Learning about Stream Geology

For prospectors that are interested in placer prospecting, water the most essential geological agent. Although almost all of the actions of the water can be seen, it is vital that people that prospect learn and have a total understanding of not just the process but of the words that are used in geology as well which describe the occurrence.

The process in which water is used is called the hydrologic cycle. In order to explain it we can start at any place of the cycle. Excluding the reality that little amounts of water continue to be brought to the top from their original pockets of formation, all of the water on the earth can be said to fall to the surface of the earth from clouds in the rain or snow.

After the water hits the earth it begins to take a trip back to up to the clouds. (We’re sure you have learned about this in school). The greater amount of water is then evaporated back into the atmosphere directly from the sea, lakes, rivers and the moist itself on the earth as well as from any other damp surface.

The following biggest source of water given to the clouds is acquired through transpiration. This is a process that has been explained as the way the plants in the earth breath by grabbing water from the earth and passing it out into the air. There are certain areas of the earth where water is returned to the atmosphere by 95 percent due to evaporation however in general this is of around 55 to 60 percent. The rest, which is around 40 percent approximately, is caused either by infiltration or runoff and porosity and many other causes in the soil.

Runoff has to do with water that cannot be evaporated or absorbed right away so it travels downwards until it reaches the sea. Infiltration is when water that can be absorbed by any given soil until it can’t absorb it anymore.

As far as mining is concerned streams include all types of moving water from narrow dry washes to rivers that are muddy and that may be a mile long. There are streams that only flow in certain periods or occasionally and these are known as intermittent and are streams that are supplied by melting snow and streams that have reached a depth where the water table consistently provides are known as permanent streams.

One assortment of streams is by the drainage patterns they have. There are streams that form a pattern that runs long square or near square angles and these are known as rectangular streams. There are also streams that are dentric in nature and are seen in an overview to form a pattern that is sort of tree like and can normally be found around the slopes of a mountain. There are also trellis streams and these drain at almost right angles into the main stream. 

Streams are also portrayed depending on the relationship they have with topography or underlying strata. A consequent direction of the stream flows along the original slope of the land. Fractures or a major different in the hardness of the bedrock alters the direction of the flow of the subsequent stream and it usually causes it to go toward the direction of the softest rock.

There are also antecedent streams that go along with its original course without taking notice of any big changes in the topography of the land that surrounds it. Another type of stream is known as superimposed streams, which cut through overlying strata that is softer and that now have older underlying rocks for bedrock.

The biggest job of the streams consists of erosion, transportation and deposition. This process starts on a surface that is inclined where water falls as rain or snow, or in places where ice has formed. The amount of runoff in different areas is directly related to different factors such as how steep the slope is, the inability of the surface to absorb the moisture, when there is a lack of vegetation in certain areas, and how long the storm or rain decides to last.