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Geologic characteristics of the central stretch of the Ticona Channel, north-central Illinois

¹ Department of Geology-Geography, Campus Box 4400, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61790; present address: Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, Davis Hall 312, Northern Illinois University, Normal Road, DeKalb, Illinois 60115; bwillems{at}niu.edu
² Department of Geology-Geography, Campus Box 4400, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61790; dhmalon{at}ilstu.edu
³ Illinois State Geological Survey, 615 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820

Bryce Willems is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geological and Environmental Geosciences at Northern Illinois University. He completed his M.S. degree in hydrogeology from the Illinois State University. His current dissertation research focuses on the specialties of glaciomarine sedimentology, stratigraphy, and high-resolution shallow seismic methodologies.

David Malone is a professor and chairperson of the Department of Geography-Geology at Illinois State University. He has served on the faculty there since completing his dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. His specialties are structural geology, stratigraphy, and sedimentolgy.

Andre Pugin is a research scientist at the Illinois State Geological Survey at Urbana-Champaign, and an adjunct professor at Illinois State University. He has conducted shallow seismic reflection surveys in the United States, Alps, Canada, Azores, and the Himalayas.

The Ticona Channel is located in north-central Illinois and occurs in Grundy, LaSalle, and Putnam counties. It is a buried bedrock valley that served as the principal paleodrainage system in north-central Illinois during the Illinoian and pre-Illinoian. This study focused on the part of the Ticona Channel within the Leonore 7.5' Quadrangle. The geometry and stratigraphy of sediments that fill the Ticona Channel were investigated using high-resolution, shallow seismic reflection profiling, traditional field geologic mapping techniques, borehole data, and water-well-log data. The valley is about 2 km (1 mi) wide and approximately 60 m (200 ft) deep. The U-shape channel is straight, trends east-west, and has only one mappable tributary. The valley is carved into the Pennsylvanian Carbondale Formation in the eastern part of the study area; it has incised into the Ordovician Prairie du Chien Group in the west. At its base, the Ticona Channel is filled with the Pearl Formation, which is coarse-grained sand and gravel that was deposited during the Illinoian glaciation. The Pearl Formation is overlain by Illinoian till of the Glasford Formation and is capped by Wedron Group sediments from the Wisconsinan stage.