With a passion for geology and space exploration, I, like many others these days keep a eye out on everything related to the Phoenix lander. These are exciting days. Got nothing to say that other bloggers havent already said. Except one question perhaps - can smaller rocks become smoothly rounded like the those seen on this link without water? Can a wind (and temperature, and chemical…) based erosion accomplish that?

Today’s excursion took us to see several types of glacial soil deposits like eskers, sandurs tills, talus, tufa and moraines. I must say that the study of glacial soil formations is much more complicated than I’ve imagined. There are just so many types of formations that I’ve never heard of before studying geology. Not to mention all the types of soils and sediments and the terminology about the different particle sizes and how they behave in terms of erosion and cohesion. I took some pictures of course, however "soil" make poor lousy photo material so I mostly took shots of the landscape today - so no cool macros of minerals today.

Pictures below shows an esker (swe. "rullstensås") covered in Beech forest streching for about half a mile and 40 meters high near the small village of Torna Hällestad. It really knocked the wind out of me when climbing up to the summit since it was such a steep climb. Yes, my physical condition could obviously be much better. Its not like its a mountain…

Picture below shows the stratigraphy of a sandur-deposit. Rounded material often transported with the ice and melting water for hundreds of miles across the landscapes. 

Picture below shows a talus (frost eroded rocks - very uncommon here in the south of Sweden)

The pictures below are from the nice natural reserve in Benestad where we looked at some small deposits of Tufa (Swe "Kalktuff").

Today I was on an excursion around Skåne looking at different bogs and marshes. We drilled soil samples and learned to see the difference between different types of soil, clay, mud and peat. We learned to how to spot the level of humification, acidity and some about the more important fossils of the different stratas. We took samples dating all the way back to just after the last iceage. Around 8000 BC. Here’s a sample of pictures from today.

Picture below. 8000 year old sample of Birch tree. 

Picture below. And then we looked at a fascility that extracted/mined peat.