Why Do We Have Holes on Mount Baldy?

Erin P. Argyilan, Department of Geosciences, Indiana University Northwest

.
Collaborators: Todd A. Thompson, Bill Monaghan, Pete G. Avis, Mark Krekeler,
Charles C. Morris, Kristin Huysken, Ryan Hennessey, Eric Torness

Special thanks to the support of the National Park Service, the Indiana
Dunes National Lakeshore, and the Indiana Geological Survey
“I reckon you know what you got into,” he says after
a few minutes of silence.

“A devil’s stovepipe, I guess.”

“Yeah. That’s what the old man calls them. I didn’t

know there was any left. You see, bub, this here was
a pine forest a long, long time ago. These dunes
didn’t useta be here, just trees. But the winds kept
bankin’ the sand higher and higher and finally
covered up the forest. Clean to the top of the trees.
And the trees eventually rotted out, leaving these
hollows where they useta be, maybe just barely
covered at the top. An’ you stepped into one. A
pretty good one, too, thank your lucky stars, because
most people who fall into a stovepipe pull the
stovepipe in after ’em an’ then . . .
 1876
1939

1926
Thompson, T.A. (1987) Outdoor Indiana
Making a parabolic dune
Mount Baldy
on the move
Looking
at the
Slipface
2012
2016
paleosol
 The life of a migrating dune
26-37 m of aeolian sediments
Underlain by late Holocene
waterlain and aeolian deposits
1939
Old Maps and 3D Models
14

1926
Archival Data - 1926
Conceptual Model
Holes as of fall 2014
Conceptual Model
Why would the
holes stay open?

saprotrophic Basidiomycete
fungus in the genus Lepiota
 Organic matter

Unaltered sand
Altered sand
“cement”
 quartz (70%) K-feldspar (10%) dolomite (15%) – SEM estimates (Argyilan et al. 2015)
98% “light” minerals (quartz & feldspar), Carbonate (2.5 – 4.4% by weight), (Pettijohn,1931)
Altered Sand “cement” - authigenic
calcium-carbonate-rich
 Task 2 – Subsurface Analysis
26
27
 Task
Core 3 (view west)
3 Location

28
“mid-Holocene” “wetland
deposit surface”

Stump

paleosol

40
35
30 • Develop stratigraphic system
25 based on marker horizons
20
(paleosols & sediments)
15 • Identify characteristics of
10 sediments and soils
5
 Exposed
Task 3
stump
29

upper
dune
• Exposures of paleosol
provide additional
controls & details about
stratigraphic horizons
• Provides better insights lower
into soil, tree (stump). dune
and dune relationships
Combine data to reconstruct landscape

“mid-Holocene” “wetland
deposit surface”

paleosol
 Taskslipface
active 6 Does the buried
31 of Mt. Baldy slipface mark a
burying trees “hazard zone”?

buried
dune
buried
dune