Del: Steve, it looks like we're
overlooking a lake down there, but it’s not like any lake I've
ever seen. What has happened here? Steve: This is Spirit Lake,
north of the volcano. At 8:32 in the morning
on May 18th, 1980, a giant earthquake occurred under
the mountain, dislodging the North Slope.
And the mountain collapsed into the lake. Del: So, the debris
from the mountain came into the lake?
Steve: Came into the lake and deposited on the
bottom of the lake about 200 feet of deposit.
Simultaneously, it pushed the water of the lake
up onto the north slope, here. We see on the north shore
of the slope this gigantic scour deposit. So,
the landslide debris lands in the lake, pushes the water up
860 feet above the pre-eruption level,
there is scour on the slopes of Mount Margaret. And then
it went around in a circle in this basin, right here,
and created this kind of scour vortex. Del: And that scar vortex
is what brought all that timber down into the lake? Steve: Yeah. So, the logs that are in the lake
were growing up on this slope. Del: So, we had a forest here
before the explosion. Steve: Yes. Over here
in the blowdown area, the trees were just blown over.
But in the scour zone — the water scours zone —
they were actually ripped loose from the surface and they landed
back in the lake. Del: That gives you an amazing
picture of the power of water. Steve: Yes. Water...
the power water to erode a landscape is right here.
We can see grooves and furrows and you can actually see
the vortex where the water went around in a circle to make
this basin in front of us. If it can do it here,
could it do it on a larger scale like on a global flood?
What would it do? Water is able to sculpt
and bevel rock with ease. And that's what we see here,
and that's what we can imagine on a larger scale during
a global flood. Del: So, what we see here
is just a small part of what massive water can do
compared to what would have happened in a huge
global tsunami. Steve: Yes. And
this is a scale model — a little living laboratory —
for the study of catastrophic erosion of bedrock. Del: Ah ha. Steve, these logs
have been floating for about 35 years.
What have you seen over those 35 years in terms of those logs
and how they float and the action of all of them? Steve: The logs, of course,
float — most of the logs
float horizontal, prone on the surface
of the lake, and then they sink. But we've been trying to watch
how they sink to the bottom. Half of the logs have
been redeposited. And so what we discovered is
they float upright at the surface. The root end of
the log usually gets soaked with water,
becomes heavy, and sinks — but they float
in upright position. Then we noticed that they fall
and disappear. And they stand upright
on the bottom of a lake. When I did my diving at
the bottom of lake, discovered large logs with root
mass flaring out at the bottom of the lake, just standing there
as if the tree grew there in the bottom of the lake —
but it didn't. It grew on the slopes up here.
The log was ripped loose by the water wave.
It floated on the lake a little while, probably prone
and then went vertical, and then finally fell
to the bottom and replanted in the bottom of the lake.
We did sonar study of the bottom of the lake. We had sonar
contacts with hundreds of upright logs on the bottom of
the lake. There's evidence — if extrapolated the bottom
the lake — maybe there were 10,000 logs
standing vertical. What would Spirit Lake look like
if you drained it? It would look like a forest
that grew there. But, no, it didn't grow there.
It's been replanted. And the implications
of that are enormous. Del: Steve, do these logs sink
at the same time or at different times? Steve: We've been watching
the log mat, here, for 35 years. But we've discovered that all
the different species of forest logs do not float
with the same duration. The first logs to be deposited
were the Noble Fir the Silver Fir. And we noticed
that they didn't survive very long in the floating log mat.
But the Douglas Fir — they continued to float
and they're the resin impregnated logs that are today
on the surface of the lake — almost 100 percent of the logs,
now half a million logs that are floating there,
are the remaining Douglas fir logs.
The other logs have fallen and the Douglas Fir start
falling out. So, if you think about the bottom of the lake,
there's a whole bunch of standing redeposited trees
and they've been deposited in species stratafied layers.
Del: Over time? Steve: Over time —
over the years. Del: So, Steve, we have these
trees that are sinking at various times,
sediment layers laying up — Steve: And different types
of trees sinking at different times. OK. Del: So, let's say three, four,
five hundred years from now, Spirit Lake is gone and someone
is trying to analyze what happened here,
what would it look like? Steve: It might look
like a series of forests that grew one on top of another. Isn't that the natural way
to think? Here's the forest growing
here today. There's the ancient forests
that grew there on the flatland thousands of years ago.
You know, that would come naturally,
wouldn't it, if we saw that? And seeing a species stratified
deposit on the bottom of the lake… Yeah,
that would imagine climate change in an ecological
succession of forests — something like that. Del: And that sounds a lot to me
like what I used to see in Yellowstone Park —
Specimen Ridge. Steve: Now, at
the Yellowstone National Park at Specimen Ridge,
there's a sign or it was a sign that talked about
the petrified forests. And there's 27 different layer
levels superimposed on one another. Each one
of those was thought to be an independent or a succession
of forest, one on another. And the study of the log mat,
here at Spirit Lake, has helped understand the layers
buried in mud flows there at Yellowstone. And the very
beautifully petrified sequoia trees that are standing upright
don't have radiating root mass. They're not sitting on soil.
