Trekgat van Berghuizen EarthCache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(other)
Related Web Page
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Trekgat van Berghuizen
This lake is called the same as the nearby small settlement in south-west Drenthe, a northern province in The Netherlands.
This lake is formed by winning peat from the original bog this was about 150 years ago. This bog was formed in so called pingo-ruines during many thousands of years.
Now this pingoruin is a natural lake surrounded by nature. In wintertime used for ice-skating.
This cache will teach you a little bit about a pingoruin, so read the text below and go this pingoruin.
Pingo
A pingo is a small round hill with inside of it a frozen lens shaped ice core, that can arise in areas where the subsurface is permanently frozen (permafrost). Groundwater underneath this frozen subsurface is standing under enormous pressure and when a crack appears in the frozen subsurface, the water is being pushed up. The water is unable to go trough the frozen upper ground, thus freezes and expands. Underneath this ice, the water remains under high pressure and keeps pushing the ice and upper ground up; a pingo is born. Pingo's grow only a few centimeters each year and therefore it can take decades before a hill is clearly visible.
The word pingo comes from the language of the Inuit and means "small hill that grows".
Nowadays you can find pingo's in the tundra areas of Greenland, Alaska, Svalbard and Siberia. Some pingo's can grow up to 50 meters high and 2 kilometer in diameter.
Pingoruin
In the Netherlands there was a tundra climate during the Weichsel-glacial, a period within the Pleistocene epoch about 116.000-11.500 years ago. In area’s where the groundwater was close to the subsurface pingo’s could arise. At the end of the Weichsel-glacial though, the temperature was slowly rising. At first the top of the pingo would melt and some time later also the ice core inside. The pingo collapses and sediment rolls from the sides of the hill down to the ground. What remains is a depression in the landscape surrounded by a small rampart of sediment; known as a pingoruin. In the depression arises a lake that over a period of thousands of years is being filled up with bog. The bog contains valuable information about the vegetation, which can be used to reconstruct the climate during the upholstering of the pingoruin.
Pingoruins are the best documented geological climate archives in the Netherlands and precious study objects for quaternary geologist.
To log this cache as a find do the following:
1. Park your car at N52 42.746 E6 17.322
2. Then walk to and go stand on the wooden fishingfloor at N52 42.779 E6 17.267 and take a picture of yourself and the pingoruin.
3. Go to N52 42.843 E6 17.213 and find a big yellow sign.
Mail me the year and month on the back of the sign (made in...) and the name of the owner of this pingroruin.
4. What, if any, evidence can you see here that suggests this is a pingo and not just a small hill?
5. Add the picture with your log and mail us the answer from #3 and #4.
ATTENTION, Picture is not longer optional but required!!! Log without picture will be deleted sooner or later!!
And before anyone wants to complain about the photo: Due to the mass dissemination of EC solutions on the Internet, GSA and Groundspeak have released the EC owners since 10 June 2019, asking for a photo as proof of the visit. Please send us the answers by our profile and upload the photo with your log. After the reply you are allowed to log immediately. If something is wrong, we will contact you. Logs without answers and without a photo are deleted without comment.
Cache in, trash out! Neem altijd een plastic zak mee om zwerfvuil onderweg op te ruimen.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)