The Elements of Geology Part 5

THE VISIBLE LOAD OF STREAMS. This consists of the silt which the stream carries in suspension, and the sand and gravel and larger stones which it pushes along its bed. Especially in times of flood one may note the muddy water, its silt being kept from settling by the rolling, eddying currents; and often by placing his ear close to the bottom of a boat one may hear the clatter of pebbles as they are hurried along. In mountain torrents the rumble of bowlders as they clash together may be heard some distance away.

The amount of the load which a stream can transport depends on its velocity. A current of two thirds of a mile per hour can move fine sand, while one of four miles per hour sweeps along pebbles as large as hen's eggs. The transporting power of a stream varies as the sixth power of its velocity. If its velocity is multiplied by two, its transporting power is multiplied by the sixth power of two: it can now move stones sixty-four times as large as it could before.

Stones weigh from two to three times as much as water, and in water lose the weight of the volume of water which they displace.

What proportion, then, of their weight in air do stones lose when submerged?

MEASUREMENT OF STREAM LOADS. To obtain the total amount of waste transported by a river is an important but difficult matter. The amount of water discharged must first be found by multiplying the number of square feet in the average cross section of the stream by its velocity per second, giving the discharge per second in cubic feet. The amount of silt to a cubic foot of water is found by filtering samples of the water taken from different parts of the stream and at different times in the year, and drying and weighing the residues. The average amount of silt to the cubic foot of water, multiplied by the number of cubic feet of water discharged per year, gives the total load carried in suspension during that time. Adding to this the estimated amount of sand and gravel rolled along the bed, which in many swift rivers greatly exceeds the lighter material held in suspension, and adding also the total amount of dissolved solids, we reach the exceedingly important result of the total load of waste discharged by the river. Dividing the volume of this load by the area of the river basin gives another result of the greatest geological interest,-- the rate at which the region is being lowered by the combined action of weathering and erosion, or the rate of denudation.

THE RATE OF DENUDATION OF RIVER BASINS. This rate varies widely.

The Mississippi basin may be taken as a representative land surface because of the varieties of surface, alt.i.tude and slope, climate, and underlying rocks which are included in its great extent. Careful measurements show that the Mississippi basin is now being lowered at a rate of one four-thousandth of a foot a year, or one foot in four thousand years. Taking this as the average rate of denudation for the land surfaces of the globe, estimates have been made of the length of time required at this rate to wash and wear the continents to the level of the sea. As the average elevation of the lands of the globe is reckoned at 2411 feet, this result would occur in nine or ten million years, if the present rate of denudation should remain unchanged. But even if no movements of the earth's crust should lift or depress the continents, the rate of wear and the removal of waste from their surfaces will not remain the same. It must constantly decrease as the lands are worn nearer to sea level and their slopes become more gentle. The length of time required to wear them away is therefore far in excess of that just stated.

The drainage area of the Potomac is 11,000 square miles. The silt brought down in suspension in a year would cover a square mile to the depth of four feet. At what rate is the Potomac basin being lowered from this cause alone?

It is estimated that the Upper Ganges is lowering its basin at the rate of one foot in 823 years, and the Po one foot in 720 years.

Why so much faster than the Potomac and the Mississippi?

HOW STREAMS GET THEIR LOADS. The load of streams is derived from a number of sources, the larger part being supplied by the weathering of valley slopes. We have noticed how the mantle of waste creeps and washes to the stream ways. Watching the run-off during a rain, as it hurries muddy with waste along the gutter or washes down the hillside, we may see the beginning of the route by which the larger part of their load is delivered to rivers.

Streams also secure some of their load by wearing it from their beds and banks,--a process called erosion.

EROSION

Streams erode their beds chiefly by means of their bottom load,-- the stones of various sizes and the sand and even the fine mud which they sweep along. With these tools they smooth, grind, and rasp the rock of their beds, using them in much the fas.h.i.+on of sandpaper or a file.

