Mima Mounds & Missoula Floods

Preliminary Findings Report

Table of Contents

1. A Preconceived Hypothesis
   
2. Playing with Isoclines
3. Lake Allison Erratics
4. Assumptions to Paradigms
   
5. Elevation Profiles
6. Dynamic Stratigraphy
7. The Goods Formation
8. Argillite & 99.9%
9. Occam's Razor

Summary

The purpose of this preliminary findings report is to establish that one or more exceptional Missoula Floods entered the Chehalis watershed, and may have delivered sedimentary material consistent with the constituency of Mima Mounds either directly or indirectly to the formative process.

This preliminary findings report details hypothetical predictions substantiated by field evidence and observations that Missoula Floods did in fact enter the Chehalis watershed, and delivered substantial quantities of ultra-pulverized mineral clays previously thought exclusively to be the result of in-situ basalt weathering. The complete list of materials made available to a Mima Mounds formative process by the intrusion of Missoula Flood events is as follows:

• Ultra-pulverized mineral clays
• Ultra-pulverized organic material
• A substantial quantity and variety of ice-rafted erratic rocks
• Chehalis spillway soil and in-situ weathered clays eroded from the spillway channels
• Chehalis spillway live organic material uprooted by the floodwaters

Proving to a high confidence that Missoula Floods were in fact instrumental in the formation of Mima Mounds will require considerably more effort, and while this report postulates a hypothetical framework for that work, the computational flow modeling and other tasks required are outside of the present scope.

A blog is an interesting way to compile a report. Reading reverse-chronologically, it roughly reveals the sequence in which ideas were formulated, expanded, and linked to one another. Which is usually not the same sequence in which ideas are best presented for comprehensive understanding!