces
Spring and Neap Tides:
 The gravitational pull of the Sun adds to, or subtracts from, the lunar pull
 When the Sun is aligned with the Moon, stronger, higher tides result
o These are called spring tides
 When the Sun is at right angles to the Moon, weaker, lower tides result
o These are called neap tides
 When sun + new moon work together (same side of earth) = compound effect

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 o Solar ride + lunar ride works together = spring tides
o (extra high tides = spring tides)
 Sun + moon work against each other = low tides = neap tides

Waves:
 Ocean waves build in response to the
shear of wind blowing over the water
surface
 Higher-energy wind yields higher-energy
waves
 Within a passing wave, water follows a
circular path
 The circle radius decreases with depth
 At a depth of one-half the wavelength,
the circular motion ceases: this is wave
base.

Longshore Currents:
 Wave refraction occurs when waves approach the shore at an oblique angle.
 Oblique wave attack creates a longshore current that moves sand laterally as
longshore drift (or beach drift).
 Longshore drift moves sand grains along the shoreline in a zigzag path.

Coastal Landforms:
 Coasts, the belts of land bordering the sea, vary dramatically in terms of
topography and associated landforms around the globe.

Wave-Cut Notches and Benches:

 Wave attack along rocky coasts results in shattering, wedging, and abrading of
the cliff, resulting in erosional removal of material and undercutting to form a
wave-cut notch
 Sea level remains at same elevation for certain period of time = erosion
Gravel Beaches:
 Gravel beaches reflect an energetic wave attack and an abundant supply of local
bedrock
 Muds are sparse as turbulence suspends fines and removes them to lower-
energy environments offshore.

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Sand Beaches and Tidal Flats:
 The beach comprises many different sub-environments, which occur in distinct
zones
 The foreshore or intertidal zone is the region between high and low tide
 The beach face is steep, and concave formed by wave swash
 The backshore is the upper beach above high tide
 They may have storm berms.
 West coast of North America = largely sand sediments
o Builds up islands
Longshore Currents:
 Swash carries sand obliquely up the beach, whereas backwash carries it straight
downslope
 So sand grains follow a sawtooth pattern, yielding longshore drift. A longshore
current develops offshore.

Coastal Landforms:
 A) Barrier Islands:
o Waves sculpt sand into elongate offshore bars parallel to the shoreline
o In regions with abundant sand, offshore bars can rise above sea level to
become barrier islands
o Barrier islands protect a shallow, quiet-water lagoon that accumulates
mud.
 B) Sand Spits:
o Bringing in sand
 C) Estuaries:
o River valleys that are flooded by sea-level rise are called estuaries
o They develop as river canyons that cut into the continental shelves during
glacial sea-level lowstands.
 D) Fjords:
o Fjords are glacier valleys that are flooded by sea-level rise
o They characterize mountainous coastlines that hosted valley glaciers
(B.C. Coast, Norway)

Tides- Intertidal Zone:

 Tides ebb and flow twice a day
 Inhabited by a variety of both plants and animals, including star fish and
anemones.
 Predation from above and risk of drying out.

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Tidal Flats:
 Tidal flats are intertidal regions that accumulate mud and silt to form thick, sticky
mud deposits
 Tidal flats display bioturbation, abundant sediment reworking by burrowing
organisms.

Organic Coasts:
 A) Coastal Reefs:
o Organic coasts are those in which living organisms control landforms
along the shore
o Coral reefs grow in tropical marine settings at shallow depth and create
large rocky structures of cemented skeletons
o Coral reefs are among the most biologically productive ecosystems.
 B) Coastal Wetlands and Mangroves:
o Organic coasts are those in which living organisms control landforms
along the shore
o Vegetation in coastal wetlands are controlled by climate.
o Coastal wetlands develop in vegetated flat-lying stretches of coastline that
are flooded by tides but do not see strong waves.
o In temperate settings, they are colonized by trees, grasses, or mosses.
o Mangroves dominate in tropical settings.
o Coastal wetlands fuel high biological productivities.
 C) Lagoons and Atolls:
o Organic coasts are those in which living organisms control landforms
along the shore
o Coral reefs grow in tropical marine settings and create large rocky
structures of cemented skeletons
o Coral reefs are among the most biologically productive ecosystems.

Sea Level Changes:

 Isostatic: equilibrium that exists between parts of the earth's crust
o – local sea level change
o Isostatic depression of earth’s crust
o is the sinking of large parts of the Earth's crust into the asthenosphere.
The sinking is caused by a heavy weight placed on the Earth's surface.
Often this is caused by the heavy weight of glacial ice due to continental
glaciation.
o As ice sheets retreat, the underlying landmass will readjust and undergo
isostatic rebound

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  Eustatic: worldwide change of sea level
o the distance from the center of the earth to the sea surface. An increase of
the eustatic sea level can be generated by decreasing glaciation,
increasing spreading rates of the mid-ocean ridges or more mid-oceanic
ridges
 Fluctuations in sea level
o Glacial melting
o Coastal uplift or subsidence
o Thermosteric expansion of the ocean water mass
 Fluctuations in global sea level
o Glacial meting
o Thermosteric expansion of the ocean water mass

Emergent Coastline:
 Emergent coasts are characterized by river incision, cliffs, wave-cut notches, and
platforms
 Emergent coasts experience relative sea-level fall
 Coastal terraces form as the land emerges from the sea.

