Landforms and sedimentology of Erie Bluffs State Park, Erie County, Pennsylvania, USA

ABSTRACT Erie Bluffs State Park (Pennsylvania, USA) is a natural classroom that permits the examination of well-preserved Pleistocene landforms as well as exposures of their constituent sediments. These features and their underlying sedimentology and stratigraphy provide a glimpse into part of the landscape evolution of the Lake Erie basin. The landforms examined in this field trip include a Late Pleistocene “Warren” proglacial lacustrine shoreline sequence with eolian dunes, beach ridges, near-shore, and lake plain environments. A distinct fluvial terrace of Elk Creek, a tributary to Lake Erie, is also well exposed. These landforms are intersected by Lake Erie’s eroding, wave-cut bluffs, providing a direct comparison of landform/sediment assemblages, depending on the quality and availability of outcrops, which vary significantly through time due to rapid erosional processes. Outcrops are often sufficient along the lateral extent of the bluffs to piece together stratigraphic relationships and depositional patterns, including the basin-ward progradation of the proglacial shoreline, and incision of Elk Creek due to the base-level controls exerted by post-glacial changes in lake levels within the Lake Erie basin. This field trip examines these landforms and sediments, describes details of the sedimentology of stratigraphic units, and discusses their place in the context of Quaternary landscape evolution of northwestern Pennsylvania.