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Recurring middle Pleistocene outburst floods in east-central Alaska

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Duane G. Froese ,
Derald G. Smith ,
John A. Westgate ,
Thomas A. Ager ,
Shari J. Preece ,
Amanjit Sandhu ,
Randolph J. Enkin  and
Florence Weber
Duane G. Froese*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6 Canada
Derald G. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4 Canada
John A. Westgate
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3B1, Canada
Thomas A. Ager
Affiliation:
United States Geological Survey, Mail Stop 980, Box 25046 Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225, USA
Shari J. Preece
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3B1, Canada
Amanjit Sandhu
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3B1, Canada
Randolph J. Enkin
Affiliation:
Geological Survey of Canada, 9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, British Columbia, V8L 4B2, Canada
Florence Weber
Affiliation:
United States Geological Survey, P.O. Box 80586, Fairbanks, AK 99708, USA
*
* Corresponding author. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E3 Canada. Fax: +780-492-2030. E-mail address: duane.froese@ualberta.ca (D.G. Froese).
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Abstract

Recurring glacial outburst floods from the Yukon-Tanana Upland are inferred from sediments exposed along the Yukon River near the mouth of Charley River in east-central Alaska. Deposits range from imbricate gravel and granules indicating flow locally extending up the Yukon valley, to more distal sediments consisting of at least 10 couplets of planar sands, granules, and climbing ripples with up-valley paleocurrent indicators overlain by massive silt. An interglacial organic silt, occurring within the sequence, indicates at least two flood events are associated with an earlier glaciation, and at least three flood events are associated with a later glaciation which postdates the organic silt. A minimum age for the floods is provided by a glass fission track age of 560,000 ± 80,000 yr on the GI tephra, which occurs 8 m above the flood beds. A maximum age of 780,000 yr for the floods is based on normal magnetic polarity of the sediments. These age constraints allow us to correlate the flood events to the early-middle Pleistocene. And further, the outburst floods indicate extensive glaciation of the Yukon-Tanana Upland during the early-middle Pleistocene, likely representing the most extensive Pleistocene glaciation of the area.

Keywords

Glacial chronologyTephraEarly-middle PleistoceneYukon RiverOutburst floods
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , July 2003 , pp. 50 - 62
Copyright
University of Washington

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