Why does the Red River of the North have so many floods?
The geology, geography, and climate of the Red River Valley make major floods an inevitability.
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geomorphology
Edible debris flow
Steep hillslopes with loose sediment are at risk from debris flows triggered by heavy rain or rapid snowmelt. As water is added to the hillslope, surface runoff or positive pore water pressure catastrophically destabilizes a portion of the slope. I decided to undertake my own research and investigate the possibilities for an edible analog for debris flows.
Abstract: Dynamics of Ephemeral Channels in Humid, Forested Watersheds
At the 2010 Geological Society of America meeting, MS student Ralph McGee will be presenting preliminary results of his thesis work in a session on Hydrogeomorphic Processes in Hillslopes, Rivers, and Landscapes which I will be convening along with Ben Crosby and Christopher Tennant of Idaho State University. Here’s Ralph’s …
Anne's picks of the literature: river and floodplain sediments
These four papers all attempt to understand what controls the sediments that make up the streambed and floodplain and that get preserved in the geologic record. White et al. look at how riffle positions are governed by valley width variations, while Jerolmack and Brzinski find striking similarities in grain size transitions observed in rivers and dune fields. Hart et al. examine the relationship between glacial advances and downstream sediment deposition, while Sambrook Smith et al. investigate the sedimentological record of floods.
Anne's picks of the June literature: Fluvial Geomorphology and Landscape Evolution
How do rivers erode bedrock streams, during big floods, and in the presence of groundwater? Laboratory and accidental experiments are providing some cool new insights.
Braided river meets mountain gorge: The Snake River escapes Jackson Hole
Though I don’t think anything can top Kyle’s pathologically misdirected RYNHO, I recently had cause to contemplate a river that everyone has heard of – the Snake River of the northwestern United States. Now, the Snake River has a famous gorge, a famous lava plain, and it’s had a famously …
New publication: Coevolution of hydrology and topography on a basalt landscape in the Oregon Cascade Range, USA
How does a landscape go from looking like this… to looking like this? Find out in my new paper in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. Hint: Using a chronosequence of watersheds in the Oregon Cascades, we argue that the rates and processes of landscape evolution are driven by whether the …
When it rains a lot and the mountains fall down
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous The geo-image bonanza of this month’s Accretionary Wedge gives me a good reason to make good on a promise I made a few months ago. I promised to write about what can happen on the flanks of Pacific Northwest volcanoes when a warm, heavy rainfall hits …
FYI: NCED Summer Institute on Earth-surface Dynamics
I basically recommend anything this NCED group puts together. The short courses on Mountain Rivers and Sand-bed Rivers that I took as late-stage PhD student were absolutely fantastic. HOW DOES VEGETATION INFLUENCE LARGE-SCALE TOPOGRAPHIC FORM? —————————————————————————————————————————– In order to adequately describe the interactions among the physical, biological, geochemical, and anthropogenic …
Delta upon Delta
For some reason the last few days have seen me browsing the semi-frozen areas of the Earth and in my search for the perfect thermokarst landscape, I’ve run across some really nice deltas. I don’t know anything about the one below other than its location in far northwestern Saskatchewan, but …