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Geomorphology of the Upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai

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Geomorphology of the Upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai Geomorphology of the upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai mountains Philip Deline, Ludovic Ravanel, Jean-Jacques Delannoy, Melaine Le Roy, Vyacheslav Molodin, Dimitri Cheremisim, Lydia Zotkina, Catherine Cretin, Jean-Michel Geneste, Hugues Plisson To cite this version: Philip Deline, Ludovic Ravanel, Jean-Jacques Delannoy, Melaine Le Roy, Vyacheslav Molodin, et al.. Geomorphology of the upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai mountains. Journal of Maps, Taylor & Francis, 2020, 16 (2), pp.595-604. 10.1080/17445647.2020.1800529. hal-03044345 HAL Id: hal-03044345 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03044345 Submitted on 8 Dec 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Journal of Maps ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjom20 Geomorphology of the upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai mountains Philip Deline , Ludovic Ravanel , Jean-Jacques Delannoy , Melaine Le Roy , Vyacheslav I. Molodin , Dimitri V. Cheremisim , Lydia V. Zotkina , Catherine Cretin , Jean-Michel Geneste & Hugues Plisson To cite this article: Philip Deline , Ludovic Ravanel , Jean-Jacques Delannoy , Melaine Le Roy , Vyacheslav I. Molodin , Dimitri V. Cheremisim , Lydia V. Zotkina , Catherine Cretin , Jean-Michel Geneste & Hugues Plisson (2020) Geomorphology of the upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai mountains, Journal of Maps, 16:2, 595-604, DOI: 10.1080/17445647.2020.1800529 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2020.1800529 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa View supplementary material UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Journal of Maps Published online: 14 Aug 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 387 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tjom20 JOURNAL OF MAPS 2020, VOL. 16, NO. 2, 595–604 https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2020.1800529 Science Geomorphology of the upper Kalguty Basin, Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai mountains Philip Delinea, Ludovic Ravanela, Jean-Jacques Delannoya, Melaine Le Roya, Vyacheslav I. Molodinb,c, Dimitri V. Cheremisimb,c, Lydia V. Zotkinab,c, Catherine Cretind, Jean-Michel Genested and Hugues Plissond aUniversité Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, EDYTEM, Chambéry, France; bInstitute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia; cNovosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia; dUniversité de Bordeaux, CNRS, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, PACEA, Pessac, France ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY As part of an archaeological research project, we investigate the geomorphology of the cold Received 12 March 2020 and arid study area by combining field mapping with use of orthoimages and DEM. To the Revised 26 May 2020 north of a broad trunk valley floor, gentle slopes continuously vegetated culminate around Accepted 15 July 2020 3000 m, while to the south steep slopes reaching to 3500 m are deeply incised and covered KEYWORDS mainly by regolith. The basin has been intensively glaciated as evidenced by the till covering Glacial and periglacial the gentler slopes, several morainic complexes, kame terraces and roches moutonnées. The geomorphology; present morphodynamics of this permafrost-affected basin is mainly periglacial, with geomorphological mapping; blockfields, solifluction lobes, patterned ground and rock glaciers on gentle slopes to high- Ukok Plateau; Altai elevated flat terrain, and block slopes and rockfall talus on steeper slopes. Large alluvial fans mountains at the outlet of the steep lateral valleys constrain the anastomosing channel of the Kalguty river. Active braided channels in those valleys evidence seasonal high peak discharge. 