41 Paleontology, Stratigraphy, Sediments, and Soils (Posters)

Wednesday, 11 March 2026
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
RCC, Lower Level Hall

First insights from the Kentucky River flood deposits

Paper number: 41-7
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM

Authors

Abstract

Severe floods in 2021 and 2022 in the greater Kentucky River raised the alarm about the hydrological future of this basin, a watershed home to several important population centers in eastern Kentucky. Extreme weather events are becoming more prevalent in Kentucky, a state with limited resilience due to a convergence of underlying socioeconomic conditions and hydrogeomorphology. In a pioneering initiative in the state, the Paleoperspectives Project, one of seven pillars of the Climate Resilience Through Multidisciplinary Big Data Learning, Prediction and Building Response Systems – CLIMBS - program, aims to identify evidence of extreme events in the geological record that improve our understanding of flooding processes and mitigate losses due to floods across the state. For this purpose, two sites were selected for the investigation of paleofloods in the Kentucky River Basin: one at Floracliff Nature Sanctuary, located in Fayette County near the city of Lexington, and another on a rural property in Estill County, located approximately 80 km from Lexington. In this work, we present preliminary results from Floracliff, where a > 6m trench was excavated in a natural levee, which appears to preserve evidence of multiple ancient floods, represented by alternating coarse (medium sand) and fine sediments (silt and clay). The trench at Floracliff preserves several diagnostic sedimentary structures, including ripple cross laminations, lateral accretion deposits, and zones of pedogenic alteration. A candidate erosional surface was identified at 1.16 m, marked by a thin layer of oxidized fine material. Above it, significant woody debris was encountered, some of which was burned, possibly related to human activities or transported by floods. Trench research is ongoing and involves centimeter-scale sampling for grain-size analysis as well as preparation of organic samples for radiocarbon dating.  Our goal is to expand the historical archive of floods beyond the instrumental record (i.e., USGS long-term gage stations) using these terrestrial sediments.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 1

doi: 10.1130/abs/2026SE-411759

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