Talk:Carolina Bay

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I have merged what I could from Carolina bays, maybe more than I should have -- it was pretty strangely written -- feel free to prune. Mwanner 14:50, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Some of the material added turns out to be from a UGA site that I have now added to the external links. Might count as fair use, but I'll try to re-write. Mwanner 20:53, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I have changed the number of bays to 10-20,000 based on [1] Mwanner 21:17, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't "alignment around a northeast-southeast trend" be NW-SE? That's what the picture seems to suggest.

I shortened the following passage quite a bit as I think it is not appropriate to give "unpublished research" more space than published findings:

Although the origin of the Carolina Bays has been a topic of considerable controversy, unpublished research by Andrew H. Ivester (University of West Georgia), Mark J. Brooks (University of South Carolina), Barbara E. Taylor (University of Georgia), and their colleagues using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) Dating, ground penetrating radar, sediment cores, and other techniques has had better success with the question of their approximate age. As a result of studies of Carolina Bays in South Carolina involving detailed analysis of their stratigraphy and OSL dating of their rim deposits, they concluded that Carolina Bays are between 70,000 and 100,000 years old. For example, according to OSL dates the age of Flamingo Bay in South Carolina is about 108,700±10,900 BP and the age of adjacent Bay-40 is about 77,900±7,600 BP. Further south, another Carolina Bay, Big Bay, was found to be over 74,000 years old. Thus, as collaborated by the presence of alternating layers of sediments containing glacial and interstadial pollen found filling individual Carolina Bays, Carolina Bays are ancient landforms whose origin predate the end of the last glacial epoch by several tens of thousands of years to possibly over 100,000 years. Furthermore, the OSL dates indicate that the formation of the Carolina Bays was not an instantaneous event, but rather individual bays were formed at different times over a period of about 30,000 years. Any hypothesis of their formation will need to consider not only their age but also explain why Carolina Bays formed over a period of tens of thousands of years.

Andrew H. Ivester and his colleagues also concluded from their research that the original morphology, orientation and shape, of the Carolina Bays has been completely destroyed by tens of thousands of years of modification by wind during dry periods and lake waves and currents during wet periods. As a result, it is likely impossible to use the modern orientation and shape of these bays as criteria for understanding the origin of these landforms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cd12dc (talk • contribs) 13:37, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OSL and Pollen Research Has Indeed Been Published

Cd12dc wrote above:

"I think it is not appropriate to give "unpublished research" more space than published findings."

Contrary to what Mr. Cd12dc incorrectly states above, The research of Ivester and others has been published not only as abstracts at scientific meetings like the abstract by Firestone that is cited in this Wikipedia article, but also as scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. The problem is that someone needs to add the appropriate citations to the text. This published research includes:

Brooks, M. J., Taylor, B. E., and Grant, J. A., 1996, Carolina Bay geoarchaeology and Holocene landscape evolution on the upper coastal plain of South Carolina. Geoarchaeology. vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 481-504.

Brooks, M. J., Taylor, B. E., Stone, P. A., and Gardner, L. R., 2001, Pleistocene encroachment of the Wateree River sand sheet into Big Bay on the Middle Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Southeastern Geology. vol. 40, pp. 241-257.

Grant, J. A., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor, B. E., 1998, New constraints on the evolution of Carolina Bays from ground-penetrating radar. Geomoprholpogy. vol. 22, no. 3-4, pp. 325-345.

Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2002, Carolina Bays and inland dunes of the South Atlantic Coastal Plain yield new evidence for regional paleoclimate. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 34, no. 6, p. 273.

Ivester, A.H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor, B. E., 2003, Concentric sand rims document the evolution of a Carolina bay in the Middle Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 169.

Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2004a, The timing of Carolina Bay and inland activity on the Atlantic coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 36, no. 5, p. 69.

Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2004b, Chronology of Carolina bay sand rims and inland dunes on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA. The 3rd New World Luminescence Dating Workshop. July 4 - 7, 2004, Department of Earth Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, p. 23.

Ivester, H. A., M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2006, Stop 3. Carolina Bays of the South Atlantic coastal plain as exemplified by Big Pond, Applin County Georgia. In pp.79-104, T. M. Chowns, ed., Quaternary Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments; Jekyll Island and the Golden Isles Parkway, Guidebooks, vol. 26, no. 1, Georgia Geological Society University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia.

Ivester, H. A., M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2007, Sedimentology and age of Carolina Bay rims. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 39, No. 2, p. 5.

