duricrust

/door"i krust', dyoor"-/, n.

a hard crust that forms on or in soil in semiarid climates owing to cementation of soil particles. Cf. caliche, hardpan (defs. 1, 2).

[ < L dur(us) hard + -I- + CRUST]

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▪ geology

Introduction

      surface or near-surface of the Earth consisting of a hardened accumulation of silica (SiO₂), alumina (Al₂O₃), and iron oxide (Fe₂O₃), in varying proportions. Admixtures of other substances commonly are present and duricrusts may be enriched with oxides of manganese or titanium within restricted areas. Thus, siliceous, ferruginous, and aluminous crusts constitute duricrusts proper. Encrusted layers of calcium carbonate, gypsum, and salt, however, are often considered forms of duricrust.

      The term duricrust (Latin durus, “hard”) was first applied in Australia to layered materials at or near the Earth's surface, such as laterites (laterite), bauxites, and quartzites. These crusts are not of themselves landforms but represent the chemical alteration of the upper parts of plains and other features of low relief. In this sense, they are soils (soil) of an extreme type.

Classification of duricrusts.

      Two partial classifications use compound names ending in -crete to indicate the kind of cementation, or in -crust, to indicate the basic chemical content. Both classifications are defective, although the working distinction between silcrusts and ferricrusts is useful. A more serviceable classification adapts and extends the nomenclature developed by soil scientists in Africa. The type boundaries that fall within duricrusts proper must be considered transitional.

      Representing the end-products of weathering, denudation, and soil formation, duricrusts occur mainly on erosional platforms such as pediments or as cappings and residuals on stream divides. The crusts usually form parts of deep-weathering profiles that may be as thick as 120 metres (400 feet). Alternatively, they occur at the bases of cliffs and scarps, in river terraces, or on valley bottoms, usually near to and lower than residual cappings. Except at the wasting or developing edges of crusts, the thickness ranges from about 0.5 m to at least 12 m. This contrasts with the platelike weathering rinds as thick as 15 centimetres (6 inches) that are often associated with cavernous (alveolar) weathering, particularly in arid areas.

Distribution of duricrusts.

      Duricrusts are concentrated in intertropical to subtropical areas, with notable extratropical extensions, especially in South Africa and Australia. They normally are absent from equatorial rain forests. Many are fossil crusts, in the sense that they relate to past climatic, biologic, and geomorphic environments and are not forming under present conditions in these areas.

      Other types of crust are associated with subhumid to arid climates, although not necessarily with the arid climatic zones of today. Crusts of calcium carbonate (calccrusts) and calcium sulfate (gypcrusts), up to 4 m thick occur in basins of inland drainage, where they form initially as evaporites (see evaporite). Alternatively, calccrusts form as surface to subsurface soil horizons, or zones, at and near the extreme end of the calcium-rich soil range. Gypsum-rich horizons, common in many desert and semidesert soils, seem not resistant enough to erosion to become crusts. Calcsilitic crusts, which result from the silification of calccrusts or other surficial limestones, have been little studied in this context. Salcrusts (salt crusts) form in depressions along desert coasts or wherever saline groundwater emerges, but unless they crystallize into rock salt these crusts also lack resistance to erosion and can be ephemeral.

      In Australia, India, Africa, and South America, the main expanses of duricrust tend to mantle pediments and plains in varying states of dissection, although some crusts occur in valleys in terrain of high relief. Allitic crusts yield commercial bauxite. Detrital and valley-floor duricrusts occur in all these countries, chiefly adjacent to the margins of residual caps. These crusts include economic reserves of manganese ore in western Africa and silicified terrace gravels in southern Australia. Possible combinations of terrain, weathering, erosion and dissection of duricrusts and continued or renewed duricrust formation are highly complex. Additionally, some duricrusts now lie buried beneath continental (nonmarine) sediments.

