) Till/a Symposium ' • TILL a Symposium Edited by Richard P. Goldthwait Assisted by: Jane L. Forsyth David L. Gross Fred Pessl, Jr. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS QE 097 T55 C~pyrl9ht © 1971 by the Ohio State University Press All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 70-153422 Standard look Number 8142-0141-2 Manufactured In the United States of America Dedication To George W. White, at the time of his retirement, to honc,r his devotion, inspiration, and teaching on the subiect of till. Blank page vi. Contents PREFACE xi I ntroductfon 1 INTRODUCTION TO TILL, TODAY 3 by R. P. Goldthwait 1 , PROCEDURES OF TILL INVESTIGATIONS IN NORTH AMERICA: A GENERAL REVIEW 27 by A. Dreimanis Genesi~ 2 TILL GENESIS AND FABRIC IN SVALBARD, SPITSBERGEN 41 by G. S. Boulton j EVIDENCE FOR ABLATION AND BASAL TILL IN EAST-CENTRAL NEW HAMPSHIRE 73 by L. D. Drake J TILL FABRICS AND TILL STRATIGRAPHY IN WESTERN CONNECTICUT 92 by F. Pessl, Jr. ABLATION TILL IN NO~,THEASTERN VERMONT 106 by D. P. Stewart and P. MacClintock vii Thickness and Structure 3 INFLUENCE OF -IRREGULARITIES OF THE BED OF AN ICE SHEET ON DEPOSITION RATE OF TILL 117 by L. H. Nobles and J. Weertman GLACIOTECTONIC STRUCTURES IN DRIFT 127 by S. R. Moran THICKNESS OF WISCONSINAN TILL IN GRAND RIVER AND KILLBUCK LOBES, NORTHEASTERN OHIO AND NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA 149 by G. W. White Stratigraphic Correlations . 4 TILLS IN SOUTHERN SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA 167 by E. A. Christiansen TILL STRATIGRAPHY OF THE DANVILLE REGION, EAST-CENTRAL ILLINOIS 184 by W. H. Johnson, D. L. Gross, and S. R. Moran SUBSURFACE STRATIGRAPHY OF THE WOODFORDIAN TILLS IN THE McLEAN COUNTY REGION, 1.LLINOIS 217 by J.P. Kempton, P. B. DuMontelle, and H. D. Glass Com position 5 1;., BIMODAL DISTRIBUTION OF ROCK AND MINERAL FRAGME~TS IN BASAL TILLS 237 by A. Dreimanis and U. J. Vagners GRAIN-SIZE AND MINERALOGICAL GRADATIONS WITHIN TILLS OF THE ALLEGHENY PLATEAU 251 by D. L. Gross and S. R. Moran viii PARTICLE-SIZE AND CARBONATE ANALYSIS OF GLACIAL TILL AND LACUSTRINE DEPOSITS IN WESTERN OHIO 275 by J. R. Steiger and N. Holowaychuk MINERAL AND ELEMENTAL COMPOSITION OF WISCONSIN-AGE TILL DEPOSITS IN WEST- · CENTRAL OHIO 290 by L. P. Wilding, L. R. Drees, N. E. Smeck, and G. F. Hall Fabric & METHODS IN THE ANALYSIS OF TILL FABRICS 321 by J. T. Andrews PEBBLE ORIENTATION AND ICE MOVEMENT IN SOUTH-CENTRAL ILLINOIS . 328 by J. A. Lineback EVIDENCE FOR REORIENTATION OF A TILL FABRIC IN THE EDMONTON AREA, ALBERTA 335 by J. Ramsden and J. A. Westgate THE RELATIONSHIP OF MACRO- AND MICROFABRIC OF TILL AND THE GENESIS OF GLACIAL LANDFORMS IN JEFFERSON COUNTY, WISCONSIN 345 by E. B. Evenson Other Phenomena 7 PLEISTOCENE MUDFLOW ALONG THE SHELBYVILLE MORAINE FRONT, MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS . 367 by N. C. Hester and P. B. DuMontelle UNARMORED TILL BALLS IN UNUSUAL ABUNDANCE NEAR MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA 383 by W. A. Pettyiohn and R. W. Lemke NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS 395 INDEX 397 ix Blank page x. Preface Symposia can be challenging, or deadly. This subject, till, excited the two hundred participants so that they urged that all the papers be gathered in one volume. These papers challenged a few participants to get out and solve some problems in the field, and some differences were argued on the floor. Subsequent solutions to many of these problems are incorporated in the articles published here. The symposium may guide many in the future to enga.ge in more discerning or_ more useful investigations of glacial till. The idea of glacial till as the subject of a symposium was originally sug- gested by Professor George W. White of· Illinois, and enthusiastically endorsed by this editor, and by Professor Dreimanis and the local com- mittee. It was a subject which was to attract a large group of geologists to the regional (North-Central) meetings· of the Geological Society of America · in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969. The. oral papers were invited by open letter in November, 1968. The subject was so timely that it elicited 24 papers (plus three "by title"), which were formed into three half-day sessions. on May 15 and 16, 1969. Twenty of these oral presentations are given here as full- length papers in which are incorporated additions and emendations in re- sponse to the lively floor discussion. · To the original twenty papers are added two new complimentary studies: (1) a general subject and literature review, with an appraisal of the status of till studies, written by this editor, to relate the papers and to set them in context; and ( 2) one of the very few recent detailed studies of till in and on an active glacier by G. S. Boulton. As with all spontaneous papers, these do not cover every facet of the subject; soils and weathering aspects and applied and economic