Sand boils or sand volcanoes occur when water under pressure wells up through a bed of sand. [1] The water looks like it is boiling up from the bed of sand, hence the name.
Sand boils or sand volcanoes occur when water under pressure wells up through a bed of sand. [1] The water looks like it is boiling up from the bed of sand, hence the name.
A sand volcano or sand blow is a cone of sand formed by the ejection of sand onto a surface from a central point. The sand builds up as a cone with slopes at the sand's angle of repose. A crater is commonly seen at the summit. The cone looks like a small volcanic cone [2] and can range in size from millimetres to metres in diameter.
The process is often associated with soil liquefaction and the ejection of fluidized sand that can occur in water-saturated sediments during an earthquake. The New Madrid Seismic Zone exhibited many such features during the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. [3] Adjacent sand blows aligned in a row along a linear fracture within fine-grained surface sediments are just as common, and can still be seen in the New Madrid area.
In the past few years, much effort has gone into the mapping of liquefaction features to study ancient earthquakes. [4] The basic idea is to map zones that are susceptible to the process and then go in for a closer look. The presence or absence of soil liquefaction features is strong evidence of past earthquake activity, or lack thereof.
These are to be contrasted with mud volcanoes , which occur in areas of geyser or subsurface gas venting.
Sand boils can be a mechanism contributing to liquefaction and levee failure during floods. This effect is caused by a difference in pressure on two sides of a levee or dike, most likely during a flood. This process can result in internal erosion, whereby the removal of soil particles results in a pipe through the embankment. The creation of the pipe will quickly pick up pace and will eventually result in failure of the embankment.
A sand boil is difficult to stop. The most effective method is by creating a body of water above the boil to create enough pressure to slow the flow of water. A slower flow will not be able to move soil particles. The body of water is often created with sandbags forming a ring around the boil. [5]
During the flood of spring 2011, the United States Army Corps of Engineers had to work to contain the largest sand boil ever discovered. The sand boil measured 9 by 12 meter (30 by 40 feet) and was located in the city of Cairo, Illinois at the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Ohio River. [6]
An example of this is during the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, when sand boils brought up debris from the 1906 earthquake. This process is a result of liquefaction. By mapping the location of sand boils that erupted in the Marina District during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, scientists discovered the site of a lagoon that existed in 1906. The lagoon developed after the Fair's Seawall was constructed, and was later filled in in 1915 in preparation for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. [7]
A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually earthen and that often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines.
Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand and silt can be carried in suspension in river water and on reaching the sea bed deposited by sedimentation; if buried, they may eventually become sandstone and siltstone through lithification.
Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and lacks plasticity when wet. Silt also can be felt by the tongue as granular when placed on the front teeth.
Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as their creating process, shape, elevation, slope, orientation, rock exposure, and soil type.
Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, in which material that is ordinarily a solid behaves like a liquid. In soil mechanics, the term "liquefied" was first used by Allen Hazen in reference to the 1918 failure of the Calaveras Dam in California. He described the mechanism of flow liquefaction of the embankment dam as:
If the pressure of the water in the pores is great enough to carry all the load, it will have the effect of holding the particles apart and of producing a condition that is practically equivalent to that of quicksand... the initial movement of some part of the material might result in accumulating pressure, first on one point, and then on another, successively, as the early points of concentration were liquefied.
A sandbag or dirtbag is a bag or sack made of hessian (burlap), polypropylene or other sturdy materials that is filled with sand or soil and used for such purposes as flood control, military fortification in trenches and bunkers, shielding glass windows in war zones, ballast, counterweight, and in other applications requiring mobile fortification, such as adding improvised additional protection to armored vehicles or tanks.
A geologic hazard or geohazard is an adverse geologic condition capable of causing widespread damage or loss of property and life. These hazards are geological and environmental conditions and involve long-term or short-term geological processes. Geohazards can be relatively small features, but they can also attain huge dimensions and affect local and regional socio-economics to a large extent.
A turbidite is the geologic deposit of a turbidity current, which is a type of amalgamation of fluidal and sediment gravity flow responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean.
Parent material is the underlying geological material in which soil horizons form. Soils typically inherit a great deal of structure and minerals from their parent material, and, as such, are often classified based upon their contents of consolidated or unconsolidated mineral material that has undergone some degree of physical or chemical weathering and the mode by which the materials were most recently transported.
A levee breach or levee failure is a situation where a levee fails or is intentionally breached, causing the previously contained water to flood the land behind the levee.
Paleoliquefaction is any liquefaction features attributed to seismic events occurring before measurements or written records were kept of earthquakes. The study of these features can reveal a great deal about the seismicity of regions where large earthquakes happen infrequently. This is a subset of the broader field of paleoseismology.
Debris flows are geological phenomena in which water-laden masses of soil and fragmented rock rush down mountainsides, funnel into stream channels, entrain objects in their paths, and form thick, muddy deposits on valley floors. They generally have bulk densities comparable to those of rock avalanches and other types of landslides, but owing to widespread sediment liquefaction caused by high pore-fluid pressures, they can flow almost as fluidly as water. Debris flows descending steep channels commonly attain speeds that surpass 10 m/s (36 km/h), although some large flows can reach speeds that are much greater. Debris flows with volumes ranging up to about 100,000 cubic meters occur frequently in mountainous regions worldwide. The largest prehistoric flows have had volumes exceeding 1 billion cubic meters. As a result of their high sediment concentrations and mobility, debris flows can be very destructive.
Internal erosion is the formation of voids within a soil caused by the removal of material by seepage. It is the second most common cause of failure in levees and one of the leading causes of failures in earth dams, responsible for about half of embankment dam failures.
There have been known various classifications of landslides. Broad definitions include forms of mass movement that narrower definitions exclude. For example, the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology distinguishes the following types of landslides:
Earth Revealed: Introductory Geology, originally titled Earth Revealed, is a 26-part video instructional series covering the processes and properties of the physical Earth, with particular attention given to the scientific theories underlying geological principles. The telecourse was produced by Intelecom and the Southern California Consortium, was funded by the Annenberg/CPB Project, and first aired on PBS in 1992 with the title Earth Revealed. All 26 episodes are hosted by Dr. James L. Sadd, professor of environmental science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.
The Marina District is a neighborhood located in San Francisco, California. The neighborhood sits on the site of the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, staged after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to celebrate the reemergence of the city. Aside from the Palace of Fine Arts, all other buildings were demolished to make the current neighborhood. The Marina currently has the highest non-Hispanic white resident percentage of any recognized neighborhood in San Francisco.
In geology, a backswamp is a type of depositional environment commonly found in a floodplain. It is where deposits of fine silts and clays settle after a flood. These deposits create a marsh-like landscape that is often poorly drained and usually lower than the rest of the floodplain.
Relief wells are used both in the natural gas and petroleum industry and in flood control.
River bank failure can be caused when the gravitational forces acting on a bank exceed the forces which hold the sediment together. Failure depends on sediment type, layering, and moisture content.
Sedimentation enhancing strategies are environmental management projects aiming to restore and facilitate land-building processes in deltas. Sediment availability and deposition are important because deltas naturally subside and therefore need sediment accumulation to maintain their elevation, particularly considering increasing rates of sea-level rise. Sedimentation enhancing strategies aim to increase sedimentation on the delta plain primarily by restoring the exchange of water and sediments between rivers and low-lying delta plains. Sedimentation enhancing strategies can be applied to encourage land elevation gain to offset sea-level rise. Interest in sedimentation enhancing strategies has recently increased due to their ability to raise land elevation, which is important for the long-term sustainability of deltas.