Geochemical Discrimination of Five Pleistocene Lava‐Dam Outburst‐Flood Deposits, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona

2004 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra R. Fenton ◽  
Robert J. Poreda ◽  
Barbara P. Nash ◽  
Robert H. Webb ◽  
Thure E. Cerling
2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (02) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra R. Fenton ◽  
Robert H. Webb ◽  
Thure E. Cerling

AbstractThe failure of a lava dam 165,000 yr ago produced the largest known flood on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. The Hyaloclastite Dam was up to 366 m high, and geochemical evidence linked this structure to outburst-flood deposits that occurred for 32 km downstream. Using the Hyaloclastite outburst-flood deposits as paleostage indicators, we used dam-failure and unsteady flow modeling to estimate a peak discharge and flow hydrograph. Failure of the Hyaloclastite Dam released a maximum 11 × 109 m3 of water in 31 h. Peak discharges, estimated from uncertainty in channel geometry, dam height, and hydraulic characteristics, ranged from 2.3 to 5.3 × 105 m3 s−1 for the Hyaloclastite outburst flood. This discharge is an order of magnitude greater than the largest known discharge on the Colorado River (1.4 × 104 m3 s−1) and the largest peak discharge resulting from failure of a constructed dam in the USA (6.5 × 104 m3 s−1). Moreover, the Hyaloclastite outburst flood is the oldest documented Quaternary flood and one of the largest to have occurred in the continental USA. The peak discharge for this flood ranks in the top 30 floods (>105 m3 s−1) known worldwide and in the top ten largest floods in North America.


Author(s):  
Cassandra R. Fenton ◽  
Thure E. Cerling ◽  
Barbara P. Nash ◽  
Robert H. Webb ◽  
Robert J. Poreda

Geomorphology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 367 ◽  
pp. 107293
Author(s):  
Chaohua Wu ◽  
Kaiheng Hu ◽  
Weiming Liu ◽  
Hao Wang ◽  
Xudong Hu ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Katherine A. Chapman ◽  
Rebecca J. Best ◽  
M. Elliot Smith ◽  
Erich R. Mueller ◽  
Paul E. Grams ◽  
...  

Completion of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963 resulted in complete elimination of sediment delivery from the upstream Colorado River basin to Grand Canyon and nearly complete control of spring snowmelt floods responsible for creating channel and bar morphology. Management of the river ecosystem in Grand Canyon National Park now relies on dam-release floods to redistribute tributary-derived sediment accumulated on the channel bed to higher-elevation sandbars. Here, we used multivariate mixing analysis of sediment elemental compositions to evaluate the extent to which flood deposits derive from tributary-supplied sand compared to reworked, relict predam sediment. The concentrations of seven major and trace elements (Fe, Ca, K, Ti, Rb, Sr, and Zr) were measured in very fine−, fine-, and medium-grained sand from flood deposits using X-ray fluorescence and interpreted using a Bayesian mixing model to characterize the proportion of sand originating from the Paria River, the only major tributary within the study reach. Flood deposits from the 2013 and 2014 controlled floods contained 69% ± 16% and 84% ± 20% Paria River−derived material, respectively, with substantial variation among sites. Based on a sand mass balance, we calculated that under decreasing storage conditions since 1963, ∼77%−83% of the annual Paria River sand flux needs to be retained within the mass of active sand stored in Marble Canyon each year to reach the observed concentration of Paria River sand at sample locations. This finding suggests that the use of controlled floods may continue to be effective for sandbar maintenance, provided sand inputs from the Paria River do not decline.


2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-14
Author(s):  
Sharon R. Stewart
Keyword(s):  

10.1029/ft385 ◽  
1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher C. Barton ◽  
Paul A. Hsieh ◽  
Jacques Angelier ◽  
Francoise Bergerat ◽  
Catherine Bouroz ◽  
...  

Nature ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Witze
Keyword(s):  

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