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13 - Megaflood sedimentary valley fill: Altai Mountains, Siberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

By
Paul A. Carling ,
I. Peter Martini ,
Jürgen Herget ,
Pavel Borodavko  and
Sergei Parnachov
Edited by
Devon M. Burr ,
Paul A. Carling  and
Victor R. Baker
Devon M. Burr
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
Paul A. Carling
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
Victor R. Baker
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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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.

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Megaflooding on Earth and Mars , pp. 243 - 264
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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