ABSTRACTS
Lessons Learned After 45 Years
This issue of CRSQ commemorates the 45th anniversary of the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens. I was an undergraduate studying geology at the time. I recall the excitement the following Fall as my geology professors discussed the eruption and its aftermath. Little did they know how much it would change their thinking. It even changed their teaching.
Mount St. Helens Provides an Analog for Polystrate Trees
Michael J. Oard
The floating logs on Spirit Lake from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens are briefly described. Over the years, some sank vertically to the bottom while heavy sedimentation occurred. This provides an analog for the Yellowstone fossil “forests” that has caused some who claimed to be Christians to become agnostics or atheists, such as Ronald Numbers. It also can explain vertical petrified trees at many other locations. The log mat on Spirit Lake provides an analog for log mats formed during the Flood.
Post-Blast Recovery of the Mount St. Helens Ecosystem
Harry F. Sanders, III, Michelle Mannisto, and Autumn Double
Forty-five years ago, Mount St. Helens, a long-dormant volcano, erupted. The aftermath of the tragedy presented scientists with a living laboratory to study the recovery of ecosystems affected by catastrophes. Ecosystem recovery has ramifications for the global Flood, which completely wiped away the existing Earth’s ecosystems. Such a catastrophe has several overlaps with the Mount St. Helens eruption and thus gives creation scientists a window into ecosystem recovery from catastrophic conditions, such as those present during the Flood. In this paper, we examine the state of the Mount St. Helens ecosystem to determine whether it has recovered from the blast. Using species richness data from before the blast, and five subsequent time steps, we attempt to determine if Mount St. Helens is recovered, and, if so, what the implications are for the Global Flood Model as described in Genesis.
The Climate and Environment of the Exodus:
Clues from the Birds of Leviticus 11:13–19
Martin Johnson
Problems concerning the need for food and water by the flocks and herd of the Israelites are discussed, and also the need for fuel for cooking. This paper argues that the identification of the “banned birds” of Leviticus 11:13–19 points to a very different climate and environment than has been the case for the past three millennia in the territory of the “wanderings of the Israelites.” This paper builds on research using onomatopoeic (OP) correlations by Johnson and Jenson (2023) which resulted in the species-level identification of seventeen of the “banned birds.”
Ornithology, archaeology, and paleoclimatology all point to the Sinai Peninsula and neighbouring regions having a much higher rainfall, which would have created the conditions where grazing and water for livestock would be available, as well as firewood. The range of habitats then available provides a precise match for the requirements of that group of birds. This has a bearing on the possible routes for the “Red Sea” crossing, as well as the date of writing Leviticus and the other Torah passages dealing with the “wanderings.”
The conclusion is drawn that this specific list of birds points to the “wilderness tradition” of the Israelites being set in a landscape that would have been found in the Sinai region prior to a time around 1250 BC. Finally, consideration is given to the “-min” attributions found in the “banned birds” list, with its implications for Hebrew bird taxonomy.
Towards a Rigorous Methodology for Quantifying Truncation of Anticlines:
A Case Study at Mount St. Helens
Edward A. Isaacs
The regional-scale erosion of hundreds to thousands of meters of stratigraphy remain one of the most pivotal yet debated arguments within Flood Geology. Despite the many previous studies of erosion of anticlines as one illustration of regional-scale erosion, no rigorous mathematical model has been proposed for systematic and repeatable modeling of fold surfaces for erosion estimates in data scarce locations. As such, this study proposes a boundary-value problem approach for modeling symmetric and non-verging fold systems. Applied to folds in the Mount St. Helens region, the model performed well in describing characteristics of the half-wavelength of the fold system. The modeled surface resulted in a calculation of 6.16 km of vertical relief eroded from the current topography, a value that could be increased to 10.1 km when transferring the modeled surface to the outermost observed fold surface. Site-specific geology suggests an additional 1 to 4 km of stratigraphy may have rested atop this modeled surface. This application of boundary-value problems represents a promising technique to systematically reconstruct fold systems for erosion estimates. The approach requires minimal inputs that are easily acquired from geologic maps although this limits its application to approximately symmetric and non-verging fold systems. Even so, this technique represents a first step towards developing an easily deployable yet rigorous approach to model fold systems for repeatable and consistent erosion estimates.
Age-Dating of Volcanic Rocks:
A Review
Andrew A. Snelling
The problems with the unproven assumptions that underpin the radioisotope age-dating methods for volcanic rocks are well-documented in the conventional (uniformitarian) literature. Assumed initial conditions are violated by inheritance from mantle and crustal sources. The required closed-radioisotope, parent-daughter systems are violated regularly by open-system behavior—contamination, loss by diffusion, and weathering. And there is good experimental evidence of past accelerated-radioisotope decay in a recent catastrophic event. Thus, the millionsof-years ages for volcanic rocks and the age-dating radioisotope methods used to obtain them are totally unreliable. However, the inflated radioisotope ages often agree with the stratigraphic and biostratigraphic positions of the volcanic strata in the rock record, which is consistent with accelerated radioisotope decay during the recent global Genesis Flood cataclysm.