Sheeted Clastic Dikes in the Megaflood Region
Sheeted Clastic Dikes in the Megaflood Region, WA-OR-ID-MT
Skye W. Cooley, Geologist
Mission Valley, MT
Abstract
Clastic dikes are sediment-filled fractures found worldwide in deformed sediments from the Precambrian to the Pleistocene. Most are soft sediment deformation features and the products of liquefaction caused by seismic shaking. The dikes described in this article are different. They are wedge-shaped, vertically sheeted, and sourced from above - characteristics that contrast with most liquefaction dikes. For this study, I investigated unconsolidated sediments exposed along the route of Pleistocene megafloods between Priest River, ID and The Dalles, OR. I measured the widths of thousands of clastic dikes at 285 exposures (as of Nov 2024). The dikes are Pleistocene in age, occur entirely within Ice Age floodways, and were formed by flood-generated forces (rapid loading and hydrofracture). They are flood injectites, not seismites. This study is the largest conducted on clastic dikes to date.
The megaflood region. Pleistocene megafloods and associated slackwater lakes covered >30,000 km2 of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The margins of the floodway can be approximated by clipping a DEM to the 400m elevation contour.
Clastic dikes in the Channeled Scablands. I have documented thousands of clastic dikes in hundreds of exposures throughout the Channeled Scabland including a few sites well north of the former Cordilleran Ice Sheet margin. Sheeted dikes occur within the floodway (blue area), are all but absent in unconsolidated sediments outside the floodway, and are largest and most abundant in slackwater deposits that contain abundant silt. Purple squares are townships (n = 132). Each square equals ~36 square miles.
Typical sheeted clastic dike. A vertically-sheeted clastic dike intrudes silty-sandy late Pleistocene megaflood rhythmites (Touchet Beds) at Smith Hollow Rd in the Tucannon Valley, WA.
Dike-sill-dike geometry. Dike follows a least-resistance pathway through a stack of Touchet Beds at Lewiston, ID. The dike tends to cut vertically across silty, low-permeability layers (tan) and follow bedding in the coarser, higher-permeability sands (gray). The orientation of fill bands flips between vertical in the dike segments and horizontal in the sill segments. Geometry of the entire dike, mostly out-of-plane, is likely a branching structure with blade-like pinchouts both laterally and on bottom (i.e., KGD hydraulic fracture model).
Not just in Touchet Beds. The dikes intrude a variety of substrates - surficial deposits, partially-lithified sediments, and bedrock. Here, a sheeted silt-sand dike intrudes hillslope colluvium composed of angular, locally-derived basaltic clasts. Prior to being reworked and transported by a catastrophic outburst flood, the material composed a scree slope on the flank of the Alder Ridge anticline. Columbia Gorge, WA.
Huge dikes formed beneath deep slackwater lakes. Very large dikes - those more than a meter wide with >50 fill bands - are found where rhythmite stacks are thickest. As a dike grows, both porosity and permeability increase, which promotes more fractures and injections. In short, large dikes tend to grow larger, while small dikes tend to remain small. Foster Wells Rd north of Pasco, WA.
Jenkins was first. This 1923 photo shows field geologist Olaf P. Jenkins standing next to a large dike exposed in a gravel pit near Touchet, WA. The caption reads, "Clastic dikes in Touchet Beds and dust dune between Touchet and Walla Walla". This dike is sourced in light colored slackwater sediments that overlie the dark, laminated sand. Source: Washington Geological Survey Archives (#00604)
Touchet Beds in Burlingame Canyon. Many geologists have visited this classic locality near Gardena, WA. About 40 Touchet Beds are exposed here (Waitt, 1980, 1985). Rhythmically-bedded flood deposits like these are widely distributed across Columbia Basin to an elevation of approximately 366m, corresponding with the highstand level of Lake Lewis. Thick, well-exposed stacks of rhythmites like those at Burlingame Canyon are rare. Most slackwater sections are thinner with greater sedimentologic variability, reflecting the site-specific flood/backflood/ponding conditions. Some Touchet-equivalent beds are found well above 366m elevation (i.e., Lacrosse, WA) and well below 366m (i.e., Cecil, OR). Slackwater at those locations was not controlled by Wallula Gap, but by other bedrock constrictions. Photo source: Washington Geological Survey Archives (1978, No. 3455). See Footnote 5.
Publications on clastic dikes. Ninety-four articles, abstracts, field guides, agency gray lit, and consultant reports have been published on the clastic dikes in Eastern Washington. At least that's how many I've found. Most simply mention the dikes in passing. Few contain measurements of any kind. Many of the Hanford articles derive from a single infiltration experiment conducted on one large dike located off Army Loop Road.
Columbia Basin vs. New Madrid. Dikes in the Columbia Basin are downward-injected, wedge-shaped. Dikes in the New Madrid Seismic Zone are upward-vented feeder conduits to sand blows. Columbia Basin dikes occur almost entirely within floodway, from Priest River, ID to Salem, OR. Several USGS careers have been dedicated to studying the liquefaction features in the New Madrid region (Fuller, 1912; Obermeier and others, 2005). No careers have been dedicated to the far more enigmatic clastic dikes in the Columbia Basin. Relief basemap by USGS.
Seismic hazard map. Earthquake hazard probability based on 2018 USGS models (fault-slip rates, frequency, magnitude). Red-orange indicates a high probability for damaging quakes. Green-blue indicates a low probability. Note the stark difference between the Columbia Basin (Low: green-yellow) the New Madrid Fault Zone (High: dark red-red-orange).
Modest earthquakes east of the Cascades. Earthquake epicenters recorded between 1970-2015 from Brocher and others (2017, Fig. 2). In Eastern Washington, quakes are mostly small magnitude, shallow, and cluster near Entiat and along Yakima Fold Belt structures. Plenty of dots fall nowhere near mapped faults and most do not cluster. The distribution of clastic dikes in Eastern Washington shows little overlap with the locations of recorded earthquakes. YFTB = Yakima Fold Thrust Belt, GRZ = Goat Rocks zone, SHZ = St. Helens zone, UL = Umtanum lineation, WRZ = Western Rainier zone. Quaternary faults are heavy gray lines.
Shaking intensity felt east of the Cascades. Shaking intensity map for the 1949 Puget Sound earthquake (M6.7, VIII). Note the variability in shaking intensity east of the Cascade Range (I to IV). Slackwater basins do not appear to amplify shaking. Figure from Chleborad and Schuster (1998, USGS PP 1560).
Previous Work on Clastic Dikes
Clastic dikes in Missoula flood deposits are noted in classic papers on Channeled Scablands geology (Bretz, 1929 field notes; Baker, 1973; Waitt, 1985; Smith, 1993; Atwater, 1986). Reports containing detailed descriptions of the dikes are few (Jenkins, 1925; Lupher, 1944; Black, 1979; Woodward-Clyde Associates, 1981). Reports containing field measurements are rare (Alwin and Scott, 1970; Cooley and others, 1996; Neill and others, 1997; Ward and others, 2006). Numerous authors speculate on the dikes' origin, but provide little supporting data (Flint, 1938; Newcomb, 1962; Bingham and Grolier, 1966; Jones and Deacon, 1966; Beaulieu, 1974; Carson and others, 1978; Shaw and others, 1999; Pritchard and Cebula, 2016). Some articles appear titled to avoid appearing in keyword searches (i.e., Newman et al., 2002; See Footnote 13). Eighty years of reporting on dike-riddled deposits at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site (1,518 km2) has provided no clarity on their origin. The voluminous Hanford gray literature contains few field measurements and lacks a regional perspective. It is rife with speculation, much of it contradictory, and best ignored (i.e., Bjornstad, 1980; Bjornstad and others, 1990, 2001; Bjornstad and Teel, 1993; Fecht and others, 1999; Bjornstad, 2006, Bjornstad and Lanigan, 2007). See Footnote 1.
Proposed Origins
Four origins for the dikes have been proposed: earthquakes (Jenkins, 1925), ground ice (Alwin and Scott, 1970; Black, 1979), desiccation (Lupher, 1944), and floodwater loading (Brown and Brown, 1962; Baker, 1973). A dubious fifth, “multigenetic” (Black, 1979; Fecht and others, 1999), suggests the dikes formed by a combination of these processes. Cooley (2015) provides a concise summary of the arguments for and against each hypothesis.
This Study
I investigated unconsolidated sediments, partially-lithified sediments, and flood-scoured bedrock exposed along the path of the Ice Age megafloods between Priest River, ID and The Dalles, OR. Clastic dikes with vertically sheeted fills were identified in 285 of 531 exposures. Locations where soft sediment deformation features were abundant were also described and mapped. Sheeted clastic dikes with identical characteristics (size, fill, age, taper direction, etc.) occur throughout the study area. All appear to have formed by the same mechanism during the Pleistocene.
Study sites. Locations with sheeted clastic dikes are shown as black circles. White circles denote investigated locations where no dikes were observed (>225). Stars denote locations with abundant soft sediment deformation with or without dikes. Star symbols are offset from outcrop circles for clarity. A dashed line approximates the Cordilleran Ice Sheet margin at LGM. Glacial Lake Columbia is shown at its 600 m elevation shoreline. Sediments observed at all locations (n = 488 shown on map) consist primarily of unconsolidated Pleistocene-age flood and non-flood silts, sands, and gravels (Touchet Beds, Pasco Gravels, Palouse Loess) that commonly overlie Neogene sediments (Ellensburg Fm, Ringold Fm, sedimentary interbeds) and bedrock (CRB). A number of thick Holocene sections were surveyed for dikes and deformation as well. Light gray areas show the extent of ephemeral slackwater lakes Lewis, Condon, Latah, Upper Columbia, and Foster that formed behind bedrock or ice constrictions (black bars A,B,C,D,E). Dikes are common in southern part of the Channeled Scablands, where exposures are more numerous. Gravel deposits, Palouse Loess, and lacustrine silts in the Glacial Lake Missoula basin contain fewer dikes than Touchet Beds. Dozens more sites have been surveyed since the drafting of this map.
Deformation varies along the flood route. Various kinds of soft sediment deformation structures occur in the Channeled Scabland (light blue area). Wedge-shaped sheeted dikes are common farther south in slackwater deposits, while t-shaped mud squirts are more common to the north in varved bottom sediments of Glacial Lake Columbia. The particular style of deformation at any given location is governed by grain size, saturation, lithification/cementation - factors that determine how the material responds to stress (loading). Dikes in Touchet Beds vs. Ellensburg Fm will vary in form and number. Dikes in different flood facies will express differently as well (i.e., Touchet Beds vs. silt-clay varves vs. bar gravel). Local flow dynamics as well as water depth and velocity affect the number and size of dikes (i.e., high energy channel vs. deep slackwater lake vs. lake-filled stilling basin). The dashed blue line follows Atwater's long profile of the Columbia River between Coeur d'Alene and Wallula Gap (Atwater, 1987, Figure 2). Each map symbol represents one or more outcrops.
Typical Clastic Dikes
Clastic dikes are sediment-filled fractures found worldwide in deformed sediments from the Precambrian to the Holocene. Most sand dikes are the products of liquefaction (fluid escape) triggered by seismic shaking. Strong shaking elevates pore fluid pressures in wet, unconsolidated sediment layers at depth, causing it to mobilize and vent to the surface, often forming sand blows (i.e., Obermeier, 1998). Therefore, most earthquake-generated clastic dikes are upward-pinching structures that contain massive sandy fills.
Sheeted Injectites in the Ice Age Floodway
The clastic dikes described here are different. They are slender, vertically-sheeted, wedge-shaped structures that were infilled from the top. They formed by the forceful filling of hydraulic fractures propagated downward into sedimentary and bedrock substrates during periods when voluminous glacial floods and deep, slow-draining slackwater lakes inundated the landscape. Their formation is consistent with hydraulic fracture described in the literature for sand injectites in submarine fans (i.e., Jolly and Lonergan, 2002) and certain glacial settings (i.e., von Brunn and Talbot, 1986; Broster, 1991; Larsen and Mangerud, 1992).
Dikes and flute casts. (A) A typical clastic dike in slackwater rhythmites (Touchet Beds) exhibits the characteristic vertical sheeting composed of darker fill bands (or sheets) separated by light-colored silt skin partitions. This example contains ~12 sheets and is filled with silty, sandy sediment closely resembling the host material. Umatilla Basin at Cecil, OR (Slackwater Lake Condon). (B) A typical dike in gravelly deposits is truncated at its top by a second floodbed. Its fill is crudely sheeted and lacks silt skins. Dikes in coarse-grained deposits tend to have lower length-to-width ratio than dikes in fine-grained sediments. Umatilla Basin at Willow Creek, OR (Slackwater Lake Condon). (C) Examples of flute casts that ornament the faces of silt skins. Upward-pointing noses are clear directional indicators. Sediment entered the fractures from the top. Quarters for scale. Walla Walla Valley, WA (Slackwater Lake Lewis). (D) A sheeted dike, filled with a mix of silty, sandy flood sediment (Late Pleistocene) and quartzite-rich gravel from the Ellensburg Fm eroded from local exposures by floodwaters, intrudes micaceous, oxidized fluvial sandstones (Miocene) at Snipes Mountain. The dike contains ~10 sheets. Hoe is 28 cm long. Emerald Road at Granger, WA (Slackwater Lake Lewis).
(a) Size and Shape - Sheeted dikes penetrate more than a dozen different geologic units, including Miocene basalt. The largest examples contain >100 vertical sheets (fill bands), are >2 m wide, and penetrate to depths >40 m. Typically, the dikes are <15 cm wide and contain fewer than a dozen sheets. Dikes in silty, sandy rhythmites are commonly long and slender. Dikes in coarse sands and gravels are typically few in number and slender or stubby. Dikes in gravel are often crudely sheeted and stubby. Dikes that penetrate bedrock (Miocene basalt, associated sedimentary interbeds, other basin-fill units) are slender and generally can be traced to silty-sandy rhythmites above.
(b) Fills - Sedimentology of the fill material reflects the local geology. Dike fills contain a mix of basaltic and micaceous sandy sediment swept up and carried by the floods (suspended-load). Basaltic and non-basaltic material eroded from localities along the floodway comprised the bedload. Dikes at Snipes Mountain, WA (Yakima Valley), for example, contain conspicuous clasts from the Miocene–Pliocene Ellensburg Fm that cap the ridge. Dikes at West Foster Creek (upper Columbia Valley) contain Miocene gruss shed from deeply-weathered granitic highlands to the north and east. Dikes near Walla Walla Valley contain Touchet Bed sediment and some ice-rafted exotics (Jenkins, 1925; Cooley, 2015). In the southeastern Palouse, dikes filled with Touchet Bed sediment overprint older dikes containing weathered, oxidized fills of sand and silt (Cooley and others, 1996; Spencer and Jaffee, 2002; Bader and others, 2016).
