scholarly journals Holocene Sediment Production in Lillooet River Basin, British Colombia: A Sediment Budget Approach

2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jordan ◽  
Olav Slaymaker

ABSTRACTA sediment budget approach is used to investigate the sources, storage, and yield of clastic sediment in Lillooet River watershed, in the southern Coast Mountains. The 3150 km2basin is heavily glacierised, and includes a Quaternary volcanic complex which has been active in the Holocene. The sediment yield has been determined from the rate of advance of the delta at the basin outlet. The floodplain of the main river valley is aggrading as the delta advances, and probably has been through most of the Holocene. Major sediment sources in the basin include glaciers and Neoglacial deposits, debris flows, and landslides in the Quaternary volcanic complex. Soil and bedrock creep, bank erosion of Pleistocene glacial deposits, and sediment from logging and agriculture are probably of minor importance. Estimates of sediment production from these sources explain only about half the observed clastic sediment yield plus the rate of valley aggradation. The unexplained sediment production may be associated with paraglacial sediments exposed by glacial retreat from the nineteenth century Neoglacial maximum; alternatively the frequency of occurrence of intermediate scale debris flows and landslides has been seriously underestimated. Sediment supply is highly episodic over time scales of centuries to thousands of years. Major factors in the temporal pattern of Holocene sediment supply are periods of volcanism, large landslides, the retreat of glaciers from the Neoglacial maximum, and recent river engineering works.

Geology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman A. DiBiase ◽  
Michael P. Lamb

Abstract Landscapes following wildfire commonly have significant increases in sediment yield and debris flows that pose major hazards and are difficult to predict. Ultimately, post-wildfire sediment yield is governed by processes that deliver sediment from hillslopes to channels, but it is commonly unclear the degree to which hillslope sediment delivery is driven by wet versus dry processes, which limits the ability to predict debris-flow occurrence and response to climate change. Here we use repeat airborne lidar topography to track sediment movement following the 2009 CE Station Fire in southern California, USA, and show that post-wildfire debris flows initiated in channels filled by dry sediment transport, rather than on hillsides during rainfall as typically assumed. We found widespread patterns of 1–3 m of dry sediment loading in headwater channels immediately following wildfire and before rainfall, followed by sediment excavation during subsequent storms. In catchments where post-wildfire dry sediment loading was absent, possibly due to differences in lithology, channel scour during storms did not occur. Our results support a fire-flood model in bedrock landscapes whereby debris-flow occurrence depends on dry sediment loading rather than hillslope-runoff erosion, shallow landslides, or burn severity, indicating that sediment supply can limit debris-flow occurrence in bedrock landscapes with more-frequent fires.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 321
Author(s):  
Miltiadis Polidorou ◽  
Niki Evelpidou ◽  
Theodora Tsourou ◽  
Hara Drinia ◽  
Ferréol Salomon ◽  
...  

Akrotiri Salt Lake is located 5 km west of the city of Lemesos in the southernmost part of the island of Cyprus. The evolution of the Akrotiri Salt Lake is of great scientific interest, occurring during the Holocene when eustatic and isostatic movements combined with local active tectonics and climate change developed a unique geomorphological environment. The Salt Lake today is a closed lagoon, which is depicted in Venetian maps as being connected to the sea, provides evidence of the geological setting and landscape evolution of the area. In this study, for the first time, we investigated the development of the Akrotiri Salt Lake through a series of three cores which penetrated the Holocene sediment sequence. Sedimentological and micropaleontological analyses, as well as geochronological studies were performed on the deposited sediments, identifying the complexity of the evolution of the Salt Lake and the progressive change of the area from a maritime space to an open bay and finally to a closed salt lake.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Delchiaro ◽  
Giulia Iacobucci ◽  
Francesco Troiani ◽  
Marta Della Seta ◽  
Paolo Ballato ◽  
...  