In addition, the exact correlation of the orientation of Carolina Bays with Pleistocene paleowind directions is based upon paleowind directions reconstructed from the orientation of Pleistocene sand dunes and other empirical physical evidence independent of any sort of computer modeling. Discussion of the paleowind directions reconstructed solely on the basis of empirical physical evidence can be found in a number of peer-reviewed publications, which include:

Carver, R. E., and G. A. Brook, 1989, Late Pleistocene paleowind directions, Atlantic Coastal Plain, U.S.A. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. vol. 74, no. 3-4, pp. 205-216.

Ivester, A. H., and D. S. Leigh, 2003, Riverine dunes on the Coastal Plain of Georgia, USA. Geomorphology, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 289-311.

Ivester, A. H., and D. S. Leigh, 2006, Riverine dunes on the coastal plains Georgia, U.S.A. In pages 31-54, Timothy M. Chowns, ed., Quaternary Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments; Jekyll Island and the Golden Isles Parkway, Guidebooks, vol. 26, no. 1, Georgia Geological Society University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia.

Ivester A. H., Leigh D. S., and Godfrey-Smith D. I. 2001. Chronology of inland eolian dunes on the coastal plain of Georgia, USA: Quaternary Research. vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 293-302.

Markewich, H. W., and W. Markewich, 1994, An overview of Pleistocene and Holocene inland dunes in Georgia and the Carolinas; morphology, distribution, age, and paleoclimate. United States Geological Survey Bulletin no. 206932 pp.

Wells G. L., 1992, The aeolian landscape of North America from the Late Pleistocene. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Also, paleoenvironment records recovered from Carolina Bays, descriptions of the cores from which they came, radiocarbon dates from these cores, and the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the sediments containing them demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that the pollen, other fossils, and radiocarbon dates used to construct these paleoenvironmental record are 1, from undisturbed sediments, which occupy the basins, which comprise individual Carolina Bays, 2. have **not** been disturbed by any sort of impact processes, and, thus, 3. **postdate** their formation. The empirical data and observations presented in the peer-reviewed papers, which are given below, clearly show that many of the Carolina Bays, from which paleoenvironmental records have been collected predate, sometimes by tens of thousands of years, beyond the limit of radiocarbon dating, the terminal Pleistocene event hypotheiszied by Firestone and others. Even if the Carolina Bays are impact craters of some sort, they clearly far too old to be related to any terminal Pleistocene event. Some of the peer-reviewed papers, which contain this evidence are:

Bliley, Daniel J., and Burney, David A., 1988, Late Pleistocene climatic factors in the genesis of a Carolina Bay. Southeastern Geology. vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 83-101.

Brooks, M. J., Taylor, B. E., and Grant, J. A., 1996, Carolina Bay geoarchaeology and Holocene landscape evolution on the upper coastal plain of South Carolina. Geoarchaeology. vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 481-504.

Frey, David G., 1953, Regional aspects of the late-glacial and post-glacial pollen succession of southeastern North Carolina. Ecological Monographs. vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 289-313.

Frey, David G., 1955, A time revision of the Pleistocene pollen chronology of southeastern North Carolina. Ecology. vol. 36. no. 4, pp. 762-763.

Ingram, Roy l., Robinson, Maryanne, and Odum, Howard T. , 1959, Clay mineralogy of some Carolina Bay sediments. Southeastern Geology. vol. 1, pp. 1-10.

Watts , W. A., 1980, Late-Quaternary vegetation history at White Pond on the inner coastal plain of South Carolina. Quaternary Research. vol. 13, no. 2, pp.187-199.

Whitehead, D. R., 1964, Fossil pine pollen and full-glacial vegetation in southeastern North Carolina. Ecology. vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 767-777.

Whitehead, D. R., 1967, Studies of full-glacial vegetation and climate in the southeastern United States. in E. J. Cushing and H. E. Wright, Jr., eds, pp. 237-248. Quaternary Paleoecology. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.

Whitehead, Donald R., 1981, Late-Pleistocene vegetational changes in northeastern North Carolina. Ecological Monographs. vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 451-471.

Citations to other similar pollen records can be found in:

Bryant, Vaughn M., Jr., and Holloway, Richard G., 1985, Pollen Records of Late-Quaternary North American Sediments. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists, Dallas, Texas.

The range of radiocarbon dates from the sediments of Carolina Bays from some Of these publications is illustrated in an article, “An Evaluation of the Geological Evidence Presented By Gateway to Atlantis for Terminal Pleistocene Catastrophe” at:

http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=86

The figure can be found at;

http://www.hallofmaat.com/images/003Fig.jpg

Paul H.