(c) Sheeting and Growth - The dikes are conspicuously sheeted “composite” and "compound" structures (sensu Hyashi, 1966). Vertical sheeting records incremental widening by repeated crack-and-fill cycles. Dike growth involved crack-and-fill cycling during single events (compound dikes) and reinjection over time (composite dikes). New fractures opened into and alongside older ones. Strong grain size contrasts between adjacent sheets are evidence of a variable and changing sediment source consistent with circulating bottom currents within floods.
Per descendum. Sheeted dikes cut sandy Missoula Flood deposits at Latah Creek near the Qualchan Golf Course west of Spokane, WA. Small branches mimick the form of the larger dike.
Pleistocene dikes in older sandstone. Energetic flooding at The Dalles incised deep gullies into fluvial sandstone of the Chenoweth Fm (Miocene-Pliocene age Dalles Group). The trench-like gullies rapidly filled with gravel. This example funnels down and becomes a gravel-filled dike that continues for several meters in partially-lithified bedrock. Flood-deposited boulders are scattered about the gently undulating surface above the roadcut. Chenoweth Creek Valley, Columbia Gorge, OR.
(d) Polygonal Networks - Burned areas and bladed cutslopes expose polygonal dike networks in plan view (i.e., Silver and Pogue, 2002). Horizontal exposures reveal how dike fills coalesced and how fill bands intertwined as fractures lengthened. Well-developed polygonal networks containing large dikes tend to occur near the centers of low elevation basins inundated repeatedly by glacial outburst floods. Sheet counts are highest where many floods gathered - primarily near Wallula Gap through which all floods flowed.
(e) Silt Skins - Thin silt partitions (silt skins) form the dike walls and separate vertical sheets of sediment (fills bands) inside the dikes. Silt skins form when pore water migrates laterally out of the saturated fill, through the fracture wall, and into the surrounding material. Skins between sheets indicate younger fills dewatered into older, drier fills (older fills are exposed to new leakoff) and into dry host sediment (unsaturated sediment). Fines are screened at fracture walls and accumulate in continuous layers (filter cake), sealing the fracture. Crack sealing begins almost immediately after the fill enters the fracture and progresses quickly. An analogous filter-screening process forms slurry walls in concrete-filled trench foundations used in heavy construction. Silt skins in study area dikes are 1–10 mm thick. New sheets crosscut older sheets and remove portions of their silt seals (erosive injection). Rip-ups of older fills, skins, and host material are common in crosscutting fills. Upward-pointing flute casts that ornament the faces of silt skins unambiguously record downward infill. Skins that line the outer walls of dikes are fluted only on their interior faces. Skins on outer walls indicate the host sediment was well-drained, ice-free, and above the water table (vadose zone) at the time of injection and probably during most subsequent crackings and fillings. Outer skin formation via leakoff appears to require unsaturated conditions and porous host material. Dikes that penetrate impermeable bedrock lack outer skin walls, but contain interior partitions. "Leakoff halos", a term I coin here for lightly cemented, slightly discolored zones of altered sediment that extend a few centimeters beyond the dike wall, are fairly common. They can only form in unsaturated host sediment. Leakoff halos (and sheeting) are less common in liquefaction dikes because the sediment which mobilizes to form such dikes and the sediment from which they emerge are equally saturated.
Dike propagation. The various parts of an advancing crack and near-simultaneous filling by sediment and dewatering. Modified from Phillips and others (2013).
Leak-off halo. Fining and cementation is apparent just beyond the margin of some dikes. This halo is evidence of "leak-off", the diffusion of pore water and fines out of the fill during injection and for a short time after. While fines migrate during diking, cementation is diagenetic and occurs later. Hwy 24 near crest of Yakima Ridge.
Halos made while you wait. The dark region surrounding this clay-rich dike is wet. There are three possible explanations. 1.) Pore water in the surrounding sand is collecting along the margins of the less-permeable dike and emerging at the vertical cutface. 2.) Pore water in the surrounding sand is held more tightly along the margin of the dike due to slightly finer-grained sediment silt mix there. 3.) Dike remains an active conduit. Pore water in the surrounding sand moves faster through the dike and diffuses outward into the sand. This dike is at Double Bluff on Whidbey Island, WA. It is composed of glacial sediment deformed by fluidization and mass wasting (Nelson and others, 2003; Swanson, 2007?; Tucker 2015; Troost, 2016; Knight, 2019). My photo from Feb 2023.
Leak-off lumpkins. The surface of a dike's outer silt skin wall is often covered with bulbous structures formed as the fill dewaters. They can look very much like tiny load casts. "Lumpkins" are consistent with outward diffusion of pore water from the wet fill into the drier surrounding sediment. Walla Walla Valley.
More lumpkins. Leak-off creates bulbous forms on the outer walls of some dikes. Hwy 397 west of Finley, WA.
(f) Distribution - Sheeted dikes are widely distributed throughout the region inundated by Ice Age floods. Great distances separate outcrops containing dikes with identical characteristics. For example, sites near Kettle Falls, WA fand Salem, OR are separated by more than 500 km. The dikes do not occur in the Palouse Loess above the local elevation of maximum flooding (i.e., above ~366m in south-central Washington), nor in unconsolidated sediments beyond the margins of Ice Age floodways. Identical dikes occur in close proximity to mapped Quaternary faults (i.e., Wallula fault zone) and at sites located >150 km from them. They are most abundant, well-formed, and best-exposed in high silt content flood rhythmites in backwater valleys.
(g) Age - Field relationships constrain the timing of dike injection to between ~1.8 Ma to ~14 ka, the period of ice sheet growth and scabland flooding in Eastern Washington (Easterbrook, 1994; Baker and others, 2016; Waitt and others, 2016). Most dikes formed late, during Late Wisconsin Missoula flooding (18–14 ka). The dikes penetrate all formations exposed to overland megafloods, including pre-Wisconsin scabland deposits (“ancient” flood gravels, silt diamicts, paleosols), calcrete-capped Pliocene-Pleistocene alluvium ("Cold Creek unit"), Pliocene Ringold Fm sediments, Pliocene Chenoweth Fm sediments, Miocene-Pliocene Ellensburg/Latah Fm sediments, and Miocene Columbia River Basalt flows. The dikes cut the Mount St. Helens Set S tephra (16 ka), but not the Mazama Ash (6.8 ka). No dikes were found in Holocene deposits during this study and I am aware of no other studies reporting sheeted dikes in Holocene alluvium in the region. Sheeted dikes did not form in significant numbers prior to the Pleistocene or since.
Slender Touchet-type dike. Missoula flood rhythmites (R1 through R7), each deposited by a separate flood, are intruded by a Touchet-type clastic dike. The dike originates at the base of R7 and descends through several underlying beds. It does not crosscut the entire the section, rather it formed midway through the Missoula flood period (18-14 ka). Other dikes descend from older and younger beds in the stack. The dike cuts a clean path through the host sediment and does not follow a rubbly zone between toppled blocks. Bedding contacts are not offset or tilted by the dike. No low angle sliding surface is present in the outcrop, which is floored in basalt bedrock. Both branches taper downward to a point. The sediment that fills the dike was not supplied by a liquefied layer at depth (a bed somewhere below R1); it does not feed a sand blow (i.e., Obermeier, 1998). The source of the dike is clear. It begins at the base of R7, widening from a small sag. Bedding in R7 grades smoothly into the top of the dike. Flute casts on the interior faces of the dike's walls provide clear evidence of downward infilling. The dike exhibits the characteristics typical of sheeted Touchet-type dikes found throughout the floodway region. Burlingame Canyon in Walla Walla Valley near Gardena, WA.
Arris and blade. At its simplest, the 3D shape of a fracture - thus a clastic dike - resembles an axe blade. But unlike the edge of an axe, fractures have irregularly-shaped fronts (arris). In outcrop, the shape of an irregular fracture front can appear differently depending on how it intersects the cut face. The example dike above tapers both vertically and horizontally. Depending on cut face position, its cross section can appear to taper downward (Plane C), upward (Plane B), or in both directions (Plane A).
Injection during flooding. My conceptual model for sheeted clastic dikes in the megaflood region developed from relationships observed in the field. This particular combination of geological and hydrological factors combined to facilitate a particular style of diking that only occurred during Pleistocene overland flood events. Flood loads fractured the relatively dry, brittle substrate allowing wet, circulating sediment sourced at the base of the flood to immediately fill the fractures.
Injectite vs. liquefaction dike. (A) The sketch illustrates differences between clastic dikes formed by liquefaction (sand blows, fluid escape structures) and those formed by floodwater loading and hydrofracture (flood injectites). Liquefaction dikes propagate upward and are sourced in wet, sandy beds deposited sometime in the past and remobilized by strong shaking. "Feeder dikes" tap a buried source. Flood injectites are sediment-filled filled hydrofractures that propagate downward. The dikes are "fed" by sediment sourced in circulating bottom currents of glacial floods moving overland (megafloods). Liquefaction dikes in A cut younger strata and are filled with older sediment. Injection dikes in B cut older strata and are filled with younger sediment. (B) My dike-fill generations concept sketch explains the formation of sheeted clastic dikes in episodically-aggrading flood sediments. The four geometries represent the range of forms found in the study area: a). Unsheeted - Single-fill, b). Sheeted - Multi-fill compound, c). Sheeted - Single-fill composite, d). Sheeted - Multi-fill composite. Compound = Multiple fill bands injected during a single event. Composite = Multiple fill bands injected during two or more events separated in time during which no injection occurred.
Dike abundance, shape, and grainsize. (A) Dike forms differ because fine and coarse materials respond differently to perturbation (loading by floodwater). Grain size governs whether pore fluid pressures will build or disperse, and whether slender fractures or stubby collapses will form. Loaded sediment containing abundant silt tend to respond by fracturing (pore fluids conveyed in fractures). Sediments that lack silt tend to respond by matrix flow (pore fluids flushed through interconnected pores). (B) Dike injection appears to be primarily a slackwater phenomenon due to the necessary combination of silt deposition (low-velocity flows during megaflood events), prolonged loading (deep water), and preservation (low erosion). (C) High silt content rhythmites (Touchet Beds) contain abundant clastic dikes with high length-to-width ratios (slender dikes). Sparse dikes in gravelly flood deposits (channel, bar, and sheet flood gravels) are typically stubby and crudely sheeted.
Vadose sandwich. Backflooded valleys accumulated thick piles of unconsolidated sediments. Flood deposits raised the ground surface, but not the water table. A dry vadose zone thickened with each flood. A dry vadose zone may have been sandwiched and sealed between the base of the flood and the water table (wet over dry over wet). Brittle fractures formed there. Liquefaction dikes, rare in the Channeled Scablands, are shown for comparison.
Discrete deformation. Deformation associated with any given dike is typically limited to the crack it occupies. The sediments immediately adjacent to most dikes remain undeformed. Clear bedding contacts and delicate bedforms continue across each dike iin the photo above. The dikes pictured are filled with Touchet Bed sediment and intrude oxidized, fluvial sandstones of the Miocene Ellensburg Fm. Quartzite cobbles in the fills were reworked by floods from cobbly Ellensburg exposures nearby. Snipes Mountain near Granger, WA.
Clean crosscuts. A sand-filled dike cuts cleanly across silt-sand rhythmites at Starbuck, WA.
Pleistocene dike in older sediments. A sheeted dike descends from Touchet Beds through a thick stack of cemented loess, calcrete, and weathered fanglomerate near Finley, WA.
Pleistocene dikes in Miocene basalt. Sheeted sand-silt dikes, sourced from above, intrude Columbia River Basalt surfaces exposed to Ice Age floods. The dikes exploit preexisting joints and other weaknesses in the bedrock. A.) Weaver Pit near Garden, Walla Walla Valley, WA, B.) Hwy 12 near Alpowa Creek, Lewiston Basin, ID, C.) Hwy 14 near Alderdale, Umatilla Basin, WA.
Gravel infill from above. Unconsolidated flood gravel fills a clastic dikes in tuffaceous Chenoweth Fm sandstone at The Dalles, OR.
Pleistocene dikes in Ellensburg sandstone. Silt-sand dike cuts a crossbedded fluvial sandstone of the Ellensburg Fm at West Foster Creek near Bridgeport, WA.
Sheeted fills in Miocene basalt. Sheeted sand dike fed from above cuts Columbia River Basalt at Prosser, WA.
Early to Middle Pleistocene dikes cut Pliocene Ringold Fm. Downward-tapering, partially-cemented dikes are truncated by ancient flood deposits at White Bluffs, WA.
Gray dike in red fan gravel. Clastic dike sourced in unconsolidated flood-laid sediment above cuts through reddened fanglomerate shed from the north flank of the Saddle Mountain anticline. Smyrna Bench, WA.
Liquefaction Evidence in Paleoseismic Trenches in Eastern Washington
Evidence of liquefaction in the study area is minimal. It would be a stretch to say sporadic. In the few instances where liquefaction in Pleistocene sediments have been reported, it expresses as small, irregular bodies. Those reports are:
- Foundation Sciences (1980) reported finding features possibly attributable to liquefaction features at Finley Quarry near Pasco, WA (Wallula Fault Zone). The blobby, ambiguous features are small, unconnected to a source bed, and partially trend with bedding. Their seismic origin (Sherrod and others, 2016) is disputed (Coppersmith and others, 2014). At best liquefaction is confined to tight corridors along some Yakima Fold Belt structures.
- Ambiguous forms in Holocene sediment revealed in a USGS trench opened near the Wallula Fault Zone were interpreted as liquefaction features by ("SUK" trench; Angster and others, 2020). The linear feature targeted for trenching has since been revealed to be an old ranch road, not a fault scarp. No fault was discovered in the SUK trench. Touchet Beds beneath the "liquefied" loess were undeformed, a finding that casts doubt on USGS's interpretation. Read my review of the SUK trench site is here: https://www.skyecooley.com/single-post/fault-scarp-or-ranch-review-of-the-usgs-suk-paleoseismic-trench-near-wallula-wa.
No liquefaction features were reported in these paleoseismic trenches excavated across fault scarps in Eastern Washington:
- Burbank Fault trench near Yakima, WA (Bennett and others, 2016).
- Wenas Valley trench (Sherrod and others, 2013).
- Saddle Mountains Fault trenches at Smyrna Bench (Bingham and others, 1970 Plates 4,5,6).
- Buroker Fault trench southeast of Walla Walla (Farooqui and Thoms, 1980, Figure 11).
- Lind Coulee Fault trenches at O'Sullivan Dam-lower Lind Coulee (GEI/West & Shaffer, 1988).
- Gable Mountain Fault trenches at the Hanford Site (Bingham and others, 1970; Golder Associates/PSPL, 1982).
