KATSTIC SINKHOLE SEDIMENTS OF DOLOSTONE IN THE UPPER MIDWEST'S DRIFTLESS AREA, USA

Analysis of one sinkhole, the Dodgeville sinkhole, developed in Ordovician dolostones in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin in the Upper Midwest'd Driftless Area reveals homogenous clayey sediment fills reflecting a range of dissolutional processes during the Quaternary or Pre-Quaternary. Granulometric analysis, graphical moments statistics, carbonate minerals, ana sand grain lithology were used to differentiate sinkhole sediment sources and modes of accumulation. Sediments in the dolostone sinkholes developed by dissolution. Sediments contain two major types of sediments : residual redish clay( autogenic sediments) and aeolian silt (allogenic sediments). The massive clay is generated from the weathered dolostone bedrocks as a in situ materials. The loessial silt is mostly derived from transportation of the surrounding surface materials, with some evidences of penetrated deposition. Unlike the collapsed sandstone sinkholes (Oh et al., 1993), dolostone sinkholes reveal homogenous, autogenic clay materials, and a geochemical composition indicative of in situ autogenic karstification. Dolostone sinkhole si1ts (26.9%) and sands (34.9%) are derived from weathered Plattevi1le-Galena dolostones, and contain high carbonate(37.5%), chert (57.2%) and lead ore (3%). Graphical moments statistics for sorting, skewness, and kurtosis indicate that sand grains from dolostones were derived entirely from local bedrock by in situ dissolution. Upper sinkhole sediments are pedagogically very young as carbonate is unleashed. Materials of the sinkhole sediment are definitely inherited from internal dolostones by dissolution and weathering, because not only a granulomatric comparison of dolostone and sandstone sediments demonstrates that they have heterogeneous paticle size distributions, but also 1ithologic analyses displays they differ completely.