The Clarion-Webster Experimental Farm is an 80-acre experimental farm of Iowa State College located 1 mile south of Kanawha, Iowa (WY2 SWYJ, Sec. 34, T94N, R25W, Hancock County). A detailed soil map was made to determine the uniformity of the soils and the subsoil material. The map was constructed from the results of auger borings, 54 to 60 inches deep, located at the corners of a 50-foot square grid laid out on the tract. Thus, there were more than 1,000 borings made on the 80 acres

White, Everett M.

English

University of Northern Iowa

Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of ScienceVolume 60 | Annual Issue Article 571953Subsoil Textural Variations on the ClarionWebsterExperimental Farm as Related to the MankatoGlacial DepositEverett M. WhiteIowa State CollegeCopyright © Copyright 1953 by the Iowa Academy of Science, Inc.Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/piasThis Research is brought to you for free and open access by UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Proceedings of the Iowa Academyof Science by an authorized editor of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@uni.edu.Recommended CitationWhite, Everett M. (1953) "Subsoil Textural Variations on the ClarionWebster Experimental Farm as Related to the Mankato GlacialDeposit," Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science: Vol. 60: No. 1 , Article 57.Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol60/iss1/57Subsoil Textural Variations on the Clarion-Webster Experimental Farm as Related to the Mankato Glacial Deposit1 By EVERETT M. WHITE The Clarion-Webster Experimental Farm is an 80-acre experi-mental farm of Iowa State College located 1 mile south of Kanawha, Iowa (WY2 SWYJ, Sec. 34, T94N, R25W, Hancock County). A de-tailed soil map was made to determine the uniformity of the soils and the subsoil material. The map was constructed from the results of auger borings, 54 to 60 inches deep, located at the corners of a 50-foot square grid layed out on the tract. Thus, there were more than 1,000 borings made on the 80 acres. The soils found on the farm are primarily Webster, an outwash phase of Webster and calcareous phases of these soils. The texture of the upper twenty or thirty inches of the area is rather uniform and ranges from a loam to a silty clay loam or clay loam. The sub-soil textures vary as is indicated in Figure 1. The sandy subsoil ma-terial is stratified and ranges in texture from a fine sandy loam or silt to sand with occasional strata of loam. The less stratified subsoil areas is made up in part of glacial till and in part of a loam mater-ial with some pebbles and silt lenses which apparently has under-gone some sorting. Approximately 15 or 20 isolated auger borings Figure I. Subsoil Variations 'Joint contribution of the Agronomy Department, Iowa State College, and the Soil Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Journal paper No. 2293 of the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Proj. No. 1152. 438 1White: Subsoil Textural Variations on the ClarionWebster Experimental FaPublished by UNI ScholarWorks, 19531953] SUBSOIL VARIATIONS 439 of sandy subsoil material were found in the non-sandy subsoil areas. The orientation of the stratified sandy subsoil material in the northeast-southwest direction is not related to the present top-ography as shown by a map constructed on a 1-foot contour inter-val. The maximum relief is 8 feet. The highest point is 500 feet south of the northeast corner, and the lowest occurs along the south side. The slope is to the northwest in the northern one fourth, to slightly north of west in the south one half of the north one half, and to the southwest in the south half of the area. Thus, the areas of subsoil textural variations intersect and cross the contour lines of the present surface. It appears the control necessary for a chan-neling of water to deposit the stratified sandy subsoil material is not present in the existing surface. The stratified sandy subsoil material is thought to have resulted from features existing during the recession of the glacier from the area. The orientation of the subsoil variations in the northeast-southwest direction closely parallels the moraine outlined by Ruhe (2) as is shown. in Figure II. Goldthwait ( 1) indicates that drain-age streams form in troughs parallel to the ice front in the forma-tion of end moraines. He also states "-that the distinction be-tween these end moraines and the intervening ground moraine is only one of relief and magnitude of the local roughness." Thus, it seems feasible to apply his idea of streams being parallel to the ice front in this area of ground moraine. The ice core moraine formed