- Spencer Canyon trenche near Entiat, WA. The trenched scarp is believed to have formed during the 1872 Chelan quake (magnitude ~7).
- Kittitas Valley trench (Szeliga/CWU/USGS in progress 2023).
Paleoseismic trenches in the Yakima Fold Belt. Fault trenching project locations highlighted on a map of Quaternary faults by Lidke and others (2003). The Finley Quarry site (not shown) is located just south of Kennewick. The Spencer Canyon site (not shown) is located ~60km north of the Kittitas Valley site. Paleoseismic trenching has revealed no connection between sheeted clastic dikes and the movements of mapped and trenched faults in the Yakima Fold Belt province. My review of published trench logs can be found at this post: Paleoseismic Trenches in Eastern Washington
In Depth: Gable Mountain Trenches The Gable Mountain trenches are particularly instructive. Several trenches were dug and a number of serious geologists inspected them. Golder Associates/Puget Sound Power and Light (Bingham and others, 1970 Plates 8, 9; Golder Associates/PSPL, 1982) opened several trenches across two thrust faults at Gable Mountain at the Hanford Site. The South Fault displaced by ~50' Miocene bedrock and the Rattlesnake Ridge sedimentary interbed that separates Pomona and Elephant Mountain flows. Overlying Hanford Fm sediments (Missoula flood deposits) were not displaced. The Central Fault displaced the interbed by 182', but overlying Hanford Fm by only 0.2' (Reidel and others, 1992, p. 43-44). No liquefaction was found in any trench. A single clastic dike, sourced from above in flood-laid Hanford gravel, descends into the fault breccia in Elephant Mountain basalt (Trench log GT-2 in Reidel and others, 1992, Figure 39, p. 45). No other dikes were noted in the 92'- long trench. Philip S. Justus, a geologist for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, clearly links the dikes to flood deposits not faulting in a memo summarizing his findings at the Gable Mountain trenches (Justus, 1980).
Flood deposits on Gable Mountain bear a close resemblance to typical Missoula flood deposits.
Two distinct cycles of [Ice Age flood] deposition are present on the north side of Gable Mtn; possibly three on south side.
Clastic dikes on Gable Mountain are similar in lithology and fabric to those found elsewhere in the Pasco Basin.
Clastic dikes associated with each overlying [flood] cycle are found in Trenches CD-8, G-2, and G-3.
The youngest clastic dikes originate from the base of the coarse upper unit of flood deposits which is bounded at the top by St. Helens S ash as found in Trenches CD-4 and G-1.
Clastic dikes in Trenches CD-5 and G-3 are displaced by shearing on the fault plane (CD-5) and in the hanging wall (G-3).
In Trench G-3 displacements in the flood deposits appear to post date the youngest clastic dike.
Shears, possibly associated with the thrust fault, appear to cross and slightly displace clastic dikes in the footwall in an area of Trench CD-6.
Clastic dikes along fault plane in Trench CD-6 have slickensides surfaces with strikes parallel to the dip of the fault.
Oriented slickensides in clastic dikes parallel to slickensides in gouge on fault breccia (Trench CD-5).
Wherever fine-grained material is present along fault plane, slickensides are present.
Key take aways from the Gable Mountain trenching project are a.) clastic dikes are typical Touchet-type dikes, b.) the dikes are sourced in surficial material (flood deposits) and descend into fault-fractured basalt below, c.) dikes are not particularly large or numerous near the Gable Mountain Fault, d.) the dikes are not liquefaction structures sourced from below and formed in response to shaking, but sediment-filled fractures that propagated along a zone of weak fault breccia, and e.) slickensides and offset dikes suggest some minor faulting occurred after flooding and diking at ~12,000 years.
In Depth: Lind Coulee Fault trenches east of O'Sullivan Dam
Paleoseismic trenches opened at Lind Coulee (south bank of O'Sullivan Reservoir) by GEI/Michael West exposed a few clastic dikes intruding the shear zone of the Lind Coulee Fault, an eastern extension of the Frenchman Hills thrust. The fault is exposed in shoreline bluffs between Rd M SE bridge and the Lind Coulee West Trench Site. It places Roza basalt over Pleistocene loess.
Lind Coulee West Trench Site. Paleoseismic trenches at Lind Coulee were opened in the 1980s as part of a dam safety study. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operates the nearby O'Sullivan Dam located east of MarDon Resort just north of Drumheller Channels. The dam is not shown in the photo; it is located a few kilometers to the west. The dam impounds Lower Crab Creek, which west flows through Lind Coulee, forming the vast Potholes Lake. Hwy 262 crosses the dam.
Findings in the Lind Coulee West Trench are similar to those at Gable Mountain. Geologists observed Pleistocene dikes intruding gouge zone of the Frenchman Hills fault that offsets Quaternary sediments,
The Lind Coulee trench initially presented strong circumstantial evidence for fault displacement of [basalt, reverse-magnetized loess, shear zone-fault gouge, and late Pleistocene loess with a petrocalcic horizon]. The evidence for displacement was magnified by the protruding knob of brecciated basalt [seven meters from west end of NE-trending trench], the apparent overturned contact with flood deposlts on the north side of the knob, flood sands injected along a shear plane in the fault zone and discontinuity of the petrocalcic horizon and infiltration of loess north of Station 7 [near west end of trench]. The geometry of flood deposits overlying the paleosol on the footwall block was also suggestive of colluvial wedge geometry.
Upon further investigation, West and Shaffer modify their interpretation,
In spite of this body of circumstantial evidence, we could find no evidence of shearing, tectonic displacement or colluviation characteristic of surface fault rupture. The [flood-deposited] sands along the shear plane appear to have been injected hydraulically along the plane rather than dragged along it.
They determine dike injection post-dated faulting,
The lacustrine silt [that separates “intermediate” flood deposits from “youngest” flood deposits] could be traced as a continuous, uninterrupted horizon across the main fault zone, indicating with 100% certainty that the fault had not moved since deposition of the silt layer. Careful excavation of Unit 5B [“intermediate”] flood deposits disclosed no evidence of shearing or tectonic colluviation. These deposits were in intimate contact with the eroded basalt surface on the hanging wall and exhibited an open-work fabric that we attribute to high energy flood deposition.
Busacca and McDonald (Appendix V) conclude the flood deposits exposed in the trench are not related to the most recent episodes of flooding (about 12 to 16 Ka) but are older…based on soil development and stratigraphic position that the age of flood deposits in the Lind Coulee West area is 40 to 50 Ka. The last surface fault displacement, therefore, occurred before 40 to 50 Ka.
The apparent injection of flood sands along a shear plane in the fault zone is more difficult to explain. We are of the opinion that the sand was injected hydraulically from the top down. The sands filling the shear however do not appear to be continuous with flood deposits mapped as Unit 5 [“intermediate” flood deposits].
Similar injection of flood sands along shear planes was noted in fault trenches excavated on Gable Mountain (DOE/Westinghouse, 1987b).
The authors agree with earlier speculation by Woodward-Clyde Consultants (1981), namely that the dikes formed by,
…either hydraulic injection associated with catastrophic flooding or hydraulic injection resulting from fault movement and liquefaction offer reasonable interpretations for the origin of clastic dikes including the feature in the Lind Coulee West trench.
They dutifully entertain an alternative origin for the dikes (liquefaction), despite finding little supporting evidence in their trenches,
Another possibility is that the sands were injected from below and are part of an older flood deposit preserved deeper in the footwall. The exposures in both cross-cut trenches suggest older flood deposits are indeed involved in faulting and could be preserved at depth in the footwall and locally along shear planes…
Lind Coulee Fault at O'Sullivan Reservoir. The Lind Coulee Fault is a south-dipping thrust that places Miocene basalt (Wanapum Roza) over younger sediments. There are several splays. Grolier and Bingham is first identified it in their draft and final reports (Grolier and Bingham, 1971; 1978 Figures 14, 23). West and Shaffer trenched it in the 1980s. A good, easily accessible vertical exposure remains. The photo above and Sketch A show Roza basalt shoved over alluvial sediments (likely Pliocene Ringold Fm), cemented loess, and weakly-cemented Palouse loess (likely late Wisconsin age). Sketches show the observable field relationships. The fault cuts rubbly Roza basalt, creating a thin white gouge zone. Beneath the gouge is a sliver of brown mudstone (hanging wall) which is underlain by cemented buff-colored loess with light band of caliche. Faint bedding in the loess and a parallel caliche are both steeply dipping to overturned directly beneath the fault. The shattered footwall Roza is brecciated and weathered above the fault and takes on a greenish-yellow hue. The rubbly basalt grades upward to competent basalt then spheroidally weathered basalt near the flow top. The flow top is also exposed along Hwy 262 just south of the trench site. Elsewhere along the fault, the gouge zone (10-20cm wide) includes boudin-like lenses of deformed dark and light brown mudstone, rock flour, or broken basalt. Investigations of the Lind Coulee Fault Trench site and longer traverses of shoreline bluffs in the area have yielded no evidence of liquefaction. Lind Coulee Fault is part of the larger Frenchman Hills structure, known to have Quaternary movement (Reidel and Fecht, 1994; Schuster and others, 1997; Lidke and Haller, 2016). USBOR memos recount some details of West's trenching project from the perspective of the client (Lefevre and O'Connell, 1987; Galster, 1987). References for the Lind Coulee Fault include Grolier and Bingham (1971, 1978), Galster/USBOR memo (1987, "Area No. 2"); Levfevre and MCConnell memo (1987), West and Shaffer (1988), Shaffer and West (1989), Reidel and Campbell (1989, "Stop 21-A", Figure 14), Geomatrix Consultants Inc. (1990, "East Fault Exposure"), Reidel and Fecht (1994), Schuster and others (1997), Lidke and Haller (2016). A big thanks to Brian Sherrod for sending me the West and Shaffer (1988, Vol. 2) report in Feb 2023.
In Depth: Willamette Valley
The Missoula floods backflooded the Willamette Valley dozens of times, depositing gravels and silt-sand rhythmites across the floor of the valley to Eugene, some 170 km south of Portland. Ice-rafted erratics numbering in the hundreds are mapped throughout the Willamette Valley (Allison, 1935; Minervini and others, 2003) and areas upstream (Bretz, 1919). In general, most exposures of Pleistocene deposits in the valley contain few dikes if any. Exposure is not great. See historical photos and unit descriptions in Bretz (1925, 1928), Allison (1932, 1933, 1936, 1953, 1978), Piper (1942), Treasher (1942), Lowry and Baldwin (1952), Baldwin and others (1955), Allison and Felts (1956), Wells and Peck (1961), Trimble (1957, 1963), Balster and Parsons (1969), Hampton, (1972), Robert (1984), McDowell (1991), Yeats and others (1996), and McDowell and Roberts (1987). Abandoned ideas about seawater incursion into Willamette Valley and Columbia Gorge are found in Condon (1871) and Bretz (1919).
River Bend section. Glenn (1965, Figures 3, 15) reported finding a few clastic dikes in Touchet Bed-equivalent flood rhythmites (Willamette Silt) in the Willamette River Valley.
Glenn (1965) found a few sheeted dikes cutting Missoula flood rhythmites (Willamette Silt) exposed along the Willamette River at River Bend and Irish Bend. Allison (1978, Figure 14) shows a clastic dike cutting a rhythmite section near St. Paul, OR. The dikes were found in highway excavations in flood deposits near Portland (Ian Madin, 2014 written communication/photos) and in exposed dirt walls in the basement of the Capital Building at Salem, OR (Ray Wells, written communication/photos). Thurber and Obermeier (1996, unpublished) reported finding 16 clastic dikes at 7 sites along the lower Calapooia River, a tributary to the Willamette River. The largest dike measured 5m long x 10cm wide. They interpreted the dikes to be earthquake-caused liquefaction features. Sims (2002) reviewed Thurber and Obermeier's report, finding their field data set too small to support their interpretations,
The limited area surveyed by [Thurber and Obermeier] in the Willamette Valley does not allow for a high level of confidence in determining if the features result from large subduction events or local intracrustal events. The age of the structures is somewhat in doubt as few radiocarbon dates are available for the host deposits and Thurber and Obermeier (1996) do not report any radiocarbon dates as part of their study. They also do not mention any evidence for liquefaction in post Pleistocene deposits of which there are many in the banks of the Willamette River and its tributaries. Thus, with incomplete coverage and lack of dating of paleoliquefaction features, the question of source zones is moot. Earthquake source determination can only be addressed with broader coverage of liquefaction features and better age data to constrain timing of events and to allow regional correlations of liquefaction features. In addition, we need a more complete picture of the size distribution of similar-aged features for the purposes of evaluating the magnitudes of prehistoric earthquakes.
Peterson and others (2014) describe sand dikes and sills (unsheeted fluid escape structures) intruding Holocene overbank muds at 8 sites along the lower Willamette River. They attribute the dikes to seismicity at the Cascadia margin. Obermeier and Dickenson (2000) describe "relict liquefaction features" in low shoreline bluffs of islands in the lower Columbia River between Astoria, OR (Marsh Island) and Kalama, WA (Bonneville Dam) and in cutbanks of 10 rivers east of the Cascade divide. The thickest dikes were 30 cm. The thickest sills were 5 cm. Authors attribute the dikes to lateral spreading, hydraulic fracturing, and surface oscillations (ground shattering and warping) during earthquakes (i.e., Cooley and others, 1996; Neill and others, 1997; Pogue, 1998). Obermeier and Dickenson is a consultant's that follows USGS and DOGAMI studies on evidence of Cascadia shaking along the lower Columbia River (Obermeier, 1993; Peterson and Madin, 1997; Atwater, 1994). The report contains some of the same information as Sims (2002) and Thurber and Obermeier (1996), but no photographs or sketches of clastic dikes or vented sand. Takada and Atwater (2004) describe soft sandy sediments in the lower Columbia River gorge deformed by magnitude 8-9 Cascadia earthquakes. The features they describe are wholly different than wedge-shaped, sheeted dikes in the Touchet Beds and the sediments that host them. Their dikes of fluidized sand are outnumbered by sills that "mostly follow and locally invade the undersides of mud beds. The mud beds probably impeded diffuse upward flow of water expelled from liquefied sand. Trapped beneath mud beds, this water flowed laterally, destroyed bedding by entraining (fluidizing) sand, and locally scoured the overlying mud."
Identical clastic dikes occur exclusively inside the floodway, mostly in Missoula flood sediments of both the dry Columbia Basin and wetter Willamette Valley. The sheeted, wedge-shaped structures are restricted to a specific interval of time (Pleistocene) and sourced only in Missoula flood deposits. Fine grained sediments outside the floodway do not contain dikes. Touchet-type dikes (sheeted, slender, wedge-shaped structures) are readily distinguishable in the field from unsheeted, younger dikes formed by liquefaction. The field evidence from the Willamette Valley supports a common origin for all sheeted clastic dikes that occur in the Ice Age floodway: fluid-driven fracture triggered by repeated flood loading.