      Rough limits to present-day ferricrust formation are the 500- to 700-millimetre (20- to 27.5-inch) isohyet (contour of equal rainfall values), below which iron is not readily mobilized, and the 1,200-mm, isohyet, above which dehydration is unusual. High mean annual temperatures, on the order of 20° to 25° C (68° to 77° F), also are necessary. Duricrusts that occur beyond the indicated limits are generally fossil (related to former climatic regimes), and many within these limits also are fossil. Ages determined by stratigraphic or radiometric methods are as great as 50,000,000 years in western Africa and more than 23,000,000 years in Australia, but duricrust formation is occurring today in some places. Phenomena related to fossil crusts include the deep weathering of the southern Piedmont area of the United States and of massifs in western and northwestern Europe during the Tertiary Period (between 2,500,000 and 65,000,000 years ago), and the Tertiary formation of residual bauxite at latitude 65° N in Siberia.

Factors involved in duricrust formation.

      The formation of crusts involves great loss of weathered material. A generalized example from the tropical weathering of a nephelinesyenite (nepheline syenite) (intrusive igneous rock) shows a reduction of silica (SiO₂) from 55 percent in the fresh rock to 5 percent in the duricrust, but an increase of alumina (Al₂O₃) from 1 percent to 45 percent, of iron oxide (Fe₂O₃) from 5 percent to 23 percent, and of combined water from 1 percent to 25 percent.

      The circulation of nutrients between plants (plant) and soil in tropical forests involves excess uptake by the plants, and this in turn promotes deep weathering. Within the deep-weathering profile, silt-size material is broken down or leached out. Clay minerals tend to be dispersed and moved downward, especially where high rainfall and vigorous plant growth lower the electrolyte concentration. The remaining oxides tend to aggregate into forms in which spheroidal microstructures are common.

      Mechanisms that are capable of promoting dehydration and hardening of ferricrusts, whether before, during, or after stripping of the overlying soil, include the destruction of forest and lowering of the water table, both of which can occur in several ways. Aside from clearance by humans, forest destruction, for example, may be caused by climatic change and downcutting by fluvial processes.

      Silcrust formation requires the selective concentration of silica, a fact that has led some experts to consider silcrusts as the lower parts of ferricrust profiles. The distributional contrast between silcrusts and ferricrusts is clear, however, and the transition between the types is well documented. Silcrusts often, but not invariably, result from the silicification of sandstones and quartzitic conglomerates. They occur in areas that are currently drier than those with ferricrusts, but the fossil nature of many, plus the deep- weathering profiles to which they usually belong, presumably indicate humid climates at the time of formation and inhibit direct reference to existing controls. Like ferricrusts, silcrusts are usually taken to have originated below the ground surface, possibly under a layer of erodible, fine material.

Mobilization, migration, and concentration of ions.

      Soil-formation processes of selective concentration of oxides of iron and aluminum, and in some circumstances of silica, include ion exchange as a most important factor. Although not yet completely understood, this involves the exchange of ions held by negative charges with other ions in the electrolyte (soil solution). Ion exchange is influenced by the fit of ions into a mineral structure. Relevant processes include hydration (adsorption of water), hydroxylation (adsorption of H⁺ and OH^- ions), oxidation (combination of oxygen, with loss of electrons to weathering agents), and reduction (depletion of combined oxygen). Ion exchange is controlled by the cation exchange capacity (CEC) expressed as the amount of exchangeable cations in milliequivalents per 100 grams clay at pH 7. Low CEC values are typical of kaolinitic clays and of actual or potential duricrusts.

      Soil water will separate into oppositely charged ions, H⁺ and OH^-, and the CO₂ of the atmosphere and soil will yield HCO₃^- and free H⁺ ions in solution. These products promote displacement of some metal cations, especially those in mineral silicates, largely by H⁺ ions that combine with OH^- in removable solutes. The H⁺ ions are small and highly charged in relation to their size and can readily enter many crystal lattices; OH^- ions neutralize the small charges of Na⁺, K⁺, and the larger charges of Ca⁺⁺ and Mg⁺⁺. Positive charges in soil particles are partly related to hydrous oxides of iron, aluminum, and manganese. Negative charges, increasing with falling pH, are neutralized by positive ions, among which Al(OH)₂⁺ is one of the more significant. Negatively charged colloidal SiO₂ and colloidal Al₂O₃ and positively charged Fe₂O₃ probably interact at high concentrations of H⁺ ions to form clay minerals. Among these, the most stable are the one-to-one layer silicates of the kaolin family, in which each silicon–oxygen sheet is condensed with one aluminum hydroxide sheet.

