to start one.
I'm speaking more generally of petrified tree deposits - not just one deposit
Then you should specify that. You keep talking alternately about global petrified wood deposits and the Joggins Formation - unless you're specific, no one but you knows what you're talking about.
in situ trees that had not been uprooted would most likely atleast have more root balls preserved
Why? Roots are fragile and easily rotted/eaten by insects/smashed into an unrecognizable mass by lithostatic pressure.
of course rivers are capable
there is such an adundant and widespread distribution of huge petrified tree trunks all across the western states it is hard to imagine rivers depositing them all - it appears more like sheet flooding
It's not that broad of an area - think about the Mississipi River system. If you include its tributaries and all of their floodplains, you cover a good portion of the United States. The Chinle Formation covers Utah, and about half each of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. There isn't petrified wood in all of its members, either.
so is the genesis flood story wrong then?
Yes, in the sense that the Flood wasn't global. It was probably describing a local flooding event. I believe the flooding of the Black Sea around 5600 BC is one candidate.
is the Bible not a reliable source of information?
The Bible isn't a reliable source of scientific information.
I agree the flood is hard to explain but so are a lot of other things that are recorded in the Bible?
And I'm uncertain of how much of the Bible is meant to be taken literally. More importantly, a global flood is something that should have left widespread evidence. As far as millions of geologists can tell, it hasn't.
an explanation of something similar can be found here
Mt. St. Helens and Catastrophism
snip.......
UPRIGHT DEPOSITED LOGS
The landslide generated waves on Spirit Lake stripped the forests from the slopes adjacent to the lake and created an enormous log mat, made up of millions of prone floating trunks that occupy about two square miles of the lake surface. These logs float freely as the wind blows them, and the decreasing size of the log mat indicates that the trees are gradually sinking to the lake floor. Careful observation of the floating log mat indicates that many trees float in upright position, with a root ball submerging the root end of the trunk, while the opposite end floats out of the water. Hundreds of upright floated and deposited logs have been grounded in shallow water along the shore of the lake. These trees, if buried in sediment, would appear to have been a forest which grew in place over hundreds of years, which is the standard geological interpretation for the upright petrified "forests" at Yellowstone National Park........snip
I already explained why using Mt. St. Helens and Spirit Lake as an analogue doesn't work before you first posted in this thread. It's back a few pages, but it's in here.
The polystrate vs. in situ definitions have also been discussed at length already - it might be helpful to read the whole thread.
the root ball as well as the roots are clearly missing - except for one broken root
As Orogeny already pointed out, there's more than one root. And as I already pointed out, you're looking at one tree that isn't fully exposed.
this is not an isolated incidence - this is the norm - for millions of petrified tree trunks all around the world
Except those are lying horizontally, with other bits of petrified wood mixed into the matrix in what can clearly be interpreted as a fluvial system.
root balls are just as tough as the tree trunk - the root ball is prob the toughest part of the tree - that's why we find a few truly in situ fossilized (or mummified) tree trunk forests around the world
We find fossilized stumps because the roots are the hardest part of a tree to remove - they're stuck in the ground after all.
something caused all of those trees to break off
I (and everyone else) disagree that they've broken off.
Also:
Roots circled in red. At least, what I would interpret as roots based on the picture.