| BITOU RIVER: Topography, geology and soils |
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eWISA Home | BITOU: MAIN INDEX | ALPHABETICAL LIST OF RIVERS | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Map of the BITOU River |
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| TOPOGRAPHY | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The upper reaches of the Bitou River and its tributaries run through the Buffelsnek, and Krantzbosch, consisting mainly of indigenous forests, owned and managed by the Directorate of Forestry. (Ref 1) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| GEOLOGY | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The drainage basin is underlain by semi-consolidated immature sandstone, conglomerate and shale of Cretaceous age (Redderling,1981). (Ref 1) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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The lower reaches of the Bitou river are underlain by Tertiary to Quaternary marine estuarine terrace gravel and parlty calcareous sand. (Ref 1) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Enon Formation (Cretaceous) consists
mainly of round pebbles of quartzite occurring in the matrix of silt and
sand.
The Enon Formation grades vertically and laterally into the Kirkwood Formation and as the soil derived from the Kirkwood Formatiojn is very unstable, landslides and unstable banks are a feature of the Bitou River valley. This area is surrounded by Crestaceous to Tertiary conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone and clay. (Ref 1) |
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Moving upstream the drainage basin is composed successively of feldspathic sandstone of the Baviaanskloof Formation and shale and siltstone of the Gydo Formation of the Bokkeveld Group. The bed of the upper reaches of the river is composed of whitish-weathering sandstone and brownish-weathering sandstone of the Kouga and Tchando Formations respectively. (Ref 1) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| SOILS | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| References | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ref 1: ESTUARIES OF THE CAPE: Keurbooms/Bitou System (CMS 19) CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 430 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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