Jordan Carey at Drumheller Channels
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2024
- Jordan Carey & Nick Zentner | May 2, 2024
Central Washington University geology instructors Jordan and Nick banter on a hike in Washington's Drumheller Channels near Othello, Washington.
/ @jorscore
Nice to see this I was suffering from geology withdrawal
Same, lol…
You know you’re a Zentnerd when you find yourself ‘jonesing’ for geology lectures and field trips..
🔍🪨⛏️🤓
@@GrannySmith lol spot on old gurl, spot on!!!
Great episode! A couple thoughts...Cataract retreat, that is submerged headward cutting and bedrock knickpoint retreat, created Grand Coulee, Dry Falls, and other scabland coulees. The migration of knickpoints is responsible for deepening bedrock channels, not just the flushing action of the flow, as occurs in alluvial channels. Drumheller Channels shows evidence of multiple bedrock knickpoints migrating northward simultaneously, perhaps at slightly different rates. When you drive across O'Sullivan Dam, notice there are 4 distinct troughs. Flows through the cataract complex appear to have interacted in complicated ways. Locations of focused scouring probably shifted during a flood. Subsequent floods would pick up where the last left off, redirecting scour elsewhere. The DC scabland evolved through time with multiple floods of different discharges. Also, kilometer-scale fracture sets in the basalt, not channelization during a falling tide, control the orientation of many of the sheer, secondary cliffs there.
"Flows through the cataract complex appear to have interacted in complicated ways". Skye, perhaps your best understatement ever.
Like Jordan, I too was wondering what would create a shear cliff perpendicular to flow. And I've always thought the cliff faces were a little too linear for hydraulic excavation alone.
Kilometer-scale fracture sets in basalt sounds perfect!
Thanks for your contributions to Nick's channel.
Making excellent sense of the two different viewpoints expressed during the video...!
This guy has “IT” He has the passion It is very contagious
I'm sure a lot of that is about "If I'm gonna teach 188 I'd better be comfortable with what I'm seeing or I'm not gonna be able to imbue the idea on my students." Drumheller is not an easy landscape to parse out; hard to envision the amount of water in _that_ particular area that it would've taken to erode that basalt while at the same time some pockets of the basalt layers might be more resistant to erosion than others. Makes it REALLY hard to visualize in your head how much water was actually going through there and at what speeds and pressure; it's a hodge-podge of different outcrops and formations that point in almost every direction on the compass. I'm just watching this and it makes my head hurt.
@@briane173 I agree. It's especially to see at ground level. A chopper would really be great to get a feel of what went on there.
I always love the field trips! It is easy to get disoriented in the scablands, so I think everyone can understand the loss of perspective. Thanks for sharing this with us Nick and Jordan! Also, isn't this a perfect conversation to demonstrate how difficult it was for Bretz to communicate the scale of this all?
Exactly what I was thinking, Sharon. I imagined Bretz and his students doing the same.
My favorite video of yours yet! Hearing and watching the behind the scenes conversations and sharing is riveting and relatable because you guys are both human and no matter how much we know or don’t know just being engaged with you guys humanizes the art of discovery with not only a class mate but students of life.
As a photographer who has spent a lot of time in the Scablands, I was drooling at the amazing good light you encountered on the columns at the end of your video, Nick!
Thanks Nick!! Outstanding! I imagine similar discussions about the Wisconsin glaciation back in the day.
I give this guy a lot of credit for going on video. Not a lot of students would be comfortable showing their lack of knowledge on a subject or being challenged on their understanding. This shows true intelligence. Good for him. 👍
I would like to be fly on your packs while you two are walking through the Channels here in Drumheller Alberta.Home of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. A Flood Story that takes you 68 MYA. Not the same Volumes /Parent Materials , but in it self a very neat story.Please Nick keep up this awesome work.😊
I understand where Jordan is coming from. I think Skye's post explains the conundrum.
Just another outstanding geology seminar and field trip! Thanks very much.
Another consideration as you look out on the flat expanse between the basalt escarpments- How much of what you observe is the eeactual bottom of the flood channel, which was eventually filled in by the receding rush of the flood front? How deep is the deposited overburden, 200 feet? The channels were in V-shaped canyons before the floods.
Look at the Willamette Valley @150-250 miles downstream, quarries are digging down a hundred feet and still haven’t reached the bottom of the flood deposits.
