Lake Okeechobee Region, What’s Under It?
My grandfather, J.R. Henderson, was a well-known soil-scientist back in the 1930s for the University of Florida.
I remember him telling me things about cows, plants, and the lands under them when we were driving on the “Sunshine State Parkway,” from Gainesville to Stuart. I think of my grandfather more these days and believe the study of geology and soils are in my blood although I know almost nothing about them.
So to educate ourselves and the those young people of the future we continue our study of the Boyer Survey of Lake Okeechobee, by Christopher Davenport and others–and today we will look at the section entitled Region Geology.
The authors mention a book by Petuch and Roberts (http://wzanews.com/IMG2/book/general%20geology/everglad%20geology.pdf) and note two formations: The Lake Flirt below and Pamlico above.
So South Florida in a nutshell….
The Lake Flirt Formation is noted to consist of three thin limestone layers the uppermost being caprock. This is often used by landscape companies to beautify our yards. I don’t understand how it is mined without jeopardizing the aquifer, but that’s another blog…
On top of the capstone and limestone layers are sands from the Pamlico Formation. These sands were blown across the state from east to west forming dunes over thousands of years. There is also clay that “resulted from deposit under Holocene ponds and marshlands.”
By Robin C. Brown
That’s just a quick review. But might get you interested again.
It is extremely humbling to refresh one’s memory on all this stuff we learned in grade school, as we are living in “the top layer” of millenniums. We in time, will just be another layer of an ancient coral formation we live upon, Florida. Nonetheless, it is important to know what is around us, above us, and under us. 🙂
FIS Overview of Florida:
Click to access 00_overview_s_fl_gly-1.pdf
Nation Academy of Science, A Brief History of the Everglades: https://www.nap.edu/read/10758/chapter/11
The Boyer Survey: http://www.flarchcouncil.org/reports/BoyerSurveyLakeO.pdf
Caprock for landscaping: http://www.larryscaprockandstone.com/products_cap_rock.asp
Jill T. Page (772) 486-6380 jilltpage@gmail.com
I am sure Mr. JR Henderson lived in an age where being honest and telling the truth was everything but imagine the damage he could do if he was not honest and gave millions of people who trusted him bad advice. Working for the state never has and probably never will pay a lot of money. The way it is today is there is an army of “exsperts” More than willing to tell lies and not be poor. This is why politicians and their staff should all be subject to lie detector test when they make decissions on how money is spent.
Exstinsive studies show that polygraph results are accurate between 80 and 90 percent of the time. If you ask 10 people a question and test show all 10 are lieing I would say you can be 100 percent sure they are lieing. We have 10 people on our citizen oversight comity that decide how the 300 million to fix the lagoon will be spent that I would like to see get lie detector test. —-Like former president James Madison said—-A government without popular(honest) information OR THE MEANS OF ACQUIRING IT is but the prologue to a lie or a tragedy or perhaps both.
In the 1800s boom towns sprung up across America everywhere gold or silver was found . As the precious metals ran out there was no more money to purchase anything and these towns faced a slow, lingering death with plenty of crime and violence. In Florida fishing was our gold mine and the same thing has happened here. I have been showing and telling people for years now how to heal our sick lagoon and have never seen one person with a bucket of calcium beach sand. They all seem to want to run down , catch fish —take calcium from the lagoon.