Overview:
This project was initiated to determine how the Rainwater Basins in Nebraska formed. Rainwater Basins are round to oval depressions, many of which are preferentially oriented, and most have a lunette on their southern or southeastern margin. The basins formed by deflation by the wind and the excavated material was deposited in the adjacent lunettes. We collected 15 cores from lunettes in the Rainwater Basins in the eastern and western portion of the Rainwater Basin Plains and dated 22 samples of sand from the lunettes using OSL dating. Our ages show the lunettes aggraded between approximately 25,000 to 39,000 years ago. Future work will focus on expanding this study to other basins in the region and working on dating several of the smaller basins that are nested within the various larger basins in the area.
Topographic profiles for the Rainwater Basin cored at the Axtell Site.
Shown are our cores and general core stratigraphy.
Figure 1: Map of the Rainwater Basin Plains in Nebraska showing basins in grey, as well as study sites investigated in both this and previous projects.
Figure 2C: Rainwater Basin near Axtell showing the outline of the basin (dashed line) and the lunette (solid line). Shown are the core locations and the location of topographic profiles C to C1 and D to D1.
Figure 4: Topographic profiles for the Rainwater Basin cored at the Axtell Site. Show are our cores and general core stratigraphy.
Figure 5: Cores drilled a the Rainwater Basin at Axtell. Core stratigraphy and OSL ages given in years ago are shown.
Figure 6: Cores drilled at the Rainwater Basin at Axtell. Core stratigraphy and OSL ages given in years ago are shown.
Link to Published Paper: (Not available yet)
Authors:
Paul Hanson, Ph.D.
Robert Matthew Joeckel, Ph.D.