2 results
2 - Channel-scale erosional bedforms in bedrock and in loose granular material: character, processes and implications
- Edited by Devon M. Burr, University of Tennessee, Paul A. Carling, University of Southampton, Victor R. Baker, University of Arizona
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- Book:
- Megaflooding on Earth and Mars
- Published online:
- 04 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 13-32
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Summary
Summary
High-energy fluid flows such as occur in large water floods can produce large-scale erosional landforms on Earth and potentially on Mars. These forms are distinguished from depositional forms in that structural and stratigraphical aspects of the sediments or bedrock may have a significant influence on the morphology of the landforms. Erosional features are remnant, in contrast to the depositional (constructional) landforms that consist of accreted waterborne sediments. A diversity of erosional forms exists in fluvial channels on Earth at a range of scales that includes the millimetre and the kilometre scales. For comparison with Mars and given the present-day resolution of satellite imagery, erosional landforms at the larger scales can be identified. Some examples include: periodic transverse undulating bedforms, longitudinal scour hollows, horseshoe scour holes around obstacles, waterfalls, plunge pools, potholes, residual streamlined hills, and complexes of channels. On Earth, many of these landforms are associated with present day or former (Quaternary) proglacial landscapes that were host to jökulhlaups (e.g. Iceland, Washington State Scablands, Altai Mountains of southern Siberia), while on Mars they are associated with landscapes that were likely host to megafloods produced by enormous eruptions of groundwater. The formative conditions of some erosional landforms are not well understood, yet such information is vital to interpreting the genesis and palaeohydraulic conditions of past megaflood landscapes. Correct identification of some landforms allows estimation of their genesis, including palaeohydraulic conditions. Kasei Valles, Mars, perhaps the largest known bedrock channel landscape, provides spectacular examples of some of these relationships.
13 - Megaflood sedimentary valley fill: Altai Mountains, Siberia
- Edited by Devon M. Burr, University of Tennessee, Paul A. Carling, University of Southampton, Victor R. Baker, University of Arizona
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- Book:
- Megaflooding on Earth and Mars
- Published online:
- 04 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 243-264
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Summary
During the Quaternary, the Altai Mountains of south-central Siberia sustained ice caps and valley glaciers. Glaciers or ice lobes emanating from plateaux blocked the outlet of the Chuja–Kuray intermontane basins and impounded meltwater to form large ice-dammed lakes up to 600 km3 capacity. On occasion the ice dams failed and the lakes emptied catastrophically. The megafloods that resulted were deep, fast-flowing and heavily charged with sand and gravel, the sediment being sourced from the lake basins and also entrained along the course of the floodways. The floods were confined within mountain valleys of the present-day rivers Chuja and Katun but large quantities of sediment were deposited over a distance of more than 70 km from the dam site in tributary river-mouths, re-entrants in the confining valley walls and on the inside of major valley bends. The main depositional units that resulted are giant bars, which blocked the entrances to tributaries and temporarily impeded normal drainage from the tributaries into the main-stem valley such that minor lakes were impounded within the tributaries behind the bars. Fine sediment from the tributaries accumulated in these lakes as local lacustrine units. Later the bars were breached by the tributary flows and the local lakes were drained. Sections of the giant bar sediments and the local lacustrine units are used to describe the nature of the megaflood valley fill, which was deposited primarily during marine isotope stage 2.