The posted coordinates are available for public access by city ordinance between the hours of 6:00 AM and 11:00 PM, and not accessible on Sundays. Please do not visit this cache site outside of the posted normal operating hours.
“What is Man-Made strata?”, is probably a question you have never asked yourself. But as you are now pondering this Earthcache, presumably in this moment, there is no more burning question on your mind.
For starters, consider the obvious terminology “man-made”. That should be a given? Right? Now add on “Strata”, defined in Merriam-websters as “one of usually many layers of a substance…”. Put them both together, and you’ve got yourself “many man-made layers”.
In the Geoscience community, there is a growing body of work identifying and studying the impact of man-made strata, which is why this location lends itself to an excellent Earthcache observation point. Geopollution is one of the many associated fields of study around “man-made strata”. As you might have guessed, landfills and understanding the long term impacts of such locations is a big part of the subject-matter of the field of study.
As you look to the southwest from this location, you will see the Oklahoma City Landfill. As with most man-made strata, this site is intentional and planned, and a necessary evil of the day-to-day lifestyle that we all enjoy. Utilizing this site and others just like it all around the world, Geocscience students, as well as experts within the Geoscience community, continue to understand landfills, predicting and improving the long-term impact and usefulness of such sites for future years and generations.
As a Geocacher, please review the requirements necessary to log this cache shown below. Please email the answer to the following question (please don’t post your answer in your log on the page, or I will have to delete that entry, no offense intended):
• You are about a ½ a mile away from the OKC Landfill to the Southwest of the posted coordinates for this cache. Hopefully you know what you are looking at when you see it. If you’ve been around OKC for any length of time, you may have even paid this location a personal visit once or twice. How high would you estimate the giant red dirt retaining wall in distance?
• For this intentional man-made strata, would you presume and expect that sufficient planning and study has been completed to properly identify and understand the long-term effects to the local resources and community?
• What issues or concerns might you have regarding this landfill site, around which you’d want to ensure proper planning had occurred in advance?
Ecclesiastes 3:1-6 "To everything there is a season...a time to search and a time to give up...."