      At least part of the ion-exchange process involves organisms and organic substances. Chelating agents, complex amino acids, and allied compounds inactivate ions of aluminum and iron and hold them firmly in lattice structures. The ions then behave as if they were not present, except when acidity markedly decreases and they are redeposited. Manganese and silicon can be similarly treated. The combined processes of solution and eluviation (soluviation) and of chelation and eluviation (cheluviation) appear to act powerfully in the formation of oxide-rich plinthite prior to duricrust formation. In the mobilization and fixing of iron, as in the general production of organic acids, bacteria also play a part. Some act to form soluble iron, others oxidize soluble ferrous iron (Fe(OH)₂) to insoluble ferric iron (Fe₂O₃); and soil microorganisms, including bacteria, are specifically involved in the production of a number of prominent chelating agents.

Rock type, terrain, and water table fluctuations.

      Duricrusts occur on a wide range of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, including granites, basalts and gabbros, arenites, and argillites. There is only the roughest of tendencies for duricrust chemistry to be controlled by bedrock chemistry, even in similar climates, although nephelinesyenites characteristically weather into allitic (aluminum-rich) crusts, basic igneous rocks into ferritic (iron-rich) to tiallitic (titanium–aluminum) crusts, and arenites and argillites, in some areas, into silitic (silica-rich) crusts. Ferritic crusts are more highly indurated, more variable in structure, and less strongly hydrated than aluminous crusts. Although structures in silitic crusts vary from pea-sized nodules to blocky and massive, with natural, subsurface erosion pipes at lower levels, these crusts are not hydrous.

      Profile drainage is influential; ready leaching and alkaline to neutral conditions favour removal of silica and concentration of aluminum and also of titanium if available. Nearness to the water table promotes concentration of iron, whereas poor site drainage and acidity possibly favour accumulation of silica. Known distributions, however, suggest geographic contrasts between ferricrust and silcrust formation rather than lithological control, which appears to be effective only in transitional belts.

      Terrain requirements for duricrust formation include gentle slopes or situations where groundwater can supply oxides of iron and manganese or both of these. Well-preserved fossil crusts on pediments or plains with maximum slopes of 8° to 10° (and average slopes of 2° or less) suggest feeble lateral movement of groundwater and relative enrichment of crusts by leaching. This contrasts with the active translocation responsible for the absolute enrichment of crusts at the base of scarps and on valley floors. Also indicative of groundwater action are the light-coloured and mottled zones of many deep-weathering profiles; the former are regarded as the result of kaolinization in a reducing (de-ionizing) environment, and the latter from seasonal fluctuation of the groundwater level. Incapacity of these zones to supply the iron content of numerous crusts confirms relative enrichment.

Effects of climate and time.

      Calccrusts, gypcrusts, and salcrusts are referable to dry climates, but duricrusts proper, at least in present and late Holocene occurrences (the Holocene Epoch began about 10,000 years ago), are referable to humid tropical climates, probably with seasonal dryness, coincident wet and warm seasons, and soil temperatures averaging 25° to 30° C (about 75° to 85° F). Under these conditions, 50 percent or more of the original rock volume can be lost during weathering, but the preservation of structures in some profiles indicates downward thickening rather than overall diminution.

      A span of 30 to 50 years will convert a drying ferallitic clay to a ferallitic duricrust; but extrapolation from known values suggests that up to 15,000,000 years may be required to form really deep-weathering profiles. Such time spans seem to be well within the range of duration of humid tropical forests in the Tertiary, however.

      Climatic change (climate change) presumably is responsible for the presence of duricrusts in equatorial areas that now receive more than 1,200 mm mean annual precipitation. The former northward extension of aridity in Africa, with Kalahari sand extending 1,600–3,000 kilometres (1,000–1,900 miles) beyond its present limit, is well documented. Similarly, former climates of the current humid tropical type are probably responsible for the presence of fossil crusts outside the tropics and for relict Tertiary (Tertiary Period) deep weathering. Such climates seem explicable in terms of reduced pole-to-Equator temperature gradients.

      Although dehydration and hardening of duricrusts are often called irreversible, this is not true over the long term. Apart from disaggregation of eroding caps, residual ferricrusts can be attacked by renewed soil-formation processes, which remobilize iron and produce red-yellow soils called “lateritic podzolics” in older classifications.

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