Thank you for brightening a rainy afternoon ❤
It's hard to judge the power of water. In 2006, I was elk hunting on Mt St Helen's and we witnessed a flash flood. The wash we was hunting went from dry to raging torrent over night. You could hear boulders smashing as they were washed downstream. It was impressive to witness
LIke the St Helens Lahars, I drove though the day after, now you see big canyons that were carved in a few hours, makes you rethink the millions of years grand canyon stuff.
Its so hard to visualize the amount depth and breadth of where the Columbia water was! in relation to the pillars and the landscape what was above and what was below. for how long> these are such important discussions, it helps us all orient. This guy really wants to know it. I thank you for being as honest and forthright as you can be. but allowing him to talk it out. and meld things in his own mind to arrive at an understanding. great episode i will probably watch it again. I loved the discussion.
I would bet the sheer scale of the whole event has confounded many geologists
Seeing it through new eyes. Interesting discussion thank you guys.
I spent a year flying back an forth from Seattle to Spokane... weekly!
Always a window seat for obvious reasons 😊
Cool a new one.
A nice surprise on a boring Sunday night.
Thank you have given us a good time
I have the very same thoughts as Jordan about the waining stages of floods, even when those are islands that is a lot of water!
I think Jordan was on to something. When any amount of water was coursing through the Drumheller Channels there was erosion happening. Even today "small" flash floods in the wherever they may be around the world are still eroding the river beds and channels that they are in. Yes, There would have been a period during the floods when erosion would have petered out, but the floods that carved the Drumheller Channels would have continued to erode as the water subsided. It was a massive amount of water that is so hard to fathom. It was immense and even mind boggling! Thanks for sharing a great video Nick!
Seems like a good dude, loves his rocks. I'd love to get you guys out and ask 10,000 questions. Grew up in the Channeled Scablands, endlessly fascinated with them. There are SOME zones that stick out as completely different for some reason, at least to my eye. The big cut North of Odessa, up toward Lincoln, that houses Coffeepot Lake, Twin Lakes, etc to me sticks out as a different story than most of "home". I could postulate a bunch of ideas as to how and why, but it'd be guess work.
Great video, excited to go check it out, reminds me of Devils Post Pile in So Cal, growing up in SoCal I remember driving though the Mojave and a thunderstorm would hit, you would have 6-10 feet of water for 1/2 hour raging down the Arroyo, you have to see that type of force to understand, some of these floods may have only lasted a short period at peak if an ice dam or something more catastrophic than a slow melt happened. Thought provoking for me as an amateur, still have my birthday rock pick from 57 years ago as a kid digging fossils in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Those columns are gorgeous! Also, "chippy stuff" should be a formal thing.
Hurrah!! I love this amazing place. This is terrific, including your considered discussions! What a day to try to visualize the floods. (Jordan is an exceptional educator, as well.)
34:40 Grew up along the Mississippi in the midwest. That's an unfathomable amount of water flowing past, trying put that flow into this scale. Unreal.
Thanks for taking us along again on one of your field videos. Just finished watching your 3 downtown lectures. Enjoyed all 3 so much I’m watching them again. I was waiting for you to explain the “chippy”formation as shale. Just kidding. Thanks again Nick!
This is a cool post Doc. I love the view from the higher spots. Crazy land activity.
Thanks man.
Jordan made me nervous as hell walking on the edge of those columns.
Reminds me of the videos where a comedian takes hikes around S. California with celebrities and asks them questions. It’s the walk itself that makes the left and right hemispheres of the brain coordinate to process new information. You could see it happening in real time here. Considering purchasing a treadmill so I can best keep up!
Amazing I-phone capture with a couple smart open creative guys palavering about this awesome giant channel. Thank you for your openness.
I think that a good analogy to the effects of the big floods on the rock formations, would be at a smaller scale.
A river jumps its banks, and is flowing down an old street in a flash flood. The street is an older construction, with the sidewalks and road made with concrete that has a high percentage of gravel aggregate in its composition. It also tends to flood a lot due to bad drainage, and debris clogging the storm sewer.
The flooding is going down the street, but because of age of the concrete, there are cracks going every each way and weak spots in the pavement itself because there's areas where the aggregate is too closely spaced for the cement between to bind tightly.
The water will wear out these areas, widening the cracks and digging holes at weak spots, maintaining the previous orientation of the weaknesses while they are made wider and deeper.
As the water recedes from the main flow (which also moved away the debris with its power), parts of the old surface will start being exposed, and therefore restricting the flow to the paths of least resistance - which will often be the former cracks and potholes, not oriented the same direction as the street/flash-flood-water flow. The overall flow will still be in that general direction, but via cutbacks, zigzags, and ponding until an overflow point is found.