In Depth: Toppenish Ridge
Two gravel pits near Granger, WA are located in close proximity to the Toppenish Ridge Fault, an east-west trending Yakima Fold Belt structure known to be active. Miocene Ellensburg Fm conglomerates are exposed in both pits. Sheeted dikes occur at the Lower Pit (more distant from fault), but not the Upper Pit (nearer the fault).
At the lower pit (225-250 m elevation) several large, sheeted dikes sourced in Touchet Beds intrude downward into fluvial conglomerates of the Miocene Ellensburg Fm, mapped as Mc(e) and Mcg(e). The flat-lying Touchet Beds are inset into the older conglomerates. Here, both units are essentially flat-lying. At the upper pit (265-295 m elevation), the Ellensburg dips steeply south (>50 deg). Very few dikes were found in the tilted beds despite an abundance of sandy layers and their proximity to the Toppenish Ridge Fault, mapped <200m away.
Toppenish Ridge exposures near Granger, WA. In the Yakima Valley, Ellensburg sediments, deposited by the ancestral Columbia River and smaller streams draining the Cascades, interfinger with and overlie the Columbia River Basalts. Green areas of the map are Miocene Ellensburg Fm sediments. Light brown areas are basalt flows. Gray areas are late Pleistocene Touchet Beds. Yellow is recent alluvium of the Yakima River floodplain. Sheeted dikes occur in the lower pit (minimally deformed strata), but not the upper (steeply tilted strata). Touchet Beds occur in the lower pit, but not the upper. The town of Granger is a short drive to the east. Land owned by the Yakama Indian Reservation.
Upper pit at Toppenish Ridge. Steeply-dipping, partially lithified fluvial sediments contain almost no clastic dikes and little evidence of liquefaction despite abundant sandy interbeds (light colored). The Toppenish Ridge Fault, which the USGS identifies as an active structure, is mapped less than 200 m away (Schuster and others, 1994; Lidke and others, 2003; USGS Quaternary Fold and Fault Database for the United States, accessed Dec 2022).
Lower pit at Toppenish Ridge. Flat-lying Ellensburg Fm sediments are penetrated by a number of sheeted dikes sourced in the overlying Touchet Beds. Diking appears related to flooding and deposition of the Touchet Beds, not folding and faulting of the Ellensburg. The dikes do not rise from a liquefied source bed. They post-date deposition of the Ellensburg, post-date some of the tilting, and were filled from the top by Touchet Bed sediment.
Dikes in the Ringold Formation (Pasco Basin)
Sheeted clastic dikes are rare in late Miocene and Pliocene sediments, even where deformed by faults of the Yakima Fold Belt. The Ellensburg and Ringold Formations (mostly floodplain alluvium and alluvial fan deposits) are free of clastic dikes and other features that might be called "seismites".
A few thin clastic dikes that do occur in the Ringold deserve mention. The sparse set of thin, mud-filled dikes is found in certain fine-grained beds in the Ringold Fm (9.5-3.4 Ma) at Smyrna Bench, White Bluffs, and Othello. The vertical dikes are rarely thicker than a notebook or longer than a meter. They are sourced and entirely contained within Pliocene strata (upper Ringold), in particular a hard, white claystone bed and a gray, ashy sand unit that thickens to the west. These dikes are limited in their extent and have not been studied in detail to date.
I interpret the dikes of this sparse set as incidental features commonly found in sandy sedimentary deposits near fault zones worldwide. They do not form polygonal networks. They are confined to specific strata. Their fills are unsheeted and otherwise bear little resemblance to Touchet-type dikes. They appear to have formed by a different mechanism.
Small dikes in Ringold sediments at Saddle Mountains. A few small white dikes descend into a red, sandy alluvial fan gravel that overlies Elephant Mountain basalt. Nearly identical dikes in same strata occur at Smyrna Bench.
Small dikes in the Ringold Fm. Small, single-fill dikes in a white claystone at Othello Canal. I examine these dikes in a YouTube video Pliocene Clastic Dikes at Othello Canal.
Columbia River Road. Dikes from above penetrate tens of meters into the Ringold Formation at White Bluffs.
Small dikes in eastern Yakima Valley. A thin clastic dike, truncated at its top, cuts fluvial-lacustrine strata at Houghton Rd north of Sunnyside, WA. These quiet water sediments closely resemble those at Snipes Mountain (mapped as Miocene Ellensburg or undifferentiated Miocene) and at many locations in Pasco Basin (mapped as Pliocene Ringold). The contact between Ellensburg and Ringold is not well defined.
Do Clastic Dikes Indicate Paleoseismicity?
Clastic dikes are commonly observed in earthquake-prone regions of the world and are often highlighted in post-quake damage assessments. Standardized methods for measuring and mapping liquefaction dikes and related features have been developed by USGS, state geological surveys, and consultants (Gohn and others, 1984; Atwater, 1994; Obermeier, 1996, 2009; Peterson and Madin, 1998; McCalpin, 2009; Holtzer and others, 2011). Field measurements of dike width, length, and distance from epicenter can be helpful in reconstructing the spatial extent of strong shaking and the drafting of shake intensity maps. The value of such maps largely depends on the size of the dataset. A small number of measurements or measurements collected within a small area (i.e., a trench) have low value because they under-represent the wider effects of shaking and may lack statistical power.
Misinterpretation of features and field relationships can also be a problem, especially for inexperienced staff or where the exposure is poor. In the absence of abundant, quality exposures or unfamiliar geology, investigators should be especially aware of their biases. The assumption that all clastic dikes form by liquefaction and were triggered by earthquakes has led some to incorrectly interpret clastic dikes formed by nonseismic processes as seismites.
Double Bluff on Whidbey Island, WA. Deformed clay-rich units (orange-tan) lie within a package of thick sands (brown-gray). Though the grainsizes are not too different from many exposures in the megaflood region, the setting is Pleistocene Puget Sound - an estuarine lowland-glacial outwash plain. The entire package shown in the photo above is deformed, though deformation is partitioned differently in the various units. Conspicuous fluidization dikes rise from each clay-rich layer and intrude overlying sand beds. The once-horizontal layering in the now-deformed sands nearly parallels the margins of the irregular dikes; both clay and sand swirl together. The dikes and swirled sands that surround them resemble features exposed in the Sanpoil Valley (i.e., t-shaped mud squirts formed by floodwater loading, rapid sand deposition, and current drag). Deformation here is attributed to seismic shaking and mass wasting, all of which I would guess occurred well back from a steep cliff face, prior to and independent of a shoreline bluff. This bluff has retreated considerably during the Holocene.
In 2017, an international conference was convened to coordinate proper reporting on seismites in sedimentary sequences. The conference emphasized the need for caution (Feng, 2017). It seems “seismite” (Seilacher, 1969; Montenat and others, 2007; Van Loon, 2014) has for some time been assigned too liberally to features of nonseismic or ambiguous origin, making reexamination of many "classic" seismite localities necessary. Participating geoscientists reattributed many "classic" features to nonseismic triggers, most commonly to rapid sedimentation and overloading (Moretti and Van Loon, 2014; Shanmugam, 2016 and references therein). The following three quotes capture the feelings of participants:
“Nonseismic events can create structures that are virtually indistinguishable from seismically- eformed sediments, or seismites. Therefore, paleoseismologists must correlate candidate seismites over regions and rule out nontectonic origins before concluding that an earthquake occurred.”
– L.B. Grant
“A great progress has been made in researches [SIC] of soft-sediment deformation structures (SSDs) and seismites in China. However, the research thought was not open-minded. About the origin of SSDs, it was almost with one viewpoint, i.e., almost all papers published in journals of China considered the beds with SSDs as seismites. It is not a good phenomenon.”
– Z-Z. Feng
“At present, there are no criteria to distinguish...soft-sediment deformation structures formed by earthquakes from SSDs formed by the other 20 triggering mechanisms...the current practice of interpreting all SSDs as “seismites” is a sign of intellectual indolence.”
– G. Shanmugam
J Harlan Bretz on clastic dikes. Bretz did not pay much attention to clastic dikes in the Channeled Scabland, but a few mentions do pop up in his copious field notes. On August 7, 1928 at "Gardena Cliffs" just south of Touchet, WA he writes, "Clastic dikes are prominent, some of them wedging out halfway down the cliff, some continuing to the bottom of the section...Wedges of the fine sand at angles of 40 degrees from horizontal penetrate or appear to penetrate up into the gravel for three or four feet" (1928 typed field notes, p. 27). On August 10, 1928 in the Walla Walla Valley, he reports, "Clastic dike of marvellous development abundant in these sections. But tho they contain the coarse black sand, they are not responsible for the pockets and lenses [ice rafted berg mounds containing non-basaltic clasts]. One clastic dike has seams of sand separated by seams of clay in the prevailing mode but seams of good brown sand" (1928 typed field notes, p. 34-35). On July 29, 1928 at Willow Creek, WA he finds, "fingers of the black sand extend from the gravel into the silt." (1928 typed field notes, p. 8). Dikes are again observed near Clarkson and Asotin in his 1928 field notes (p. 43). Bretz also describes aseismic deformation in the Touchet Beds in his typed field notes and in one article (August 14, 1923; Bretz, 1928b, Fig. 9 photo above; July 15, 1929). See Footnote 11.
Sheeted dikes in the Channeled Scablands and Palouse Hills. Sheeted dikes originate in Pleistocene deposits, including both “ancient” flood deposits (>35 ka, pre-Late Wisconsin) and younger Missoula Flood deposits (<35 ka, Late Wisconsin). The vertically sheeted, wedge-shaped structures number in the tens of thousands (a conservative estimate), are visually distinctive, and occur only within the boundaries of the Ice Age floodways. They penetrate to many meters depth, including to basalt bedrock. Various basalt flows and interbeds, where truncated by flood unconformities and/or overlain by flood, deposits also contain dikes - whatever flow is exposed to overland floods.
Maximum Width Method is Inappropriate for Sheeted Dikes (Compound and Composite)
Liquefaction-hazard maps prepared in the wake of damaging earthquakes are based on point data collected in the field, specifically the widths and locations of surface rupture, clastic dikes, water spouts, sand boils, and related phenomena. Liquefaction dikes in the subsurface feed sand blows erupted at the surface. If cross section exposures are available, the width of the widest feeder dike can be recorded at each site and the point data contoured or otherwise summarized cartographically. One such method is the “maximum width method”. It is based on the notion that seismic shaking is most intense near an epicenter and drops off with distance away as energy attenuates. Larger dikes are predicted near the epicenter where ground acceleration is greater, shaking more intense, higher pore pressures in wet sediment were generated, and more lateral spreading occurred. Relationships between maximum width of liquefaction-type feeder dikes and shaking intensity are well established (Ambraseys, 1991; Galli, 2000; Zhong and others, 2022).
An significant and often-cited attempt at liquefaction-feature mapping was conducted in the New Madrid Seismic Zone by USGS geologist Steve Obermeier. The investigation targeted sand blows formed by shaking in the valleys tributary to the lower Mississippi River (Fuller, 1912; Boyd and Schumm, 1995; Obermeier and others, 2005). Magnitude 7.2–8.2 quakes with Modified Mercalli Intensities >VIII struck the region in 1811-1812, toppling unreinforced structures, disrupting transportation networks, and changing local hydrology. Two earlier seismic events are now recognized as well. During shaking, sand blows vented wet sediment in the floodplains of large rivers to the surface over hundreds of square kilometers. Remnants of the vented sand are still visible on aerial photos. Obermeier (1998), collected width measurements on feeder dikes exposed in creek cutbanks and approximated the location of the paleoepicenter, demonstrating liquefaction features can be used to reconstruct the damage halo of past quakes and estimate magnitude.
Sand blows in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Obermeier used the maximum width method to characterize Holocene sand blows preserved in broad floodplains of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers (Obermeier, 1998). Black circles correspond to his 3 maximum width categories for the sand-filled feeder dikes (15 cm, 15-50 cm, >50 cm). Dashed ovals are the damage halos from the 19th century quakes.
But the USGS's methodology for measuring sand blow feeder dikes (liquefaction features) is not applicable in the Columbia Basin. The method inappropriate for sheeted, downward-pinching clastic dikes (sand injectites). The 'maximum width method' assumes dikes are single-fill structures formed during single earthquakes; dike width scales with the strength of shaking. Width captures the total amount of lateral spreading that occurred during a shaking event. By contrast, the width of a sheeted dike reflects the total amount of widening, which may have occurred during multiple events separated by decades to millennia. Sheeted dikes grow incrementally by multiple injection/widening events that can be separated by long hiatuses. The two data sets describe two entirely different phenomena, likely different failure modes (hydraulic fracture vs. fluidized escape), different triggers, and different near-surface saturation levels (water table position). The appropriate measurement, one that provides an apples-to-apples comparison, would be to record the width of the widest feeder dike at a site (single-fill structures) vs. the width of the widest individual sheet in any dike at a site (sheeted structures).
Crust Beneath Columbia Basin vs. New Madrid The tectonic setting and seismic potential of faults in the Columbia Basin (<M 7) and faults in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (>M 7) are not comparable. The New Madrid is an ancient failed rift in crystalline basement (seismicity generated by deep, steep faults in strong crust). The Columbia Basin is a young back-arc flood basalt province resting atop Tertiary sedimentary-volcanic sequences formed outboard of the cratonic margin (seismicity generated by shallow, low-angle thrusts in young, relatively weak material). Deformation (liquefaction) in the New Madrid region involved Holocene floodplain deposits of major rivers - the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash. Liquefaction was confined to wet, low-relief, alluvial plains. Deformation in Columbia Basin, by contrast, involved Ice Age megaflood deposits deposited atop Miocene basalt, sedimentary interbeds, and associated basin fill units. Large rivers here flow mostly in deep, bedrock gorges. The water table resides beneath a thick vadose zone in cover in many valleys.
Bedrock geology or floodway processes? Sheeted clastic dikes are found in sediments overlying thick Miocene basalts in the Columbia Basin (Pasco Basin, Yakima Fold Belt, Palouse, Willamette Valley Subprovinces), but not in sediments overlying thinner basalts of the Blue Mountains Subprovince and Idaho-Nevada Graben. Subprovinces map modified from Tolan and others (2009, Figure 1).
Missing Holocene Deformation
Thick, unconsolidated alluvium in dozens of valleys in Eastern Washington lack clastic dikes. The absence of dikes in wet, fine grained Holocene floodplain and valley fills suggests that a.) faults of the region do not generate large enough earthquakes to produce dikes like those in Pleistocene sediments, or b.) Pleistocene dikes are not the product of large earthquakes, or c.) that the recurrence interval of large earthquakes is much longer than 10,000-15,000 years.