[edit] Sea Level Changes

The following citation from the section entitled "Age" needs to be revised:

"During glacial periods when sea level was 3000 meters below present, the water table would have been below the bottom of the vast majority of the bays."

Three thousand meters is 9842.5 feet. I really don't believe that the Atlantic Ocean dropped that much during the last glacial period.

Jbaker314 00:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Carolina Bays Comet impact

The paragraph beginning "The cometary theory" is incorrect. It conflates informed opinion from the 1940s with the recent Laurentide cometary impact given in Firestone et. al. PNAS vol 104 # 41, p. 16016 ff.

This gives the 12,900 date, but does not suggest that the Bays are the result of that event. Rather, they state that the areas they sampled contain remains from the 12,900 event, which would be expected if the Bays were pre-existing features. They give no discussion of the geology which could suggest a creation date for the Bays sampled.

Would someone restore the previous version of the paragraph, which gave a slightly different date, and then add a paragraph saying something to the effect that the presumed impact in 12,900 left evidence in several Bays, but that there was no evidence that it created them. And reference the Firestone paper, which is open access.

Thank you.

John Roth —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.23.85.122 (talk) 18:15, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

There are two separate issues. One is the age of the bays and the second is their origin. That they are over a 100,000 years old does not preclude them from being of some sort of impact origin. It just means they are not connected with the alleged terminal Pleistocene event.Paul H. (talk) 04:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "White Sand" as Evidence of Impact

One current paragraph reads:

It has been argued that large areas of white sand are due to an immense amount of heat baking the iron, SiO2Fe -> SiO2 + Fe. According to this argument, "baking" of the sand by the impacts literally "burns" the iron straight out and redeposits it into the sand. Instead of being a set of a compound, you have pure sand and iron, which go to FeO later as iron oxide. It is argued that the iron is redeposited as magnetic iron oxides in undisturbed sand dunes near all the Carolina Bays.

The above argument for the "white sand" being evidence of an impact the result is a completely scientifically bankrupt one, which comes from Firestone's book. The idea that iron can be either burnt or baked out of sand and redeposited by high temperatures is physically impossible. What will happen is that initially high temperatures will bake iron (oxides) onto the sand and eventually fuse it on the sand at high enough temperatures. Ultimately, if the temperature gets high enough, the sand will melt and the iron will mixed into the glass formed by the melting sand. The "SiO2Fe -> SiO2 + Fe" equation is total nonsense when it comes to what heat does to iron oxides in soils because that just does not happen when sand containing iron is baked.

The fact of the matter is that decent soil science textbook, even decent USDA soil surveys, will demonstrate that the "white sand", which is being discussed above is what is called an E-Horizon from which the iron has been leached out by chemical processes that occur normally in sandy soils. In addition, an examination specific soil surveys will show that the so-called "white sand" occurs throughout the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal plains and is completely unrelated to the distribution of Carolina Bays. The "white sand" should be removed as evidence of impact because it is totally unrelated to any impact processes. I suspect the "white sand" is not mentioned in the PNAS paper because, someone pointed it out to Firestone how silly it is to use it as evidence of an impact. Some web pages to look at are 1. E horizon and 2. Master Horizons.Paul H. (talk) 04:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on "Perfectly" Concentric Rims

On May, 31, 2008, Mr. 24.106.179.86 edited the text of part of the Carolina Bay article to read:

On the basis of 45 OSL dates from and sedimentological analyses of rims of Carolina Bays in Georgia and South Carolina, Ivester et al. (GSA poster, 2007) concluded that a single Carolina bay was actively modified between 12,000 to 50,000 BP; 60,000 to 80,000 BP; and 120,000 to 140,000 BP. These data, however, would suggest that the prevailing winds in these paleo-times were perfectly consistent across the ages. In fact, Ivestor proposes that a single bay was modified over a 150K time period, in multiple "generations," each resulting in a rim perfectly concentric with the last. This would require the prevailing winds over this time to have remained almost perfectly constant.

There are major errors in this paragraph. First, the statement, "In fact, Ivestor proposes that a single bay was modified over a 150K time period, in multiple "generations," each resulting in a rim perfectly concentric with the last." is false. Ivester et al. (2007) states nothing about the "concentric rims" of the Carolina Bays, which he studied, being "perfectly concentric." That the concentric rims of the Carolina Bays examined by Ivester et al. (2007) are "perfectly concentric" is nothing more than a false assumption made by Mr. 24.106.179.86. For example, among the Carolina Bays, whose rims were dated by Ivester et al. (2004, 2007), is Big Bay in Sumter County, South Carolina. A detailed examination of Big Bay's rims using available aerial photography clearly demonstrates that its rims both pinch and swell and truncate each other. They area clearly not "perfectly concentric" as is claimed to be in the above quoted text. If a person was to examine any of the other Carolina Bays examined by Dr. Ivester, they would find that they are also not as "perfectly concentric" is they are claimed to be.