at the side of the trough opposite the active ice front could act as a control to guide melt water in a manner which is essential to give the oriented, sorted, sandy subsoil material. Such a control is ne-cessary since the present surface is apparently unrelated to the orientation of the subsoil variations. The less oriented nature of the material in the south one half of the area may be related to the escape of water through the ice core moraine to the stream at the southeast or south (Figure III). However, the major trend ap-pears to be the same but with a less definite separation of the sandy subsoil areas by the less sorted subsoil areas. It may be the result of the formation of narrower troughs with correspondingly small-er' ice-core moraine. It seems the partially reworked material which occurs with till in the finer textured subsoil areas could result from a shallow cov-er of ablation moraine on the ice-core moraine. The relatively uniform surface texture could result from washing of the ablation residue into the troughs. That is, the washing of the poorly sorted finer fractions out of younger troughs into older troughs after the 2Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science, Vol. 60 [1953], No. 1, Art. 57https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol60/iss1/57440 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE [Vol. (,() 'II " :(xpet i mental ~ . -i', fal"m .. /-·-./ .~ - 7 -I • • I .·· . I . . Fi9u,.e 1L MoraiMI Pattern of Ho.ncooK l Humbol't a1ut port of Ko s1.1th and. f·9. :m D . e w,.1,h+ Co101ti... 1 ure . ro1na9 •• • E"cii moraine mor9i,,. ••• mgjor drgino.9eway M-3.a.H·'t: Mattkate monaitlllS. • intermittQnt drail"la~ay· C-c:.: Ca"r mo,.01 .. a. sandier material was deposited. The possibility of poorly sorted local loess cannot be excluded but it appears the material contains too much clay for this to be feasible. The conditions necessary for the orientation of escaping water could be brought about by a rapidly receding but active glacier. If the glacier were stagnant, there would be no reason for an orientation of the escaping water. An alternate explanation is that melt water between the mar-ginal moraine, in the middle of Hancock County (Figure II), and the receding ice front did not have well developed outlets so that water flowed across and sorted the till surface material. This ex-planation does not explain the orientation of the subsoil variations unless one can assume the present surface is entirely different from the surface left by the glacier. It would be possible for a paral-lel swell and swale topography to orient water but it seems the present surface should have been deposited as a topographic ex-pression of this orientation if this were true. It would also appear that a mass of water would concentrate in the drainageways (Fig-ure III) and not flow across this area unless ice-core morainal systems were present to act as a control. It is not known wheth-er an erosional pebble band exists on the buried till surface. The depth of the till surface from the present surface is not known since in part of the area it was impossible to tell from auger borings whether the material was till or reworked till. In most of the sandy subsoil areas, no till-like material was encountered within the 60-inch depth. 3White: Subsoil Textural Variations on the ClarionWebster Experimental FaPublished by UNI ScholarWorks, 19531953] SUBSOIL VARIATIONS 441 The first explanation of the variations found in the soils and subsoils of this tract seems the best available at this time. The tract investigated is small in comparison to the conclusions which have been made. It would be desirable to have a map of a larger area, but more than 30 man-days of work by soil survey personnel were required to map this 80 acres so that the cost would be pro-hibitive for a larger area. Literature Cited ( 1) Goldthwait, R. P. 1951. Development of end moraines in east-central Baffin Island. lour. Geo!. 59: 567.577. (2) Ruhe, R. V. 1952. Topographic discontinuities of the Des Moines Lobe. Am. lour. Sci. 250: 46-56. • DEPARTMENT OF AGRONOMY IowA STATE COLLEGE AMES, IowA 4Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science, Vol. 60 [1953], No. 1, Art. 57https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol60/iss1/57

Subsoil Textural Variations on the ClarionWebster Experimental Farm as Related to the Mankato Glacial Deposit

Name not available

https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3176&amp;context=pias

Subsoil Textural Variations on the ClarionWebster Experimental Farm as Related to the Mankato Glacial Deposit

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Northern Iowa

Name not available