[Aqualist] silt/sand boundary

[Colin.Pain at ga.gov.au]

There would seem to be a more fundamental question, admirably posed by
Robert Ehrlich in 1983 in Volume 53(1) of J. Sed. Pet. I reproduce it
below.

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SIZE ANALYSIS WEARS NO CLOTHES, or HAVE MOMENTS COME AND GONE?

For a long time we have assumed that size frequency distributions
contain a veritable treasure-trove of information. Mean (or median) size
and measures of sorting have indeed become practical tools. Steadily
over half a century papers have demonstrated that still finer nuances of
distributions can be evaluated and so, of course, are of value. The
present technological revolution in instrumentation and computers
carries a threat that shortly we will be inundated by even more papers
illustrating even more complex approaches which the authors will regard
as Promising. Promises Promises. . . . Hope springs eternal. . . . "The
check is in the mail." A troubling thought inkles its way to the fore.
Why don't we routinely use this tool of great worth to help solve the
sorts of problems that our field addresses? Have the research objectives
that stimulated this approach slowly and unobtrusively evaporated
leaving complex size analysis a cure that has lost its disease? If such
objectives are still viable, why has no one over the span of more than
50 years stumbled on the rights "combination" to achieve them? One
certainly can't attribute the lack of success to the intellectual level
of practitioners inasmuch as many of our most honored colleagues have
taken a hack at the problem at one time or another. The reason lies
elsewhere. The time has come to re-evaluate the effort, try to diagnose
the roots of this unsavory situation. Perhaps the time has come to stop
plaguing generations of students with complex techniques that are never
seriously used. It appears to me that their time would be more
profitably engaged in tatting.
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_______________________________________________________________ 
Colin Pain, PhD
Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Environments & 
    Mineral Exploration (CRC LEME)
c/- Geoscience Australia   {Room 2.003}
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