Late Pleistocene braided rivers of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA

Abstract

Infrared Landsat imagery (band 4) clearly reveals braided river patterns on late Pleistocene terraces of unglaciated rivers in the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States, a region that presently exhibits meandering patterns that have existed throughout the Holocene. These Pleistocene braided patterns provide a unique global example of river responses to late Quaternary climate changes in an unglaciated humid subtropical region at 30–35° north latitude. Detailed morphological and chronological results are given for the Oconee-Altamaha River valley in Georgia and for the Pee Dee River valley in South Carolina, including 15 optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates and four radiocarbon dates. Correlative examples are drawn from additional small to large rivers in South- and North Carolina. OSL and radiocarbon ( 14C) dates indicate distinct braiding at 17–30 ka, within oxygen isotope stage 2 (OIS 2), and braiding probably existed at least during parts of OIS 3 and possibly OIS 4 back to ca 70 ka. The chronology suggests that braiding is the more common pattern for the late Quaternary in the southeastern United States. Braided terraces appear to have been graded to lower sea-levels and are onlapped by Holocene floodplain deposits up to 10–60 km from the coast. The braiding probably reflects the response of discharge and sediment yield to generally cooler and drier paleoclimates, which may have had a pronounced runoff season. Sedimentation of eolian dunes on the braid plains is coeval with braiding and supports the conclusion of dry soils and thin vegetation cover during the late Pleistocene. Our chronological data contribute to a body of literature indicating that reliable OSL age estimates can be obtained from quartz-rich bed load sand from braided rivers, based on good correlations with both radiocarbon dates from braided fluvial sediment and OSL dates from stratigraphically correlative eolian sand.