There's all kinds of interesting tree ring correlations between
logs with root ends at different levels arguing that the trees
all grew at one time and were buried
in successive layers. So, that reminds us
almost immediately — Del: So, what we see at Specimen
Ridge in Yellowstone has for years and years been viewed
as a long succession of different forests.
It's very similar to what we're seeing here. Steve: Yes. And so Mount St.
Helens provides a laboratory for studying how species
stratified logs get buried and could be petrified
like at Yellowstone. So Mount St.
Helens has enormous applications to geology elsewhere, like at
Yellowstone Petrified Forest. Del: Well, I'd like to get
a closer look at that log mat. Can we go down there
and see them? Steve: Yeah, we have a trail
down there and it is a really good way to go.
Del: All right. It's even more impressive
when we get down here. All of these logs.
They're just incredible. Steve: A million logs floated
on Spirit Lake the day after May 18th. The lake
was covered with logs. They thought the lake was gone.
It looks like a beach, doesn't it?
Del: It does. Steve: But it's logs floating
over deep water. Del: You know, the thing that,
I guess, I first noticed when I got down here is how
these things appear to be almost milled. I mean,
they're rounded — they're smooth.
What causes all that? Steve: They floated for years —
now, 35 years these logs have been floating in this lake and
they rub against one another and they're milled. Obviously, the big observation to make here
is the bark is gone after 35 years. Del: Why don't we see… I mean,
all this bark has been stripped off and these logs have
been milled. Why don't we see all
of that residue floating? Steve: It's obviously
waterlogged and soaked. In 1979 I defended my Ph.D.
dissertation on the floating mat model for the origin of coal at
Penn State University. What I was interested in was how
a coal bed in Kentucky formed. And as I studied the coal bed,
it became evident to me that it did not grow in place in
a swamp, but that the coal bed formed from logs rubbing
and making bark — bark falling to the bottom and accumulating
sheets of tree bark underneath a floating log mat.
That was the model that I defended for my Ph.D.
dissertation. Del: And that was before all
this happened? Steve: 10 months before
Mount St. Helens exploded, I defended my Ph.D.
dissertation on the floating log mat model for the origin
of a coal bed in Kentucky. Del: And then, all of a sudden,
you had one here. Steve: And then right here at my
favorite volcano, at Mount St. Helens in Washington State,
we have a floating log mat for study. Now, it became
a concrete reality, so I had to go diving.
And I had to go explore this log mat in this unusual environment. Del: So, are you telling me
you've been down to the bottom of Spirit Lake? Steve: I'm trained scientific
diver and I've done the dives to the bottom of the lake —
up to 100 feet. Del: And what did
you find there? Steve: I’m looking at the bottom
of the lake to see what the sediment is like that’s
accumulated there since 1980. Well, yeah. It's
as you might imagine, it's abundant sheets
of tree bark. That's where the logs deposited
their bark, is on the bottom of the lake. The water soaked
exterior of the tree rubs against another tree
and peeled off. Water soaked, it swells, it sinks
to the bottom, and you build up this thick spongy layer of plant
material called peat. But it's formed underneath
the floating log mat. Del: Was it a thin layer or
a thick layer? How thick was it? Steve: Yeah, the organic
material that accumulated under the floating log mat was up
to three feet in thickness and over a wide area
of the lake. There was not an area
like that didn't have a large quantity of plant material.
And the primary plant material is sheets of tree bark.
And it reminds me of the coal beds that I was studying
in Pennsylvania and in the eastern United States
in Kentucky, where abundant sheets of tree bark are found in
the coal bed itself. So, the plant material
that accumulated in the bottom of this lake is very much
in the texture and composition like the coal beds
in the eastern United States. Del: So,
what you're seeing here, does it look like we have
the precursor to a coal bed, right here? Steve: This is the first step
for the formation of a coal bed. We haven't completed the coal
bed operation — we need another volcanic eruption to bury
the bottom of the lake to make the plant material be compacted
to form coal. But we have seen the first step
for the formation of a coal bed. Del: So, let's suppose we
had another volcanic activity here and we had —
what would it be, a mud flow, then, that might come in and…. Steve: Yeah. Yeah, or another
summit avalanche deposit could very abruptly bury this.
And… but… or what was down on the bottom of Lake in 1980 that
was buried? Could that be coalified,
sitting down there already? So — Del: So do you think it can…
that process can produce coal in that short of a time? Steve: I think it can.
