ABSTRACT
The Kenyon Island Group lies within the Great Sacandaga Lake's
largest
and most unnavigable shallow water shoal. The shoal measures
approximately
5.0 mi2. The Kenyon Islands, including Mead and Deer
Islands,
occupy approximately 3/4 mi2 during the months of
annual high
lake level. During the late shallow water season of 1998, a NE to
SW diagonal
transect of nine core samples were collected by a Geoprobe coring
device,
with recoveries between 8' and 16' deep sections. In this study
these cores
were used to identify the stratigraphy, classify the sediment
grain sizes,
evaluate the abundance of economic minerals, and calculate the
most cost
effective and environmentally sound method of deepening the
lakebed for
navigation and recreational purposes and reconfiguring the new
real property
created.
Here I present evidence for the existence of a previously
unidentified
large moraine field, of approximately 12 mi2, located
between
two different end moraines of the Pleistocene Epoch. Today, about
1/3 of
that moraine field surrounds the Kenyon Island Group, within the
shorelines
of the Great Sacandaga Lake. The south and east end moraine is
visible
in an arcuate path which includes the two major Kenyon Islands and
Deer
Island. The south and east end moraine is approximately 3/4 mile
wide and
is confined by the valley walls of the Sacandaga Basin. This end
moraine
must have been at least 300 feet high during the Pleistocene
Epoch. The
north and west moraine was deposited before the south and east end
moraine
and is also visible in exposures around the lake. This forms
moraine rock
fields in arcuate bands, which are confined by the valley walls of
the
Sacandaga Basin. The north and west end moraine was originally 1/2
miles
wide and must have stood at least 120 feet high.
The moraine field contains all the classic landmarks including
kames,
kettle lakes, eskers, drumlins, flutes and fossil streambeds. The
moraine
field sediments that exist are no more than 45 feet thick beneath
the lakebed
and 45 to 120 feet thick outside the shorelines and above bedrock.
The
bedrock maybe Cambrian, including Little Falls Dolomite, Theresa
Dolomite
and/or Potsdam Sandstone.
This thesis proposes a remedy involving dredging and earth-moving
heavy
equipment to permanently deepen part of the lakebed of the Great
Sacandaga
Lake that is currently of little use because the area is typically
too
shallow for regular lake navigation. If there are minerals within
the sediments
of the study area that are of current economic importance and have
values
significant enough to pay for a lakebed deepening, the
geochemistry, mineralogy
and mineral chemistry will reveal them. These minerals can then be
identified
and evaluated as the mechanism that will support the tremendous
costs associated
with such a major deepening effort. The long term outcome of a
Great Sacandaga
Lake deepening, beside improving the navigational, recreational,
and fisheries
of the lake will create room for an additional 200 billion gallons
of water,
which could be priceless in the next frontier.
The moraine field sediment profile in the study area may be unique
to the whole of the Great Sacandaga Lake. The question of dredging
the
lakebed versus simpler earth-moving heavy equipment to reconfigure
the
lakebed, anywhere else in the Great Sacandaga Lake, will most
certainly
require further research and could yield different results.
Ambrosino, A.M., 2001. Sediment characteristics around the Kenyon
Island
Group, Great Sacandaga Lake (NY): economic potential of dredging
and land
reclamation. Unpublished MSc. thesis, State University of New York
at Albany.
194 pp., +x
University at Albany Science Library call number: SCIENCE
Oversize
(*) QE 40 Z899 2001 A43
thesis (scanned
text) - 25.6MB pdf file
Return to MS Theses completed in the
Geological
Sciences Program, University at Albany