Ice front configuration and torrential flow features of the Late Wisconsinan interlobate region of southcentral Michigan
- Albion Coll., MI (United States). Dept. of Geological Sciences
A large re-entrant, bordered on three sides by ice of the Michigan, Saginaw and Huron-Erie lobes, developed over a five-county area in southcentral Michigan during ice retreat of the Port Bruce Stade of the Woodfordian Substage. At this time, ice occupied positions marked by the Sturgies, Tekonsha, and Kalamazoo Moraines. The presence of numerous boulder beds within outwash deposits attests to frequent episodes of torrential flow. A major source of the discharge was the draining of short-lived proglacial and subglacial lakes identified by lacustrine deposits which occur at different altitudes within moraine belts. Tunnel valleys, meltwater channels, and narrow chutes carried the high discharges of water that were partly responsible for the Kankakee torrent of northeastern Illinois. The configuration of abandoned meltwater channels in eastern Calhoun and western jackson counties, between the Kalamazoo Moraine on the northeast and the Tekonsha Moraine to the southwest, indicates that a large ice-collapsed depression, 30 km long and 8 km to 16 km wide, developed within the Saginaw lobe just behind its margin. For a short period of time it contained intermittent glacial lakes one of which drained through the Kesler Lakes sluiceway. A large outwash plain, the Union City-Mendon sluiceway, heads at the Tekonsha Moraine in southcentral Calhoun County and extends southwest through northeastern Branch County to the Sturgis Moraine. Several abandoned narrow chutes, up to 1.6 km long and 60 m to 300 m wide, are incised in the outwash plain in the vicinity of Union City. Channel geometry indicates that flow exceeded 850 cms (30,000 cfs) during bankfull discharge and came from the overflow of a lake dammed by ice blocks in the ancient St. Joseph River floodplain.
- OSTI ID:
- 6949679
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9404217-; CODEN: GAAPBC
- Journal Information:
- Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States), Vol. 26:5; Conference: 27. annual conference of the North-Central Section of the Geological Society of America (GSA), Kalamazoo, MI (United States), 28-29 Apr 1994; ISSN 0016-7592
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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