Objectives:

Upon completion of this unit students should be able to: Describe the general characteristics that are associated with a meandering stream.  Include gradient, common bar forms, load, bank material, channel form and sinuosity. Show how helical flow contributes to erosion of the cut bank and deposition on the point bar. Describe the vertical and longitudinal grain size patterns that you would expect to see in a point bar. Discuss the features that form on the floodplain of a meandering river, including crevasse splays, the natural levee, floodplain deposits, and ox-bow lakes. Describe how a meandering stream migrates across the floodplain, producing a fining-upward sequence. Differentiate between braided, meandering and anastomosing streams.   Discuss the age and general depositional environments for alluvial sediments in California's Central Valley. List the Cenozoic sedimentary units that are common in the Sacramento area;  tell the age, depositional environment and important economic characteristics of each.

  

Reading Assignments:

Lecture 15: Meandering streams- Boggs, 5th edition, pp. 215-220 and: GSA Today article- Katrina crevasse splay deposits:   https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/16/9/pdf/i1052-5173-16-9-4.pdf   Lecture 16: Stratigraphic nomenclature and Stratigraphic correlation   Lab:  Cenozoic stratigraphy week 1   Please fill out a reading log for the GSA article, meandering streams reading and evaporite deposition sections.  Reading logs are due Wednesday at the start of class.   Reading log

   

Class notes:

Lecture 15 notes Lecture 16 notes

   

Graphics from lectures:

Lecture 15 graphics Lecture 16 graphics

  

Lab this week-   Begin Cenozoic stratigraphy project.  We will divide into groups, and begin our discussion of local stratigraphy (see above!).    Cenozoic stratigraphy week 1