Glacial isostatic adjustment directed incision of the Channeled Scabland by Ice Age megafloods.

ABSTRACT: During the last deglaciation, dozens of glacial outburst floods-among the largest known floods on Earth-scoured the Channeled Scabland landscape of eastern Washington. Over this same period, deformation of the Earth's crust in response to the growth and decay of ice sheets changed the topography by hundreds of meters. Here, we investigated whether glacial isostatic adjustment affected routing of the Missoula floods and incision of the Channeled Scabland from an impounded, glacial Lake Columbia. We used modern topography corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment as an input to flood models that solved the depth-averaged, shallow water equations and compared the results to erosion constraints. Results showed that floods could have traversed and eroded parts of two major tracts of the Channe

SUBMITTER: Pico T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8872708 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature