Origin and history of the Teays drainage system; The view from midstream

Abstract

Configuration of the buried part of the Teays Valley system across western Ohio, Indiana, and eastern Illinois suggests that the Teays is not a preglacial system, but rather, that it was formed marginal to a major glacier earlier than that which created the Ohio River, probably in similar fashion by consolidating and diverting fragments of older drainages. Pertinent criteria include (1) the relatively straight gorge that (2) crosses at least three regionally high areas with (3) few tributaries that join at grade. Also significant are (4) the depth of the gorge across a broad limestone plateau that has (5) relatively shallow karst development. These features imply a youthful valley system that was destroyed by burial before reaching a mature stage.Although thousands of drillholes and seismic datum points in Indiana alone detail the bedrock surface and the nature of the unconsolidated deposits that overlie it, many questions remain regarding the evolution of that surface. Fluvial and lacustrine deposits associated with the earliest presently known till in Indiana (>0.8 Ma) fill eastern parts of the Teays gorge. Are there tills of pre-Teays age, and is any part of a pre-Teays valley system identifiable? What stratigraphic criteria distinguish those parts of the Teays that have been reoccupied and incorporated into younger, but now also buried, valley systems? The Blue River Strath of southern Indiana shares many characteristics with the type Teays and the ancestral Kentucky River valley and may be coeval with them; are there other such features? A regional approach to these and related questions should yield results.

Evidence of transient topographic disequilibrium in a landward passive margin river system: knickpoints and paleo‐landscapes of the New River basin, southern Appalachians

“…Gray (1991) suggested the late Tertiary Teays may have flowed to the North Atlantic, and was captured into the continental interior prior to, or as an early result of, initial encroachment of ice sheets during the Pliocene. Continued ice advance repeatedly forced the Teays into new courses along the ice margin, with the maximum Pleistocene glacial advance at 1.5 Ma damming the Teays near present-day Chillicothe, Ohio to form glacial Lake Tight (Tight, 1903;Gray, 1991;Granger et al, 2001). Breaching of the south-western margin of the lake ultimately formed the modern Ohio River course along the ice margin (Tight, 1903;cf.…”

“…This origin of incision is consistent with continued upstream migration of transient adjustment documented in streams of the lower Ohio River basin by Granger et al (2001) and Anthony and Granger (2007), and would also explain the disequilibrium apparent in the Cheat River basin, another major tributary of the Ohio River (Springer et al, 1997;Hancock and Kirwan, 2007) (Figure 12). Our study area is located~250 km (straight line distance) from the ice margin, and continued headward advance of the incision process we document will impact the landscape up to 400 km south of the southernmost advance of ice sheets at 1 Á 5 Ma (Gray, 1991). The drop in continental interior regional base level produced by progressive integration of the Teays River would have forced incision signals to propagate through the New River system to initiate its adjustment to the new location and ultimately the elevation of the Ohio River channel (Figure 12).…”

“…The drop in continental interior regional base level produced by progressive integration of the Teays River would have forced incision signals to propagate through the New River system to initiate its adjustment to the new location and ultimately the elevation of the Ohio River channel (Figure 12). Approximate pre-glaciation Teays-Mahomet course is based on the work of Gray (1991). Similar to the erosional response following stream capture along the Blue Ridge Escarpment (Prince et al, 2010(Prince et al, , 2011, upper New River basin incision may be another example of how drainage rearrangement can force episodes of transient incision in the absence of tectonic uplift.…”

“…The transient incision we observe may thus result from the accelerated release of topographic potential energy preserved in the Appalachian Highlands. The glacial Lake Tight indicated (Tight, 1903;Gray, 1991) is one of many lakes formed along the ice margin; glacial lakes and preglacial courses other than the main stem of the Teays are not shown. The upper New River basin, along with other Ohio River basin examples (Springer et al, 1997;Granger et al, 2001;Anthony and Granger, 2007;Hancock and Kirwan, 2007), may therefore present a unique glimpse into the wide range of impacts climatic fluctuation may have on fluvial systems.…”

High magnitude and rapid incision from river capture: Rhine River, Switzerland

“…[3] Large drainage basin reorganization events are proposed to have occurred in a number of river basins around the world including the Colorado [Lucchitta, 1979], Rhine [Petit et al, 1996;Ziegler and Fraefel, 2009], Snake [Beranek et al, 2006], Yellow [Craddock et al, 2010], Yangtze [Clark et al, 2004], Indus [Clift and Blusztajn, 2005], Ohio [Gray, 1991], and Zambezi [Thomas and Shaw, 1988] Rivers. Understanding the impact of drainage reorganization on erosion rates and processes is fundamental to understanding the controls on catchment denudation and landscape evolution in these regions.…”