Date of Award

1968

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Geology

First Advisor

F.D. Holland, Jr

Abstract

Glovers Pond is a temperate, dimictic lake, 1.25 miles southwest of the town of Johnsonburg, Blairstown 7.5' Quadrangle, northwestern New Jersey. The Paleozoic Kittatinny, Jacksonburg, and Martinsburg Formations, in fault contact with each other, crop out in the vicinity of the lake. The lake has a maximum depth of 9.5 meters and occupies a glacially modified and dammed fault valley currently being infilled concentrically by .four types of sediment. Basim1ard these are: (1) peat, (2) marl, (3) "transitional", calcareous, organic-rich silt, and (4) gyttja. Glovers Pond is thermally and chemically stratified. The hypolimnion is undersaturated with CaCO3; tl1is prohibits deposition of calcium carbonate in the profundal zone. Marl is deposited on a shallow shelf by chemical and biochemical precipitation of CaCO3 . J caused primarily by blanketing growths of Chara; these provide a habitat for several of the nine species of gastropods and the three species of bivalves which live in the lake.

Five cor2s from the lake and contiguous bogs present a strati graphic record from late Wisconsinan time to the present. Wood from the base of the marl gave a radiocarbon age of approximately 11,560 years B.P.; the youngest peat was deposited 2,080 +- 100 radiocarbon years B.P., indicating an average rate of horizontal infilling of 2.9 cm per year. Chemical analyses of sediments show that twice in the past CaCO3 was deposited in the deepest part of the lake implying two periods of warmer, drier climate in tl1e past. The second of these changes may represent the Hypsithermal Interval.

Included in

Geology Commons

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