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Most rock forms at elevated temperature and pressure, and the minerals making up the rock are often chemically unstable in the relatively cool, wet, and oxidizing conditions typical of the Earth's surface. Chemical weathering takes place when water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other chemical substances react with rock to change its composition.
Saxicolous crustose lichens play an important role in the weathering of rocks. Repeated contraction and expansion of thalli occurs in response to alternate periods of wetting and drying, resulting in the breakdown of rock fragments and removal of mineral grains from the rock surfaces. [18]
Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a water management technique, practiced to cultivate irrigated lowland rice with much less water than the usual system of maintaining continuous standing water in the crop field. It is a method of controlled and intermittent irrigation.
Most commonly, researchers have advocated salt weathering as the primary explanation for the formation of honeycomb weathering. Currently, it is considered to be polygenetic in origin; being the result of complex interaction of physical and chemical weathering processes, which include salt weathering and cyclic wetting and drying.
Starting in the 1970s, most workers have advocated salt weathering as the primary explanation for the formation of tafoni. Currently, tafoni are considered to be polygenetic in origin being the result of complex interaction of physical and chemical weathering processes, which include salt weathering and cyclic wetting and drying. [1] [4]
A COLE value of 0.06 means that 100 inches of soil will expand by 6 inches when wet. [2] Soils with this shrink-swell capacity fall under the soil order of Vertisols . [ 6 ] As these soils dry, deep cracks can form on the surface, which then allows water to penetrate to deeper levels of the soil. [ 7 ]
In biology and ecology, desiccation refers to the drying out of a living organism, such as when aquatic animals are taken out of water, slugs are exposed to salt, or when plants are exposed to sunlight or drought. Ecologists frequently study and assess various organisms' susceptibility to desiccation.
For example, three species of land snails in the genus Euchondrus in the Negev desert are noted for eating lichens growing under the surface limestone rocks and slabs (endolithic lichens). The grazing activity of these ecosystem engineers disrupts the limestone, resulting in the weathering and the subsequent formation of soil. [113]