Well, in my mind, clay is a more specifically defined substance based on mineral content and particle size. Mud is larger particles, more organics, and less homogenous. Clay is what you make pots from and is less frequent in Canadian caves in my experience, but I probably would have used our mud symbol to draw it. I guess in my mind clay belongs to the set of mud not vice-versa. Semantics I know but there is a reason I was so stuck on it. In Canada we have been using a symbol for mud, see link to a map of a well-known cave: http://www.canmorecavetours.com/images/Images/RNC_Map/CanmoreCaveTours-RatsN... . It would seem like a break in tradition to use a different symbol for mud. I've been surveying caves for 20 years with this symbol. As far as I understood, we were using British mapping symbols because of the large number of British cavers like Mike Boon and Tich Morris, and others who came over because of Derek Ford at McMaster University. I used to have a huge list of symbols with this mud symbol included, I can't find anything to back this up several pages deep on google. You will notice that the UIS calcite symbol is exactly the mud symbol in Canada whereas our calcite symbol is connected scallops. Not sure if this is based of some now defunct british symbols set. I see the UIS symbols have no mud symbol so I guess clay it is, even though clay is not a standard UIS symbol just a member of the set clastic sediments. Is that ASF symbols distinction that therion is using?? I guess you could say this is clear as mud eh? Rob Countess Canadian caver On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 12:05 AM, Bruce Mutton via Therion < therion@speleo.sk> wrote:

Ha ha, what do you think mud is made of?

Clay? And a bit of water, but then most things on earth have a little water, so just stick with clay.

Have a look at my interpretation

https://therion.speleo.sk/wiki/drawingchecklist

Search for mud on that page.

Bruce

*From:* Therion [mailto:therion-bounces@speleo.sk] *On Behalf Of *Rob Countess via Therion *Sent:* Monday, 14 August 2017 6:03 PM *To:* List for Therion users <therion@speleo.sk> *Cc:* Rob Countess <rob.countess@gmail.com> *Subject:* [Therion] mud!

So, Still a therion noob despite having put all my data over. Finally working on cave maps not just line plots, thanks to a caving buddy who is leading the charge.

So this seems strange but.... why is there no mud area symbol? I am sure someone else has already addressed this. I cant be the only person to survey in a muddy cave. Surprised really, my floor detail is usually sand, cobbles, mud, water or breakdown. I've never really had to use clay or debris. Can someone help put the mud into my cave maps? It seems like such a common and important floor area, can someone with the expertise make it so that mud just comes up on the drop down area list in map editor?

Rob Countess

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I designed a UK symbol set for just this purpose. You can pull a copy from the British Caving Association registry where I (and many other UK cavers) publish and share our data. See the gb_layout.thc file in the Wookey Catchment repo: http://www.cave-registry.org.uk/svn/WookeyCatchment/ My project in that catchment is Swildons. So if you want to see how I include it in a Therion project just download the data set and process the thconfig-swildons_ent Therion project file in the Swildons folder. Footleg On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 11:36 PM Wookey via Therion <therion@speleo.sk> wrote:

On 2017-08-14 11:51 -0700, Rob Countess via Therion wrote:

...

It would seem like a break in tradition to use a different symbol for mud. I've been surveying caves for 20 years with this symbol. As far as I understood, we were using British mapping symbols because of the large number of British cavers like Mike Boon and Tich Morris, and others who came over because of Derek Ford at McMaster University. I used to have a huge list of symbols with this mud symbol included, I can't find anything to back this up several pages deep on google. You will notice that the UIS calcite symbol is exactly the mud symbol in Canada whereas our calcite symbol is connected scallops. Not sure if this is based of some now defunct british symbols set.

You don't have to draw your caves with the UIS sysmbol set. You can choose a different symbol-set if you prefer. As you say, the lack of a 'mud' sysmbol is a bit difficult for cavers of a UK mindset, but the UIS logic in just defining sediments by particle size does make some sense.

Therion is quite happy for you to specify any sysmbol set you like, or to add a few extra sysmbols. (Most UK surveyors can't really get by without the 'slope arrow' symbol for example)

Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/ _______________________________________________ Therion mailing list Therion@speleo.sk https://mailman.speleo.sk/listinfo/therion