A ground-water sapping landscape in the Florida Panhandle

Schumm, S. A.; Boyd, K.F.; Wolff, Claudia; Spitz, William

doi:10.1016/0169-555x(95)00011-s

Cited by 146 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In this case, the valley heads have the same amphitheater shape, but there are no clues for headward erosion. Similar amphitheater-headed valleys on Earth are found on the side of the Colorado Plateau (Laity and Malin, 1985), on the flanks of volcanos on Hawaii (Kochel and Piper, 1986), on a coastal reach in the Atacama desert in Chile, in Idaho (Lamb et al, 2006) and in the Florida Panhandle (Schumm et al, 1995). Such valleys can form by groundwater seepage erosion in unconsolidated sand (Kochel and Piper, 1986), which is the case in the Florida Panhandle.…”

Section: Valley Examplesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Valley formation by groundwater seepage, pressurized groundwater outbursts and crater-lake overflow in flume experiments with implications for Mars

Marra

Braat

Baar

et al. 2014

Icarus

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Section: Valley Examplesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Valley formation by groundwater seepage, pressurized groundwater outbursts and crater-lake overflow in flume experiments with implications for Mars

Marra

Braat

Baar

et al. 2014

Icarus

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“…Furthermore, several springs issue from the sea cliffs along the present-day shoreline and do not have canyons or alcoves associated with them (Stearns and Macdonald, 1946). In loose sediment (e.g., Howard and McLane, 1988;Uchupi and Oldale, 1994;Schumm et al, 1995) or weakly cemented sedimentary rocks (e.g., Laity and Malin, 1985;Howard and Kochel, 1988;Nash, 1996), seepage erosion is a plausible hypothesis for canyon formation (Lamb et al, 2006). In resistant rock like basalt, however, seepage must fi rst weather the rock to transportable-sized particles before erosion can occur (Dunne, 1990;Dietrich and Dunne, 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation of amphitheater-headed valleys by waterfall erosion after large-scale slumping on Hawai'i

Lamb

Howard

Dietrich

et al. 2007

Geological Society of America Bulletin

127

165

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Amphitheater-headed valleys are common on the surfaces of Earth and Mars. The abrupt terminations of these valleys at their headwalls have been used extensively to argue for valley erosion from springs (i.e., seepage erosion or groundwater sapping) rather than surface runoff. This interpretation has significant implications for Martian hydrology and the associated prospects for life. A connection between channel form and the erosion processes induced by groundwater, however, has not been demonstrated in resistant rock. Perhaps the most widely cited terrestrial analogs for Martian amphitheater-headed valleys in basalt are the spectacular canyons of Kohala, Hawai'i. Here we present new fi eld observations and topographic analyses of the amphitheater-headed Kohala valleys. We found no evidence for intensively weathered rocks or alcoves around springs at valley headwalls. Instead, valley-head erosion appears to be dominated by waterfall plunge pools. Stream fl ow from peak annual precipitation events exceeds spring discharge by more than an order of magnitude, and such fl ow is responsible for evacuation of the coarse sediment that lines the streams. Bathymetric surveys along the Kohala coast have revealed a large submarine landslide, the Pololū Slump, directly offshore of the Kohala valleys. We propose that the headscarp of this massive landslide is expressed as the present-day ~400 m Kohala sea cliffs. As dominant streams poured over this headscarp as waterfalls, vertical plunge pool erosion and undercutting caused upstream propagation of knickpoints, eventually producing amphitheater-headed valleys. Island subsidence rates and the ages of volcanic eruptions and submarine terraces indicate that the average rate of valley headwall advance is as high as 60 mm/yr. We propose a simple expression for upslope headwall propagation by vertical waterfall erosion based on abrasion by impacting sediment particles in plunge pools. This model indicates that headwall propagation depends nonlinearly on the sediment fl ux passing over the waterfall and linearly on the ratio of kinetic versus potential energy of sediment impacts. After the PololūSlump, many streams did not form upslopepropagating waterfalls because they had smaller discharges due to a radial drainage pattern and fault-bounded drainage divides, which prevented runoff from the wetter summit of the volcano. A threshold for headwall propagation due to sediment supply or sediment-transport capacity is consistent with the model. Island subsidence following valley formation has resulted in alluviation of the valley fl oors, which has created the observed U-shaped valley cross sections. Our interpretation implies that surface runoff can carve amphitheater-headed valleys and that seepage erosion cannot be inferred based solely on valley form on Earth, Mars, or other planets.

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“…In this paper, we focus on a particular seepage network on the Florida Panhandle [14][15][16]. An elevation map of a section of this network is shown in figure 1a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An elevation map of a section of this network is shown in figure 1a. The growth of this network is driven by the flow of groundwater through a layer of nearly homogeneous unconsolidated sand [14]. Originally, groundwater emerged in springs at the base of a steep bluff.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bifurcation dynamics of natural drainage networks

Petroff

Devauchelle

Seybold

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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As water erodes a landscape, streams form and channellize the surficial flow. In time, streams become highly ramified networks that can extend over a continent. Here, we combine physical reasoning, mathematical analysis and field observations to understand a basic feature of network growth: the bifurcation of a growing stream. We suggest a deterministic bifurcation rule arising from a relationship between the position of the tip in the network and the local shape of the water table. Next, we show that, when a stream bifurcates, competition between the stream and branches selects a special bifurcation angle α =2 π /5. We confirm this prediction by measuring several thousand bifurcation angles in a kilometre-scale network fed by groundwater. In addition to providing insight into the growth of river networks, this result presents river networks as a physical manifestation of a classical mathematical problem: interface growth in a harmonic field. In the final sections, we combine these results to develop and explore a one-parameter model of network growth. The model predicts the development of logarithmic spirals. We find similar features in the kilometre-scale network.

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A ground-water sapping landscape in the Florida Panhandle

Cited by 146 publications

References 13 publications

Valley formation by groundwater seepage, pressurized groundwater outbursts and crater-lake overflow in flume experiments with implications for Mars

Valley formation by groundwater seepage, pressurized groundwater outbursts and crater-lake overflow in flume experiments with implications for Mars

Formation of amphitheater-headed valleys by waterfall erosion after large-scale slumping on Hawai'i

Bifurcation dynamics of natural drainage networks

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