loess

—loessial, loessal, adj.

/loh"es, les, lus/, n.

a loamy deposit formed by wind, usually yellowish and calcareous, common in the Mississippi Valley and in Europe and Asia.

[1825-35; < G Löss < Swiss G lösch loose, slack (sch taken as a dial. equivalent of G s), akin to G lose LOOSE]

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Unstratified, geologically recent deposit of silty or loamy material that is usually buff or yellowish brown and is deposited chiefly by the wind.

Loess is a sedimentary deposit composed largely of silt-sized grains that are loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. It is usually homogeneous and highly porous and is traversed by vertical capillaries that permit the sediment to fracture and form vertical bluffs.

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▪ sedimentary deposit

Introduction

      an unstratified, geologically recent deposit of silty or loamy material that is usually buff or yellowish brown in colour and is chiefly deposited by the wind. Loess is a sedimentary deposit composed largely of silt-size grains that are loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. It is usually homogeneous and highly porous and is traversed by vertical capillaries that permit the sediment to fracture and form vertical bluffs. The word loess, with connotations of origin by wind-deposited accumulation, is of German origin and means “loose.” It was first applied to Rhine River valley loess about 1821.

      Thick loess blankets are composed of loess packets 1 to 5 m (about 3 to 16.5 feet) thick, each of which contains intercalated strata of loessial and loesslike sediments, paleosols (ancient soils), sand layers, and similar material. The totality of these constitutes the loess complex. There are several regional variants of loess that, together with true loess, constitute a loess series, including loessial sand, sandy loess, loess loam, and clayey loess. The individual elements of the loess series are hard to distinguish, and the several sediment types composing it are interpreted differently by workers in different regions or countries.

      Loess covers extensive areas in Asia, Europe, and North America. Most widespread in today's temperate zones and in the marginal semiarid zones of the deserts, loess covers about 10 percent of the land surface of the Earth. Loess usually exhibits a surface cover of fertile soil that is conducive to intensive agriculture. The capacity of loess to retain vertical or even overhanging walls is especially evident on the Loess Plateau in China, where some loess bluffs stand 150 m high and contain innumerable cellarlike dwellings excavated by the local inhabitants. In semiarid regions people such as the Pueblo Indians made houses and fortresslike closed edifices from loess-based adobe.

Physical and chemical properties.

      The dominant grain-size fraction of loess, called the loess fraction, ranges from 0.02 to 0.05 mm (0.0008 to 0.002 inch) and includes grains of coarse and medium-grained dust. Grain-size analyses by various methods indicate that the abundance of this fraction is about 50 weight percent. Clay-sized particles (less than 0.005 mm [0.0002 inch]) make up another 5 to 10 percent. In some loess regions, the grain-size distribution shifts toward finer grains with increasing distance from the source of dust (e.g., eastward from Sand Hills, Neb.).

      Loess typically exhibits a low moisture content of 10 to 15 percent that increases as porosity decreases. Its porosity is 50 to 55 percent, decreasing slightly downward to a depth of about 10 m (33 feet). Below this depth, porosity varies as a function of the grain-size distribution. If the loess is enriched with clay, then the porosity may decrease to 34 to 45 percent. The porosity of sandy loess is about 60 percent.

      Loess contains 60 to 70 percent quartz with extremes of 40 and 80 percent. Feldspars (feldspar) and micas (mica) make up 10 to 20 percent and carbonates (carbonate) 5 to 35 percent. About 2 to 5 percent of the silt is composed of such heavy minerals as amphiboles, apatite, biotite, chlorite, disthene (cyanite), epidote, garnet, glauconite, pyroxenes, rutile, sillimanite, staurolite, tourmaline, and zircon. Grains are typically slightly weathered. In the finest grain-size fractions (below 0.002 mm [0.00008 inch]), such clay minerals as montmorillonite, illite, and kaolinite predominate over the detrital (fragmental) constituents. Clay minerals may be formed by various processes during and after the accumulation of loess.

      The mineralogical composition of loess is fairly uniform, but there are some local deviations due to differences in grain size and area of origin. The area of origin of the dust fraction is revealed by the heavy mineral assemblage, and research has shown that the dust sources may be local, neighbouring, or distant.