So, you could have a gully cut several inches into the sidewalk or roadbed that is 30 to 90 degrees off from the drainage of the gutters, with the original damage done by erosion from the flood, but little (if any) being from the water that's now cutting across the street from the left gutter to the right gutter, because the damaged area is lower than the left gutter's next stretch.
Grand Coulee went to Potholes, Frenchman and Drumheller via Quincy Basin, but Telford, and even a little branch connecting from Cheney/Palouse, also emptied into Quincy Basin. Who knows which of these channels were in play at any given flood-- and what damage each flood did to the channels. And of course Drumheller's outlet divides between Crab Creek and Eagle Lakes / Scooteny before meeting up in Pasco Basin. The only realistic control point is Walulla, and even so you have to assume a Lake Condon level. A modelling and computational nightmare, but I would LOVE to see someone attempt a decameter, or even meter scale CFD of Drumheller.
Good program. Jordan is quite animated.
I felt Jordan's "pain" at 41:00. I pictured a firehose in the corner of my back yard, running at full blast. (That would be the water coming through the coulee). It would be hard to imagine the amount of water coming through the hose (coulee) could cover my entire back yard ( the 9 mile wide Channels) in water, and have the entirety of the water flowing out of the opposite side of the yard. It sure seems that in order to get that much water passing through my yard (Channels), the firehose (coulee) would have to have been covered by/submerged in an even larger flow of water somehow. His question "Was the entire coulee full of flowing water ever completely covered by water?" (like a submerged river) made sense while trying to figure it all out. Thx for the video, guys. Even though you made my brain ache! lol
I love this. I have learned so much from this. Hearing geologists discussing is so helpful.
Hey, Nick. I live in Kennewick and see the local Missoula flood geology every day. When I read many of the questions in the comments to your videos, it makes me want to advise them all to get Bruce Bjornstad's books on the floods. (You frequently refer to them.) So many questions are concisely answered, accompanied by photos, diagrams and maps. I consider them essential references for any serious understanding of the floods and their marks on the landscape.
Welcome Jordan! I agree - Drumheller Channels IS stunning!
Page 136 from David Alt’s book, GLACIAL LAKE MISSOULA shows an east-west flow when the Quincy Basin overflows into the Pasco basin.
A STATEWIDE flash flood! Amazing!
Awesome open discussion. I think the scale of the scope and energy of the floodwaters is incredibly difficult to see unless you are many thousand feet up, which makes Bretz’ observations and interpretations jaw dropping….
The erosion that Jordan was imagining is also a matter of time… The floods only lasted a handful of days, and the drop in both volume and energy would have been way too fast, in my opinion, to do much plucking of major basalt columns or carving channels.
I grew up in Africa, on the banks of the Rundi river in Rhodesia, a major undammed river that flooded for a couple of weeks every spring. There was a portion of the river bed that was basalt and after the waters receded, it was fascinating to see features like cisterns big enough for us kids to hide in, carved into the basalt by the currents, eddies, and abrasive gravels.
Maybe it would help to include on the map, the gradient in the direction of flow, and speed of the water at various points, if possible.
I’m 65 and a mountain biker. I love this guy!
Welcome professor Carey. I hope you never lose any passion for geology or your long hair.
It is worth remembering that the ice caps were kilometres thick and contained enormous quantities of water, which was continually released as the climate warmed. Unimaginably volumes released to thunder down existing channels and create new ones. I suspect we will continue to underestimate the extent of the flow over eons as the Ice Age came to an end. I envy your ability to experience that landscape.
Nick, these youngsters will keep your knees young too.
Great little vid! I love seeing a capable educated person being confused by the land I grew up around, possibly because it's confused me for a lifetime.
I love doubt, best teacher.
Thanks for sharing Jordon Carey. It was amazing to watch him stop, look & think on his own. Learning asks questions, figure answers, then questions?
That was fun.
Just a thought. The escarpment Jordon identified was on the windward side of the flood waters. The analogy I'd use much like a snow drifting on the windward side attempting to undermine a structure.. That's perhaps why it appears to be stream cutting east to west., but really it was creating an eddy that dug out the face of the cliffs. Just another 2 cents lol
First thing I see is columns with gaps.
I’m thinking,
“don’t drop your hammer!”
Here we go.
