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Evidence of Multiple Late-Wisconsin Floods from Glacial Lake Missoula in Badger Coulee, Washington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Russell C. Bunker
Russell C. Bunker*
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712
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Abstract

Catastrophic floods from glacial Lake Missoula entered the Pasco Basin in south-central Washington and backflooded its marginal valleys. Badger Coulee, one such valley, contains beds of fine-grained slackwater sediment deposited by these floods. The slackwater sediment contains two ash layers of the Mount St. Helens set S tephra, about 13,000 yr old. The ash was deposited on a ground surface developed atop slackwater sediment deposited during preash flooding. Evidence of the former ground surface includes the reworked ash, inferred trace fossils, stream and debris-flow deposits, slopewash and/or eolian sediment, and colluvium at the ash horizon. These features and the ash were buried by slackwater sediment deposited during postash flooding. Nonflood, subaerial deposits are not present atop other beds. Instead, beds commonly are reversely graded across “contacts,” suggesting that multiple beds were continuously deposited. The exposed beds thus record at least two late-Wisconsin floods, one preash, the other postash. The pre- and postash floods may be correlative with earlier-reported floods thought to have occurred 17,500-14,000 and 14,000–13,000 yr B.P., respectively.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , July 1982 , pp. 17 - 31
Copyright
University of Washington

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