Undeformed Holocene alluvium. Thick sections of Holocene floodplain alluvium (>4m) like this in the Dry Creek Valley near Walla Walla show no evidence of strong, post-Mazama shaking. White Mazama ash is conspicuous in many roadcuts, railcuts, and cutbanks in the Walla Walla Valley. If present, deformed bedding and faults would have long ago been identified by local geologists, farmers, and soil scientists given the strong visual contrast between the bright white ash and darker alluvium. Holocene deformation attributable to seismic shaking, if present, is not widespread in Eastern Washington. Photo location is the intersection of Harvey Shaw Rd and Dague Rd along Dry Creek ~8 km north of Walla Walla, WA. Mapped Quaternary faults nearby include Wallula Fault Zone (21 km away), Hite Fault (33 km away), Kooskooskie Fault (23 km away), and Promontory Point Fault (6 km away). Photographed in June 2021.
Thick alluvium. No deformation found in floodplain sediments of Union Flat Creek near Dusty, WA.
Undeformed late Pleistocene-Holocene alluvium. Thick alluvial fills along Willow Creek near LaCrosse, WA are undeformed.
Undeformed late Pleistocene deposits and Holocene alluvium. Ice Age flood, reworked colluvium, and lake deposits capped by younger alluvium and Mazama Ash are well exposed along Latah Creek west of Spokane, WA. Lake beds are prone to failure along the creek, but the section remains largely undeformed and without dikes. I've seen nothing resembling continuously-deformed layers (i.e., seismites). Local folds (centimeter to meter scale) are occassionally encountered. These are rollups formed where coarse bedload gravels override finer grained sediments (high energy backflood flows). Cutbank exposures are found along Hwy 195 near Qualchan Golf Course and farther up Hangman Valley Rd near Hangman Valley Golf Course.
Shaking Intensity-Liquefaction Distance Relationships Fail
Shallow, intraplate faults in the study area are believed capable of producing magnitude ~6.5 earthquakes and MMI VII–VIII shaking (Lidke and others, 2003). However, sheeted clastic dikes sourced in Pleistocene sediments are found at distances far beyond the 100–125 km outer limit for soft sediment deformation established by Galli (2000) and Zhong and others (2022).
- An epicenter placed at Wallula Gap (Wallula Fault Zone) is located >285 km from large dikes near Kettle Falls, WA.
- An epicenter at Burbank, WA (Umtanum–Gable Mountain Fault) is >260 km from large dikes in Lewiston Basin, ID.
- An epicenter in the Blue Mountains (Hite Fault) is >265 km from large dikes near Granger, WA in the western Yakima Valley.
- An epicenter placed near Arlington, OR (Arlington–Shutler Fault Zone) is >230 km from dikes in the central Willamette Valley, OR.
- An epicenter placed at Smyrna, WA (Saddle Mountains Fault) is 225 km from large dikes at Kettle Falls, 205 km from Tammany Creek, ID, 135 km from Cecil, OR, and 120 km from Bridgeport Hill, WA.
- An epicenter placed at Wyeth, OR (Mount Hood Fault Zone) is 250 km from large dikes at Warden, WA, 375 km from Lewiston, ID, and 395 km from Latah Creek, WA.
- An epicenter placed at Spencer Canyon near Entiat, WA (unnamed fault zone) is >210 km from large dikes at Touchet, WA.
Magnitude–distance curves. Curves from six liquefaction studies conducted on several continents were compiled by Galli (2000) and Zhong and others (2022). The Zhong study builds on Qiao and others (2017). The studies define a robust relationship between earthquake magnitude and the radial distance away from an epicenter at which liquefaction features can form. Applying the curves to faults in the Columbia Basin, believed capable of magnitude 7.0 quakes, liquefaction is expected to extend outward up to ~125 km. However, many large dikes in the study area are found at distances greater than 125 km away from Yakima Fold Belt structures, the Hite fault, the Arlington–Shutler fault zone, and the OWL-Wallula fault zone. Figure modified from Galli (2000).
Weak Evidence of Strong Shaking East of the Cascades
If the dikes in the Channeled Scablands are the products of seismic shaking, then one or more of the Yakima Fold Belt structures would be the likely trigger(s). However, the dikes are distributed over too large an area for a single YFB fault to be the culprit. If one or more structures (i.e., Saddle Mountains Fault) triggered diking, then a recurrent record of seismic shaking would be evident in nearby exposures of Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene strata. Thick Holocene sections in particular, where evidence of strong shaking should be widespread and well preserved, are plentiful in the region and accessible from major roads. Likewise, faulted sediments at Toppenish Ridge, Smyrna Bench, Lind Coulee, Kittitas Valley, Naches Valley, and many other locations should host seismites. Measured sections through Ellensburg, Latah, and Ringold Fm should contain evidence of liquefaction. Evidence of strong shaking should be well expressed along active faults and should decrease with distance from them.
Saddle Mountains Fault. Several excellent exposures of sandy interbeds between tilted basalt flows (Elephant Mountain) are found along the Saddle Mountains front (Lower Crab Creek). None contain sheeted clastic dikes. The thin, light-colored fractures in the photo at right are not liquefaction features, but bleached shear bands, which are structures common in deformed sandstones worldwide.
Study on interbeds. Ebinghaus and others (2012, Fig. 5) examined Miocene sedimentary interbeds (Ellensburg Fm) at 14 sites in Pasco and Quincy Basins. Minor soft sediment deformation was noted at 3 sites. At Wagon Road, Wagon Road 2 (Moses Coulee), and Mabton (Yakima Valley), deformation was observed at contacts between thin siltstones-mudstones and overlying fluvial sands. The load casts and flame structures appear directly tied to this particular sedimentary environment: crevasse splays repeatedly spilling sand onto off-channel muds. No clastic dikes were reported. Their findings are consistent with my own observations of Tertiary sediments and those of others (i.e., Hays and Schuster, 1983; Smith, 1988).
Fault zone investigations have likewise failed to reveal a pattern of strong seismic shaking in Eastern Washington:
- The Stateline earthquake of 1936, centered in the Walla Walla Valley - the quake often used as evidence for strong shaking on OWL faults - was a sub-magnitude 6.0 event that formed no sheeted dikes and caused no damage to speak of beyond its epicenter, the tiny community of Umapine, OR.
- The Hite Fault, located in the Blue Mountains southeast of Walla Walla, appears no longer seismically active. I am aware of no reports of liquefaction associated with the Hite Fault.
- Strong shaking produced by a Puget Sound fault or by the Cascadia Subduction Zone are far-fetched explanations for the dikes in Eastern Washington. Shaking generated west of the Cascade divide, would be greatly attenuated before reaching the Columbia Basin (Peterson and others, 2011; Wood and others, 2014). No evidence of megathrust shaking at 1700 AD (Atwater and others, 2005) is recognized in Eastern Washington. Likewise, no evidence of the 1918 Vancouver Island M 7.2, 1946 Vancouver Island M 7.5, 1949 Olympia M 6.7, or 2001 Nisqually M 6.8 is known.
- Widespread liquefaction was not reported following the 1872 North Cascades earthquake (~M 7) and its many aftershocks (Milne, 1956; Sherrod and others, 2015; Brocher and others, 2018) despite vast quantities of silty-sandy glaciofluvial and glaciolacustrine sediments in terraces along the Columbia, Wenatchee, Methow, Okanogan, and Sanpoil Rivers. Stories about damaging earthquakes and news onother natural disasters came from local newpapermen (see Brocher and others, 2018, Appendix B), whose job it was then and is today to amplify the spectacle and sell papers. Their reports should be taken with a grain of salt. The 1872 quake caused water spouts, ground cracks, landslides, and collapsed cabin roofs according to reports (Washington Stadard Newspaper 11 Jan 1873; Coombs and others, 1976). Let's put those reports in historical context. Wenatchee in 1872 was in every way a frontier town. Residents - all 100 of them - were 20 years away from their town being platted. The light bulb and the telephone had not yet been invented. Ulysses S. Grant was President. Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona were not yet states. Chelan County didn't exist. Just 6 rudimentary seimographs monitored ground motion for the entire PNW region, including parts of British Columbia, until the mid-1960s.
- The notion that widespread liquefaction east of the Cascades could be attributed to large, distant quakes through a "bounce of seismic of energy from the Moho" (i.e., Obermeier, 1988, p. 250) is flatly rejected.
- A long history of strong seismic shaking has not been recognized in a.) hundreds of borehole cores logged at the Hanford Site, b.) in dozens of measured sections at White Bluffs by several geologists, c.) in cores from alpine lakes in the Cascades and Okanogan Highlands, d.) in ODP cores off WA and OR, e.) in thick Ellensburg/Thorp/Latah Fm sections in Kittitas, Yakima, and Naches Valleys, f.) in Neogene sediments in the Dalles-Umatilla syncline, and g.) in thick and thin sedimentary interbeds in the CRBs across the region. A strong paleoseismic signal remains largely unrecognized despite more than a century of geological investigation by USGS, USBOR, Washington Geological Survey, various mapping crews, university researchers, graduate students, and others.
Evidence of strong shaking in central Washington is a hypothesis currently being tested through trenching and other investigations by USGS. Plans for future trenching are unclear, but I assume their work will continue. Reports are at best mixed regarding the actual threat Quaternary faults pose to citizens and infrastructure in the region. Some reports contain significant errors (i.e., Angster and others, 2020) or interpretations disputed by collaborators (Coppersmith and others, 2014). Much of the USGS's work is trustworthy, capably handled by seasoned field staff. Nevertheless, no association between YFB seismicity and sheeted clastic dikes has been established to date through trenching of more than a dozen faults or by any other method. Instead, non-seismic factors (large overland floods, rapid sedimenation) appear to control where, when, and how the dikes formed (see Footnote 6). It is entirely plausible that the YFB ridges rose one M 5.9 quake at a time.
Lost near Lyons Ferry. About 15 Touchet Beds overlie a thick bar gravel in the Snake River canyon near Lyons Ferry. John Whitmer photo (WGS Archive No. 03144).
Sheeted Dikes by Nonseismic Triggers
Examples of sheeted, per descendum clastic dikes that closely resemble those in Columbia Basin. In all cases, overloading, rapid sedimentation, and hydrofracture were involved. Sheeted, wedge-shaped dikes intrude muddy deposits beneath tidewater glaciers in Sweden (Von Brunn and Talbot, 1986; Jolly and Lonergan, 2002; Le Heron and Etienne, 2005; Phillips and others, 2013), New England (Kruger, 1938), and in sediments of alpine glacial lakes (Sutherland and others, 2022). Sheeted dikes intrude lahar deposits on the side of an Aleutian volcano in Alaska (Herriott and others, 2014). Dikes formed by hydrofracture propagate downward and laterally out of marine turbidites into channel levees and distal deepwater fan-lobe complexes (Braccini and others, 2008; Cobain and others, 2016). Wedge-shaped sand dikes descend from the base of debris flow deposits into the underlying sandstone at Black Dragon Canyon in the San Rafael Swell, UT (Author's field notes, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dikes_in_black_dragon_canyon_UT.JPG).
Lessons from Mount Spurr, Alaska. Sheeted dikes with identical characteristics observed in Touchet-type dikes discovered by Herriott (2014) in sandy lahar deposits on the side of an Aleutian volcano. Rapid deposition, surface loading, wet over dry sediments, and hydraulic fracturing involved. Image courtesy of Herriott.
Sheeted dikes in glacial settings. Descending "laminated dikes" at Voss, Norway are identical to dikes in the Touchet Beds of Washington State. Wall-parallel laminations formed by "a repetitive process operating during formation of these types of dikes" (Mangerud and Skreden, 1972; Mangerud et al., 1981; Larsen and Mangerud, 1992). Similar downward-injected dikes formed in glacial seettings are reported in Scandinavia, British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, and New England (Amark, 1985; Broster and Clague, 1987; Dionne and Shilts, 1974; Dreimanis and Rappol, 1996; Kruger, 1938).
Grounding glacial ice injects sediment downward. Top-loading and hydraulic fracture conspire to force wedge-shaped dikes into a muddy substrate. Figure by von Brunn and Talbot (1986, Fig. 16).
Field Work Matters
The origin of clastic dikes in sedimentary sequences can be ambiguous Earthquakes are not required. In fact, clastic dikes are reported in many geological settings where active seismicity plays no role at all (Shanmugam, 2016). Lessons learned from coastal California or the Wabash Valley cannot be applied universally. When anchored by evidence gathered at the outcrop, investigations into the origin of a clastic dike set tilt toward a correct interpretation. Office-generated theories and probability models serve society best when they are rooted in and remain subordinate to field data.
Dikes are threshold features that, if interpreted one way, may prompt policy makers to brand a landscape as hazardous and unfit for occupation and/or development. Interpreted another way, the same dikes become Ice Age relicts of little importance to anyone other than academics and megaflood enthusiasts.
Careful field work that involves a significant number of observations (measurements, descriptions, samples) and a study area scaled to the geological phenomenon under investigation should be de rigueur. Overuse of "seismite", shoddy field documentation, and the application of methods poorly suited to the region are unacceptable practices.
Project planning is the responsibility of the paleoseismologist. Paleoseismology is primarily a field-based discipline focused on determining the timing and effects of prehistoric earthquakes. Data gathered in the course of a paleoseismic investigation (fault slip rates, event dates, and shaking effects) are critical inputs to building codes, hazard planning documents, and land use policies. Data collected in the field inform and often drive policymaking. Unlike technical trench logs and tables of recurrence probabilities, maps constructed from field data are easily understood by technical and non-technical audiences alike. They are uniquely influential and readily migrated into land use policy documents, which tend to persist for decades.
Distances from an assumed epicenter. Radial distances from outcrops I visited containing clastic dikes (circles) measured from an assumed epicenter at Wallula Gap (Wallula Fault Zone). Most dikes occur within 150 km of the assumed epicenter, but many occur at distances far beyond liquefaction limits established by Galli (2000). Black bars represent the boundaries of subbasins along the Ice Age floodway. Subbasin count, at bottom of figure, is a proxy for outcrop availability. Outcrops are more numerous near Wallula Gap, where several rivers converge. Dikes are most abundant in exposures immediately upstream and downstream of Wallula Gap, though large dikes are found in distant exposures. Subbasins: CC = Crab Creek Valley, GT = Gorge Tributary valleys downstream of Wallula Gap to The Dalles, LB = Lewiston Basin, OK = Okanogan Valley, PB = Pasco Basin, RP = Rathdrum Prairie, QB = Quincy Basin, SR = Snake River Valley, TV = Tucannon River Valley, UB = Umatilla Basin, UC = Upper Columbia River Valley, WC = Willow Creek Valley, WW = Walla Walla Valley, WV = Willamette Valley, YV = Yakima Valley.
