Loess Words- A Glössary

 Words associated with Loess; words belonging to the world of Loess; words that need explaining- and could benefit from some discussion; words that might be deployed more widely. 

Loessification  L.S.Berg 1964  Loess as a Product of Weathering and Soil Formation.  Israel Program for Scientific Translations Jerusalem 207p translated from the Russian by A.Gourevitch. This is now the basic Berg reference; most of his work was published in Russian and is now hard to find. The 1964 book is translation of material from 1947; from Berg 1964 p.20:

"The difference between loess and its parent rock is like the distinction between soil and rock: the transformation of the latter into the former requires a soil-forming process; in the same manner, the transformation of rock into a loess requires a loess-forming process. The process, though variable in each instance, is everywhere the same in its principle; it is a 'loessification' ; and from this standpoint we are justified in assuming a single family of loessic rocks."

Collapsibility

Chernozemisation

Adobe

Brickearth   

Silt

Dictionaries.  Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary 1979:  loess (say lerss)  noun; a loose, usually yellowish, deposit of wind-blown soil, particularly common in China. (German)

Cavitation

Suspension

Verbreitung

Comminution

Heneberg compromise

Flow-stick transition

  

Schneckenhausel Boden  Sam.Hibbert, in 1832, wrote about the naming of Loess..  "It has been described under various names, of which the most adopted is that of Loess. According to M.Von Leonhard, its synonyms, as they occur along the course of the Rhine, are Loesch, Schneckenhausel-Boden, Mergel, (in the upper lands of Boden,) and Briz."

Mergel

Briz

Parna

Mercia Mudstone

Windy Day

Loess Commission INQUA    The Loess Commission was founded by Julius Fink (a professor in Wien in Austria) he founded it initially as a sub-commission of the Stratigraphy Commission of INQUA (Internationale Quartarvereinigung)[for data on INQUA see Loess Letter 65]- at the 1961 meeting of INQUA in Poland; at the Paris INQUA Congress of 1969 it was upgraded to full commission status; Fink stayed as President. He handed over to Marton Pecsi of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1977 at the UK Congress.

Hydroconsolidation

Zingg shapes.  "By considering the ellipsoid, Smalley's modified Zingg classes are given as I a = b >c disc, II a = b =c sphere; III a >b >c blade and IV a >b= c rod. The classical Zingg approach and Smalley's approach can be unified if an internal parameter 0<=p<= 1 is introduced, the classical Zingg system corresponds to p = 2/3, Smalley's suggestion corresponds to p = 1." [Domokos et al. Math. Geosci. 42, 29-47, 2010 ]. doi 10.1007/5 11004-009-9250-4 

Black Soils:  The great black soils of Ukraine and the Mid West, what the Russians called Chernozems, were loess before they were chernozems; now they are chernozems developed on loess. A chernozemisation process has operated, post deposition, which has changed the material.. Clay and organic material has accumulated, carbonates have moved.

Mammoths:  R.Dale Guthrie 2001.  Origin and causes of the mammoth steppe: a story of cloud cover, woolly mammoth tooth pits, buckles and inside-out Beringia.  Quaternary Science Reviews 20, 549-574.

"..during the last full glacial (LGM) say 18000 BP most of the north was unimaginably arid.. rivers were reduced to streams...   loess sheets, sand seas, dune fields and wind were common features of this aridity; therefore Pleistocene skies must have been very dusty."