WEATHERING OF RIVER BEDS. The erosion of stream beds is greatly helped by the work of the weather. Especially at low water more or less of the bed is exposed to the action of frost and heat and cold, joints are opened, rocks are pried loose and broken up and made ready to be swept away by the stream at time of flood.

POTHOLES. In rapids streams also drill out their rocky beds. Where some slight depression gives rise to an eddy, the pebbles which gather in it are whirled round and round, and, acting like the bit of an auger, bore out a cylindrical pit called a pothole. Potholes sometimes reach a depth of a score of feet. Where they are numerous they aid materially in deepening the channel, as the walls between them are worn away and they coalesce.

WATERFALLS. One of the most effective means of erosion which the river possesses is the waterfall. The plunging water dislodges stones from the face of the ledge over which it pours, and often undermines it by excavating a deep pit at its base. Slice after slice is thus thrown down from the front of the cliff, and the cataract cuts its way upstream leaving a gorge behind it.

NIAGARA FALLS. The Niagara River flows from Lake Erie at Buffalo in a broad channel which it has cut but a few feet below the level of the region. Some thirteen miles from the outlet it plunges over a ledge one hundred and seventy feet high into the head of a narrow gorge which extends for seven miles to the escarpment of the upland in which the gorge is cut. The strata which compose the upland dip gently upstream and consist at top of a ma.s.sive limestone, at the Falls about eighty feet thick, and below of soft and easily weathered shale. Beneath the Falls the underlying shale is cut and washed away by the descending water and retreats also because of weathering, while the overhanging limestone breaks down in huge blocks from time to time.

Niagara is divided by Goat Island into the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls. The former is supplied by the main current of the river, and from the semicircular sweep of its rim a sheet of water in places at least fifteen or twenty feet deep plunges into a pool a little less than two hundred feet in depth. Here the force of the falling water is sufficient to move about the fallen blocks of limestone and use them in the excavation of the shale of the bed.

At the American Falls the lesser branch of the river, which flows along the American side of Goat Island, pours over the side of the gorge and breaks upon a high talus of limestone blocks which its smaller volume of water is unable to grind to pieces and remove.

A series of surveys have determined that from 1842 to 1890 the Horseshoe Falls retreated at the rate of 2.18 feet per year, while the American Falls retreated at the rate of 0.64 feet in the same period. We cannot doubt that the same agency which is now lengthening the gorge at this rapid rate has cut it back its entire length of seven miles.

While Niagara Falls have been cutting back a gorge seven miles long and from two hundred to three hundred feet deep, the river above the Falls has eroded its bed scarcely below the level of the upland on which it flows. Like all streams which are the outlets of lakes, the Niagara flows out of Lake Erie clear of sediment, as from a settling basin, and carries no tools with which to abrade its bed. We may infer from this instance how slight is the erosive power of clear water on hard rock.

a.s.suming that the rate of recession of the combined volumes of the American and Horseshoe Falls was three feet a year below Goat Island, and a.s.sUMING THAT THIS RATE HAS BEEN UNIFORM IN THE PAST, how long is it since the Niagara River fell over the edge of the escarpment where now is the mouth of the present gorge?

The profile of the bed of the Niagara along the gorge (Fig. 39) shows alternating deeps and shallows which cannot be accounted for, except in a single instance, by the relative hardness of the rocks of the river bed. The deeps do not exceed that at the foot of the Horseshoe Falls at the present time. When the gorge was being cut along the shallows, how did the Falls compare in excavating power, in force, and volume with the Niagara of to-day?

How did the rate of recession at those times compare with the present rate? Is the a.s.sumption made above that the rate of recession has been uniform correct?

The first stretch of shallows below the Falls causes a tumultuous rapid impossible to sound. Its depth has been estimated at thirty- five feet. From what data could such an estimate be made?

Suggest a reason why the Horseshoe Falls are convex upstream.

At the present rate of recession which will reach the head of Goat Island the sooner, the American or the Horseshoe Falls? What will be the fate of the Falls left behind when the other has pa.s.sed beyond the head of the island?

