Weirs Closed

[Smalls]

Originally Posted by Big pond

I don't know any scientific names but I dig in the ground for a living and the soil around hackberry and south has a very high clay content compared to the rest of Cameron that does not have clay and caves in as u dig

Yeah I'll agree with you there. When we had projects over on that side of the lake, specifically over in Black Lake, that stuff was some heavy clays! On the east side of the lake you get a lot of mucky stuff, and in some areas its straight organic! Those are the areas that it doesn't get a whole lot of time out of the water, so the microbes and all those little things don't get the chance to break that stuff down.

Actually, the more I look at the west cove area, the more differences I see. The rim of west cove has alot of clayey soils. There are still some of those bancker mucks mixed in, but that rim is a lot of clay. So that could have something to do with why the west side of the system handles salinities better.

Now I don't remember everything from my soils class, but if I remember right, I think clay soils have a higher sodium exchange capacity or something like that. So those soils are likely able to handle saline conditions better than more organic soils, which is what the east side of the lake is made up of.

Ironically enough, that 40% of the parish really doesn't include the area around West Cove. It is made up of soils that make up less than 25% of the entire land area. That quite honestly could be part of the reason the marsh around west cove has been able to sustain itself. Clay soils act differently than organic soils.