The Geological Phenomena Found Poetry Slam

A convergence of science and linguistic beauty.

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The lunar maria are large, dark, basaltic plains on Earth's Moon, formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. They were dubbed maria, Latin for 'seas', by early astronomers who mistook them for actual seas. They are less reflective than the 'highlands' as a result of their iron-rich compositions, and hence appear dark to the naked eye.

Lunar mare

[geologicalpoetryslam]

The term 'cyclic mobility' refers to the mechanism of progressive reduction of effective stress due to cyclic loading. This may occur in all soil types including dense soils. However, on reaching a state of zero effective stress such soils immediately dilate and regain strength.

Soil liquefaction

Back by popular demand.

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Absolute dating provides a numerical age or range in contrast with relative dating which places events in order without any measure of the age between events.

Absolute dating

Felt kind of appropriate to kick off February with this one.

[geologicalpoetryslam]

[A] forebulge is a flexural bulge in front of a load on the lithosphere.... Because of the coupling with the mantle, the rate of forebulge formation and collapse is controlled by mantle viscosity.

Forebulge

I never promised this would be clean.

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Organic palynofacies considers all the acid insoluble particulate organic matter (POM), including kerogen and palynomorphs in sediments and palynological preparations of sedimentary rocks. The sieved or unsieved preparations may be examined using strew mounts on microscope slides that may be examined using a transmitted light biological microscope or ultraviolet (UV) fluorescence microscope. The abundance, composition and preservation of the various components, together with the thermal alteration of the organic matter is considered.

Palynofacies

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering and contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land after a glacier retreats.

Nunatak

Resisting the urge to make a terrible joke here.

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Cross-cutting relationships may be compound in nature. For example, if a fault were truncated by an unconformity, and that unconformity cut by a dike.

Cross-cutting relationships

The list of the types of these relationships is quite superb, I might add.

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Palsas need large quantities of water for the formation of their ice lenses, and for this reason they occur particularly in bogs.

Palsa

[geologicalpoetryslam]

The soil through which water passes to feed the formation of ice lenses must be sufficiently porous to allow capillary action, yet not so porous as to break capillary continuity. Such soil is referred to as 'frost susceptible.'

Frost heaving

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When many lobes are in sequence, the appearance is like a staircase in profile.

Solifluction

[geologicalpoetryslam]

In spring, the snow and ice melt, and the landscape is effectively inundated with half a year's worth of rainfall in the space of a couple of days. The top soil becomes waterlogged, and flows like a liquid.

Gelifluction

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Duplexes occur where there are two decollement levels close to each other within a sedimentary sequence, such as the top and base of a relatively strong sandstone layer bounded by two relatively weak mudstone layers. When a thrust that has propagated along the lower detachment, known as the floor thrust, cuts up to the upper detachment, known as the roof thrust, it forms a ramp within the stronger layer. With continued displacement on the thrust, higher stresses are developed in the footwall of the ramp due to the bend on the fault.

Thrust duplex

"And that, children, is how duplexes are made."

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Thrust faults are a special class of "reverse faulting" that typically have low dip angles. The distinguishment between a thrust fault and a reverse fault is in their influence.

Thrust fault

[geologicalpoetryslam]

Nappes form when a mass of rock is forced (or "thrust") over another rock mass, typically on a low angle fault plane. The resulting structure may include large-scale recumbent folds, shearing along the fault plane, imbricate thrust stacks, fensters and klippe.

Nappe

There's such a thing as a "nappe stack" but apparently no "nappe sack."

(Sorry not sorry.)

[geologicalpoetryslam]

In geology, a mélange is a large-scale breccia, a mappable body of rock characterized by a lack of continuous bedding and the inclusion of fragments of rock of all sizes, contained in a fine-grained deformed matrix. The mélange typically consists of a jumble of large blocks of varied lithologies. Large-scale melanges formed in active continental margin settings generally consist of altered oceanic crustal material and blocks of continental slope sediments in a sheared mudstone matrix. The mixing mechanisms in such settings may include tectonic shearing forces, ductile flow of a water-charged or deformable matrix (such as serpentinite), sedimentary action (such as slumping, gravity-flow, and olistostromal action), or some combination of these.

Mélange This whole thing is a poem in and of itself. Read it at various speeds and you'll see what I mean.

[geologicalpoetryslam]

The orogeny of an orogen is only part of the orogen's orogenic cycle.

Orogeny

This entire Wikipedia entry has its own built-in drinking game.

[geologicalpoetryslam]

In statistics, originally in geostatistics, Kriging or Gaussian process regression is a method of interpolation for which the interpolated values are modeled by a Gaussian process governed by prior covariances, as opposed to a piecewise-polynomial spline chosen to optimize smoothness of the fitted values.

Kriging

This is only the beginning.