Slackwater Facies

Channel Facies Thalweg Facies Slackwater Facies Diamicton Facies Backswamp Facies... 

Slackwater facies are found in most cave deposits, usually as the final layer to be deposited. The slackwater facies appears at the top of the section in Figure 4 as the laminated clay overlying the channel deposits. Even when passages are nearly plugged... 

Springer and Kite (1997) used the term "slackwater facies" to describe sediments that backflooded into shallow caves along the Cheat River in West Virginia. With cave entrances opening directly into the river valley, these slackwater sediments have larger particle sizes and also include flotsam that floated into the cave on the flood crest. Otherwise their use of the term is essentially the same as that presented in this paper. 

Most caves that contain clastic sediments contain slackwater facies. The slackwater facies material consists of the layer of clay or perhaps clay and silt that makes up the topmost layer of the sediment. Caves subject to flooding collect a layer of slackwater facies every time the cave fills with water. 

Mammoth Cave provides excellent exposures of slackwater facies (Fig. 4). At the tops of most sediment piles is a layer, seldom more than a few cm thick, of thinly layer clay and very fine silt. Some of these sedimentary layers are varved, apparently representing an annual cycle of flooding with the rise and fall of the ancestral Green... 

Clastic sediments deposited in conduit systems can be conveniently be divided into five facies depending on the mechanism of deposition. The channel facies comprises most observed sediment piles and can be subdivided further depending on the objectives of a particular investigation. Diamicton facies and slackwater facies are deposited from suspended loads. Channel facies and thalweg facies are transported as bedload. The backswamp facies is defined to describe those residual in infiltrated clastic sediments that are deposited in place with little horizontal transport. 

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