This was so interesting. Not only is it tough for folks, not from the western US, to comprehend the vastness of the West, but the scale of everything else on top of that. AND there wasn't just one ice age, or one flood. Nor did they all likely flow exactly the same way each time or with the same volume. And, to a point you made in your recent Moses Cooley lecture, there is still more data yet to gathered as to where all the outflow landed/went and when. I grew up in Missoula, went to UMasstAmherst for a semester on exchange. In line for dinner one night was asked how long it took to drive from one end of MT to the other. I said about 12 hrs. The person asking said, "That would be Ohio...I've never been to Ohio." It was a mind twister for them. They had no other frame of reference.
Thank you for the engaging education I receive with each video,lecture and field adventure.😊
Boy, what a view!👀✨💛Nick, the lighting was perfect for the video even!! Thank you, Jordan for talking out and describing your understanding of scale(s) of the floods and comparing and contrasting the scales out loud for us! Thank you both also for constantly orienting yourselves throughout the video It was very helpful for viewers like me to try to understand the scales of them!!😃✨💗We really have to actually get there at the Drumheller Channels one of those days...
Still hoping to see Nick someday standing north of Omak explaining the Flat-irons there, some of the best examples there are anywhere. : )
Take him to the Great Blade 😁 Or the heights above Washtucna looking down on the scoured basalt where the Palouse cuts through
Is this the place with the famous hammer ?
I honestly love your “Everyman” approach to science Nick.
Blows the mind! I’m too far upstream, although not so bad at the foot of the Pintlers. What a great opportunity for folks.
I always try to look behind where I’ve walked! Think big and then times it by a many a factor. Mind explodes! It’s hard to wrap your head around.
Undercutting can do it’s own kind of damage as it recedes after is softened up by the mass flow.
❤❤❤ wondrous! Thank you Gentlemen!
Great video guys. Thank you Nick and Jordon.
Trying to understand the scale of the mega-floods is mind blowing. Where I live in the Tri-Cities is at about 400 ft elevation. There was once 800+ feet of water on top of my house (so to speak). It's hard to comprehend.
23:50 Based on that perpendicular wall, I was thinking the flow would be coming towards you. Thinking of the Niagra river chewing it's way upstream.
Very Very Very Cool Guys. Wonderful to see the teamwork guys. Ya know. Never a dull moment. Time Travel. I'll tell ya. You guys are Time Travel Wizzards. Just Wizzards you are. 200Milllion ~ 300 Million, ya know, Whatever. Time Travel. A rock here ~ a swale there ~ Some "layers." I love the "Layers." Ya know, ~ The Grand Canyon way too much for me. But these columns. Time Travel I'll tell ya. Better than Star Trek. Better than Marvel Comics. More like that Cumberbach guy ~ that guy. Wizzards you are. Oh yea!
😂
I did some minor work with sand tables in junior high where I saw evidence of how waterfalls and different stream features formed.
Maybe using a sand table to set up the drum lands geology as it might have been pre-flood and then running water through it might help you visualize the effects of a flood better.
Oregon State University has a large wave tank that might be interested in helping out. But I got results in a container that was about as big as the bottom of two shoe boxes. A larger space would allow you more detail.
Thank you fellas.
My explanation is: When the ice age flood or melted water (which came from the north) hit up against the basalt wall, it would swirl down creating a depression in front of the wall. Water or a river flowing parallel to the basalt wall was not required.
Awesome🤘 love this and appreciate it👍 very interesting
🔥Thank you 🔥
You want to see the magnitude of the destruction of the water of the floods… at our farm on the east end of Frenchman Hills , the morning sun shows in magnificent color the scar of mother earth that is the Drumheller.
Also the imagination allows you to picture the water flowing around the Frenchman as it joins the crab creek drainage. You will see the water and debris flowing by.
You need to see it from the air… my airplane has given me views not many have ever seen
i was on the same page as Jordan when his first instinct seemed to be to asign local cross flow within channel as having formed one of eye striking terrain features that did not align parallel to the global flow direction.
Hello from Omak
Fascinating conversation. While I listened to it several questions raced through my head, as for instance if we can determine how the floods differed from each other. We know from the multiple water lines that we can see in the Missoula valley that the breaches of the ice dam occured at different water heights. IIRC this pointed also to the later floods having not been as violent as the first ones as lower water lines from Lake Missoula would have been removed if later fill-ups of the Missoula valley went higher.
So my questions would be if we can determine high water marks from the different floodings in the Drumheller channels and if we can calculate how fast the water was moving there. Can we calculate how much force is needed to break out single pillars from a wall of basalt pillars and can we find remains from the basalt pillars having been ripped off by the flood, for instance if there are pillar stumps left in the ground?
