MUD MANAGEMENT METHODS (MMM)
BOOTSUCKIN’MUD™ Blog Series #3
Why did the World invent mud anyway?
Mud and its harmful qualities are written about in great horse magazines and scholastic papers, but I have not encountered one that gets to the bottom of mud.
The next several blogs will answer your questions about mud in Bootsuckin’MUD Blog Serie 1-7.
Learning about mud entails learning a geologically abbreviated version. It reads fast.
Where does MUD come from?
“We, of course, know the final outcome, but we should not let that influence our appreciation of the story as it unfolds.” Source: Scientific America.
The Universe is littered with flying objects, and collisions are inevitable. According to NASA, about 4.5 billion years ago, our planet gained momentum as a succession of varying-sized dust particles & Nebulae-like swirling gases that produced a gravitational pull attracting Meteoroids, Asteroids, Comets, and other celestial objects. Lucky for us, the galactic bodies that gelled contained eight essential minerals: Oxygen, Aluminum, Iron, Potassium, Sulfur, Magnesium, Silicon, Calcium, and Sodium, precisely what our planet needed to develop Earth as we know it.
Core, Crust, water.
During the creation of Earth, meteoritic rocks were so hot that they changed types back and forth from metamorphic to igneous or sedimentary. This volatile cocktail of gases, elements, and minerals was liquified into molten magma, frothing and churning. Heavier metal elements sunk inward, and the lighter elements floated upward toward the surface. The heavier elements, nickel and iron, formed our core.
But Earth was not finished as volcanoes violently ejected rock fragments called tephra into the atmosphere, landing miles away, destroying and littering the planet with fragmented Montmorillonite and Leonhardite. Lava flowed, mixing with igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, then cooled, and land mass grew.
Fifty million years later, the atmospheric gases transformed, allowing heat to be released and the Earth to cool further. The lighter basalts, rocks, and granite rose as slag hardened into Crust.
It became so temperate that it allowed water, deposited by crashing, water-rich planetesimals asteroids and comets, to collect and pool in deep crevasses, quarries, future riverbeds, and ponds.
BUCKETS-EARTH receives rain in buckets.
Late in the Triassic-Carian Age, or 232 million years ago, after millions of years of being nothing but dry Crust. Water mixed with the gases emitting carbon dioxide that enhanced evaporation from the quarries & ponds, seeding continual collections of vapors from the oceans and waterways that formed clouds, and it rained throughout the land for 2 million solid years.
ALL OF EARTH WAS UNDERWATER: A Harvard-led study calculated that 3-4 billion years ago, the Earth’s Primordial Ocean’s internal water storage capacity may have been one to two times larger than it is today. With that much water, it may have covered the planet’s entire surface & one to two times larger than today. Source: Harvard Gazette- Junjie Dong Ph.D. Planetary Sciences
Kevin Costner would enjoy knowing he was right; Earth was a Waterworld. Presently, much of the planet’s water is continuously subducted through naturally occurring subsurface aquifers and carried deeply under the tectonic plates. This process still happens today as part of the cycling Hydrosphere System that extends 9 miles upward into the atmosphere & downward past the Crust 3 miles deep, keeping the core temperate & somewhat restrained. This system circulates endlessly: like chilled air, the cooler water drops down, slipping under mantle plates, keeping the core temperate & controlled, while warm water escapes upward to cool, circulating & exchanging repetitively.
Presently, our combined oceans contain 352 quintillion gallons of water. Lake Superior, the World’s largest freshwater lake, holds three quadrillion gallons capable of flooding South & North America to 1 acre-foot.
Water is very heavy, placing our lakes & oceans under tremendous pressure at 3,000 to 9,000 pounds per square inch. Saltwater weighs about 8.6 pounds. Fresh rainwater weighs in at 9 pounds a gallon. Flowing water weathers rocks moves sediment & extracts its minerals as it tumbles on its journey, and that settles across both the land and ocean floor to create a crust of Shale & Mudstone to hold it all together, much like our skin holds our bones & organs together.
Layer by layer over time, throughout ALL 196,940,000 square miles of Earth’s continental layers & oceanic floors, water pressure exerted tremendous weight, compacting the sediments, minerals & elements to form Earth’s impenetrable Crust from “an ancient mud” geologically called Mudstone and/or Sedimentary Shale that hardened, and water cannot penetrate.
Over eons, Earth went through tremendous growth patterns, some with plant life, trees, dinosaurs & animals, followed by mass extinctions caused by other terrestrial objects crashing on our planet, emitting gases and debris into the atmosphere that obscured the Sunlight. Earth went into snowball mode.
Each period of extinction laid beds, layer after layer, of decaying plants, trees, leaves, grasses, organisms, animal bones (nature’s bone meal), nutrients Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium mixed with air and moisture, creating humus-stabilized old carbon, which glues micro-soil together. A centimeter of topsoil takes a thousand years to form. We know it as A-Horizon humus topsoil.
But soil does not stay intact; weather forms our landscapes. All the planet’s dirt is never geologically static, it shapes then reshapes itself sporadically uplifting. The ingredients of our soil are always changing, leaching its minerals & elements to layers below or moving, blowing in the wind or whisked away by water. Over time, mountains & volcanoes collapse, grasses, plants & trees die, rocks tumble & minerals flow weathered by wind, snow, or erosion.
Topsoil is always evolving based on what nature or you throw at it. It is a living thing. It contains 45% minerals, 5% organic matter, air & water. Whether it can sustain crops or plants to build a microbial life to support them depends on Nature’s contribution, weather & humans.
Where does MUD come from?
Answer: During Earth’s creation, sediments from crashing comets & asteroids, minerals, and elements mixed with water covered the entire Earth. Over time, the weight of the water squeezed out each subsequent layer of sediment, compacting it into a hard, impenetrable CRUST, a water barrier. When the water reaches CRUST, it cannot drain.
Ideally, CRUST should be: 6-9 inches below your topsoil. Often you find an impenetrable barrier at less than that or completely exposed topside. The less topsoil you have, through natural forces, animal management or human hands the more likely you are to have mud. Water needs somewhere to go.
When water on soil reaches the barrier and cannot drain, it becomes mud, which is why you have mud.
We hope you agree it is not an environment you or your horses or animals should live in.
For that reason, we produce PastureDRY™, made initially to correct soils & renew them as Mother Nature intended healthy, rejuvenated and drains.
PastureDRY™ is a unique proprietary concentrated liquid spray-on, safe, agricultural mineral & soil conditioner that breaks the barrier and allows water permeation & your topsoil to dry.
All you need is a hose-end sprayer and access to water.
Please visit our website at PastureDRY.com or call 877-562-8147 with any questions.
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