1. Introduction Kalguty basin provides the context for ongoing dating of Pleistocene glacier advances and inferring palaeocli- The present study was motivated by ongoing archaeo- mate from mass balance reconstruction, with the aim logical research that began in 1990 on the Ukok Plateau to better constrain the age of the rock carvings and the (Molodin et al., 2004), a border region with Kazakh- environmental conditions prevailing at that time. stan, China, and Mongolia that is bounded by steep, high-elevated mountain ranges (Figure 1). Ukok, one of the three areas of the ‘Golden Mountains of Altai’ 2. Geographical, geological and climatic (UNESCO World Heritage region since 1998) is well- setting known to archaeologists for its kurgans, i.e. frozen bur- ial complexes of the 750–250 BCE Pazyryk Culture The highest hills to the north of the upper Kalguty with mummies like the ‘Ukok Princess’ (Chikisheva basin culminate slightly above 3000 m asl, while the et al., 2015). Numerous petroglyph sites are also crest-line of the west end of the Saylyugem Range characteristic of the Ukok Plateau but are difficult to forming the Mongolia/Russia boundary is broadly date given the absence of stratigraphy (Molodin & above 3000 m with a relief reaching > 1000 m, and cul- Cheremisin, 2007). minates with the Tundu-Uqgar (3529 m asl; Figure 2). Our multidisciplinary research project aims to place The valley floor drained by the Kalguty river descends these petroglyphs in their environmental, temporal, and from 3000 to 2300 m over a distance of 22 km, the technical contexts. To address the first two objectives, lower half section being 1–1.5 km wide (Figure 3). A we carried out a detailed geomorphological study of the continuous alpine meadow with shrub patches extends upper Kalguty basin in order to establish a relative chron- up to the top of the hills north to the Kalguty river, and ology of its morphodynamics since the LGM, as the pet- to 2700–2800 m to the south. roglyph site considered as the oldest in the Ukok, Devonian volcanogenic sedimentary rocks are Kalgutinski Rudnik, is located there (Molodin & Chere- dominant in the Saylyugem Range: conglomerates, misin, 2007). While Pleistocene glacial superfloods (e.g. sandstones, schists, and quartzites, interbedded with Rudoy, 2002) or present glacier dynamics (e.g. Ganiush- marlstones and acid volcanic rocks. Further north, kin et al., 2017)havebeenintenselystudiedintheRussian acid (e.g. rhyolite) and basic volcanic rocks are inter- Altai mountains, no detailed geomorphic analysis is bedded with sandstones and schists. A N120° fault available for the Ukok area. This study of the upper crosses both formations, while the two small valleys CONTACT Philip Deline [email protected] Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, EDYTEM, 73000 Chambéry, France © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Journal of Maps This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 596 P. DELINE ET AL. Figure 1. Location of the upper Kalguty basin (study area) in the south-east of the Ukok Plateau, Russian Altai Mountains (Google Earth images); blue areas: present-day glacier extent according to RGI (Randolph Glacier Inventory) Consortium (2017); red line: boundaries between Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. north of the Ulan-Dawa river correspond to secondary To support the final detailed geomorphological map- faults striking N10-40°. ping, a high-resolution DEM was built from SPOT6/ The climate of this arid area of the Altai is cold 7stereo images acquired in 2017, after radiometric cor- desert type BWk according to Köppen-Geiger climate rections (L1A process level). Within Geomatica classification (Peel et al., 2007): mean annual air temp- OrthoEngine (PCI Geomatics), (i) raw images were con- erature is generally negative, e.g. −8.3°C at Bertek verted into epipolar pairs, (ii) DEMs were extracted (2250 m asl); annual precipitation decreases from from the overlap between the epipolar pairs (image cor- 500 mm in the NW to 100 mm along the border with relation), and (iii) the epipolar DEMs were geocoded Mongolia, of which c. 65% occurs in summer (Batbaa- and stitched together to form a 4 m-DEM (triangu- tar et al., 2018; Shahgedanova et al., 2010). lation). Two Pléiades panchromatic orthoimages from Two small glaciers are still present at the head of the 18th September 2016 covering the study area (except East valley (RGI Consortium, 2017) with a total area of its most downstream part) were also used for mapping. 0.25 km² (Figure 2). Spatial modelling of permafrost in Hand-drawn maps were georeferenced in GIS soft- the Altai Mountains (Riseborough et al., 2010) suggests ware (QGIS), where detailed geomorphological map- that continuous permafrost (i.e. ≥90% of the area) ping was carried out using the high-resolution SPOT characterizes the slopes of the study area, whereas DEM and Pléiades orthoimages. Despite their uneven sporadic permafrost (10–50%) is present in the valley quality,
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