The rate at which a stream erodes its bed depends in part upon the nature of the rocks over which it flows. Will a stream deepen its channel more rapidly on ma.s.sive or on thin-bedded and close- jointed rocks? on horizontal strata or on strata steeply inclined?

DEPOSITION

While the river carries its invisible load of dissolved rock on without stop to the sea, its load of visible waste is subject to many delays en route. Now and again it is laid aside, to be picked up later and carried some distance farther on its way. One of the most striking features of the river therefore is the waste acc.u.mulated along its course, in bars and islands in the channel, beneath its bed, and in flood plains along its banks. All this alluvium, to use a general term for river deposits, with which the valley is c.u.mbered is really en route to the sea; it is only temporarily laid aside to resume its journey later on. Constantly the river is destroying and rebuilding its alluvial deposits, here cutting and there depositing along its banks, here eroding and there building a bar, here excavating its bed and there filling it up, and at all times carrying the material picked up at one point some distance on downstream before depositing it at another.

These deposits are laid down by slackening currents where the velocity of the stream is checked, as on the inner side of curves, and where the slope of the bed is diminished, and in the lee of islands, bridge piers and projecting points of land. How slight is the check required to cause a current to drop a large part of its load may be inferred from the law of the relation of the transporting power to the velocity. If the velocity is decreased one half, the current can move fragments but one sixty-fourth the size of those which it could move before, and must drop all those of larger size.

Will a river deposit more at low water or at flood? when rising or when falling?

STRATIFICATION. River deposits are stratified, as may be seen in any fresh cut in banks or bars. The waste of which they are built has been sorted and deposited in layers, one above another; some of finer and some of coa.r.s.er material. The sorting action of running water depends on the fact that its transporting power varies with the velocity. A current whose diminis.h.i.+ng velocity compels it to drop coa.r.s.e gravel, for example, is still able to move all the finer waste of its load, and separating it from the gravel, carries it on downstream; while at a later time slower currents may deposit on the gravel bed layers of sand, and, still later, slack water may leave on these a layer of mud. In case of materials lighter than water the transporting power does not depend on the velocity, and logs of wood, for instance, are floated on to the sea on the slowest as well as on the most rapid currents.

CROSS BEDDING. A section of a bar exposed at low water may show that it is formed of layers of sand, or coa.r.s.er stuff, inclined downstream as steeply often as the angle of repose of the material. From a boat anch.o.r.ed over the lower end of a submerged sand bar we may observe the way in which this structure, called cross bedding, is produced. Sand is continually pushed over the edge of the bar at b (Fig. 42) and comes to rest in successive layers on the sloping surface. At the same time the bar may be worn away at the upper end, a, and thus slowly advance down stream. While the deposit is thus cross bedded, it const.i.tutes as a whole a stratum whose upper and lower surfaces are about horizontal. In sections of river banks one may often see a vertical succession of cross-bedded strata, each built in the way described.

WATER WEAR. The coa.r.s.er material of river deposits, such as cobblestones, gravel, and the larger grains of sand, are WATER WORN, or rounded, except when near their source. Rolling along the bottom they have been worn round by impact and friction as they rubbed against one another and the rocky bed of the stream.

Experiments have shown that angular fragments of granite lose nearly half their weight and become well rounded after traveling fifteen miles in rotating cylinders partly filled with water.

Marbles are cheaply made in Germany out of small limestone cubes set revolving in a current of water between a rotating bed of stone and a block of oak, the process requiring but about fifteen minutes. It has been found that in the upper reaches of mountain streams a descent of less than a mile is sufficient to round pebbles of granite.

LAND FORMS DUE TO RIVER EROSION

RIVER VALLEYS. In their courses to the sea, rivers follow valleys of various forms, some shallow and some deep, some narrow and some wide. Since rivers are known to erode their beds and banks, it is a fair presumption that, aided by the weather, they have excavated the valleys in which they flow.

