Condensation-corrosion speleogenesis above a carbonate-saturated aquifer: Devils Hole Ridge, Nevada

Abstract

The Devils Hole Ridge, a small block of Paleozoic carbonate rocks surrounded by the Amargosa Desert in southern Nevada, is located at the discharge end of the Ash Meadows regional carbonate groundwater flow system. The massif hosts the famous Devils Hole, a near-vertical extensional fracture which intersects slightly thermal groundwater (33.6°C) and whose walls are coated below the water table by thick mammillary calcite. The latter was deposited continuously over the last ca. 600kyr, indicating that the water underneath Devils Hole Ridge was supersaturated with respect to calcite during this time span. Rocks, located more than 9m above the present-day water table, remained in the unsaturated (vadose) zone. Continuous, long-term presence of thermal water and the extensional tectonic setting, creating underground thermal lakes in open fractures, is associated with intense dissolution above the water table. Condensation corrosion is responsible for modifications of the morphology of the subaerial parts of the tectonic caves. We also describe, for the first time, the Devils Hole Prospect Cave, which was created almost entirely by condensation corrosion. Caves and cavities in the Devils Hole Ridge are an interesting example of hypogene speleogenesis, by condensation corrosion, operating above an aquifer which was demonstrably supersaturated with respect to calcite for hundreds of thousands of years.