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Holocene Paleofloods of the Ross River, Central Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Peter C. Patton ,
Geoff Pickup  and
David M. Price
Peter C. Patton
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06459
Geoff Pickup
Affiliation:
Centre for Arid Zone Research, CSIRO, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia
David M. Price
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia
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Abstract

The rivers of central Australia rise in the MacDonnell Ranges and flow out across broad, low-relief plains into the surrounding desert. The stratigraphy of the Ross River plain records the areal extent and frequency of Holocene floods. This floodout plain is underlain by deeply weathered alluvial deposits, characterized by red earth soils dated by thermoluminesence at >59,000 yr. This old alluvium is covered by a sheet-like deposit of very silty sand of probable eolian origin dated by thermoluminesence at 9200 ± 900 yr. The oldest Holocene alluvium occurs as broad, low-relief bars and levee deposits flanking the modem channel and as low-relief long-wavelength bedforms that fan out across the plain. This deposit resulted from a flood flow, up to 10 km wide, that covered the entire plain. Evidence for several large floods between 1500 and 700 yr B.P. is also preserved in a 500- to 1500-m-wide paleochannel. Thus, the surface features on the floodout plains are the product of a few rare large flood events. This paleohydrologic record is additional evidence of the dynamic nature of the hydrometerological regime of central Australia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , September 1993 , pp. 201 - 212
Copyright
University of Washington

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