Moreover, a bird's-eye view or a map of a region shows the significant fact that the valleys of a system unite with one another in a branch work, as twigs meet their stems and the branches of a tree its trunk. Each valley, from that of the smallest rivulet to that of the master stream, is proportionate to the size of the stream which occupies it. With a few explainable exceptions the valleys of tributaries join that of the trunk stream at a level; there is no sudden descent or break in the bed at the point of juncture. These are the natural consequences which must follow if the land has long been worked upon by streams, and no other process has ever been suggested which is competent to produce them. We must conclude that valley systems have been formed by the river systems which drain them, aided by the work of the weather; they are not gaping fissures in the earth's crust, as early observers imagined, but are the furrows which running water has drawn upon the land.

As valleys are made by the slow wear of streams and the action of the weather, they pa.s.s in their development through successive stages, each of which has its own characteristic features. We may therefore cla.s.sify rivers and valleys according to the stage which they have reached in their life history from infancy to old age.

YOUNG RIVER VALLEYS

INFANCY. The Red River of the North. A region in northwestern Minnesota and the adjacent portions of North Dakota and Manitoba was so recently covered by the waters of an extinct lake, known as Lake Aga.s.siz, that the surface remains much as it was left when the lake was drained away. The flat floor, spread smooth with lake-laid silts, is still a plain, to the eye as level as the sea.

Across it the Red River of the North and its branches run in narrow, ditch-like channels, steep-sided and shallow, not exceeding sixty feet in depth, their gradients differing little from the general slopes of the region. The trunk streams have but few tributaries; the river system, like a sapling with few limbs, is still undeveloped. Along the banks of the trunk streams short gullies are slowly lengthening headwards, like growing twigs which are sometime to become large branches.

The flat interstream areas are as yet but little scored by drainage lines, and in wet weather water lingers in ponds in any initial depressions on the plain.

CONTOURS. In order to read the topographic maps of the text-book and the laboratory the student should know that contours are lines drawn on maps to represent relief, all points on any given contour being of equal height above sea level. The CONTOUR INTERVAL is the uniform vertical distance between two adjacent contours and varies on different maps.

To express regions of faint relief a contour interval of ten or twenty feet is commonly selected; while in mountainous regions a contour interval of two hundred and fifty, five hundred, or even one thousand feet may be necessary in order that the contours may not be too crowded for easy reading.

Whether a river begins its life on a lake plain, as in the example just cited, or upon a coastal plain lifted from beneath the sea or on a spread of glacial drift left by the retreat of continental ice sheets, such as covers much of Canada and the northeastern parts of the United States, its infantile stage presents the same characteristic features,--a narrow and shallow valley, with undeveloped tributaries and undrained interstream areas. Ground water stands high, and, exuding in the undrained initial depressions, forms marshes and lakes.

LAKES. Lakes are perhaps the most obvious of these fleeting features of infancy. They are short-lived, for their destruction is soon accomplished by several means. As a river system advances toward maturity the deepening and extending valleys of the tributaries lower the ground-water surface and invade the undrained depressions of the region. Lakes having outlets are drained away as their basin rims are cut down by the outflowing streams,--a slow process where the rim is of hard rock, but a rapid one where it is of soft material such as glacial drift.

Lakes are effaced also by the filling of their basins. Inflowing streams and the wash of rains bring in waste. Waves abrade the sh.o.r.e and strew the debris worn from it over the lake bed. Shallow lakes are often filled with organic matter from decaying vegetation.

Does the outflowing stream, from a lake carry sediment? How does this fact affect its erosive power on hard rock? on loose material?

Lake Geneva is a well-known example of a lake in process of obliteration. The inflowing Rhone has already displaced the waters of the lake for a length of twenty miles with the waste brought down from the high Alps. For this distance there extends up the Rhone Valley an alluvial plain, which has grown lakeward at the rate of a mile and a half since Roman times, as proved by the distance inland at which a Roman port now stands.

How rapidly a lake may be silted up under exceptionally favorable conditions is ill.u.s.trated by the fact that over the bottom of the artificial lake, of thirty-five square miles, formed behind the great dam across the Colorado River at Austin, Texas, sediments thirty-nine feet deep gathered in seven years.