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ABSTRACT The Triassic Katberg Formation has played a central role in interpreting the end-Permian ecosystem crisis, as part of a hypothesis of aridification, vegetation loss, and sediment release in continental settings. We use drone images of an inaccessible cliff near Bethulie to investigate the Swartberg member, a braided-fluvial body 45 m thick, describing remote outcrop facies to identify geomorphic units and using spatial analysis to estimate their proportions in 2-D sections. Here the Swartberg member comprises three channel belts within shallow valleys, the lowermost of which is ∼500 m wide and incised into lacustrine deposits. The component channel bodies consist mainly of trough cross-bedded sand sheets (48%) and channel-scour fills (28%). Recognizable bars (15%) comprise unit bars with high-angle slipfaces and mounded bar cores (components of mid-channel compound bars), bars built around vegetation, and bank-attached bars in discrete, probably low-sinuosity conduits. Abandoned channels constitute 8% and 16% of flow-parallel and -transverse sections, respectively. When corrected for compaction, the average thalweg depth of the larger channels is 3.9 m, with an average bankfull width of 84 m, scaling broadly with the relief of the bars and comparable in scale to the Platte and South Saskatchewan rivers of North America. The fluvial style implies perennial but seasonably variable flow in a vegetated landscape with a humid paleoclimate. The northward paleoflow accords with regional paleoflow patterns and deposition on a megafan sourced in the Cape Fold Belt, where the Swartberg member represents the avulsion of a major transverse-flowing river. U-Pb dating of in situ and reworked pedogenic carbonate nodules from below the base of the Swartberg member yielded Anisian to Ladinian ages (Middle Triassic), younger than the previously assumed Early Triassic age and implying that considerable gaps in time exist in the succession. An assessment of the interval spanning the lower to mid Katberg Formation is needed to reevaluate the inferred unidirectional trend in fluvial style, aridification, and fossil distributions in this condensed, disjunct succession.
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Quantifying bankfull flow width using preserved bar clinoforms from fluvial strata
Abstract Reconstruction of active channel geometry from fluvial strata is critical to constrain the water and sediment fluxes in ancient terrestrial landscapes. Robust methods—grounded in extensive field observations, numerical simulations, and physical experiments—exist for estimating the bankfull flow depth and channel-bed slope from preserved deposits; however, we lack similar tools to quantify bankfull channel widths. We combined high-resolution lidar data from 134 meander bends across 11 rivers that span over two orders of magnitude in size to develop a robust, empirical relation between the bankfull channel width and channel-bar clinoform width (relict stratigraphic surfaces of bank-attached channel bars). We parameterized the bar cross-sectional shape using a two-parameter sigmoid, defining bar width as the cross-stream distance between 95% of the asymptotes of the fit sigmoid. We combined this objective definition of the bar width with Bayesian linear regression analysis to show that the measured bankfull flow width is 2.34 ± 0.13 times the channel-bar width. We validated our model using field measurements of channel-bar and bankfull flow widths of meandering rivers that span all climate zones (R2 = 0.79) and concurrent measurements of channel-bar clinoform width and mud-plug width in fluvial strata (R2 = 0.80). We also show that the transverse bed slopes of bars are inversely correlated with bend curvature, consistent with theory. Results provide a simple, usable metric to derive paleochannel width from preserved bar clinoforms.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1935513
- PAR ID:
- 10323646
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geology
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 0091-7613
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1038 to 1043
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Triassic Katberg Formation has played a central role in interpreting the end-Permian ecosystem crisis, as part of a hypothesis of aridification, vegetation loss, and sediment release in continental settings. We use drone images of an inaccessible cliff near Bethulie to investigate the Swartberg member, a 45 m thick braided-fluvial body, describing remote outcrop facies to identify geomorphic units and using spatial analysis to estimate their proportions in 2D sections. Here the Swartberg member comprises three channel belts within shallow valleys, the lowermost of which is ~500 m wide and incised into lacustrine deposits. The component channel bodies consist mainly of trough cross-bedded sand sheets (48%) and channel-scour fills (28%). Recognizable bars (15%) comprise unit bars with high-angle slipfaces and mounded bar cores (components of mid-channel compound bars), bars built around vegetation, and bank-attached bars in discrete, probably low-sinuosity conduits. Abandoned channels constitute 8% and 16% of flow-parallel and -transverse sections, respectively. When corrected for compaction, the average thalweg depth of the larger channels is 3.9 m, with an average bankfull width of 84 m, scaling broadly with the relief of the bars and comparable in scale to the Platte and South Saskatchewan rivers of North America. The fluvial style implies perennial but seasonably variable flow in a vegetated landscape with a humid paleoclimate. The northward paleoflow accords with regional paleoflow patterns and deposition on a megafan sourced in the Cape Fold Belt, where the Swartberg member represents the avulsion of a major transverse-flowing river. U-Pb dating of in situ and reworked pedogenic carbonate nodules from below the base of the Swartberg member yielded Anisian to Ladinian ages (Middle Triassic), younger than the previously assumed Early Triassic age and implying that considerable gaps in time exist within the succession. An assessment of the interval spanning the lower to mid Katberg Formation is needed to reevaluate the inferred unidirectional trend in fluvial style, aridification, and fossil distributions in this condensed, disjunct succession.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1130/G48729.1