Submergent Coastline:
 Submergent coasts are characterized by flooding of river valleys or glacial
troughs to form estuaries and fjords.
 Submergent coasts experience relative sea-level rise.

Beach Destruction and Protection:

 Storms (especially hurricanes) radically alter shorelines
 Human development in coastal settings are often affected
 Construction in coastal settings is increasingly regulated.

Coastal Stabilization Techniques:

 Groins, jetties, and breakwaters arrest sediment transport
 Usually this produces unintended consequences
 Sediment deposition is enhanced in one place
 Sediment erosion ist accelerated in another.

Sea Walls:

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  A concrete or rock seawall can hasten erosion in extreme storms
 Wave energy is concentrated, and erosion is enhanced at the base of the wall
 Seawalls can then fail.

GROUNDWATER

 Hydrogeology: study of groundwater

 Groundwater: liquid water that resides in sediment or rock under the surface of
the Earth
o major component of the hydrologic cycle.

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What is Groundwater:
 Groundwater: subsurface water found in pores and fractures in geological media
o Classically it is defined as water below the water table
o Broader definition includes water in unsaturated soils and sediments
o Any type of water = just liquid
o Hydro cycle =
 Freshwater: 10,530,000 km^3/d reservoir, but small discharge
percentage
 Saline groundwater: 12,870,000 km^3/d reservoir
 Water reservoirs on Earth:
o Oceans: 1,300,000,000 km^3
 97.3%
o Freshwater: 35,000,000 km^3
 2.7%
 Freshwater reservoirs on Earth:
o Glaciers – 69%, Liquid freshwater – 31%
o Fresh groundwater – 30.2%
 Lakes, soils, atmosphere, rivers, biomass has significantly lower
percentages
 Percentage of population reliant on groundwater for domestic use:
o ~25-40% in Canada (~9-14 million people)
o ~70% in Maritimes
o Groundwater used principally for agriculture (Prairies), industry (QC, BC),
rural homes (ON, NB, NFLD)
 A) Groundwater resources:
o Drinking water, irrigation, industry
 B) Groundwater contamination:
o Agriculture, waste water, industrial spills, energy development
 C) Groundwater geotechnical
o Dams + reservoirs, building foundations, landslides + mudflows

Where is Groundwater Found?

 Aquifer – a saturated geologic unit that readily transmits significant (economic)
quantities of water (to a well)
o Groundwater flows through aquifers Aquifers are more permeable than
aquitards
o **Low porosity = can still be good aquifer (ex: granite)
 Aquitard – a saturated geologic unit that poorly transmits water in low quantities
insufficient for a well

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 o Aquitards have low permeability
 Porosity = amount of water + void space
o Intergranular: ~30% (Sandstone)
 30% is void space
o Fracture: ~1%
 Bedrock – 1% void space
o Dual porosity = intergranular + fracture
o Groundwater resides in subsurface pore spaces, the open spaces within
any sediment or rock
o The total volume of open space is termed porosity
o Porosity can be filled with water or air
o Pores can also become filled with mineral cement and other fluids, like oil
or natural gas
 Permeability = ease of flow
o Permeability is the ease of water flow due to pore interconnectedness
o High-permeability material allows water to flow readily
o Water flows slowly through low-permeability material

 Aquifers + Aquitards:
o An aquifer is a high-porosity, high-permeability rock that transmits water
easily
 Unconfined aquifer lies at the surface
 Because it is in contact with human activities, it is easily
contaminated.
 Confined aquifer lies beneath an aquitard
 Being isolated from the surface, it is less susceptible to
pollution
o An aquitard is lower-permeability rock that hinders water flow. Aquifers
and aquitards are commonly interlayered.
 Unsaturated zone + Saturated zone + water table
o Water table – dig down + get water
 Level where you have saturated conditions in water pressure (1
atm)
o Above water table. Capillary fringe – full saturated pores but under tension
o Exceed capillary tension + pores drain
o Unsaturated:
 Grains of materials, water + gas (air, with high CO2 and low O2)

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  Unconfined vs Confined Aquifers:
o 1) Unconfined or Phreatic aquifer:
 Connected to atmosphere above
 Unsaturated zone
 Water table defines the groundwater
pressure
 Saturated zone
 Direct recharge occurs along its length
o 2) Confined or Artesian aquifer:
 Bound above by a low-permeability
formation (aquitard)
 Fully saturated, no unsaturated zone
 Potential surface (or pressure surface, like
water table) defines the groundwater
pressure
 Different types of aquifers:
o Sand Aquifer
o Clay Aquitard – water moves through it but slowly
 Sand aquifer below
o Rock Aquifers
 A) Sandstone
 Sandstone in southern Jordan, provided groundwater to the
400 BC Nebatean city of Petra
 Sandstone in Petra stained along bedding planes by
groundwater flow and mineral oxidation
 B) Basalt
 In Hawaii, flows of ‘a‘a and pahoihoi lava cool to basalt
forming a series of aquifers kilometers thick
 C) Limestone karst

