Washington Scablands...?

[GT40_GearHead]

ok slug, you are our one and only geologist here, what can you say about this ?
i didn't got alot from the discovery documentery

[Zephik]

At first I had no idea what-so-ever about what you were talking about.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...blands&spell=1

Oh I see now. What do you want to know about it?

[d_stilgar]

I'm from Washington too. I was told that the eastern side of the state was carved out by a giant glacier that was guided by the volcanic Cascades and the Rockys, but also helped the Rocky's grow bigger. I've also heard the Missoula flood theory. I believe that both worked together to form the sweeping valleys and then the more canyon-like river valley. That could be just me though.

[Zephik]

I'm from Washington too. I was told that the eastern side of the state was carved out by a giant glacier that was guided by the volcanic Cascades and the Rockys, but also helped the Rocky's grow bigger. I've also heard the Missoula flood theory. I believe that both worked together to form the sweeping valleys and then the more canyon-like river valley. That could be just me though.

I've been told this as well. As for what I believe? I think it was mainly created by a glacier. Mix in everything else and you have the Washington Scablands.

Just for fun, did you guys know that we (the US northwest) have one of the highest diversities of tree's in the world? That is, not tree's that have been brought in from distant lands but tree's that have made it here on their own. I think... its like 12 different species? Where as most areas have 3-5. At least thats what I THINK I remember from forestry class. But I do remember the bit about people coming from all over the world because of our tree diversity. There is another really famous spot over in the UK for studying mass diversity of tree's.

[Slug Toy]

the scablands arent a glacial feature. the shape is all wrong for that. glaciers either flatten everything out, or cut U shaped valleys. besides, most of that area is sandstone, which would have been completely screwed up by a glacier.

from the journals i read, it looks like there was a sequence of events:

-a glacier DID carve out a nice hole to create lake missoula
-there was an ice dam formed by the glacier as well
-there were a series of dam failures that caused major flooding along rivers, and dug out some of the sandstone

so it was a series of huge floods that did this. thats why you can see awesome horizontal layering in the rock, thats how much each flood took out. the vertical lines you see in some pictures is columnar basalt. that forms with lava hits water or ice and cools really fast, causing vertical cracks. that stuff is harder, and that is why a lot of it is exposed in the scablands. the sandstone washed away to show these columns.

so you may ask how the columnar basalt got there. well its kind of like mount garibaldi up here. the cascades were active a long time ago (like during the last ice age). the lava from a volcano probably hit the glacier that formed lake missoula. when that happened, the columns formed, and the lava stopped dead. then sediment piled on top... and when the floods happened, it got carried away.

ive only had a few minutes to read about this. interesting stuff though. take a look at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial...outburst_flood

thats a good example of an ice dam being breached like what happened in washington.

[Cevinzol]

the theory of the scablands mega flood seems really cool. After seeing a show on public TV about it, I want to go see that landscape myself some time.

[Rankenphile]

It was Noah.

[GT40_GearHead]

It was Noah.

ouuu shhh


i am looking at it in google earth, and its hard for me to imagine the size of the glacier and lake

[Slug Toy]

well try to imagine this then. back in the last ice age, pretty much all of canada, and a good portion of the northern US were under ice. and not just that, some of that ice is thought to have been about 2km thick at least. the stuff that formed the BC coast here was 1 to 1.5 km thick.

if you think some of those formations are cool, check this out.

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...ly4thTR-07.jpg

that is rainbow falls which is just outside whistler, BC. ive been there, and its huge. look on the walls real close, and you'll see that the whole damn thing is made of the columnar basalt. everything around there is actually, the area up around whistler is another place where lava met a glacier to form some cool stuff.

or you can try searching for the tsingys in madagascar. try it in google earth, they have some great high resolution shots of it, if you can actually find it... ive managed to find it twice and other times its been hidden. you can try searching ankarana national park too, because that park encompasses the tsingys. anyways, its an awesome limestone formation that im going to see some time in my life. i cant even describe it, just find some pictures and you'll see.

or you can check out the land in ethiopia. specifically the northern part by djibouti. thats an interesting volcanic area. lots of shield volcanoes and cinder cones, and lots of lava spread out everywhere. ive seen a few aerial pictures of huge sulfur formations from hotsprings there too. if ethiopia wasnt such a political hot spot, id go there too. erta ale is calling me.