the.com/duricrust
Earth's own crusty scab, where soil hardens into rock because the rain keeps leaving.
means A hard, rock-like layer formed near the surface of soil in dry climates, where minerals like silica, iron, or calcium carbonate accumulate and cement the ground as water repeatedly evaporates.
from A 20th-century geological coinage, built from Latin 'durus' (hard — the same root giving us 'durable' and 'endure') fused with 'crust'. Soil scientists needed a word for these baked, mineral-hardened surface layers found in arid and tropical regions — laterite, calcrete, silcrete, and their kin — so they simply described what the stuff is: a hard crust, named with blunt Latin honesty rather than borrowed myth.
- formation
- minerals wick upward and cement topsoil as groundwater evaporates
- common types
- laterite, calcrete, silcrete, named for their hardening mineral
- farmer's nightmare
- can turn fertile land into impenetrable pavement
- climate clue
- signals ancient wet-dry cycles long after they end