<p>The Seymareh landslide is the largest rock slope failure (44 Gm<sup>3</sup>) ever recorded on the exposed Earth surface. It detached ∼10 ka BP from the northeastern flank of the Kabir-Kuh anticline (Zagros Mts., Iran) originating the natural dam responsible for the formation of a three-lake system (Seymareh, Jaidar, and Balmak lakes, with an area of 259, 46, and 5 km<sup>2</sup>, respectively). The lake system persisted for ∼3000 yr during the Holocene before its emptying phase due to overflow. A sedimentation rate of 21 mm yr<sup>−1</sup> was estimated for the Seymareh lacustrine deposits, which increased during the early stage of lake emptying because of enhanced sediment yield from the lake tributaries. </p><p>To reconstruct the climatic and environmental impact on the lake infilling, we reviewed the geomorphology of the basins and combined the results with multi-proxy records from a 30 m thick lacustrine sequence in Seymareh Lake. Major analyses comprise grain size analysis, carbon and oxygen stable isotopes of carbonate-bearing sediments, and X-ray diffraction analysis of clay minerals.</p><p>Lake overflowing is largely accepted as the main response to variations in water discharge and sediment supply since the alternation from dry to wet phases enhances sediment mobilization along hillslopes decreasing the accommodation space in the downstream sedimentary basins. In this regard, during the early-middle Holocene, the Seymareh area, as well as the entire Middle East, was affected by short-term climate changes at the millennial-scale, as testified by both paleoecological and archaeological evidence. Indeed, several records from Iranian lakes (i.e., Mirabad, Zeribar, Urmia) well documented the temperature and the moisture conditions of the western Zagros Mountains during the Holocene. During the early Holocene, the precipitation remained low up to 6 ka BP, reaching the driest condition around 8-8.2 ka BP. The impact of this abrupt climate change is evident across West Asia, where the first large villages with domesticated cereals and sheeps disappeared, converting to small hamlets and starting habitat-tracking. As regards the Seymareh area, a more irregular distribution of rainfalls and their increasing seasonality may support rhexistasy conditions, during which the scarce vegetation cover enhances both the hillslope erosion and sedimentation rate in the basins, most likely contributing to the overflow of Seymareh Lake. </p>


The Holocene ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manel Leira ◽  
Maria C Freitas ◽  
Tania Ferreira ◽  
Anabela Cruces ◽  
Simon Connor ◽  
...  

We examine the Holocene environmental changes in a wet dune slack of the Portuguese coast, Poço do Barbarroxa de Baixo. Lithology, organic matter, biological proxies and high-resolution chronology provide estimations of sediment accumulation rates and changes in environmental conditions in relation to sea-level change and climate variability during the Holocene. Results show that the wet dune slack was formed 7.5 cal. ka BP, contemporaneous with the last stages of the rapid sea-level rise. This depositional environment formed under frequent freshwater flooding and water ponding that allowed the development and post-mortem accumulation of abundant plant remains. The wetland evolved into mostly palustrine conditions over the next 2000 years, until a phase of stabilization in relative sea-level rise, when sedimentation rates slowed down to 0.04 mm yr−1, between 5.3 and 2.5 cal. ka BP. Later, about 0.8 cal. ka BP, high-energy events, likely due to enhanced storminess and more frequent onshore winds, caused the collapse of the foredune above the wetlands’ seaward margin. The delicate balance between hydrology (controlled by sea-level rise and climate change), sediment supply and storminess modulates the habitat’s resilience and ecological stability. This underpins the relevance of integrating past records in coastal wet dune slacks management in a scenario of constant adaptation processes.


