Kansas Geological Survey, Current Research in Earth Sciences, Bulletin 253, part 2
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Kansas Geological Survey, Current Research in Earth Sciences, Bulletin 253, part 2
Prev Page--Fracture System, Lineaments ||
Next Page--Appendix
Before the Pleistocene, it seems likely that streams in east-central and in southeastern Kansas flowed generally southeast, paralleling the overall present-day general drainage direction south of the Kansas River. In northeastern Kansas, however, the preglacial drainage was directed toward the northeast as a tributary to the Grand River system. This now-buried valley was blocked during glaciation and the drainage was diverted along the ice margin to become the Kansas River valley. This suggests a drainage divide somewhere between the northeast- and southeast-draining systems (Aber, 1997).
The present west-to-east course of the Kansas River is thus a conspicuous exception to the generalization of southeasterly drainage, so that an ancient drainage system trending southeast would differ drastically from that of the present Kansas River. In the area of study between the St. George quadrangle on the west, and the Eudora quadrangle on the east, the Kansas River flows east and has a gradient of about 0.00047 or roughly 47 cm/km or 2.5 ft/mi, which is more than double the general gradient of the streams south of the Kansas River that flow southeast. Thus, the Kansas River's present location, direction, and gradient are clearly anomalous with respect to southeastern Kansas, and probably have arisen much more recently than the drainage system elsewhere east of the Flint Hills and south of the Kansas River.
Based on our analyses, the ancestral streams in central eastern and southeastern Kansas that deposited the high-level gravels had gradients of only about 0.21 m/km, or little more than a foot per mile. The gradients of the ancient streams were similar to those today.
The major watersheds south of the Kansas River, which include those of the Marais des Cygnes, Neosho, Verdigris, and Fall rivers, probably were established before the oldest of the high-level chert gravels that have been preserved were deposited. The drainage system that preceded them is essentially unknown, and whether evidence will ever be available that would permit the initial stages of these major watersheds to be interpreted is problematical. In spite of these uncertainties, we can be confident that the system of fractures has had large influence on the evolving drainage system.
In analyzing the effect of fractures, we must keep in mind that they have been discerned entirely through the topography. No direct evidence exists for them otherwise. However, they have undoubtedly influenced the landscape on a variety of scales. Consider the valleys of the Blue River northwest of Manhattan and the Neosho River northwest of Emporia. Both are long and straight, and we may suspect that major northwestward-trending fractures have guided their development. The profusion of lesser fractures has had similar long-standing influence, although their effect is less obvious.
Although the fracture system has strongly influenced the evolution of the drainage system, it is unclear how today's topography has been produced. One speculation is that perhaps an early and widespread sequence of chert gravels was deposited over broad alluvial plains before some, or all, of the present high-level chert-gravel deposits were formed.
Perhaps the fractures were "etched" on this ancestral alluvial plain in its earliest stages, and the lineaments we discern today are responses to their controlling influence over the past million years or more. If broad alluvial plains existed, they probably would have had gradients and slope directions similar to those that we interpret for remnants of the present high-level chert-gravel deposits. In other words, a gradient of about 0.21 m/km or a little more than one foot per mile southeasterly from the Flint Hills probably prevailed across eastern Kansas south of the present Kansas River drainage.
Such long-gone alluvial plains, even with their low gradients, might have been influenced by fractures, which once in place, exerted strong directional influence. Later as the streams cut down in response to regional uplift, the fractures continued to exert strong influence, and they probably will continue to do so in the future.
Although it seems likely that fractures have influenced the drainage details for a long time, an anomaly occurs wherever the High Plains surface is present because it seems to mask the influence of the fractures. The High Plains surface is widespread throughout the Plains region of the United States and Canada and is of course selectively present in western and central Kansas (Frye, 1946; Macfarlane and Wilson, 2006). Around the edges where erosion has begun to remove remnants of the Ogallala Formation, whose upper surface forms the High Plains in the region, the fracture system is immediately discernible, even though no trace of fractures exists on the High Plains surface.
The situation in northeastern Kansas is complicated by the preglacial drainage, plus the effects of subsequent glaciation. Relationships between remnants of high-level chert gravels and glacial tills in northeast Kansas provide important information as to the relative age of the chert gravels. In places, glacial till rests directly on chert gravels, so at least some of the high-level chert gravels are older than the Kansan glacial deposits, and perhaps all of them are.
Interestingly, in the glaciated region north of the Kansas River, the topography seems to have been as strongly influenced by the fracture system as it is in the nonglaciated region south of the river. Study of the details of the shaded-relief maps (figs. 5 and 12) reveals that the topography north of the Kansan glacial limit is as intricately seamed and scarred as it is south of the limit. This is surprising, for the presence of widespread till deposits north of the limit would be expected to have a smoothing, softening, and obliterating effect on the finer topographic details; the shaded-relief maps suggest otherwise. Of course, we must consider the large difference in temporal scales. Glaciation in northeast Kansas spanned only a few tens of thousands of years, whereas the influence of the fine-scale fracture system presumably has gone on for millions of years, perhaps since the Proterozoic.
Thus, glaciation, except near the Kansas River, seems to have had little effect on the fine-scale fracture-system level of detail, although glaciation probably had major influence on the larger features of the drainage system. Both north and south of the Kansas River, the influence of fractures seems to be the same and the network of streams seems to be biased in the same manner and over the same ranges of scales. This concordance with respect to topographic detail between north and south seems remarkable, although the Kansas River and its tributaries such as the Wakarusa River, are discordant and provide a boundary for the southeasterly trend of the regional drainage system.
These features suggest that the landscape has been modified appreciably by erosion since the Kansan glaciation. If the old directional biases in the drainage system were lost or severely modified by Kansan glaciation, they have been resurrected by renewed downcutting. Even near the Kansas River, where the influence of glaciation has been preserved in the present course of the river, the fractures have been reasserted and the lineaments they have created are little changed. On the other hand, perhaps most of the glacial modifications of the landscape have been such that the effects of the lineament system were never wholly subdued. Either way, the lineaments seem to be ever-present.
The mystique of Kansas' landscape east of the Flint Hills is with us yet. Even though we have tried to look back several million years, the nature and influence of the fracture system on the landscape is a challenge that remains. We envision a series of alluvial plains that sloped toward the southeast at a little more than 0.2 m/km, or 14 inches/mi, over which streams transported a variety of sedimentary materials, including chert gravels. Gentle intermittent uplifts stimulated the stream system to cut down, locally removing and reworking the chert gravels to create stream-terrace deposits now preserved as remnants of high-level chert gravels. Although the fracture system has had large influence on the details of the landscape, it is the elevation of these chert-gravel remnants that have been important for our interpretations.
In northeastern Kansas, glaciation during the Pleistocene disrupted the southeasterly drainage and established the present location of the Kansas River. South of the Kansas River and its immediate tributaries, however, the southeasterly drainage has been preserved.
Our procedures have made use of the wealth of topographic-elevation data now available in digital form as DEMs or digital terrain models. We suggest that, coupled with modern GIS procedures, they portend the use of these new opportunities in geomorphology and in the interpretation of landscapes.
We thank James Aber of Emporia State University for leading us to critical locations near Emporia where high-level chert-gravel deposits are located; Wakefield Dort of the University of Kansas pointed out locations of high-level chert gravels north of the Kansas River; and William C. Johnson of the Department of Geography at the University of Kansas was helpful providing information on the gravel deposits. All three kindly critiqued an earlier version of the manuscript. Janice Sorensen of the Kansas Geological Survey located and provided needed references.
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