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Sandstone landforms shaped by negative feedback between stress and erosion

Abstract

Weathering and erosion of sandstone produces unique landforms1,2 such as arches, alcoves, pedestal rocks and pillars. Gravity-induced stresses have been assumed to not play a role in landform preservation3 and to instead increase weathering rates4,5. Here we show that increased stress within a landform as a result of vertical loading reduces weathering and erosion rates, using laboratory experiments and numerical modelling. We find that when a cube of locked sand exposed to weathering and erosion processes is experimentally subjected to a sufficiently low vertical stress, the vertical sides of the cube progressively disintegrate into individual grains. As the cross-sectional area under the loading decreases, the vertical stress increases until a critical value is reached. At this threshold, fabric interlocking of sand grains causes the granular sediment to behave like a strong, rock-like material, and the remaining load-bearing pillar or pedestal landform is resistant to further erosion. Our experiments are able to reproduce other natural shapes including arches, alcoves and multiple pillars when planar discontinuities, such as bedding planes or fractures, are present. Numerical modelling demonstrates that the stress field is modified by discontinuities to make a variety of shapes stable under fabric interlocking, owing to the negative feedback between stress and erosion. We conclude that the stress field is the primary control of the shape evolution of sandstone landforms.

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Figure 1: Sandstone landforms and modelling.
Figure 2: Laboratory experiments.
Figure 3: Material model.
Figure 4: Simplified models of evolution of some basic landforms.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the help of G.T. Carlig and D. Tingey for assistance with sampling and measurements in the USA and J. Valek and J. Bohac for UCS and triaxial measurements. We also thank M. Audy, M. Sluka, V. Cilek and J. Adamovic for providing photographs and V. Erban, L. Palatinus, A.N. Palmer, K. Zak, J. Mls and T. Fischer for valuable comments on this manuscript. The rain simulator was provided by VUMOP, Prague. This research was funded by the Grant Agency of Charles University (GAUK No. 380511), Czech Science Foundation (GA CR No. 13-28040S), the research plan No. RVO 67985831 and MEYS grant LK21303. The research was also supported in part by the Hintze Fund at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA.

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Contributions

J.B. proposed the negative feedback mechanism idea, managed all activities and wrote most of the manuscript. J. Soukup and J.V. performed most of the field and laboratory effort. M.F. carried out part of the physical modelling and contributed to the preparation and writing of the manuscript. J. Schweigstillova performed the frost weathering experiments, studied microstructure and contributed to manuscript preparation. D.M. introduced the soil mechanics perspective, developed the material model and contributed to manuscript writing. A.L.M. and G.K. contributed to manuscript preparation and writing. J.R. carried out the triaxial tests and numerical modelling.

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Correspondence to Jiri Bruthans.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bruthans, J., Soukup, J., Vaculikova, J. et al. Sandstone landforms shaped by negative feedback between stress and erosion. Nature Geosci 7, 597–601 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2209

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