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At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
USGS2016

Sedimentologic characteristics of recent washover deposits from Assateague Island, Maryland

The U.S. Geological Survey has a long history of responding to and documenting the impacts of storms along the Nation’s coasts and incorporating these data into storm impact and coastal change vulnerability assessments. Although physical changes caused by tropical and extratropical storms to the sandy beaches and dunes fronting barrier islands are generally well documented, the interaction between sandy shoreline erosion and overwash with the back-barrier wetland and estuarine environments is poorly constrained. The goal of the Barrier Island and Estuarine Wetland Physical Change Assessment project is to integrate a wetland-change assessment with existing coastal-change assessments for the adjacent sandy dunes and beaches, initially focusing on Assateague Island along the Maryland and Virginia coastline. Assateague Island was impacted by waves and storm surge associated with the passage of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, causing erosion and overwash along the ocean-facing sandy shoreline as well as erosion and overwash deposition in the back-barrier and estuarine bay environments. This report describes sediment data collected using sand augers in active overwash zones on Assateague Island in Maryland. Samples were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) during two surveys in March/April and October 2014 (USGS Field Activity Numbers [FAN] 2014-301-FA and 2014-322-FA, respectively). The physical characteristics (for example, sediment texture or bedding structure) of and spatial differences among these deposits will provide information about overwash processes and sediment transport from the sandy barrier-island reaches to the back-barrier environments. Metrics derived from these data, such as mean grain size or deposit thicknesses, can be used to ground-truth remote sensing and geophysical data and can also be incorporated into sediment transport models. Data products, including sample location tables, descriptive core logs, core photographs and x-radiographs, the results of sediment grain-size analyses, and Geographic Information System (GIS) data files with accompanying formal Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata can be downloaded from the Data Downloads page.

Maryland↗
USGS1987

Sedimentologic and stratigraphic framework of the upper part of the Fort Union Formation, western Powder River basin, Wyoming

The purpose of this study is to describe the stratigraphy and interpret the environments of deposition in the upper part of the Paleocene Fort Union Formation. Of all the lithofacies present within the study area, sandstone is the most dominant and makes up most of the upper part of the Fort Union Formation along the western edge of the Powder River basin, Wyoming. This sandstone lithofacies occurs in three forms: 1) pink conglomeratic sandstone, 2) coarse-grained sandstone, and 3) fine-grained sandstone. The pink conglomeratic sandstone lithofacies forms a series of Stacked channel bodies in which the clasts are as much as 1 3/4 in. in diameter. The coarse-grained sandstone lithofacies is laterally equivalent to the pink conglomeratic sandstone sequence, but contains smaller clasts; it is arranged en echelon (offset) to the north. The fine-grained sandstone lithofacies, limited to the northern part of the study area, is not as laterally continuous as the pink conglomeratic sandstone lithofacies to the south. Basal lag conglomerate underlies both the conglomeratic sandstone and coarse-grained sandstone lithofacies, but not the fine-grained sandstone. The presence of a fine-grained sandstone lithofacies lateral to the conglomeratic sandstone and coarse-grained sandstone lithofacies suggests the presence of a coarse-grained braided and meandering fluvial system coeval with a fine-grained meandering fluvial system.. The meandering fluvial systems drained the alluvial plain flanking the Bighorn Mountains on the west and the Casper arch on the southwest, and flowed north-northeastward within the Powder River basin.

Wyoming↗