2004 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1359-1372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen C. Gellis ◽  
Milan J. Pavich ◽  
Paul R. Bierman ◽  
Eric M. Clapp ◽  
Amy Ellevein ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Morel ◽  
Guillaume Piton ◽  
Caroline Le Bouteiller ◽  
Alexandre Mas ◽  
Guillaume Evin

<p>In mountain areas, the quantification of sediment yield is essential in the diagnosis of a torrential watershed. The objective of this study is to present a prediction method based on multivariate statistical models calibrated from an original data set covering nearly 130 torrential basins in the Northern French Alps. Data on sediment yield and occurrence of torrential events were collected on these catchments thanks to registries from sediment retention basins (average monitoring period of 20 years) and historical archives of the catchment basin managers. On these catchments, several morphological and hydro-meteorological characteristics were calculated (e.g. geological and sediment connectivity indices, the rate of connected eroding areas in the catchment, the Melton index, the slope of the fan, etc.) in order to relate them to sediment production and the frequency of occurrence of torrential events. These models allow the estimation of quantiles of the sediment yield in small torrent catchments. These models could be useful to evaluate sediment yield and the occurrence of torrential events on catchment not equipped with sedimentation structures.</p>


Author(s):  
Marisa C. Palucis ◽  
Thomas P. Ulizio ◽  
Michael P. Lamb

Steep, rocky landscapes often produce large sediment yields and debris flows following wildfire. Debris flows can initiate from landsliding or rilling in soil-mantled portions of the landscape, but there have been few direct observations of debris flow initiation in steep, rocky portions of the landscape that lack a thick, continuous soil mantle. We monitored a steep, first-order catchment that burned in the San Gabriel Mountains, California, USA. Following fire, but prior to rainfall, much of the hillslope soil mantle was removed by dry ravel, exposing bedrock and depositing ∼0.5 m of sandy sediment in the channel network. During a one-year recurrence rainstorm, debris flows initiated in the channel network, evacuating the accumulated dry ravel and underlying cobble bed, and scouring the channel to bedrock. The channel abuts a plowed terrace, which allowed a complete sediment budget, confirming that ∼95% of sediment deposited in a debris flow fan matched that evacuated from the channel, with a minor rainfall-driven hillslope contribution. Subsequent larger storms produced debris flows in higher-order channels but not in the first-order channel because of a sediment supply limitation. These observations are consistent with a model for post-fire ravel routing in steep, rocky landscapes where sediment was sourced by incineration of vegetation dams—following ∼30 years of hillslope soil production since the last fire—and transported downslope by dry processes, leading to a hillslope sediment-supply limitation and infilling of low-order channels with relatively fine sediment. Our observations of debris flow initiation are consistent with failure of the channel bed alluvium due to grain size reduction from dry ravel deposits that allowed high Shields numbers and mass failure even for moderate intensity rainstorms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-403
Author(s):  
Luciane Silva Moreira ◽  
Patricia Moreira-Turcq ◽  
Renato Campello Cordeiro ◽  
Bruno Turcq ◽  
Keila Cristina Aniceto ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 1923-1938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumitoshi Imaizumi ◽  
Yuichi S. Hayakawa ◽  
Norifumi Hotta ◽  
Haruka Tsunetaka ◽  
Okihiro Ohsaka ◽  
...  

Abstract. Debris flows usually occur in steep mountain channels and can be extremely hazardous as a result of their destructive power, long travel distance, and high velocity. However, their characteristics in the initiation zones, which could possibly be affected by temporal changes in the accumulation conditions of the storage (i.e., channel gradient and volume of storage) associated with sediment supply from hillslopes and the evacuation of sediment by debris flows, are poorly understood. Thus, we studied the relationship between the flow characteristics and the accumulation conditions of the storage in an initiation zone of debris flow at the Ohya landslide body in Japan using a variety of methods, including a physical analysis, a periodical terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) survey, and field monitoring. Our study clarified that both partly and fully saturated debris flows are important hydrogeomorphic processes in the initiation zones of debris flow because of the steep terrain. The predominant type of flow varied temporally and was affected by the volume of storage and rainfall patterns. Fully saturated flow dominated when the total volume of storage was  <  10 000 m3, while partly saturated flow dominated when the total volume of the storage was  >  15 000 m3. Debris flows form channel topography which reflects the predominant flow types during debris-flow events. Partly saturated debris flow tended to form steeper channel sections (22.2–37.3°), while fully saturated debris flow tended to form gentler channel sections ( <  22.2°). Such relationship between the flow type and the channel gradient could be explained by a simple analysis of the static force at the bottom of the sediment mass.


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