GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE BUCKNER, MO 7.5-MINUTE QUADRANGLE, JACKSON, RAY AND CLAY COUNTIES, MISSOURI, WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON BURIED BEDROCK PALEOVALLEYS

The Buckner 7.5' Quadrangle covers an approximate area of 60 square miles in the midwestern United States, 16 miles east of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It includes sections of three Missouri counties and is topographically subdivided into two regions. The upland region consists of rolling hills and deep ravines, and the lowland region comprises the floodplains of the Missouri River and its tributary, Fire Prairie Creek. Exposed rocks in the quadrangle consist of loess, glacial drift and alluvium, deposited during the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs, and layered bedrock consisting primarily of Pennsylvanian limestone and shale. The principal natural resource is groundwater, which is extracted from alluvial deposits in the Missouri River Floodplain. In the spring and summer of 2014, the quadrangle was mapped by students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, as a part of the United States Geological Survey EDMAP program, under the supervision of Professor Richard J. Gentile. The project entailed mapping more than 30 named lithostratigraphic units, and studying numerous well and borehole logs recorded over the last 100 years. These records informed the creation of an additional bedrock map, allowing subsurface resolution of upper bedrock contacts in areas where alluvial processes of the Missouri River Floodplain limit surface bedrock exposures. The bedrock map, included as an insert to the Buckner 7.5' Geologic Map, illustrates the configuration of bedrock topography absent of surficial materials, and defines deep bedrock valleys buried by glacial drift to a depth of over 60 m. These valleys likely originated as diversion channels, carved by meltwater at the southern boundary of an ice lobe that dammed the Missouri River during a pre-Illinoian glacial period. Future studies should include a comprehensive drilling program in these valleys, referred to here as the Buckner and Sibley Buried Bedrock Paleovalleys, to determine if the thick cover of glacial drift was deposited during one or more glacial advances. Additional mapping along the bluff of the Missouri River should also be completed to locate any additional, subsurface diversion channels.