Quicksand Fans

Oh this is so funny. I'm in Central FL & I've also been looking up quarries and I recognize some of these

That change of color is often a good sign! Whatever sediment is being deposited into these ponds usually ends up being something sinkable. Sometimes it's sand, sometimes it's clay, but sometimes it's nothing. But you'll only know for sure by exploring in person. I looked up a quarry in Weirsdale & thought what i saw on the satellite wasn't going to be anything, but it ended up being my favorite claypit of the season!

Keep in mind that the images are at least a year old and do not show the current state of the area. Also don't forget to check historic images to see how the location has changed in the past. Google Earth on a Desktop PC has that function, i don't know if that works on your mobile device, too.

I realize this is off the topic as intended but I cannot resist saying the thread has me imagining Georgia O'Keefe as a quicksander.

What if you see something like this in a quarry?

I can’t explore since it’s the dead of winter here but I am so curious

It’s all about the art

It is not only water color around quarries, but the evidence of sediment deposits, which are seen in each of the photos. Some are fan-shaped, while others are irregular. I zoomed in on the areas of interest for each photo in order:







As for Bird320's photo, the entire settling pond is all choked with sediment, which contains quicksand, and the cracked areas would contain clay! The area to the right also looks interesting.

You never know the current status of these places until you check those places out (without getting caught for trespassing), since some settling ponds that show little sinking stuff at the time the photos were taken may be full of sinking stuff now. Or settling ponds that look like all clay and quicksand when the photo was taken, such as in Bird320's photo, might have since been dried out, and perhaps excavated to renew the settling pond.

I wish you all the best for the 2022 sinking season!

Brown would obviously just be sediment. Green is probably Algae. The water pit at my quarry always has a teal / aquamarine hue to it, i always just assumed it had to do with the mineral content.

Stone and gravel quarries don't generally extract their products with chemicals, they just crush big rocks into smaller rocks, so you're probably safe.

Another good thing to look for is Frogs. I always see tons of them and their Tarpoles when I go to clean up. Amphibians are very sensitive to water quality so seeing them go about their Froggy buisness is a good sign the water is clean too.

EOS Landviewer offers 10 free satellite images per day, and you can use these to find more recently updated pictures of what you're looking for, though they are lower resolution and the pits can get overexposed on the satellite camera.
(https://eos.com/landviewer)

Google Earth Pro, the free desktop app can give you past satellite images, which helps you see how the quarry has changed over time, which is also super helpful.
(https://www.google.com/earth/versions/#earth-pro)

Boggy Man wrote:
While I only zoomed in on the beige sediment (quicksand) deposits, the snow above it may conceal more deposits of sinkable stuff

That is actually dry sand! No snow in Florida

Seein a lotta Google Maps in here, but I'm tellin ya, people sleep on Bing Maps. Search the same area in Bing Maps, right click and hit View bird's eye (not available in all areas, but seems like it is for this one), and go to town. It's an angled view (vs. directly down), the imagery itself is typically much higher quality, AND you can even rotate it to four different angles, which is a game-changer. It honestly feels almost like cheating sometimes. You're welcome.

Ace wrote:Seein a lotta Google Maps in here, but I'm tellin ya, people sleep on Bing Maps. Search the same area in Bing Maps, right click and hit View bird's eye (not available in all areas, but seems like it is for this one), and go to town. It's an angled view (vs. directly down), the imagery itself is typically much higher quality, AND you can even rotate it to four different angles, which is a game-changer. It honestly feels almost like cheating sometimes. You're welcome.

Well, now I REALLY want winter to be over very very exciting bird’s eye view imagery found, now to wait…