Walk the channel north of Upper Goose Lake. When you see the hollows and drill holes below the general floor of the channel and lower than the lip of the cliff north of the lake, then you can feel the way the water turbulance plucked the bedrock out. From Battery Fully Charged.
Love this stuff Mr Zentner
Excellent, thanks.
That was very interesting to listen to. When the floods came through that area, what type of material was the water carrying? I've seen videos of Arizona monsoon floods. I cannot imagine that on the scale there.
Now that is what I call an interesting discussion! Eye opening in multiple ways.
One question though as to the height of the water. Is it possible that during the earlier floods the water removed the loess and that during later floods the channels were formed? During these later floods the top of the islands may have stayed dry. Because how is it possible that the water was contained inside the Grand Coulee, but once out of the coulee spread out 9 miles wide and still at such a height that it overflowed the top of the islands?
Just a thought.
Thanks for posting, Nick!
You made the urge to visit the Pacific Northwest even greater!
❤
That was fun… I should add that it's an area - like the Grand Canyon, I think - that has to be seen in person to really be appreciated. The term that Jordan and Nick both used - and which seems spot-on appropriate to me - is "scale." It's one thing to see video of the Drumheller Channels or Frenchman Coulee and say to yourself, "Yeah, that was a LOT of water," but it's an order of magnitude different to stand next to that island of lava columns in Drumheller or at the brink of Dry Falls or Frenchman Coulee and imagine the power and enormity of the flood(s) that created the landmarks.
Nick and Jordan sharing observations and collaborating on interpretations shows the advantages of multiple eyes and minds working together. To include every nuance and detail of the observations, Bretz no doubt used observations and interpretations of others in his parties in the same way the Nick ‘n Jordan party bouncing off of each other hosts for us today. Nick, “…overall, it’s a North-South swoosh from Dry Falls…” Jordan, “…that’s where I’m off in the scale, I was tricked by the landscape to fit the flood in my head…”
Is it possible that floodwater freezing and thawing in the cracks in the columns could have primed them to break off more easily? About 20 years ago there was a large rockslide, on US 2 or SR 20, that was caused in part by the same kind of freeze/thaw dynamic. And that was much harder rock than basalt.
Very interesting conversation
If you have a use for it, I would be open to coming out to these areas with my RC plane. I can stay in the air for over 1.5 hrs and can attach a number of sensors. I would be thrilled to participate in some geological surveys.
Put lidar on it and map it. Scale it. Visualize it. Share it.
There could have been many smaller floods that did not overtop the promontory for every major flood that did that had waning stages now you address the over the shoes or smaller
Hi all. If there was a horizontal obstacle to the direction of flow like the one that is described in this video. As a river runner, that would be terrifying. Wouldn’t run it but would love to have seen it!
That last shot of the video was absolutely perfect, and had me laughing out loud. Hopefully that hammer is on display?
Also remember that at one time,the tops of the columns were at ground level,,or way under ,and the floods carved everything else away.
So , a nine mile wide torrent of water flowing generally in the same direction sculpting the landscape down below?
Nice to meet a new geologist. It seems the scale is what is hard to grasp.
I live on a glacier sediment drumlin hill, it's like a giant sand bar
T Y Nick & Jordan. Overall, in the D-Channel area...two questions:1) Any observable evidence of the effects of folding/faulting from clock wise rotation? 2) Any erratics at elevation....or bottom of the channels? Great content Gentlemen.
So……how deep was the water over the top of the columns during the major events?
A hundred years from now people will be visiting the hammer drop spot.
snug up those rock hammers, never leave a man behind
The basalt floods under the water floods create confusing patterns.
Just glancing at google maps I wonder how the offshore bathymetry compares to what may have happened in the deep water erosion your were discussing
Great scenery in the video! Could you please post the coordinates where you two were standing on top of the columns at 36:16? I'd really appreciate it. It will cut down on my walking time if I can go straight to them. 😀 aka Greg in east TN
Greg, you're gonna want to walk all over the whole area, regardless. Budget. More. Time!
@@Steviepinhead I want to. I'll have to get there about dawn. The last time I was there, it was nearly 100F. Thanks for caring! 😀
This invigorating discussion needs some hydraulic modeling as a follow up. How and when was the "cutting" taking place? Only at max flow? Maybe the most "cutting" was happening then but it may be short sighted to think that no "cutting" was taking place during the diminishing stages of the flood.
I like how he has a view of looking at himself "over there", it has an aboriginal tone for a very "head " type subject.
It's mind boggling the amt of water that was needed to carve all this, even if there were many multiplie events of it.
👍