Re: Whimpy Roots

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Payne" <bpayne15@juno.com>
To: <ksharman@pris.bc.ca>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 8:41 PM
Subject: Re: Whimpy Roots
>"Less intense rooting" from pioneering
> vegetation might not bioturbate the thin partings, but a single
> generation of less intense rooting will not produce enough vegetation to
> support the mat and prevent further root bioturbation. In the absence of
> a modern analog, which I've asked for before and you have yet to offer,
> you have too many conditions to make this a workable solution.
You want a modern analogue? Here are three. This is from "Holocene peat and Tephra Record from the Southernmost Chilean Andes" by Kilian et al, 2003 (link to file below). Tephra (recent volcanic ash) layers were studied in peat and lake sediment cores. Peat cores were 2 to 6 meters long, and contained 2 to 4 tephras. These tephras were from 1 or 2 mm thick up to 5 cm thick, and had peat above and below them.

The authors discuss preservation of the tephras, comparing those in lake sediments to peat tephras: "The organic rich sediment core from the small lake Chandler.preserves the most tephra fall layers.No root activity or bioturbation has disturbed small tephra fall layers in this lake..In contrast, thin tephra layers in peat cores are often dispersed by root growth after deposition. Therefore, fine grained volcanic ash layers are often difficult to detect and the original thickness of ash is difficult to estimate in these cores. However, observation of the presence of very thin tephra layers was easier in ombrogenic peat cores than in minerogenic core sections." Despite the acknowledged disturbance by roots, they were able to find tephra layers as thin as a few millimeters! Peat forming vegetation re-established on top of the ash layer, and the peat accumulated.

Another study looked at peat bogs in New Zealand. "A Palynological Study of Polynesian and European Effects on Vegetation in Coromandel, New Zealand.." By Byrami et al (2002) (link to PDF below) took cores of 1.2 m to 3.1 m deep in a peat bog. They found tephras 1 to 2 cm thick, with peat above and below. There was also a blue grey clay layer 10 cm thick in one of the cores, again with peat above and below, and another core had a 10 cm layer of coarse sandy clay with peat above and below. In addition, there were numerous thin (~1 cm) layers of charcoal found. All these show that rooting by the peat-forming vegetation above these beds did NOT destroy them, as you think is a certainty.

The palynology of this bog was studied, and a mix of trees, herbs, and shrubs makes up the flora. This is not a grass or sphagnum swamp with no trees.

A third example - "Kaipo bog project - fine-resolution study of late-glacial climatic change in New Zealand" (link below). A series of 16 tephra layers is interbedded with late Glacial and Holocene peats and muds. These look to be about 10 cm to 20 cm thick from the diagram.
> One, your "stand up roots vertically in a turbidity
> current"
> > explanation, and my "in situ growth" explanation, with evidence of no
> > extensive bioturbation.
>
> No, Kevin, there is a third possibility which I have offered several
> times: an opportunistic growth spurt, followed by flooding and
> deposition from a floating mat. This would explain the vertical roots
> and the lack of bioturbation.
Yes, you offered it, and I refuted it (Feb. 26). You are invoking opportunistic growth for every instance of vertical roots in so-called Flood deposits? This doesn't leave any time for the Flood. You have not answered my post on the Gates where Leckie decribes an interval of ~70 meters with vertical roots and thick coal seams. How can you have repeated underwater deposition from floating mats switching back and forth with repeated, multiple opportunistic growth spurts in a Flood timeframe? Clearly, you have not thought this through - it's just an ad hoc explanation you are forced to come up with to explain the data.
>Continued growth in situ will certainly
> result in bioturbation by the time enough vegetation is piled up to
> support the tree roots and keep them out of the parting.
This is, and always has been, a supposition on your part, proven wrong by my examples above.
>
> Pennsylvanian roots are often Stigmarian axial roots, which look similar
> to a bottle brush. If the central axial root grows parallel to the
> surface then the radial rootlets will be perpendicular to and penetrate
> the parting. You can't grow these tree roots on top of a parting without
> penetrating the parting.
Are you saying that stigmarian axial roots are never found penetrating partings?
>Also, the weight of the tree would compress the
> soft mud/peat and cause a depression beneath the stump, squeezing the
> parting out from beneath the tree stump. Furthermore, if these were in
> situ swamps, why aren't the tree stumps ubiquitous? Why do we only find
> the occasional tree stump in growth position? And if the stump horizons
> do NOT have mostly prostrate logs, then why not? Where did all of the
> logs from the stumps go?
The occasional stumps found in growth position are ones found right at the floor of the seam. Pioneering vegetation (horsetails, ferns) generally establishes first, along with a few trees, then more continuous trees. Stump horizons and prostrate logs found above the base of the seam are coalified.
>
> When you were arguing against my detrital vertical roots, you said we
> would expect to see horizontal to sub-horizontal roots if they floated
> in. Now you are calling on randomly-oriented pieces of vegetation to be
> jabbed into the mud. You can't have it both ways, Kevin.
Horizontal branches, logs, stumps, etc. would have sub-branches and roots that would stick into the soft mud substrate. We don't see these in partings that I am aware of.

