File:Florida Carbonate-Platform-via-Tihansky.jpg: Difference between revisions

Oh Miami... then there's 'sponge rock' down below

Florida, Sea-Level Rise Reality

The Florida peninsula, with much of it close to sea level, and underlying karst/limestone landscape, sea-level rise will deliver salt-water intrusion into the aquifer.

As evidenced with coastal "Ghost Forests", salt water movement into fresh water coastal zones and then inland into groundwater will be disruptive and act to foreshadow devastating environmental results.

Karst formation/underground will have added impact on sea-level rise/salt water intrusion in Florida

Re: Florida topography: Karst topography is the geological name given to an area of limestone bedrock featuring caves, sinkholes, underground streams and natural springs (Florida has one of the highest concentrations of springs on Earth). In laymen terms, karst topography is anywhere the lower levels of the soil horizon has been dissolved by the physical or chemical weathering of the bedrock. These environments are comprised of carbonate rocks, such as dolomite and limestone, or having high amounts of evaporites, for example, salt and gypsum, as these materials tend to be highly soluble in water. Having these conditions within humid climate like Florida invites faster weathering. Another erosion accelerator is groundwater mixed with vegetation creates a weak acid that dissolves the limestone. (think baking soda mixing with vinegar) Over time, cracks become caves, and when caves collapse they form exposed openings known as karst windows.

Karst topography? Limestone-Carbonate Peninsula? Underground Connected Waterways? Mosaic Corporation Demonstrates a Case Study

What is the connection between the world's largest phosphate production industry, sea-level rise and Florida's underground waterways?

Phosphate has seeded Florida with the environmental equivalent of ticking time bombs

The Clock is Ticking on Florida’s Mountains of Hazardous Phosphate Waste

• https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/aquiferbasics/carbrock.html

Where carbonate rocks are exposed at land surface, solution features create karst topography, characterized by little surface drainage as well as by sinkholes, blind valleys, sinking streams, and mogotes. Because water enters the carbonate rocks rapidly through sinkholes and other large openings, any contaminants in the water can rapidly enter and spread through the aquifers.

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Florida: Hear not, See not, Speak not:

Banned in Florida: Government Frowns on Use of the Term -- "Climate Change"

What we see of Florida is just part of an enormous carbonate platform that developed over millions of years.

When the bit of metamorphic rock that would become Florida's basement rifted off of proto-Africa in the time of Pangea, a basin formed as the baby Atlantic Ocean was born. That's where the Florida Platform began to form: in shallow, warm seas filled with coral reefs and algae with calcium carbonate skeletons, living happily under the sun, producing those calcium carbonate bits that built up incrementally as they died. And this went on for ages, right up through the Paleogene, the geologic age after the death of the dinosaurs.

There are cliffs bounding the Florida Platform that are nearly 1,828 meters (6,000 feet) high, beneath the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

That immense carbonate mass may be more than 6,096 meters (20,000 feet) deep. That's a huge amount of potential karst.

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