The Role of Talus Pile Mobility in Valley Widening Processes and the Development of Wide Bedrock Valleys, Buffalo River, AR

Abstract Valley width is largely controlled by lithology and upstream drainage area, but little work has focused on identifying the processes through which valleys widen. Bedrock valleys widen by first laterally eroding bedrock valley walls, followed by the collapse of overlying bedrock material that must then be transported away from the valley wall before the valley can continue widening. We hypothesize that talus piles that cannot be transported by the river protect the valley wall and slow valley widening, while talus piles that are rapidly transported allow for uninterrupted valley widening. We used field measurements from 40 locations in both wide and narrow valleys along the Buffalo River, AR to test this hypothesis. Our data show that wide valleys tend to have fewer talus piles and smaller talus grain sizes, whereas talus in narrow valleys is larger in size and more continuous along valley walls. We calculated potential talus block entrainment at each site location and found that talus blocks in wide valleys are potentially entrained and moved away from valley walls during moderate and large flood events, whereas talus blocks in narrow valleys are very rarely moved. Our results show that the potential transport of talus piles protecting bedrock valley walls from widening is controlled by the block size of collapsed bedrock wall material relative to stream competency. Our results also suggest that persistence versus mobility of collapsed talus piles is an important process in the development of wide bedrock valleys.