Valley Alluviation in Southwestern Wisconsin∗

Meander erosional banks of fifth and sixth order southwestern Wisconsin streams having drainage areas of twenty square miles (30 km2) or less frequently reveal three distinct sedimentary sequences. The basal unit of coarse textured debris is thought to represent bed load sediment of a prior channel active near the terminus of a mid-Holocene drought about 6,000 years B. P. A silty clay series over the coarse layer is interpreted to have been derived by vertical accretion on a paleo floodplain during a climatic shift toward more humid conditions of the late Holocene. Distinctly laminated silt loam sediments produced by vertical accretion extend from the middle series to the current surface, and mainly result from increased flooding related to modern land use practices. The recent man-induced change in channel morphology is analogous to natural adjustments produced by Holocene climatic fluctuation, and suggests that temporal aspects of channel and floodplain evolution may be described by a step function model. KEY WORDS: Biogeomorphic responseClimatic changeFloodplainHoloceneValley alluviationWisconsin Notes ∗ Appreciation is expressed to the following individuals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: to Professor L. J. Onesti and Mr. C. J. Sorenson for field assistance; to Dr. Margaret Bender at the Center for Climatic Research for radiocarbon dating; to Professor R. D. Sale and Mr. M. L. Czechanski at the Cartographic Laboratory for preparation of figures; and to Professors R. A. Bryson and G. H. Dury for constructive criticism of the first draft of the manuscript

Accretion (finance) · Archaeology · Cartography · Channel (broadcasting) · Debris · Flooding (psychology) · Floodplain · Geography · Geometry · Geomorphology · Holocene · Hydrology (agriculture) · Meander (mathematics) · Mudflow · Physical geography · Quaternary · Radiocarbon dating · Silt · Geology · Hydrology and Sediment Transport Processes · Oceanography · Paleontology · Soil erosion and sediment transport · Tree-ring climate responses

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