Same dikes hundreds of kilometers apart. One of several very large Touchet-type clastic dikes in the Upper Columbia River gorge, some 285 km north of Wallula Fault Zone. Lake Roosevelt near Kettle Falls, WA.
Key Characteristics of Clastic Dikes Assessable in the Field
Three key physical characteristics of clastic dikes, (a) vertical sheeting, (b) taper direction, and (c) truncation by bedding, speak directly to dike origin and are readily assessable in the field.
(a) Vertical Sheeting - Sheeting is the result of repeated fracturing and sediment injection. Dikes in the study area grew in staccato fashion by filling of newly opened fractures by new pulses of sediment. Sheeting in dikes found elsewhere likely records a similar pattern of reinjection along preexisting weaknesses. New sheets erode older ones; rip-ups derived from adjacent bands should be present in abundance. Small packages of parallel sheets, typically up to six or so in the case of study area dikes, commonly crosscut older packages and reveal variations in the way fractures propagate. If new sheets tap progressively younger source beds, small collapses should be present above fractures opening below. At some of my study sites, multiple collapses appear in successive rhythmites, each initiating a dike. Brief periods of dike widening alternate with longer periods of inactivity (hiatus), a pattern that tracks with cyclic filling and spilling by proglacial lakes.
(b) Taper Direction - Taper direction is strongly tied to dike origin as it often reveals how fractures propagated, the mode of fracture, and the orientation of the fluid pressure gradient. In many cases, taper direction reveals the source of dike fills. Upward-tapering dikes rise from a buried sediment source layer and formed by upward escape of fluidized sediment under a normal pressure gradient (higher deeper, lower shallower). During shaking, pore fluid pressure rises. If the pressure exceeds the confining stress, then wet sediment is expellled upward, down the pressure gradient. Downward-tapering dikes indicate injection from the surface and a temporarily inverted pressure gradient. Fluid driven fractures propagate downward and are filled by sediment circulating at the surface. Upward-tapering dikes are almost always the result of seismic shaking. Downward-tapering dikes (per descendum) form in response to rapid loading and hydraulic fracture. Fractures tend to follow efficient pathways within the substrate.
(c) Truncations - The tops of downward-tapering dikes are truncated at bedding contacts or unconformities. Dikes truncated tops constrain the timing of injection. A set of dikes truncated by depositional or erosional contacts is evidence of a repetitive trigger and repeated diking over time.
Flood counts and the development of vertical sheeting. Stacks of rhythmites (Touchet Beds) deposited by Pleistocene megafloods accumulated to different thicknesses in different parts of the Channeled Scabland. Rhythmite counts vary depending on location. The most complete rhythmite sections occur in slackwater basins repeatedly filled by Lake Lewis, Lake Condon, and Lake Allison. Lake Lewis filled the Walla Walla Valley (Waitt, 1980; 1985), Lewiston Basin (Bretz, 1929 field notes; Webster and others 1982), and Tucannon Valley (Smith, 1993). Lake Condon filled the Umatilla Valley (Benito and O'Connor, 2003), Willow Creek Valley (Cooley, 2015), and Sixmile Valley. Lake Allison filled the Willamette Valley (Glenn, 1965). Glacial Lake Columbia filled the Sanpoil Valley (Atwater, 1986), Upper Columbia Valley (Kiver and Stradling, 1982; Hanson and Clague, 2012), Latah Creek Valley (Rigby, 1982; Kiver and Stradling, 1982; Waitt, 1983; Meyer, 1999), and Foster Coulee (Russell, 1893). Rhythmites also occur in the Glacial Priest Lake basin (Walker, 1967; Breckenridge, 1989). The rhythmite count at a site approximates the flood count. All floods flowed through Wallula Gap and slackwater lakes that ponded there were the deepest anywhere in the region (>200m). Consequently, the largest dikes occur in full rhythmite sections in the southern Pasco Basin, eastern Umatilla Basin, and western Walla Walla Valley. Fill band counts (sheet counts) record repeated flood-loading, substrate failure, and sediment injection. Sheet counts (injections) roughly scale with rhythmite counts (flood counts), though a one-sheet-per-flood pattern is not robust. The sheet count data suggest that up to about 10 sheets may form in a given dike during a flood. Local conditions seem to play a role(flow regime, water depth, valley configuration, grainsize, slackwater lake residence time, etc.). Because dikes widen by the addition of new sediment via reinjection, their widest portions occur near the base of rhythmite stacks (lower in the section) rather than near their tops (higher in the section). Dikes can appear to taper upward because newer fills that tapped successively younger flood beds intruded alongside older fills, forming composite injection dikes
Truncated dikes at multiple levels. Earlier workers have noted clastic dikes in more than a dozen geologic units exposed along the Ice Age floodway. I've revisited their sites and redrawn the stratigraphy at each to clarify the relationship between the dikes and the deposits. The sketches above are representative of studies published to date and show diking was recurrent and associated with flooding. A.) Walla Walla Valley sites from Spencer and Jaffee (2002). B.) Lind Coulee site from Daugherty (1956). C.) Moxee Mammoth site from Lillquist and others (2005). D.) Hanford's FMEF site from Bjornstad and others (1990). E.) Rulo site from Bader and others (2016). A = Alluvium, C = Colluvium, CRB = Columbia River Basalt, DIA = Silt diamict, EG = Exotic-clast bearing gravel, FG = Fanglomerate/Alluvial fan gravel, L = Loess, P = Paleosol, S = Sandy, SCR = Silt-clay rhythmites, TB = Touchet Beds/Hanford Fm.
Silt-sealed Cracks Facilitated Hydrofracture
Sand-propped hydrofractures are used by the petroleum industry to stimulate oil and gas reservoirs, a procedure known as "fracking". Hydrofracturing is induced by shutting in a portion of the well bore, adding a proppant slurry (sand + water + chemicals), and using pumps to jack up the fluid pressure. When fluid pressure exceeds the formation's resistance, the rock surrounding the well fails and fluid-driven fractures propagate outward. The pressurized proppant slurry immediately fills the new fractures and holds them slightly open, permitting hydrocarbons to flow back to the well. Fractures propagated beyond the well bore greatly increase a well's effective surface area and open new pathways into the reservoir.
Silt skins appear to have facilitated hydrofracturing of substrates during megaflooding (rapid loading events). Loading by floodwater raised fluid pressure in the formation. Elevated pressure state that lasted for a period of seconds to minutes. Shallow natural weaknesses such as frost cracks, soil macropores, burrows, and joints provide nucleation planes for new fractures. During flooding, some of the weaknesses became fractures that opened a few centimeters and were rapidly filled by sediment. Dewatering (leakoff) forms a silt skin at the dike wall. The entering water-sediment slurry (natural proppant) was sourced from the base of the overriding flood. The skin-sealed crack behaved as a pressure vessel. Continued loading of the sealed fracture raised pore fluid pressures (Pf) inside. The point at which fluid pressure exceeded the confining strength of the formation (Pf > 03), breakout occurred, propagating the fracture tip, and a forming dike in the 01–02 plane (vertical). As the fluid pressure equilibrates to the confining pressure (Pf = 03), the fracture tip halts, the crack completely fills, and pressure begins to build again if flood load is still present. Each breakout causes a forward jump of the fracture tip and temporarily relieves fluid pressures in fractures (volume increase, pressure decrease). This load-crack-fill-seal cycle is responsible for the dikes’ vertically sheeted fabric.
The direction of fracture propagation appears controlled, in part, by the orientation of older sheets and bedding contacts (weakness planes), in part by the vertically-oriented water load, and in part by the orientation of the local fluid pressure gradient during flood loading (downward-tapering dike = inverted pressure gradient). In sand blow systems, by contrast, the pressure gradient is normal and decreases upward, toward the ground surface (free face). Sand blow feeder dikes are filled with sediment escaping from a fluidized layer at depth and pinch upward (normally-oriented pressure gradient).
Diking within a flood seems to occur at two different times. One, at initial onrush of floodwater (rapid loading). Two, during slackwater (sustained load). Gravelly or sandy dikes are likely produced by the first. Silty-sandy dikes are likely produced by the second. Dike injection in the Touchet Beds appears to be primarily a slackwater phenomenon due to the necessary combination of silt deposition (lower-velocity flow), overloading (deep water), and off-channel preservation (low erosion).
Sheeted infill illustrated. Fluid pressure-crack volume cycling at the scale of the fracture (nearfield scale) explains vertical sheeting in clastic dikes during a loading event. Time steps 1 through 12 in the pressure-time curve correspond with crack tip locations in the illustration below. During rapid overloading, dike growth (cracking and filling) corresponds with pressure-volume cycling where fluid pressure remains between the minimum and maximum principal stress values. Fluid-driven fracture is also responsible for producing slender, descending, sheeted dikes in other geologic settings where rapid overloading has occurred (lahar, glacier, debris flow, etc.). While the general principles of hydraulic fracture were well established in practice and in the literature prior to WWII, the development of sheeting in clastic dikes by hydraulic fracture, as I've illustrated here, is new and published here for the first time.
Sheeting forms pulse by pulse. Cyclic fluid-driven fracture results in the growth of dikes with vertically-sheeted fills during flood events (a single hydrofracture event). The cross sections correspond to the gray shaded portion of the pressure-time curve in the figure above. During hydraulic fracture, new fractures open, propagate, and fill. Here I show 4 pulses corresponding to 4 episodes of adjacent diking (2a, 3a, 3b-c, 4b, 4c) and nonadjacent diking (1a, 2b, 4a). Incremental growth of dikes involves the cycling of fluid pressuer, the repeated opening of new fractures, and near simultaneous infilling by sediment carried by a flood. Evidence of repeated flooding (stacks of rhythmites) and repeated fracture injection (sheeted fills) is a pattern observed throughout the Channeled Scablands.
Near field and far field fracture. I modified the stress-strain curve that describes hydraulic fracture to illustrate my concept of sheeted diking during floods. The curves relate floodwater loads imposed over a broad area (far field flood load) to cyclic pressure pulses that occur at the local scale (near field injections). The fracking/leak-off test framework captures most of the important elements. Leak-off begins when a fracture opens (not at closure) and continues after the fracture closes, but that point, somewhat secondary, is not well captured in this diagram.
Relevant equations. This article provides limited discussion on the set of equations relevant to fluid-driven fracture and diking. The equations above are basic elements of undergraduate-level courses in Fracture Mechanics. Quality YouTube channels teaching this stuff include Nicholas Espinoza, Scott Ramsay, Taylor Sparks, and others. Elastic Pressure (Pe) describes properties of the fractured material. Specifically, the stress perpendicular to a crack required to keep it open, where h is crack width, L is crack length, G is the shear modulus, and v is Poisson's ratio. Source Pressure (Pr) is fluid pressure of the source, considered here to be the pressure of the sediment-water slurry at base of a megaflood or slackwater lake, measured at the opening (top) of the crack. Source Pressure is assumed to be constant during diking. E is Young's modulus of the host sediment or rock, delta p is the density difference between host and the injected fill, g is gravity, Q is the volumetric flux of material injected into the crack, and u is the average injection velocity. Viscous Pressure Drop (Pv) is the pressure change along its length from crack opening to crack tip, where n is the slurry viscosity. Fracture Pressure (Pf) is the pressure required to propagate the crack tip forward, where Kc is the critical fracture toughness. Hydrostatic Pressure (buoyancy) is ignored for near-surface sedimentary dikes at atmospheric temperatures.
Deep marine analogs? A 2m-wide sand injectite intrudes pillow basalts in Angola (Hurst and Cartwright, 2007, Fig. 4).
Evaluating Proposed Origins
In this section, I evaluate the proposed origins based on my data and observations collected from hundreds of dike-bearing outcrops over the past 30 years.
Origin Hypothesis 1b - Little evidence supports a desiccation origin. Dike geometry, distribution, size, and internal sedimentary characteristics are fundamentally at odds with an origin involving the passive infilling of meters-deep, open-standing mudcracks.
Origin Hypothesis 2: Ground ice - Ice wedges are common to permafrost lowlands of North America, Europe, and Asia. Ice wedges grow by seasonal freeze-thaw action and coalesce to form conspicuous polygonal networks. Many display vertically-laminated fills (Lachenbruch, 1962; Romanovskiy, 1973). Ice wedge growth at middle latitudes today is far less common, though fossil ice wedge casts have been found (Horber, 1949; Dylik, 1966; Burbidge and others, 1988; Stone and Ashley, 1992; Demoulin, 1996). Alwin and Scott (1970), Lupher (1944), and Black (1979) interpreted clastic dikes in the Pasco Basin as fossil ice wedge casts based on their arrangement in polygonal networks, vertically-laminated fills, and age. While the dikes in some ways resemble ground ice features, evidence of permafrost ever forming in Eastern Washington has not been found. The Columbia Basin is located at the transition between maritime and continental climate zones. Its average elevation is quite low. Only modest periglacial evidence is know in the Blue Mountains of SE Washington. Cirque elevations in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho project far above the crests of Yakima Fold Belt ridges (Pierce, 2003, Fig. 1). The Basin lies significantly west of the relict ground ice features catalogued for Idaho and Montana (French, 2018). Distinctive frost wedges formed in varved bottom sediments of Glacial Lake Missoula have not be recognized in similar varved beds of Glacial Lake Columbia beds in north-central Washington (Chambers, 1984; Chambers and Currey, 1989; Levish, 1997; Hanson and others, 2012; Hanson, 2013; Smith, 2014, 2021). Fossil soil wedges in Idaho's Lemhi Range (Butler, 1984; D.R. Butler written communication), at the Owl Cave-Wasden Site on the Snake River Plain (Dort, 1968; Butler, 1969), in terrace gravels near Lewistown, MT (Schafer, 1949), in prairie soils east of Glacier National Park (unpublished field notes by the author) and near Laramie, WY (Grasso, 1979; Mears, 1981, 1987; Nissen and Mears, 1990; Munn and Spackman, 1991; Dillon and Sorenson, 2007) have not been found in Washington.
Wedges in Glacial Lake Missoula beds. Numerous small wedges like this descend from several horizons in Glacial Lake Missoula "varve" beds exposed at Rail Line (A,B), Jocko River (C), Crow Dam, and Garden Gulch sections (Chambers, 1984; Chambers and Currey, 1989; Levish, 1997; Hanson and others, 2012; Hanson, 2013; Smith, 2014, 2021). These structures formed during lowstand periods (shoalings) in the lake basin and resemble wedges commonly found in periglacial regions. A combination of desiccation and shallow ice wedging are likely.
The terminus of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet is well mapped across northern Washington (Porter and others, 1983; Atwater 1986; Cheney, 2016), but a corresponding periglacial zone remains loosely delineated. Murton (2020) delineates a conspicuously narrow permafrost zone south of the Okanogan Lobe; the southern limit of permafrost occupied essentially the same position. Abundant relict periglacial features are found in a 200 km-wide zone south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (Pewe, 1983; Clark and Ciolkosz, 1988), but few such features are reported south of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet (Orme, 2002; French and Millar, 2013; French, 2017).
