Abstract:

Intrastratal dissolution of gypsum and anhydrite in four stratigraphic units of Pennsylvanian to Jurassic age in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming has resulted in many collapse features that have developed primarily in the non-soluble overlying rocks. Subsidence has affected several areas that are undergoing urban development. Subsurface intrastratal dissolution of anhydrite in the Minnelusa Formation has produced a regional collapse breccia, extensive disruption of bedding, many dolines, and breccia pipes and pinnacles, some of which extend upwards more than 300 m into overlying strata. Recent collapse is evidenced by steep-walled dolines more than 20 m deep, collapse in water wells and natural springs resulting in sediment disruption and contamination, and fresh circular scarps surrounding shallow depressions. Many beds of gypsum are contorted because of expansion due to its hydration from anhydrite, and many gypsum veinlets extend downward along random fractures from parent gypsum beds. Several dolines are sites of resurgent springs. As the anhydrite dissolution front in the subsurface Minnelusa moves downdip and radially away from the center of the Black Hills uplift, these resurgent springs will dry up and new ones will form as the geomorphology of the Black Hills evolves. Old dolines and breccia pipes, preserved in cross section on canyon walls, attest to the former position of the dissolution front. Mirror Lake, which is expanding northwestward in a downdip direction, is a local analog of a migrating dissolution front.