>Also, if one
> of your in situ trees falls over, wouldn't those horizontal roots be
> pushed into the mud on one side (the side beneath where the tree fell),
> and wouldn't the limbs of the tree be plunged into the thin, soft layer
> of mud? Even if you were able to grow trees on soft mud without
> disturbing the layer of mud, which is impossible, you still have the
> problem of getting the tree down when it dies without mashing the
> parting.
Yes, this probably happens. The exposures of thin intraseam partings are predominantly 2D (underground headings, highwalls, roadcuts) or point data like core. This limits our observation of a parting that covers tens of thousands of square kilometers of area to a very small dataset. I submit that if you looked hard even in these 2D exposures you would find pinchouts and small scale thickness variations from squashing by stumps.

Smaller vegetation like ferns and horsetails can build up a peat layer without having the stump problem. Think about a sphagnum bog, Bill. Plenty of thick modern peats have formed with no trees needed.

> > I might even say that partings without roots may have been
> > covered by allochthonous peat IN THE SWAMP,
>
> This is called "hypo allochthonous" - and it won't help unless you cover
> the parting with a meter or so of vegetation, and where are you going to
> get that much vegetation to cover >200,000 square miles (three times,
> once for each parting in the Herren coal!)?
To be precise, it's called hypautochthonous (Stach, 1982 p. 19). You are still stuck on your unsupported presupposition that you need a thick "buffer" of vegetation so the roots of subsequent vegetation don't penetrate the substrate. Tell me, Bill, in the modern swamp example you quoted and I re-quoted, how did the swamp become established when the quote says that tree roots do not extend to the deeper peat layers or the mineral substrate? Are you proposing a floating mat origin for this modern peat deposit?
> > then normal swamp plant growth
> > prevailed. Those partings that have roots support an insitu origin.
>
> Partings with roots but no bioturbation?
I have shown you a picture of these - what more do you need?
> > But, we must look at the big picture here.
>
> You really don't like these detailed analyses when they go against you,
> do you Kevin? I can tell when I'm on the right track because that is
> when you guys always run for the big picture.
Funny, Bill, but any time I have brought up details, like vertical roots, low sulphur coals, inertinite, artificial coalification of root-containing peat that makes the roots disappear, to name only a few, you have either backed down or not answered.

If an explanation doesn't fit into the big picture, then it's not a sound one. Your explanation doesn't satisfy the details OR fit into the big picture.

> We're in the Pennsylvanian, now. You're going to have to start over with
> your in situ proofs.
I don't recall switching to the Pennsylvanian, since you have not addressed even half of the points I brought up. Would you like a list?

By this I take it you are admitting that Mesozoic and Cenozoic coals, which comprise a large portion of the world's resources, probably formed according to the mainstream in situ origin. Thank you.

> We agree that tonsteins are subaqueous deposits. As to whether they
> settled vertically out of suspension as you say, or whether they flowed
> horizontally as I have suggested, is beside the point.
This is most emphatically NOT beside the point. If you cannot demonstrate how they got there in the first place, any discussion you may have about tonsteins is irrelevant.
> The tonsteins are
> there
But you can't explain how.
> and they are not bioturbated.
I have quoted Grieve (1984) saying that tonsteins contained stringers of organic matter. To quote Grieve, "the organic stringers bend around the graupen." You must admit that this could be roots.

Grieve notes "lack of laminations or internal partings" in the tonsteins. This points to no laminations to begin with, or bioturbation by the organic stringers that might be roots. "Rounded light grey blebs (graupen) are concentrated near the contacts of the band, and also occur in the enclosing dark grey carbonaceous rock." Again, evidence for bioturbation (mixing).

> You can't grow a swamp on a tonstein
> or any other parting without bioturbation.
Wrong.
>Until you can show me a
> modern swamp with intact layers of mud,
See the start of the post.
> you have not demonstrated the
> viability of your model.
Guess I have now, eh?

Kevin
www.rsnz.govt.nz/publish/jrsnz/2002/025.pdf NZ tephra in peat swamps
Revista geol?ica de Chile - Holocene peat and lake sediment ...

Holocene peat in Chile

http://www.qub.ac.uk/arcpal/Tephra/inquatephra/Kaipo_bog_project/kaipo_bog1_project.htm Kaipo bog
Received on Wed Mar 10 00:57:41 2004