Late Pleistocene conditions in the Columbia Basin were never periglacial, though the idea seems to persist in the literature (i.e., O'Geen and Busacca, 2001). The landscape never supported a tundra plant community. Tundra biomes are identified by their lack of trees. Tundra plants are adapted to very cold winters, short growing seasons, and shallow rooting zones limited by bedrock or permafrost. Pleistocene mammoth unearthed in south-central Washington were nourished by steppe-grassland forage (Fry, 1969; Last and Barton, 2014). Pollen from Columbia Basin lake cores indicates the long term presence of cold-tolerant, low-growing species and conifers (Blinnikov and others, 2002; Whitlock and Brunelle, 2006).
Ice wedges depicted in the literature. Hundreds of studies have been published on fossil ice wedges, ice wedge casts, and soil wedges formed in permafrost (Lachenbruch, 1962; Pewe, 1973; Romanovskij, 1973; Mears, 1987; Yershov, 1998; Bockheim, 2002; Murton, 2020). Columbia Basin was never glaciated and barely periglacial, even during the very coldest parts of the Pleistocene. Eastern Washington's clastic dikes are not fossil ice wedge casts, despite their laminated fills and speculation by authors (Lupher, 1944; Alwin, 1970; Black, 1979).
No mention of relict ground ice features, frost stirring, or gelifluction is found in NRCS Soil Surveys for the Colville Indian Reservation, Okanogan County (NRCS, 2010), Chelan County (USDA, 1975), Douglas County (NRCS, 2008), Grant County (USDA, 1984), or Lincoln County (USDA, 1981). Paleosols developed in Palouse loess and scabland deposits contain abundant evidence of soil life - phytoliths, rodent burrows, insect burrows, and other features incompatible with perennially frozen ground. Rodents repeatedly recolonized the landscape between Ice Age floods. Frost shattering of Columbia River Basalt, exposed over thousands of square kilometers, was not unusually intense (Pidwirny, 2006). Thick loess and mima mounds, often attributed to periglacial processes, are not diagnostic of periglacial landscapes. Large loess regions are known in glacial and non-glacial landscapes worldwide (Busacca and others, 2004). In North America, silt mounds are found from central Mexico to the Arctic and some mound fields in Washington are clearly Holocene in age. Mima mounds indicate abundant wind, dust, and some aridity. Little else.
At its coldest, the Pleistocene Columbia Basin was "tundra-like" (Cooley, 2008) and perhaps best described as a "cold steppe" (Spencer and Knapp, 2010, p. 50) with widespread sagebrush and pockets of forest refugia supporting species commonly "found in alpine and sub-alpine valleys in the [present-day] Cascade Mountains of Washington... cool-to-cold, moist, open-park conditions...consistent with the presence of continental ice to the north".
Soil wedges in Montana. These wedges formed 465 km east of Grand Coulee Dam in treeless prairie soils east of Glacier National Park. Periglacial wedges like these help define a former ground ice region south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (Murton 2020, French 2017). Roadcut is along Hwy 89 between the Two Medicine River and Badger Creek south of Browning, MT.
Origin Hypothesis 3: Lateral spreading - Lateral spreading forms wedge-shaped cracks by combining liquefaction and lateral extension. Cracks open as blocks of earthen material slide sideways on a low-angle slip plane. The figure below shows three scenarios where wedge-shaped dikes may form in gentle terrain underlain by a thick body of sediment (i.e., Walla Walla Valley). The free face, formed by channel incision and sediment removal is key, as that space accomodates lateral spreading.
There are numerous aspects of lateral spreading that are inconsistent with the Columbia Basin landscape. Tension fractures form near the bluff edges (within 100m?), but dense networks of clastic dikes are most extensive on valley floors. High-relief channel wide enough to create free faces and the space required for spreading are simply not found in the Touchet Beds or other formations that host many dikes. Concave valley floors are, if anything, broadly compressional, not extensional. Slopes of benches underlain by Touchet Beds are too flat to translate blocks of sandy sediment sideways. In short, slide blocks have no reason to form in slackwater settings and, if formed, have nowhere to go. Any spreading was localized in narrow strips along the margins of flood coulees. The dikes are not abundant in deposits of large Late Pleistocene landslides (i.e., Corfu landslide) or rubbly zones between slide blocks.
Lateral spreading still popular on Boyer Avenue? Lateral spreading falls short. Liquefaction does, too.The diagrams above explain why. (A) Channel incision removes support and creates a free face that can facilitate lateral spreading in shoreline bluffs. (B) Seismic shaking can trigger liquefaction in wet, sandy layers at depth resulting in clastic dikes (water escape structures). This involves the mobilization of in situ sediment and venting of a slurry to the surface as sand blows. Broad sheets and "volcanic" sand edifices are formed. (C) A large vertical load imposed by a megaflood (overland flood, backflood, or slackwater lake) increaseds pore fluid pressures in the substrate (sediment or rock), which can initiate hydraulic fracturing. Fractures immediately fill with sediment sourced from the surface (sediment circulating at the base of the flood). Hydraulic fractures initated at the surface propagate downwards. Fractures are propped by the sandy fill to become clastic dikes. Internal sheeting develops during single events (pressure-volume cycling) and over time as new dikes fomred during later flood events merge with older ones. Repeated flooding creates composite clastic dikes.
Free face extension and shearing at depth. Lateral spreading can create unsheeted, wedge-shaped dikes. Wedge-shaped gravel dikes at Hunters, WA formed when unstable shoreline bluffs composed of lake sediments capped by outwash gravel began to topple into the channel. A free face and a subhorizontal slide plane at depth are necessary. Both are missing from exposures containing sheeted dikes.
Origin Hypothesis 4: Rebound following slackwater lake drainage - Ice Age floods imposed enormous loads on the crust. Each flood imposed a load very rapidly and were sustained for several weeks beneath deep slackwater lakes. In the Pasco Basin, the depth of Lake Lewis depth exceeded 200m.
The crust was depressed a bit during floods and rebounded after waters drained away. We don't know the amount of depression or if the effects of loading and unloading are preserved. Because differences exist between sediment deposited by overland floods, slackwater lakes, and non-flood sediment (i.e., alluvium, loess), the relative timing of deformation should be apparent in outcrops. For example, if the coarse grained lower portion of a Touchet Bed (overland flood phase) is deformed, but the finer grained upper portion (slackwater lake phase) remains undeformed, then flooding triggered deformation. If deformation occurred during both phases, it may differ in style due to grainsize differences. If clastic dikes can be smoothly traced to the lower, upper, or both parts of a rhythmite, then both flood and slackwater settings triggered injection.
Belly up to the bar. Wedge-shaped fractures result from up-bending caused by unloading of floodwater by drainage.
Origin Hypothesis 5: Seismic shaking and liquefaction - Floodwater infiltration of fault zones might elevate pore pressure and trigger rupture. Whether scabland floods triggered strong earthquakes is unknown. If the dikes are the products of seismicity, whether tectonic or flood-induced, then diking by liquefaction and lateral spreading would be expected. However, liquefaction dikes found in Holocene alluvium of the lower Columbia River and attributed to the 1700 Cascadia earthquake (Dickenson, 1997; Obermeier and Dickenson, 1997; Atwater and others, 2005, 2015) do not resemble feeder conduits of sand blows like those formed by shaking in Alaska quake in 1964 (McCulloch and Bonilla, 1970) or New Madrid in 1811-12 (Fuller, 1912; Obermeier, 1989). Atwater (2000) suspects the engineering properties of sediments that comprise sand islands and river banks vary in ways not anticipated, which might explain discontinuous liquefaction in visually-similar deposits occupying identical positions in the landscape. Sheeted dikes in the Channeled Scabland formed only during the Pleistocene despite >15 million years of fault activity and growth of Yakima Fold Belt.
Origin Hypothesis 6: Flood-generated vibration - Ice Age floods certainly caused a tremendous rumble as they coursed through the Channeled Scablands. The cataclysm must have been terrifying to humans and animals who experienced them. Overland flooding may have induced a vibratory resonance in surficial sediments, causing them to deform in unusual ways. The dikes may be a product of this resonant deformation. Research into seismic signals generated by large sediment-laden floods was underway at Université de Grenoble-Alpes, France as of Feb 2023 (Kristen Cook, Florent Gimbert, Alain Recking).
Origin Hypothesis 7: Hydraulic fracture triggered by floodwater loading - This is my preferred origin, the evidence for is presented in this article.
Numerous non-seismic triggers. Clastic dikes often form in response to rapid sedimentation and overloading. Dikes are widely documented in both seismically-active and low-seismicity areas and in a variety of geologic environments and deposits. While earthquakes commonly trigger liquefaction and can a produce clastic dikes, they are most commonly unsheeted, upward-tapering, and small. Dike morphology indicates whether liquefaction was involved. Evaluate taper direction, internal sheeting, and the connection to source bed to distinguish each type, its trigger, its origin. Not all clastic dikes are seismites. Figure modified from Shanmugam and others (2016, Figure 16).
Dike-sill-dike. Fluid-driven fracture in unconsolidated granular material is central to the formation of sheeted clastic dikes in the Touchet Beds. An understanding of how hydraulic fractures initiate and propagate is mandatory. Or avoid the physics and continue to flounder about with incomplete notions of liquefaction and other outdated explanations unsupported by data. Your choice, professor.
Conclusions
This article summarizes my work on sheeted clastic dikes in the Columbia River Basin of WA, OR, ID, and MT. The study area is located far from the Cascadia margin and was swept repeatedly by glacial floods during the Pleistocene. Their size, shape, sedimentology, and age indicate all formed by the same mechanism: fluid-driven fracture (hydraulic fracture) and downward injection triggeredd by rapid loading by megafloods and inundation by slow-draining slackwater lakes. Floods and lakes imposed enormous loads on sedimentary and bedrock substrates causing tensional fractures to open, propagate, and fill with sediment. Dike widths reflect local flood counts and sheeting reflects crack-and-fill cycling during flood events. Reinjection of new sediment into existing dikes occured during successive floods. Slumping and hydraulic fracture were suspected by earlier workers (Baker, 1973; Pogue, 1998), but not tested. They are not sand blow feeder structures, liquefaction features, or related to earthquakes as are most clastic dikes described in other regions (i.e., New Madrid Seismic Zone). They are not seismites, but flood injectites that closely resemble sand injectites described in petroleum basins.
This article expands on one published in Northwest Geology v. 49 in August 2020. Northwest Geology is published annually by the Tobacco Root Geological Society in conjunction with the TRGS field conference. TRGS is a Montana-based group of geoscience professionals. I update this online version from time to time as new information becomes available. Online version was first posted here 15 Sept 2020.
LAST UPDATED: 19 November 2024
Keywords: megafloods, sand injectite, clastic dike, channeled scablands, missoula floods, Washington State, hydraulic fracture, Cordilleran Ice Sheet, Touchet Beds
Footnote *1* Bruce Bjornstad, a retired career Quaternary geologist at Hanford, has, more than any of his PNNL colleagues, mentioned the clastic dikes in his writing, beginning with his university work in the late 1970s and continuing with his recent guidebooks on scabland geology. The primary focus of his professional career was the hydrogeological behaviour of megaflood deposits at the Hanford Nuclear Site and, to a lesser extent, sediments of the Ringold Formation. Though an author of numerous agency reports, Bjornstad has never published original or peer reviewed work on clastic dikes. He is listed as a coauthor on Fecht and others (1999) - a mystifying publication - which I believe was compiled from Fecht's notes. The list of quotes below reveals Bjornstad's drifting opinion on the origin of the dikes through time. What accounts for these changes in opinion remains unclear. Based on their 40 years of writing, I consider Bjornstad and his Hanford colleagues to be casual observers of the dikes. They failed to seriously address the dike problem during their time.
a.) Bjornstad (1980)
"The assemblage of sedimentary structures within the Touchet Beds comparable to turbidites ...suggest periodic, rapid, subaqueous deposition of successive rhythmites by turbidity-like currents created by flood surges during a single flood. Additional evidence suggesting that flood surges rather than separate floods were responsible for rhythmite formation [includes]...the possible association relating clastic dikes with soft sediment deformation."
b.) Bjornstad (1990)
"These dikes are thought to represent dewatering structures that developed during compaction and settling of cataclysmic flood deposits during or soon after floodwaters drained from the Pasco Basin (Bergeron and others, 1987)." "Most clastic dikes, ubiquitous in flood deposits throughout the Pasco Basin, appear to have formed through forcible injection during waning stages of flooding (Black, 1979; WCC, 1981) during this time."
c.) Bjornstad and Teel (1993)
"In the Pasco Basin, clastic dikes are believed to be dewatering structures associated with lake draining following cataclysmic floods." d.) Bjornstad and others (2001)
"The dikes signify soft-sediment deformation during or soon after flooding, perhaps associated with flood-induced seismicity (Cooley and others, 1996; Fecht and others, 1999)."
e.) Bjornstad (2006)
"Clastic dikes formed during or soon after Ice Age flooding, perhaps because of ground shaking during earthquakes...If earthquakes occurred more frequently, we might expect to see more dikes in sequences of flood beds with truncations atop flood beds. But this is not the case..."
f.) Bjornstad and Lanigan (2007)
"Clastic dikes may be the result of ground shaking, which caused the wet sediments to liquefy and flow along paths of weakness down into or up along vertical earthquake-generated cracks in the flood deposits."
Footnote *2*
I have not submitted this manuscript to an academic journal. An earlier version was published in Northwest Geology v. 49 publsihed by the Tobacco Root Geological Society (Cooley, 2020). That manuscript was reviewed and approved by Mike Stickney, Director of Earthquake Studies Office at Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology and Jeff Lonn, Research Geologist also at Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. Supporting TRGS's excellent annual field conference is far more important to me than whatever prestige I might gain through publication in a traditional journal. Thousands have read this article because it is offered free online. A few dozen might find it if it were tucked behind a journal's paywall. Paying exorbitant page rates so that others might publish my work seems a bit anachronistic, given the tools available today. When the project is complete (I consider everything here draft information), I will likely submit a much leaner version emphasizing the measurement data to Northwest Science Journal for review. Or maybe Whitman College or the Washington Geologic Survey would be interested.
Footnote *3* In our work as Whitman College geology students (Cooley, 1996; Cooley and others, 1996) and follow on studies (Niell and others, 1997; Pogue, 1998), we imprecisely stated that the dikes penetrate from top to bottom through the entire stack of rhythmites, thus were late-flooding and/or post-flooding features. While many dikes do cut from top to bottom through the stack, their internal structure - their vertical sheeting - preserves a more nuanced history of incremental growth coincident with flooding. Vertical sheets of sediment that comprise large dikes (sheets = dikelets = fill bands), are often truncated at their tops by depositional contacts between rhythmites and surfaces within rhythmites that correspond to abrupt changes in flow regime (i.e., upvalley flow, slackwater, downvalley drainage). The dikes do not descend from the top of the rhythmite stack.
