Welcome to Buffalo River State Park! This is a beautiful park in lovely Minnestoa with great prairies and intriguing woods. Today will we study how a river valley is formed.
Formation of a River Valley
You are standing at the top of a former river cutbank, looking across the valley that the Buffalo River has eroded into underlying sediments. A cutbank is a steep bank that forms where a river runs against the side of a hill, undercutting and eroding it.
A floodplain forms where this sideways erosion produces a wide plain on either side of the river. Thus, the valley below you is thought to have formed because the path of the river has changed through time, sometimes eroding against the bank you are standing on, sometimes eroding on the bank on the south side of the valley where it is now.
Downward erosion and sideways erosion can take place at the same time producing a series of step-like level areas called terraces.
Logging as a find:
Send an email:
The name of this EC and the number of people in your party
1) As you look to the southeast, can you see one of these terraces near the bottom of the frontier cutbank?
2) Using the graphic on the cache page, which stage of maturity is this river valley in?
Sources:
-Buffalo River State Park Interpretive Signs