{"id":812,"date":"2021-03-29T14:57:28","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T19:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/?p=812"},"modified":"2022-10-05T14:12:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T19:12:42","slug":"marshall-geology-students-examine-evidence-of-teays-stage-ice-dammed-lake-in-the-hocking-river-valley-and-the-cause-of-local-landsliding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/2021\/03\/29\/marshall-geology-students-examine-evidence-of-teays-stage-ice-dammed-lake-in-the-hocking-river-valley-and-the-cause-of-local-landsliding\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall Geology Students Examine Evidence of Teays Stage, Ice-dammed Lake in the Hocking River Valley and the Cause of Local \u201cLandsliding\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

– Dr. Mike Caudill<\/em><\/p>\n

The study of landscapes, their attributes, and their origins, is of the primary interest of geologists.\u00a0 This sub-discipline of geology is known as geomorphology, the study of Earth\u2019s surficial processes and their results.\u00a0 Students in the Geomorphology course at Marshall University recently visited southeastern Ohio to examine evidence of an ancient glacial lake and related landslides in the Hocking River Valley. Similar glacial lake deposits are present along the edges of the ancient Teays Valley of West Virginia in the Huntington – Charleston corridor.<\/p>\n

Many of today\u2019s landscape features were formed by processes or events that are no longer occurring in this region.\u00a0 Their origins are pieces in the puzzle of the \u201crecent\u201d geologic history of the region.\u00a0 More practically, some valley landforms consist of distinctive types of deposits that in some cases are valuable resources, such as the sand and gravel deposits of stream terraces. \u00a0In other cases, the deposits in the Hocking River Valley and the ancient Teays Valley present engineering problems and hazards such as landsliding.<\/p>\n

Complex landscapes like the hilly Appalachian Plateau region of southeastern Ohio and western West Virginia record many past geologic events that modified the Earth\u2019s surface.\u00a0 Deciphering some of these events and their results enriches our understanding of this unique region, but also has practical applications.<\/p>\n

It is common to assume that in Appalachian Plateau region rivers flow in the valleys they carved into the local bedrock.\u00a0 This simple assumption seems reasonable when we consider how a landscape consisting of hills and valleys arrived at its present configuration.\u00a0 However, landscapes evolve over long periods of time and their present configurations are the results of the imprints left on them by many past geologic events. \u00a0The relationship of a river to the valley it flows in can be very complex. \u00a0Such is the case for the Hocking River of southeastern Ohio.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Figure 1. The Hocking River Valley in the Lancaster-Sugar Grove area. Note, the valley widens to the north, whereas the present flow direction is to the south. This is relationship indicates the present-day river occupies a valley carved by an earlier north-flowing stream.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is most typical for rivers to flow from elevated hilly areas (foothills) on to adjacent lower-lying plains. At Earth\u2019s surface, water runs downhill and the landscape generally slopes downhill from hilly areas to plains. Hocking River however, draws its headwaters from the rolling plains north of Lancaster, OH and flows southeastward toward the higher elevation foothills of the Appalachian Plateau. Here it enters a narrow valley carved into the local bedrock (Fig. 1). Contrary to the common assumption, the modern Hocking River did not carve the valley in which it now flows.<\/p>\n

The geomorphic events the lead to formation of the valley in which the Hocking River flows today can be traced back to Teays Stage of the Pleistocene Epoch.\u00a0 This time interval includes the several ice ages that impacted North America and Ohio.\u00a0 It began about 1.6 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago.\u00a0 Ohio\u2019s landscape, particularly the river systems, was configured very differently than today.\u00a0 Indeed, at the onset of the Pleistocene Epoch neither the Ohio River, Scioto River, Miami River, Muskingum River, nor the Hocking River existed.\u00a0 In their place was a major north-flowing river, the Teays River, and lesser known tributaries such as the Newark and Marietta Rivers.\u00a0 This early part of the Pleistocene Epoch, before Ohio\u2019s first ice age is known at the Teays Stage.\u00a0 During the Pleistocene Epoch and before about 500,000 years ago, glacial ice spread southward from Ontario, across northern Ohio, and terminated just south of Lancaster, Ohio near the edge of the Appalachian Plateau (Fig. 2). \u00a0At that time, the area where the modern Hocking River valley now lies was occupied by the north-flowing Logan River, a tributary of the Newark, which in turn was a tributary of the well know Teays River.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Figure 2. Paleogeography of the Teays River and its major tributaries in Ohio, including north-flowing Logan River. Note the dotted line showing the maximum extent of the glacier that dammed the valleys of the Teays and Logan Rivers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As glacial ice reached its maximum extent south of Lancaster it formed a massive ice dam across the valley of the north-flowing Logan River.\u00a0 The ice-dam ponded the waters of the Logan River producing a lake whose waters extend all the way up the river valley to the drainage divide that lay south of the town of Logan. The types of lakes are known as pro-glacial lakes for their position at the \u201cfront\u201d of glaciers (Fig. 3).<\/p>\n

Geologist think a pro-glacial lake that formed in the Logan River valley was present for at least several thousand years until the glacier retreated back into Canada.\u00a0 Thin layers, silt and clay, accumulated on the lake bottom during this time. Remnants of these lake-bottom sediments are still preserved along portion of the old Logan River valley (Fig 4).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Figure 3. Model shows formation of pro-glacial lake in Logan River Valley by glacial-ice dam.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Figure 4. Thinly layered, silt and clay, lake-bottom sediments preserved along a portion of the old Logan River Valley State Route 664 exit at Logan, Ohio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lake-bottom sediments that accumulated on bottom of the pro-glacial lake in the Logan River valley are present today along both sides of U.S. Rt. 33 just south of the State Route 664 exit at Logan, Ohio.\u00a0 They are present in the grassed slopes excavated during highway construction.\u00a0 These soft, weak, clayey lake-bottom deposits can cause engineering problems as they are prone to producing small landslides.\u00a0 The Ohio Dept. of Transportation remediates such landslides by excavating the slide material and replacing it with large limestone boulders which will help stabilize the slope (Fig. 5).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Figure 5. Small local landslides formed in lake-bottom sediments of former pro-glacial lake in ancient Logan River valley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– Dr. Mike Caudill The study of landscapes, their attributes, and their origins, is of the primary interest of geologists.\u00a0 This sub-discipline of geology is known as geomorphology, the study of Earth\u2019s surficial processes and their results.\u00a0 Students in the Geomorphology course at Marshall University recently visited southeastern Ohio to examine evidence of an ancient<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/files\/Picture17.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":821,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions\/821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/geology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}