One mystery, which the above text fails to address is how either impacting meteorites, shock waves, or any of the other proposed impact-related mechanisms can explain the nestling of individual Carolina Bays with rims "perfectly concentric with the last." Regardless of whether the rims were formed tens of thousands of years apart as indicated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating or minutes / seconds apart, it is highly improbable that either a "train" of meteorite / comet fragments, shock waves, or other impact related phenomena would follow each other in exactly the same path to create the nested rims seen in some Carolina Bays. The highly chaotic and turbulent nature of such a catastrophic impact event and the widely variable aerodynamics of either any impactor fragments, shock waves, or any other impact phenomena would prevent this. In it also unexplained why the paleowind directions derived by Craver and Brooks (1989) from Carolina Bay orientations are virtually identical to those they derived from orientation of relict Late Quaternary parabolic dunes, which Ivester et al. (2004, 2007) argues to be contemporaneous on the basis of OSL dating.

In the same manner that the "perfection" of the nesting of the concentric rims is exaggerated, the proponents of an impact theory for the origin of Carolina Bays falsely exaggerate the "perfection" of orientation of the Carolina Bays. As demonstrated from published research, individual Carolina Bays are not "perfectly aligned" as they are often claim to be. As discussed and illustrated in Johnson (1942), Kacrovowski (1977), and Carver and Brooks (1989), the orientation of the long axes of Carolina Bays varies by 10 to 15 degrees in any one area. Maps, found in Kacrovowski (1977) and Rasmussen et al. (1955), of Carolina Bays show that within Delmarva Peninsula, the long axes of Carolina Bays become, at best, distinctly bimodal with greatly divergent directions and, at worst, completely random and lacking any preferred direction.

Another error in the text quoted above is that paleowind indicators, i.e. relict sand dunes, and paleoclimatic computer models generally indicate that for the southern and central Atlantic coastal plain, the prevailing winds were consistent in direction throughout the last interglacial-glacial-interglacial cycle (Carver and Brooks 1989, Markewich and Markewich 1994). Relict, Quaternary sand dunes, which have been dated to the same time periods as the modification of the Carolina Bays, all exhibit the same orientation. They prove that the prevailing winds blew in relatively the same direction during the periods of times that Ivester et al. (2007) concluded that the Carolina Bays were modified. Thus, the relatively consistent orientation of the long axes of the Carolina Bays within a 10 to 15 degrees range completely fails to invalidate the conclusions of Ivester et al. (2007).

One notable exception to the consistency of prevailing Late Quaternary wind directions according to paleoclimatic models and relict sand dunes is the northern Atlantic coastal plain, i.e. the Delmarva Peninsula. It is revealing that this region where the prevailing winds would have varied greatly through the last interglacial-glacial-interglacial cycle is the same region where the orientation of the long axes of individual Carolina Bays vary significantly from each other.Paul H. (talk) 03:47, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

References

Carver, R. E., and G. A. Brooks, 1989, Late Pleistocene paleowind directions, Atlantic Coastal Plain, U.S.A. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. v. 74, no. 3-4, pp. 205-216.

Ivester, A. H., D. I. Godfrey-Smith, M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2004, The timing of Carolina Bay and inland activity on the Atlantic coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. v. 36, no. 5, p. 69.

Ivester, A. H., M. J. Brooks, B. E. Taylor, 2007, Sedimentology and ages of Carolina Bay sand rims. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. v. 39, no. 2, p. 5.

Johnson, D. W., 1942. The Origin of the Carolina Bays. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kaczorowski, R. T., 1977, The Carolina Bays: a Comparison with Modern Oriented Lakes Technical Report no. 13-CRD, Coastal research Division, Department of Geology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. 124 pp.

Markewich, H. W., and W. Markewich, 1994, An overview of Pleistocene and Holocene inland dunes in Georgia and the Carolinas; morphology, distribution, age, and paleoclimate. Bulletin no. 206, United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, 932 pp.

Rasmussen, W. C., and T. H. Slaughter, 1955, The ground water resources, in The water resources of Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester Counties. Bulletin no. 16, Maryland Geological Survey, Baltimore, Maryland, 170 pp.