LOOKING BACKWARD; 35 YEARS OF BRAIDED RIVERS, ALLUVIAL FANS, GRAY SEDIMENT AND RED ROCKS

Being one of 5-College area graduates from the "golden decade", my first contact with Edward S. Belt was through talks and papers concerning facies and depositional environments of Mesozoic rocks in the Connecticut Valley and Carboniferous rocks in the Canadian Maritimes. I became particularly interested in the fluvial transport of gravels and conglomerates because of an introduction to those facies in both Pleistocene and Mesozoic sections during field trips and coursework. When I discovered that all of the references to braided rivers fit on one page, my fate was sealed. I was lucky enough to go to Alaska with Miles Hayes to work on braided rivers, even though I considered my topic somewhat of a "bootleg" in the coastal program.

The downstream variation in processes, bar morphology, facies and sedimentary structures found on the Alaskan glacial alluvial fans proved to transferable to Iceland, New England Laurentide deglacial deposits, and to some Mesozoic rocks in the Hartford Basin. I discovered the best example of sedimentary structures in rocks indicating a sandy braided-river depositional environment at Coal Mine Point, Joggins, Nova Scotia in Carboniferous-age rocks. Go there at low tide.

We workers in glacial environments considered braided rivers to sometimes flow on, and construct, alluvial fans or to be the delta-plain component of fan deltas. We termed them humid alluvial fans. Revisionists attempted to hijack the term alluvial fan to be used only for debris-flow dominated, or arid fans. However, some of the earlier workers in the Northeast Gulf of Alaska, namely Israel C. Russell and Grove Karl Gilbert, considered the glacial braided rivers to flow on, and have deposited, alluvial fans. Good enough for me.

I still use principles of fluvial deposition learned long ago in todays work interpreting Laurentide deglacial fluvial morphosequences. Principles learned in part from Edward S. Belt. Thanks Ed.