studies are conspicuously absent. The subjects do conveniently fall, however, within certain areas of current interest: genesis,· structure, stratigraphic correlation, composition, and fabric. The papers are designed on a professional level for the co-worker and scientist in related fields. This volume should serve as a reference volume for all inter- ested in this common subject. xi There are a few related papers presented at that Columbus meeting which are not here, either because they were submitted elsewhere or were not completed in publishable form. These papers are listed below, and most of their abstracts are published in "Abstracts with Programs for 1969, Part 6, North Central Section, The Geological Society of America": Brace, B. R., "Till identification methods recently used iri Butler and Preble Counties, Ohio." - Favede, F., "Differentiation of ice deposits of Wisconsin age in Portage County, Ohio." Flemal, R. C., Hinckley, K., and Hessler, J. L., "Fossil pingo field in north- central Illinois." Harris, S. A., "The meaning of till fabrics" ( title listed without abstract). Jacobs, A. M., "Sand-silt-clay ratios of two Illinoian tills." Karrow, P. F., "Character and variations in multiple-till sequences in the Waterloo interlobate area of Ontario." Lindsay, J. F., Summerson, C. H., and Barrett, P. J., "A long-axis clast fabric comparison of the Squantum 'Tillite,' Massachusetts, and the GQwganda Formation; Ontario." - Schafer, J. P., "Structural relationships of tills in western Connecticut." Sitler, R. F., "Weathering in glacial till." Tipton, M. J., and Leap, D. I., "Pre-Wisconsin glacfation as the builder of the Coteau des Prairies.~' Myriads of earlier studies of glacial till in English are referenced at the end of each paper here, especially the first. Still other older S<?urces are listed in Charlesworth, f K., "The Quaternary Era", v. 1, Chapters XVI to XX, p. 359-414. One symposium on till was held ( 1966) in Poznan, Poland, and is· soon to be published in languages other than English. This volume is the first group of papers in English on till. Not the least of the indirect contributions to quality in this volume are the high standards and careful critique performed promptly and eagerly by the assistant editors. To them and their organizations ( Bowling Green State University, Illinois State Geological Survey, and United States Geo- logical Survey) is due gratitude for the many "free" hours, and three trips to Columbus for editorial meetings. The cochairman of the original oral sessions, R. F. Black, R. H. Durrell, W. R. Farrand, J. L. Forsyth, A. Good- ing, J. L. Rau, A. F. Schneider, and W. J. Wayne, carefully steered and conducted the discussions. This is, then, an integrated published effort of a large group of experts. Richard P. Goldthwait xii 1 'Introduction Blank page 2. Till j a Symposium Introduction to Till, Today R. P. Goldthwait WHY TILL? Till is the only sediment stemming directly and solely from glacial ice. It and its rock equivalent, tillite, are used to identify the former presence and extent of glaciers, and to define the sequence of climatic events leading to repeated glaciations extending far into temperature latitudes. The uncon- solidated deposit, variously referred to as hardpan, boulder clay ( Charles- worth, 1957), unsorted glacial drift, Geschiebelehm (German), keileem (Dutch), or just "moraine,'' forms patchy to continuous cover over 30 percent of the continents. Another 10 percent or more of the land may be underlain by consolidated tillites from former glaciers hundreds of millions of years ago ( principally Permocarboniferous and Huronian). In addition to its universality, till holds the secrets to the action of ice at the bottom of a glacier. Tunnels and stream openings under glaciers penetrate only the outer few tens or hundreds of feet of ice, and involve an artificial boundary condition. Actual drilling in deep ice is just beginning to supply some answers. Another approach to basal action in ice comes from _. theoretical physics ( Nye, 1952) and has grown rapidly since 1960 ( e.g., Shumskii, 1964; Lliboutry, 1964; Pounder, 1965; Oura, 1969), but in most ways it is still untested. One paper here (Nobl~s and Weertman, 1971; this volume, p. 117) is concerned entirely with this approach. So we rely on the product itself, till, for many answers. It has been studied far too little; ~indeed, this is the first compendium in English on the subject. Positive identification of the glacial origin of till is important, both as to interpretation of the extent and frequency of drastic prehistm;ic climatic events, and as to the tracing and locating of outcropping mineral resources, overrun and buried by the glacial drift. The latter is an a:rt long developed in Finland and rapidly developing in Canada. Till is also the foundation material with· which almost every engineer and builder in latitudes above 3 4 Till / A SYMPOSIUM 40° must deal.