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ABSTRACT Natural river diversion, or avulsion, controls the distribution of channels on a floodplain and channel sandstone bodies within fluvial stratigraphic architecture. Avulsions establish new flow paths and create channels through several recognized processes, or styles. These include reoccupying existing channels, or annexation, downcutting into the floodplain, or incision, and constructing new channels from crevasse‐splay distributary networks, or progradation. Recent remote sensing observations show that avulsion style changes systematically moving downstream along modern fluvial fans but, to date, no studies have assessed the significance of these trends on fluvial fan stratigraphy. Here, spatiotemporal changes in avulsion stratigraphy are investigated within the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation, deposited in the Cordilleran foreland basin during the Late Jurassic epoch. Measured sections and photographic panels were analysed from 23 locations across the Salt Wash extent. Avulsion style was identified in the stratigraphic record by the basal contact of a channel storey with underlying strata: channel–channel contacts indicate annexation, channel–floodplain contacts indicate incision and channel–heterolithic contacts indicate progradation. Contact types change downstream, such that channel–channel and channel–floodplain contacts dominate proximal locations, while channel–heterolithic contacts become increasingly prevalent downstream. Outcrop results were compared to a numerical model of fluvial fan formation and remote‐sensing analysis of avulsions on modern fans. In both additional datasets, channels in proximal fan positions tend to avulse via annexation, reoccupying abandoned channels, while channels in more distal positions tend to avulse via increasingly significant progradation. These findings suggest a relationship between newly recognized downstream changes in avulsion style and well‐established downstream changes in fluvial fan architecture. Furthermore, this suggests that fan architecture can inform interpretations of ancient fluvial dynamics, including avulsion behaviour, and that avulsions can cause stratigraphically significant and measurable changes to fan architecture.
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Quantifying river avulsion activity from satellite remote sensing: Implications for how avulsions contribute to floodplain stratigraphy in foreland basins
ABSTRACT The rarely witnessed process of river avulsion repositions channels across floodplains, which influences floodplain geomorphology and stratigraphic architecture. The way avulsions redirect water and sediment is typically generalized into one of two styles. Avulsions proceeding through rapid channel switching and producing little to no floodplain disturbance are annexational, while those that involve sequential phases of crevassing, flooding, and eventual development of a new channel are progradational. We test the validity of these avulsion style categories by mapping and characterizing 14 avulsion events in Andean, Himalayan, and New Guinean foreland basins. We use Landsat data to identify how avulsions proceed and interpret the possible products of these processes in terms of geomorphic features and stratigraphy. We show that during annexation the avulsion channel widens, changes its meander wavelength and amplitude, or increases channel thread count. During progradation, avulsion channels are constructed from evolving distributary networks. Often beginning as crevasse splays, these networks migrate down the floodplain gradient and frequently create and fill ponds during the process. We also see evidence for a recently defined third avulsion style. Retrogradation involves overbank flow, like progradation, but is marked by an upstream-migrating abandonment and infilling of the parent channel. Avulsion belts in this study range from 5 to 60 km in length, and from 1 to 50 km in width. On average, these events demonstrate annexational style over 22.4% of their length. Eleven of 13 events either begin or end with annexation, and seven both begin and end with annexation. Only one event exhibited progradation over the entire avulsion-belt length. While there are many documented examples of purely annexational avulsions, we see little evidence for completely progradational or retrogradational avulsions, and instead suggest that a given avulsion is better envisioned as a series of spatiotemporal phases of annexation, progradation, and retrogradation. Such hybrid avulsions likely produce significantly greater stratigraphic variability than that predicted by the traditional end-member model. We suggest that a time-averaged, formation-scale consideration of avulsion products will yield more accurate characterizations of avulsion dynamics in ancient fluvial systems.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1911321
- PAR ID:
- 10342909
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Sedimentary Research
- Volume:
- 92
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1527-1404
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 487 to 502
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract. River avulsions are an important mechanism by which sediment is routed andemplaced in foreland basins. However, because avulsions occur infrequently,we lack observational data that might inform where, when, and why avulsionsoccur and these issues are instead often investigated by rule-basednumerical models. These models have historically simplified or neglected the effects of abandoned channels on avulsion dynamics, even though fluvialmegafans in foreland basins are characteristically covered in abandonedchannels. Here, we investigate the pervasiveness of abandoned channels onmodern fluvial megafan surfaces. Then, we present a physically basedcellular model that parameterizes interactions between a single avulsingriver and abandoned channels in a foreland basin setting. We investigate how abandoned channels affect avulsion setup, pathfinding, and landscapeevolution. We demonstrate and discuss how the processes of abandoned channel inheritance and transient knickpoint propagation post-avulsion serve to shortcut the time necessary to set up successive avulsions. Then, we address the idea that abandoned channels can both repel and attract future pathfinding flows under different conditions. By measuring the distance between the mountain front and each avulsion over long (106 to 107 years) timescales, we show that increasing abandoned channel repulsion serves to push avulsions farther from the mountain front, while increasing attraction pulls avulsions proximally. Abandoned channels do not persist forever, and we test possible channel healing scenarios (deposition-only, erosion-only, and far-field-directed) and show that only the final scenario achieves dynamic equilibrium without completely filling accommodation space. We also observe megafan growth occurring via ∼100 000-year cycles of lobe switching but only in our runs that employ deposition-only or erosion-only healing modes. Finally, we highlight opportunities for future field work and remote sensing efforts to inform our understanding of the role that floodplain topography, including abandoned channels, plays on avulsion dynamics.more » « less
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.2110/jsr.2021.038