What we need is burial to squeeze out the water
and then we need a little bit of heat. We don't need a lot
of pressure to make coal. But in the laboratory we can
make a coal — coaly-like substance —
very rapidly, in weeks just by compacting the water away
and then generating a little bit of heat.
Internally wood generates heat when it's sitting away
from oxygen — the idea of the hay in the barn,
kind of thing. And so… but yeah, wood can be coalified and that's known
from laboratory experiment. Del: So, all we need is a peat
layer like we see formed right here,
another layer on top to provide the pressure,
squeeze out the water and we have coal. Steve: Yeah. My Ph.D.
dissertation supervisor… my advisor worked
on the coalification of wood. And it happens in weeks
in the right pressure and temperature situations.
Doesn't take millions of years to make coal, just a little bit
of heat and pressure makes the thing happen.
And coalification is one of the ways that wood
is preserved in the earth — fossilized, if you will.
The other way, of course, is petrification,
where mineral infiltrates the wood. Del: So, Steve, what caused you
to have such interest in coal in the beginning? Steve: As a kid, early age,
I had lumps of coal and I was always wondering how
did the plant material get accumulated to make the thick,
hard mass that's now coal. What was the process
like that formed it? As a kid, I was very interested
in that subject and I was looking at the glassy
bands running through coal, realizing those are solid plant
fragments in coal. What was the story that a lump
of coal has to tell? Del: And what was the story you
were told as a kid? Steve: Yeah, as a kid they told
me it took thousands and thousands of years to build
up the thick spongy plant material called peat,
which was later compacted in a swamp. And a swamp
environment accumulated and compacted to make a layer
of coal. Since the organic material
in a swamp — a freshwater swamp —
is antiseptic it allows the plants not
to completely decay. And you're able to build up
this thick spongy layer of peat. I was told it took about
a thousand years to form an inch of coal. That
was the conventional explanation for the origin of coal.
And I was out there at Penn State University in 1979
to test that particular explanation for the origin
of coal. Del: And how did you test it? Steve: Did the study
of the Kentucky coal bed, and I pretty much disproved
the swamp theory for the origin of coal. Well,
in the explanation and the process of going through
a Ph.D. thesis and dissertation, the university said,
‘You can't turn in a thesis disproving a theory.
You need to turn in a thesis proving a theory or generating
a new theory for the origin of coal. So,
don't tell us what's wrong with the old theory for the formation
of coal. Generate a new theory
for the formation of coal.’ Well,
the day before Christmas 1978, I was taking a bath thinking
about the plant material and especially the tree bark
accumulated in coal and the thick layering in coal.
And I was thinking about the root penetrated,
very disorganized structure of modern swamp peats.
As I thought about this, I was playing with soapsuds
and imagining logs floating on an ocean. And I imagined
an ocean full of logs and these logs would rub against one
another and the bark would peel off and sink to the bottom.
And that's what I call the floating mat model
for the origin of a coal bed. What we see here, essentially,
is the first step for the formation of a coal bed
like the coal beds in Kentucky. And the modern swamp peats are
intensely root penetrated and create this homogenous
texture that's quite different than the coal beds that we have
in the world today. And those coal beds are better
explained by this type of environment. Del: So, having studied what's
going on here, what would you conclude now,
and help people understand as to how the coal beds around
the world might have formed? Steve: I was told that it takes
thousands of years to form an individual coal bed
and millions of years to form the strata with multiple
coal beds. Instead, I think that coal beds and the strata
around the coal beds can form rapidly like in an ocean.
And these logs could float around in an ocean
with the marine organisms and the logs could be peeled off,
bark could fall to the bottom, and thick sequences of plant
material and non-plant material, like sand and lime sediment,
could be accumulated to make the coal layers that we see all
over the world. And so, this log mat environment is a piece
of a puzzle that helps us understand the rapid
and catastrophic processes that form coal and coal
bearing strata. And I think this helps us
understand the global flood of Noah's day and even
the catastrophic process that was going
on on a colossal dimension. Del: So, this provides for you
a continual lab, doesn't it? Steve: Yeah. So, this
is a living laboratory for the study of coal formation.
And Mount St. Helens just happened to make
this laboratory for us to study.
Looks like the present offering a key to the past
Something I've never understood about the young earth stance (generally those who hold to the flood of Noah encompassing the globe) is why they feel these discussions help their view. The fact of local disasters fits for someone who holds to a young or an old earth.
If you believe the earth is young then you believe a catastrophic event like this happened in a local area recently and globally some time ago. However, if you believe in an old earth you believe a catastrophic event like this happened in a local area recently and did not happen globally some time ago.
A valuable discussion would be one that would be true for a young earth (global flood), but is not true for an old earth. This discussion doesn't offer that at all.
On the idea of coal specifically, the idea that coal can form quickly under a set of circumstances doesn't prove that other circumstances weren't present at a different time. It seems this discussion isn't fruitful for either view.