After a very long hiatus (almost a decade I guess) just like geological unconformities, I am back and I am going to make a conscious effort to post at least one blog (my geological encounters) per month. Let see how it goes....
Wondering the reason for the hiatus - Well a lot of things have been happening at my end, and I guess I did not know how to cope, but I am seeking help and this blogs are my effort to get back to my natural self, and keep pinning things that I really love and passionate about - that is to keep learning from the geological record and sharing with people who would like to read my geological rambling.
So I have been looking at some of my fieldwork diaries, and one thing that I came across was the honeycomb weathering patterns on cretaceous Basalts from the western coastal belt of Deccan Volcanic Province.
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| Small cavities separated by thin septa of unweathered basalt rock, making it highly porous. |
The longer the cheese is fermented, the bigger the eyes or cavities will be. Something similar happens along the rocky coast, where regular onslaught of sea lashing on the rock with long duration of salt spray, sand-laden wave & wind crashing on the rock surface abrades to sculpt a beautiful pattern resembling a honeycomb structure, isn't that cool!! These amazing Swiss 🧀-like patterns are a result of honeycomb weathering a.k.a Tafoni, a form of cavernous weathering that arises from a combination of physical factors such as moisture absorption, marine-laden sand abrasion, wind corrosion and salt crystallization, and chemical processes like oxidation and dissolution acting on rock surfaces, like these basalts along the Konkan rocky shores for very long geological time (post-dating the basalt outpouring of 62 mya). These small cavities separated by thin septa of unweathered rock continue to evolve and when you fast forward time these patterns continue to coalesce to form bigger and more complex cavities. The continued onslaught by salt, wind, and waves abrades the surface forming cavities sometimes as big as 0.8 meters wide.
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| The small cavities coalesce into bigger ones over time by the continued battering of physical and chemical agents. |
Just as bees meticulously construct hexagonal cells to efficiently store honey and pollen, natural processes like wind, water, and chemical weathering act on basalt to create these distinctive patterns. Most importantly, when extensive patterns exist they provide storage for freshwater in otherwise impervious hard rock basalts along the coastal belt, and is a source aquifer rock for natural springs along the coast. Also, these cavities are also home to many crustaceans along the rocky beaches of western Konkan plains.
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| A closer look at the honeycomb structure. (Telescopic leveling rod for scale) |