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  Anticosti Island where groundwater flows from the limestone
rocks and feeds salmon streams
 Sampling a groundwater spring from karst on Anticosti
Island, for baseline studies as the island was being
considered for shale gas and oil development
 Karst caves and channels are formed from dissolution of
limestone by the infiltration of groundwater with dissolved
carbonic acid from the soil.
o CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O  Ca2+ + 2HCO3–
 if water table lowers, caves immerge and become exposed
 Carlsbad caverns are in New Mexico (near Texas Border)
 D) Fracture Granite
 The Squamish Chief granite dome has fractures where
groundwater discharge sustains vegetation
 Green – bc water flow + allows vegetation
 Sampling groundwater in a gold mine in Yellowknife to study
the movement of groundwater in fractured granitic rock.

Gradient and Flow:

 Groundwater recharge takes place by percolation
of rain through the soil and unsaturated zone
 Recharge can also take place from riverbanks or
reservoirs if the aquifer is being pumped to lower
the water level
 To get groundwater to move, we need a driving force or gradient. Flow is
proportional to gradient.
 Gradients in aquifers occur between high
groundwater levels and low levels.
 Groundwater flow was quantified by Henri
Darcy in 1856
 Darcy’s Law for groundwater flow through an
aquifer relates discharge, Q (m3/s) to
gradient, Dh/Dl (m/m) and resistance, K
(m/s) to flow through a given area, A (m2)

 Piezometers in a cross section:

o The water level inside the piezometer measures the water level in the
aquifer
o Comparing water levels between two piezometers gives the gradient
(Dh/Dl)
o Groundwater flow is along the gradient, from high level to low level

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 o Examples of piezometer screens at the tip of the piezometer standpipe
(pvc pipe) that goes up to surface
 The screen allows the groundwater to rise up the pipe to the level
of its hydraulic head.
 Artesian (Confined Aquifers) Wells and the Potentiometric Surface:
o Artesian wells tap confined, tilted aquifers that are pressurized by upland
recharge
o Water rises in artesian wells to the potentiometric surface, which is an
analogue of the water table for a confined aquifer
o A well casing below this surface will flow without pumping
o City water distribution systems are designed like artesian aquifers
o A water tower establishes the potentiometric surface
 Flowing Artesian Well in a Confined Aquifer
o When the hydrostatic head for a well in a confined aquifer is higher than
the land surface, the well can flow
o This is similar to a spring, which occurs where the water table “outcrops”
in a valley and water from the unconfined aquifer flows onto the surface
 Springs:
o Springs occur where the aquifer outcrops or intersects with the land
surface
o This might be a focused spring with flow or it might be a diffuse seepage
face

Groundwater Resources:
 Qanats: ancient water resource technology to tap the water table
 Over pumping of groundwater:
o Excessive pumping of wells can cause neighboring wells to go dry
o Drawdown (lowering) of the w.t.
o Cone of depression in the w.t.
 Problems with groundwater withdrawal:
o 1) Land subsidence (sinking)
 Water in pore space acts to hold grains apart
 When groundwater is removed, sediment grains compress and the
pores collapse
 This causes the land surface to crack and subside irreversibly
o 2) Saline Intrusion
 In coastal regions, fresh groundwater flows over a saline wedge
due to density differences
 The depth of the freshwater dense is 40x its height above sea level.
 Drawdown of the water table by 1 m from excessive groundwater
withdrawal causes saltwater to be drawn into wells by as much as
40 m.

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  Saline intrusion occurs from over-pumping of groundwater in a
coastal aquifer
o Oman fossil groundwater recharged 13,000 to 30,000 years BP
o Dates by measuring the carbon 14 of the dissolved inorganic carbon in
groundwater
 Fossil groundwater nourishing desert agriculture = mining

Groundwater Contamination:
 Nutrients = nitrogen
 Fuels + Solvents
 Highway road salt
 Industrial wastewaters
 Nitrates:
o From fertilized lawn, septic system, atmosphere, animal waste + fertilized
crop (most nitrate contamination)
 Organic contaminants:
o Dense Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids (DNAPL) and Light Non-Aqueous
Phase Liquids LNAPL) ee slightly soluble organic liquids
 If spilled on the surface, they flow down and sit below the water
table (DNAPL) or on the water table (LNAPL) and contaminate
groundwaters for hundreds of years.
 Dense non-aqueous phase liquids which sink through an aquifer
and contaminate groundwater for many years
o DNAPL – trichloroethylene (TCE) used in dry-cleaning as a solvent is
pervasive and very difficult to treat in the subsurface
o LNAPL – gasoline (benzene-toluene-ethylbenzene-xylene or BTEX) is
pervasive, but volatile with leakage from old underground storage tanks
(every old gas station has one)
 Aquitards: Barriers to contaminants: (protecting groundwater resources)
o Hydrofracking
o Carbon capture + deep storage
o  Nuclear waste disposal in a deep geological repository

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