Journal article
Salt polygons and porous media convection
- Abstract:
- From fairy circles to patterned ground and columnar joints, natural patterns spontaneously appear in many complex geophysical settings. Here, we investigate the origins of polygonally patterned crusts of salt playa and salt pans. These beautifully regular features, approximately a meter in diameter, are found worldwide and are fundamentally important to the transport of salt and dust in arid regions. We show that they are consistent with the surface expression of buoyancy-driven convection in the porous soil beneath a salt crust. By combining quantitative results from direct field observations, analogue experiments and numerical simulations, we further determine the conditions under which salt polygons should form, as well as how their characteristic size emerges.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1103/PhysRevX.13.011025
Authors
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society
- Journal:
- Physical Review X More from this journal
- Volume:
- 13
- Article number:
- 011025
- Publication date:
- 2023-02-24
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-01-25
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2160-3308
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1328536
- Local pid:
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pubs:1328536
- Deposit date:
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2023-02-14
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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