As geologists, we think of a "clastic dike" as a single structure, but sheeted dikes are actually compound structures (multiple parts) and many composite structures (new parts added over time). While the "dike" may crosscut an exposure, each sheet (or packages of sheets) traverses only a portion of it. The dikes grew as single fills andsheet packages during single events, and by the addition of new sheets/packages through time, each sourced from a different rhythmite. Dike growth occurred in tandem with Ice Age flood cycles, which punctuated the Pleistocene. As students, we regularly observed truncated sheets (and entire dikes) and were somewhat puzzled by them. We routinely commented to one another about them, photographed them, and sketched various truncation relationships in our field books. We did not, however, fully recognize, much less emphasize the fundamental importance sheet/package truncation plays in dike growth. The dikes are composite structures that grew wider and deeper by reinjection during dozens of catastrophic glacial outburst flood events. Truncated sheets indicate the dikes are not single-event structures injected at the tail end of Missoula flooding (crosscutting features that post-date deposition of all or most floodbeds), as our clumsy early interpretations suggest. Rather, they are long-lived structures that grew in pulses during floods over time. Many large dikes grew by repeated sheet injection over thousands of years. Their growth recurrence interval is the flood interval.
Footnote *4*
The term injection has no directional implication. Injected material may have moved upward, downward, or sideways. Injection describes fracture-filling where wet or slurried material is mobilized and moves into fractured sediment or rock. The usage of injection and injectite in this article is consistent with the relevant geoscience literature (sediments and structure of petroleum reservoirs), not general textbooks on sedimentology and stratigraphy. For example, injection wells move water from the surface to the subsurface. Hydraulic injection involves the lateral propagation of fractures and proppant from the well bore into the formation. Fluidized injection is commonly used to describe both upward-pinching clastic dikes and dikes that were filled from the top.
Footnote *5*
Burlingame Canyon is on private land is not accessible to the public without permission from landowners.
Footnote *6*
In the course of my investigation of calcrete-bearing sediments of Plio-Pleistocene age near Othello, WA, I have not observed evidence of extensive soft sediment deformation consistent with strong, recurrent shaking in the two dozen sections I have described. I recently correlated 28 detailed stratigraphic columns from White Bluffs by Kevin Lindsey (Lindsey and others, 1996 Appendix A), finding no evidence of repeated, widespread shaking. Soft sediment deformation in Pleistocene sediments is plainly syn-depositional. Local deformation and some small, unsheeted fluidization structures in Ringold sediments are found along Saddle Mountains' frontal thrust. Trenching by Michael West and others decades ago documented young faulting higher on the mountain. Steve Reidel never mentioned seismites in reports on Yakima Fold Belt uplifts or in map unit descriptions accomanying his geologic maps maps. Paleoseismic trenches logged by USGS have not shown liquefaction to be widespread.
Footnote *7*
A package of fill bands injected during a single flood. Three fill bands comprise a composite clastic dike in the idealized example above. Each band formed at a slightly different time during a megaflood event. Each fracture opening corresponds with a slightly different flow regime, taps a slightly different stratigraphic level within a rhythmite as it forms, and accesses sediment of a different grainsize. Substitute different flood beds for stratigraphic position within a single bed to explain reinjected dikes in the region. At a larger scale, dike fills reflect the caliber of the sediment available to them. Grainsize in flood deposits is primarily determined by the local flow regime - high-energy channel, backflooded valley, slackwater lake. Since the configuration of most valleys and bedrock water gaps were not radically changed by flood erosion, successive floods produced more or less the same flow regimes and deposited the same grainsizes in the same places over and over. For example, the protected Touchet Valley received mostly medium to fine sand and silt. Dikes there are filled with the same. The Starbuck area, situated close to high-velocity coulees, received more gravelly sand. Dikes there are filled with coarser material. A page from one of my field books.
Footnote *8*
I update this online document from time to time as new information becomes available. This seems a modern way to do things. I prefer to provide updates they come rather than wait for some journal to publish out of date information.
Footnote *9*
If my work informs yours, you should cite this web-based article or the original print article (Cooley, 2020). What is presented here is new work and original work. It is entirely my own. Please include the date you accessed it in your citation.
Cooley, S.W., date accessed, Sheeted clastic dikes in the megaflood region, WA-OR-ID-MT, https://www.skyecooley.com/single-post/2020/09/15/Sheeted-Clastic-Dikes-in-the-Megaflood-Region
Cooley, S.W., 2020, Sheeted clastic dikes in the megaflood region, WA-OR-ID-MT in Lonn, J; English, A.; McDonald, K.; Hargrave, P. (editors), Northwest Geology: Journal of the Tobacco Root Geological Society, 45th Annual Field Conference - Geology of the Bitterroot Region and Other Papers v. 49, p. 1-17
Footnote *10*
As recently as 1996 and publication of the Final EIS for tank wast remediation (USDOE/WADOE, 1996), a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of geologists regarding the dikes' origin and role in conducting fluids in the subsurface was recognized by geohydrologists at Hanford. Nevertheless, they forward an interpretation,
As with the genesis of [the] clastic dikes, little is known about their hydraulic characteristics...the inferred hydraulic nature of the dikes is that of potentially a minor barrier to flow perpendicular to the dike. The clay content and lack of sand stringer continuity suggest that clastic dikes do not function as preferential flow paths for vertical flow.
Whether the dikes serve as conduits to leaked hazardous liquid waste moving from the surface to subsurface aquifers was partially addressed via an infiltration field experiment on a single, large dike in Touchet Beds at the Hanford Site (Murray and others, 2003). This single experiment generated several other reports by different authors.
A large lithified dike penetrating bedrock at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado raised similar concerns decades prior to the Murray report (Miller and others, 1979). Liquid waste introduced deliberately to the suburface was also a problem at RMA. Characterization of clastic dikes as lateral barriers to migrating fluids is an idea developed at RMA and later adopted by Hanford authors, though few geological similarities between dikes in Washington and Colorado exist,
A vertical, tabular body embedded in fine-grained, tuffaceous, calcareous sandstones, siltstones, and shales has been reported at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The tabular body has the mineralogy and structure of an igneous dike, but it may also be a clastic dike of sedimentary origin. The possibility that the body may be an igneous dike is of concern to the staff geologists at the Arsenal because it could extend to great depth and be impermeable enough to provide a barrier to laterally migrating ground water or, conversely, it could be relatively permeable and provide an aquifer.
The figure below shows the results from an infiltration test where water-borne dye tracer was introduced to the ground surface via driplines and allowed to spread by gravity into in a.) a large, vertical, sheeted clastic dike, b.) a large, sheeted, subhorizontal sill joined to the dike, and c.) non-dike Touchet Bed sediment surrounding both. Red and yellow areas indicate high reflectance values (high mosture content). Odd how reflectance values and moisture values in the chart below disagree. The figure is redrawn from Murray and others (2001, Fig. 7.33, 7.34). I've reframed their nearly unintelligible artwork, thus presented their study's key finding clearly. Note the sill at left is as wet or wetter (containing and conducting as much or more dye tracer) as the vertical dike at center. The report did not address the intersecting sill.
The Murray study has been regularly referenced in subsequent reports, despite it's obvious design flaws and limited value to geological community or waste remediation managers at Hanford. The study failed to consider flow in the sill and failed to test flow in a multi-dike network, the typical configuration in Columbia Basin. Reading through the project's various interim and final reports leaves one with the impression that it was a start-and-stop affair involving many enthusiastic lab scientists doing something (outdoors!) for the first time. Ten collaborators are listed.
If Hanford geologists actually wanted to find out how clastic dikes conduct fluids leaked from the surface, they would have repeated this experiment at several locations, evaluating flow behavior in multiple configurations of clastic dike-sill networks (i.e., flow in typical dike networks). The Murray team studied one dike at one location. Hardly the rigorous investigation of which our National Labs are capable. But Murray gave it the old College Try, didn't he?
Clastic dike exposed in the Army Loop Road excavation. Grid on lowest tier is 2m wide x 1m high. Blue tent covers infiltration dripline equipment. Photo: Murray team.
Clastic dike and sill are much finer grained than host sediment. Photo: Murray and others, 2003, Fig. 10.
Infiltration in dike, sill, and host sediment after 3 days. Murray and others, 2003, Fig. 16.
Infrared image (top) and a composite photograph of the experiment pit face. Vertical dike is on the left in both images. Sill is the long, dark, horizontal feature extending from the right side of the dike. It looks like bedding. Photo: Murray and others, 2003, Fig. 12.
Clastic dike polygonal network along the Army Loop Road near the infiltration study site. Google Earth photo.
*Footnote 11*
The caption for the 1928 photo above reads,
Contorted bedding in silt and fine sand, Walla Walla Valley. Etched into relief by the wind.
In the body of the article, he notes,
Marked irregularities in stratification of sandy phases occur. One such structure is illustrated in Figure 9. No satisfactory explanation for this is at hand.
In 1923, Bretz writes,
Along Sunset Hiway, 4-5 miles north of Wenatchee, is a cut showing a seasonably banded silt about 200 ft above the altitude of Wenatchee. 30-foot section. Silt is pale buff in color. Some portions a very fine sand, somewhat more gray or brown colored. The seasonal banding is far from perfect thruout...In most summer bands, is a delicate foreset or current bedding, showing very gentle southward drift of the material along the bottom. This doesn't seem right for a water body which recorded varve clays. And there are several other unorthodox things too. Portions of the deposit which do not show varve clay straification are composed of fine sand to silt, not of clay. Current bedding is prominent in this, much more so than in the summer varves. Here and there in the section are worn pebbles and cobble not of basalt or the local granite. These undoubtedly show the presence of floating ice. In certain layer of the finer silt are most peculiar contortions of the laminae, tho the strat immediately above or below are not affected. Some of these contortions were sketched. In each sketch, one prominet continuous lamina has been shown. The others are squeezed or thickened to conform. In [sketch 3] the little triangular areas show fragmentation and porosity. These plications or contortions have a strike. They are rolls! And the strike is essentially parallel to the wall of the valley here. Other evidence, in the existence of gentle flexures in the strata themselves, seems to point to settling of the material down a subaqueous slope toward the deeper parts of the valley as the cause for the distortion.
Bretz's only mention of clastic dikes arrives on July 15, 1929 in typed field notes on Tammany Bar at Lewiston, ID. This is four years after publication of the first article on Touchet Bed clastic dikes by O.P. Jenkins, who visited this same exposure. At Lewiston, Touchet Beds ("silts") overlie a boulder gravel bar left by the Bonneville flood.
The silt rests directly on the rough bouldery surface of the gravel deposit, some boulders a foot or two in diameter setting up on top of the gravel project for their full diameter into the silt...The silt is well sorted, no scattered particle of basalt, etc., rather irregular bedding. Lenses of black coarse sand occur irregularly, the contact of sand on silt being so irregular that it seems like a cross section of miniature mountain topography. To add to the puzzle, clastic dikes can be traced up in the depsit, thickening with increasing height and some of them abruptly ending at various levels. This silt looks more like a normal stream alluvium, the cracks developing at successive interevals while the accumulation was going on per saltum, thus some of the cracks being filled and covered over before other cracks were formed. Yet there is no such sand on top of the silt today from which the the major number of the cracks (coming to the top) could be filled. Such sand deposit may once have been present, and now gone by erosion.
*Footnote 12*
Future Work - My field data collection effort has spanned many years, yet could be repeated if the outcrops remain. I have taken copius field notes and built an organized archive of information on the outcrops I have visited. If a future geologist is interested in revisiting sites at which I ahve collected measurements, they would complete the task much quicker since a map now exists to guide them. Locating and accessing dozens of new (previously unreported) outcrops throughout this large study area took hundreds of days in the field. If you are a student or geologist interested in conducting your own project on clastic dikes, please feel free to contact me. Happy to help.
*Footnote 13*
Newman et al. titled their 2002 article "High frequency electromagnetic impedance imaging for vadose zone and groundwater characterization". The first sentence of the Executive Summary reads,
Executive Summary - A geophysical experiment is described for characterizing the clastic dike systems, which are ubiquitous within the vadose zone at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The Abstract contrasts markedly with the summary and does not include the words "clastic" or "dike". The author seems to have replaced "clastic dike" with the word "heterogeneity".
Abstract - Accurate description of transport pathways on the gross scale, the location of contamination, and characterization of heterogeneity within the vadose zone, are now realized as vital for proper treatment, confinement and stabilization of subsurface contamination at Department of Energy (DOE) waste sites. Electromagnetic (EM) methods are ideal for these tasks since they are directly sensitive to the amount of fluid present in porous media, as well as fluid composition. At many DOE sites it is necessary to employ lower frequency (<1 MHz) or diffusive electromagnetic fields because of the inability of ground penetrating radar (GPR) to penetrate to sufficient depths. The high frequency impedance method, which operated in the diffusive frequency range (10 Hz to 1 MHz), as well as the low end of the spectrum employed by GPR (1MHz-10 MHz), is an ideal technique to delineate and map the aforementioned targets. The method has clearly shown the potential to provide needed information on variations in subsurface saturation due to local storage tanks and perched water zones, as well as mapping geological structures related to the subsurface hydrological properties and heterogeneity within the vadose zone. Although it exhibits certain advantages over other EM methods, the impedance method comes with a set of assumptions and practices that can limit its potential. The first is the desire to locate receivers in the far-field of the transmitter which allows the use of magnetotelluric (MT) inversion codes to interpret the data. Unfortunately, one does not precisely know when one is in the far-field of the transmitter, because this depends on the geology we wish to image. The second limiting factor is the scarcity of complete 2D and 3D inversion schemes necessary to properly invert the data. While approximate 2D schemes are now emerging, rigorous 2D and 3D inversion codes are needed to bound the range of applicability of the approximate methods. We propose to address these problems in the following manner: (1) implement full non-linear 2D/3D inverse solutions that incorporate source coordinates and polarization characteristics, (2) use these solutions to study improvements in image resolution that can be obtained by making measurements in the near- and mid-field regimes using multiple source fields, (3) collect data at the Hanford Reservation with recently developed earth impedance measurement systems, and (4) interpret the field data with the newly developed inversion capability, as well as with additional and independent information such as well logs from boreholes. The benefit of this research to the DOE would be a combined measurement/interpretation package for non-invasive, high-resolution characterization of larger transport pathways, certain types of contamination, and heterogeneity within the vadose zone at the Hanford reservation, as well as other DOE facilities.
References
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