Magnetic Parameters as Indicators of Late-Quaternary Environments on Fort Riley Kansas

암석 자기 변수들을 이용한 제4기 고환경 복원-Fort Riley 캔사스

Climatic change of the late-Quaternary period has been record-ed in the loess deposits of the central Great plains and the record of such change is extractable using a number of approaches and parameters. The stratigraphy of loess deposits which have been investigated on Fort Riley exhibits the same sequence of loess units and intercalated buried soils as is found elsewhere in the re-gion but adds detail unique to the reservation Upland late-Qua-ternary composite stratigraphy preserved on the reservation con-sists of the basal Sangamon soil of the Last interglacial(c. 120-110ka), Gilman Canyon Formation(c. >40 -20ka), Peoria loess(c. 20 -10ka) Brady soil(c. 11 -10ka) Bignell loess(c. 9-\ulcornerka). and mod-ern surface soil. Application of magnetic analyses has provided proxy data sets that represent a time series of climatically regulated pedogenesis/weathering and botanical composition. magetic data have yielded an impression of the variation in climate from Sangamon time to the late Holocene through a reconstruction of the history of pedogenesis/weathering. Sangamon soil formation dominated the reservation durin the Last interglacial as indicated by magnetic parameters. During Gil-man Canyon time loess influx was usually sufficiently slow as to permit pedogenesis which appears to have been at a maximum twice during that time. Warm season grasses were important dur-ing soil formation but diminished in importance during the peri-ods of more rapid loess fall which were cooler and perhaps wet-ter. Peoria loess fall a function of the deterioration of climate during the last Glacial Maximum thinly blanketed the reservation with thickest accumulations occurring to the north-west(Bala Cemetery site)proximal to the source region. Long-term surface stability did not apparently occur within Peoria time but short-term stability may be indicaed by the presence of thin weathering zones(incipient soils) in the Peoria loess. Re-gional landscape stability prevailed during the environmental shift at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition resulting in forma-tion of the well expressed Brady soil. One or more weak soils developed in the Bignell loess as it ac-cumulated. A notable feature of the Bignell loess is the appear-ance of the Altithermal dry period: the loess experienced little weathering and was dominated by warm season grasses until the latter of the Holocene.