Pleistocene–Holocene transition in the central Mississippi River valley

Abstract

Within the northern Mississippi embayment the ancestral Mississippi River flowed south through the Western Lowlands and the ancestral Ohio River flowed through the Eastern Lowlands for most of the Pleistocene. Previous investigators have mapped and dated the terraces of their respective braid belts. This current research investigates the three-dimensional aspect of the Quaternary alluvium north of Memphis, Tennessee, through the interpretation of 3374 geologic well logs that are 91.4m (300ft) deep. The braid belts are capped by a thin silt/clay horizon (Pleistocene loess) that overlies gravelly sand, which in turn overlies sandy gravel. The base of the Pleistocene alluvium beneath the Ash Hill (27.3–24.6ka), Melville Ridge (41.6–34.5ka), and Dudley (63.5–50.1ka) terraces of the Western Lowland slope southerly by 0.275m/km and all have an average basal elevation of 38m. Near Beedeville, Arkansas, the bases of these terraces descend 20m across a northeast-striking down-to-the-southeast fault that coincides with the western margin of the Cambrian Reelfoot rift.The maximum depth of flow (lowest elevation of base of alluvium) occurred in the Eastern Lowlands and appears to have been the downstream continuation of the ancestral Ohio River Cache valley course in southern Illinois. In traversing from west to east in the Eastern Lowlands, the Sikeston braid belt (19.7–17.8ka) has a basal elevation averaging 7m, the Kennett braid belt (16.1–14.4ka) averages 13m, the Morehouse (12ka) braid belt averages 24m, and the Holocene (≤10ka) Mississippi River floodplain has the highest average basal elevation at 37m. Along this easterly traverse the base of the Quaternary alluvium rises and the age of alluvium decreases. The eastward thinning of the floodplain alluvium in the Eastern Lowlands appears to be caused by decreasing Mississippi River discharge as it transitioned from the Wisconsinan glacial maximum to the Holocene.The base of the Holocene Mississippi River floodplain averages 23m higher in elevation than the Pleistocene floodplain bases in the Eastern Lowlands. This high suballuvial surface (platform) is bound by the tectonically uplifted Joiner ridge, Blytheville arch, Charleston uplift, and Bluff Line fault. The spatial relationship and similar histories of the platform and bounding structures suggest that Quaternary erosion and tectonics are related.