      The chemical composition of loess most often falls within the following percentage ranges: silica, SiO₂, 50 to 60; alumina, Al₂O₃, 8 to 12; iron oxide as Fe₂O₃, 2 to 4; iron oxide as FeO, 0.8 to 1.1; titanium dioxide, TiO₂, and manganese oxide, MnO, about 0.5; lime, CaO, 4 to 16; and magnesium oxide, MgO, 2 to 6.

      The characteristic carbonate content of loess depends on the nature of the dust source, on geochemical and biological processes that occur during and after deposition, and on precipitation and leaching by groundwater. Carbonates are present in loess in a variety of forms, primarily as incrustations on quartz grains and clay-particle aggregates and as small granules and shell fragments. Secondary concentrations include concretions of nodules (Loess-doll) and layers of lime accumulation (caliche). Lime forms frequent tubular incrustations along decayed plant roots, fissure fillings, and similar avenues in loess.

      Loess is a rather ill-consolidated sediment of low compressive strength. It is stable, however, as long as it remains dry. Parting surfaces are vertical because capillary incrustations of lime, developed around the roots of a grassy plant cover, lend a vertical texture to loess.

      Soaked and loaded loess, however, is liable to collapse and slumping. Wetting decreases cohesion between grains by two-thirds, and the angle of internal friction also decreases (e.g., from 32° to 20°). Groundwater flow in loess will carry away fine, insoluble mineral particles, and this mechanical separation in loess can be accompanied by solution of mineral particles. This process gives rise to depressions, sinkholes, loess wells, and collapse ravines and is much accelerated by gully erosion.

Distribution and classification.

      The world's largest loess-covered areas lie between latitudes 55° and 24° N: in China on the banks of the Huang Ho; on the margins of the continental deserts of Inner Asia; in Central Asia in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the foreland of the Tien Shan, and east of the Caspian Sea; and in Siberia along Lake Baikal and the Lena River and in vast regions in the southern parts of the catchment areas of the Ob and Yenisey rivers. In Europe there is an extensive, uninterrupted loess cover in the South Russian Plain, large spots and belts in the Danube Basin, along the Rhine, along the margin of the former inland ice cap in the German-Polish plain, and in the Paris Basin. In North America loess covers the plains of the Platte, Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers and the Columbia Plateau. In the Southern Hemisphere, between latitudes 30° and 40° S, the most significant loess regions include the “pampas loesses” of Uruguay and Argentina and parts of New Zealand.

      Loess blankets may cover a variety of relief forms; they occur most often in plains; on river valley slopes, flats, and rises; on pediments in the forelands of mountains; and on alluvial fans. On mountain slopes and intermontane basins, loess occurs to a maximum elevation of 400–600 m in Europe, 1,000–2,000 m in Inner Asia, and up to 4,000 m in China.

      The lithological classification of loess is based on physical and chemical properties, and the conditions of origin are partly or entirely neglected. In addition to true or typical loess, loessial and loesslike deposits also are quite frequent in occurrence. The proportions of silt and other fractions and constituents (clay, sand, lime), as well as colour, porosity, strength, and plasticity of loessial deposits, differ significantly from comparable properties of true loess. Loessial deposits include sandy loess, loessial sand, loess loam, clayey loess, and loess that is altered during soil-forming processes. Loesslike deposits, on the other hand, include sediments that resemble typical loess only in certain features (mineralogical composition, dominant dust fraction, colour, etc.). These deposits occur within or on the margins of loess regions and are most often mixed with other types of sediment. The group of loesslike deposits is not rigidly circumscribed; it usually is understood to include loess loam, loess mud, loess-containing rock debris, and stratified loess.

      Genetic classifications of loess, in contrast to this lithological classification, are based on the origin of the silt and on the processes that have brought about its accumulation. This requires knowledge of the circumstances of loess formation, which involves many complications and, in all its ramifications, is termed the loess problem.

      Environmental conditions in the areas of loess formation are revealed by pollen and the shell remains of snails, among other animals. The more frequent mammalian remains include mammoth, bison, musk ox, lemming, marmot, Siberian mouse, polar fox, cave bear, deer, elk, and reindeer. These lived in the Arctic tundra in cold, wooded steppes. Snail assemblages in loess indicate a cyclic alternation of species, reflecting both cold and humid climates and cold and dry climates; extremely dry conditions also may be indicated for restricted areas. The snails present in the loamy paleosols (ancient soils) that are intercalated between loess packets usually are indicative of a warmer climate. The cyclic alternation of forest and steppe snails shows that the climatic conditions during loess formation could not be exclusively cold and dry; such is the evidence of contained animal remains.

