Buffalo Bayou Field Guide

Extras // Making A Sand Peel

Skate Park Sandbar

Figure 6.1 shows the site of sand peel X (Plate 7) in the skate park sandbar and its relationship to the end of the flood phase water level. This portion of the skate park sandbar was forming during the middle adjustment phase of Harvey (Fig. 6.2). It is the best-preserved Hurricane Harvey depositional feature in Buffalo Bayou Park (Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.2. Google Earth image of the skate park area near the end of the early adjustment phase, approximately 2 days after the end of the flood phase. The sandbar (yellow) is presumed to be forming at this time.

Figure 6.3. View looking south of the sandbar ~100 days after Harvey, during the recovery phase.

The Making of a Sand Peel

We used a method developed by Moiola et al. (1969) involving digging a trench, applying cheesecloth to the face and painting it with a plastic polymer dissolved in acetone (Fig. 6.4).

Figure 6.4. View of sand peel X (Plate 7) while the dissolved plastic polymer was being painted on.

Storm over storm

Two years after Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, Hurricane Imelda did it again. As a group we pulled a sand peel from this site on November 15, 2019 during the GeoGulf field trip (Fig. 6.5). The Imelda sand peel sculpture (Fig. 6.5) recorded the reworking Hurricane Imelda did to the deposits from Hurricane Harvey. This sand peel sculpture (Fig. 6.5 and 6.6) archives the erosion of Harvey deposits and their redeposition of a new sequence of beds recording a sharp rise then a drop-in energy.

This stacking of multiple storm event archives illustrates how the coastline we live on is a composite stack of many millennia filled with storm events. Storms are what make the land we live on in Houston; we need to be better at adapting to them.