      Pollen analysis reveals only the broad outlines of ancient plant ecology, but pollen assemblages indicate that cool grasslands, steppes, wooded steppes, and wooded tundras and tundras were among the preferred environments of loess deposition. These climatic zones lay south of the margins of the extensive Pleistocene ice sheets, significantly displaced from their normal (non-Ice Age) position, together with the zone of westerly winds.

Origin and age.

      For more than a century a number of partly conflicting and partly complementary hypotheses have been put forward to explain the origin of the silt fraction of loess. The mineral constituents of loess (quartz and feldspar, for example) are reduced to minute particles by weathering action, principally in semiarid and arid regions. But the source of dust may also be a silty, sandy unconsolidated sediment of Tertiary age (formed from 66.4 to 1.6 million years ago), as, for instance, the Ogallala Group of the United States. The sand and silt may have been size sorted by the wind, which then transported and deposited the silt. Dust storms derived from such rock units are frequent even today in the continental deserts of Asia; the silt content of “continental loesses” is derived in this manner.

      Another significant source of dust may have been the marginal zone of the Pleistocene ice sheet over Europe and North America. During the several ice advances, or glaciations, huge amounts of glacial till, rich in silt, could accumulate in the zone. The silt fraction could then be carried away by the westerly winds and deposited on the lee side of some relief feature; this is sometimes called the theory of glacial loess.

      Silt may also be removed from its site of origin of first deposition and be sorted by fluvial processes. Abundant silt is borne by rivers and deposited in times of flood in basins and on alluvial fans that border mountain regions. Some of the silt is then removed from broad floodplains by winds; this results in a double sorting, once by water and once by wind, and hence a more sharply defined typical grain size. In this case loess accumulation is not necessarily connected with a glaciation; indeed, most of the alluvial loesses do not date back to a glaciation.

      The reason for conflicting opinions on loess formation is that the silt fraction may have been deposited or reworked by any of the various processes; and, depending on environment and other circumstances, the dominant process may change through time.

      There is a consensus that the accumulated dust fraction must have undergone diagenesis (physical and chemical changes after deposition) in order to turn into loess. Diagenesis includes the weathering of fine grains of lime, aluminum silicates, and other substances by hydration in arid climates. In near-surface silt the finest clay particles are cemented by migrating solutions of calcium carbonate and iron oxides and colloidal iron compounds; the quartz grains acquire crusts or coatings of lime or iron, and adjacent grains are cemented together. As a result of these processes, some of the finer particles also attain loess fraction size of 0.01 to 0.05 mm. It has been proved that a grain size of about 0.05 mm is the most favourable for thriving grassy vegetation. Essentially, diagenesis turns sediment deposited in the form of dust into a loosely cemented siltstone.

      The peculiar features of loess are thus developed during a process of loess genesis that is akin to that of soil formation. This circumstance served as a basis for the pedogenic (soil origin) theory of loess formation, which basically held that loess is a product of weathering and pedogenesis under semiarid conditions in grasslands and wooded steppes. It would be difficult to explain the formation of a thick loess blanket subdivided by several horizons of paleosols in this way, however. More reasonable would be a polygenetic origin, in which dust can accumulate as the result of any process alternating in time and space, with loess formation resulting from pedogenetic processes acting under favourable climatic conditions.

      These pedogenetic processes may take place in three different ways. Epigenesis is an accumulation of a mineral mass without loess properties, perhaps with a high silt and lime content, which under weathering and soil formation acquires loess properties and is transformed into loess. In syngenesis, the accumulation of a mineral mass that is mainly of eolian origin and the acquisition of all loess properties occurs simultaneously, under the influence of soil formation. In protogenesis the accumulated mineral matter already has all the main loess properties because transport occurred subsequent to weathering and soil formation.

      The optimum conditions of loess formation are thought to have existed along the border of the continental ice sheet, in such areas as the cold steppes, wooded steppes, loess tundras, and in the steppes bordering the continental deserts. Under conditions other than optimum, the accumulated dust would likely turn into a loesslike deposit differing from typical loess, namely loess loam, limeless loess, brown earth, or reddish loam, or, alternatively, into a soil.

      The formation of loess packets is correlated with the cold, dry climatic phases of the Pleistocene glaciations in regions marginal to the ice. The climatic phases, and the occasions of loess formation, recurred three to five times as within the last glaciation.

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