10Be Dating of Late Pleistocene Megafloods and Cordilleran Ice Sheet Retreat in the Northwestern United States
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10Be dating of late Pleistocene megafloods and Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreat in the northwestern United States Andrea M. Balbas1,2, Aaron M. Barth1,3, Peter U. Clark1, Jorie Clark1, Marc Caffee4,5, Jim O’Connor6, Victor R. Baker7, Kevin Konrad1, and Bruce Bjornstad8 1College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA 2Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA 3Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA 4Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA 5Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA 6U.S. Geological Survey, 2130 SW Fifth Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97216, USA 7Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721-0011, USA 8Ice Age Floodscapes, Richland, Washington 99354, USA ABSTRACT The specific routes taken by these floods depended on their peak discharge During the late Pleistocene, multiple floods from drainage of gla- and the position of the Okanogan lobe of the CIS. When this lobe was at cial Lake Missoula further eroded a vast anastomosing network of or near its maximum extent, it blocked the northwestern Columbia River bedrock channels, coulees, and cataracts, forming the Channeled in Washington, thereby forming glacial Lake Columbia and diverting the Scabland of eastern Washington State (United States). However, the floods south across higher routes in eastern Washington. These floods, in timing and exact pathways of these Missoula floods remain poorly part following channels cut by earlier Quaternary megafloods (Bjornstad constrained, thereby limiting our understanding of the evolution et al., 2001), eroded the spectacular complex of anastomosing bedrock of this spectacular landscape. Here we report cosmogenic 10Be ages channels, coulees, cataracts, and immense gravel bars that compose the that directly date flood and glacial features important to understand- Channeled Scabland (Bretz, 1928) (Fig. 1). ing the flood history, the evolution of the Channeled Scabland, and Although the relative timing of flood-routing history is reasonably relationships to the Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS). One of the larg- well known (Atwater, 1986; Baker et al., 2016; Waitt, 2016), there are est floods occurred at 18.2 ± 1.5 ka, flowing down the northwestern few constraints on the ages of flood-related erosional and depositional Columbia River valley prior to blockage of this route by advance of features, limiting our ability to assess landscape evolution with respect the Okanogan lobe of the CIS, which dammed glacial Lake Columbia to flood discharge and routes (Denlinger and O’Connell, 2010). The and diverted later Missoula floods to more eastern routes through existing terrestrial chronology suggests that the last period of Missoula the Channeled Scabland. The Okanogan and Purcell Trench lobes of floods occurred sometime after 22 ka and ended sometime after 16 ka, the CIS began to retreat from their maximum extent at ca. 15.5 ka, with large uncertainties in this age range (Benito and O’Connor, 2003; likely in response to onset of surface warming of the northeastern Waitt, 2016). This chronology is based on seven maximum-limiting Pacific Ocean. Upper Grand Coulee fully opened as a flood route after 14C ages (Benito and O’Connor, 2003; Waitt, 2016), a floating varve 15.6 ± 1.3 ka, becoming the primary path for later Missoula floods chronology anchored by one 14C age on reworked wood (Atwater, 1986), until the last ones from glacial Lake Missoula at 14.7 ± 1.2 ka. The the Mount St. Helens ash set “S” volcanic ash with an imprecise age youngest dated flood(s) (14.0 ± 1.4 ka to 14.4 ± 1.3 ka) came down estimate (Benito and O’Connor, 2003; Clague et al., 2003), and the the northwestern Columbia River valley and were likely from glacial age of the Bonneville flood (from Lake Bonneville, ca. 18 ka; Oviatt, Lake Columbia, indicating that the lake persisted for a few centuries 2015). These dates and stratigraphic relations among deposits and flood after the last Missoula flood. features indicate that earlier floods were larger than later ones (Atwa- ter, 1986, 1987; Benito and O’Connor, 2003; Waitt, 1985). Few ages, INTRODUCTION however, directly date the specific timing of flood events or of specific During the late Pleistocene, dozens of megafloods from glacial Lake flood pathways. Missoula in western Montana (United States) resulted from repeated To improve the flood chronology, we present 3210 Be ages from gra- breaching of the Purcell Trench lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS). nitic boulders deposited by ice rafting or on flood bars or granitic bedrock These floods traveled across eastern and central Washington State, ulti- associated with distinct flood pathways (Fig. 1). We also report 13 10Be mately draining into the Pacific Ocean (Fig. 1). In contrast to a model- ages on granitic boulders from terminal moraines deposited by the Purcell based scenario positing a sequence of relatively small flood discharges Trench and Okanogan lobes, which controlled flood origin and routing. eroding one of the many scabland channels impacted by glacial Lake Forty of these ages are new, to which we add five published but recali- Missoula outburst flooding (Larsen and Lamb, 2016; Perron and Ven- brated 10Be ages that date retreat of the Purcell Trench lobe (Breckenridge ditti, 2016), field evidence and paleo hydraulic calculations provide clear and Phillips, 2010). Our analysis does not include six ages apparently evidence of immense flood flows. The huge valley cross sections of the affected by prior exposure or post-depositional movement. 10Be ages were Rathdrum Prairie (Idaho) and Columbia Gorge were inundated, but not calculated using the CRONUS-Earth web calculator (v. 2.0, http://web1. appreciably modified, by the largest of the Missoula floods, which had ittc.ku.edu:8888/2.0/) with a global production rate (3.92 ± 0.31 atoms peak discharges of 10–20 × 106 m3 s–1 or more (Baker, 1973; Benito and g–1 a–1) based on the nuclide and time-dependent scaling framework of O’Connor, 2003; O’Connor and Baker, 1992; O’Connor et al., 2013), mak- Lifton et al. (2014). Other scaling schemes do not significantly alter the ing these the largest known freshwater floods in Earth’s geologic record. results or interpretations of our ages. Details of all sampled boulders GEOLOGY, July 2017; v. 45; no. 7; p. 583–586 | Data Repository item 2017193 | doi:10.1130/G38956.1 | Published online 08 May 2017 ©GEOLOGY 2017 Geological | Volume Society 45 | ofNumber America. 7 For| www.gsapubs.org permission to copy, contact [email protected]. 583 124o W 122o W 120o W 118o W 116o W 114o W Age (ka) 50o N A 20 17.5 15 12.5 10 ) 40 14 49o N A 13 35 12 30 11 25 9 48o N 20 8 Telford-Crab Creek 15 6 Cheney- o 47 N Palouse 10 3 5 5 Freshwater Diatoms (% 2 o 46 N 12 1 11 B 10 0.8 C) 45o N o ( 9 8 0.6 100 km SST 7 37 0.4 K’ 6 U 5 0.2 B 4 Dextral:Sinistral Ratio Okanogan Lobe 49 13 Glacial Lake C Smaller oods through 109 6 5 11 Columbia NW Columbia River. 2 9 97 Coeur Glacial Lake 14 Spokane d’Alene Maximum extent of Okanogan 8 Missoula 1 and Purcell Trench lobes. 47o N Floods routed through Channeled Interpretation Largest ood(s) through NW Columbia River. Scabland. 12 Missoula 20 17.5 15 12.5 10 Tri-Cities Age (ka) Columbia River outlet 10 3 100 km Figure 2. Summary of Be surface exposure ages and their interpreta- 119o W 116oW tion. A: 10Be surface exposure ages from flood-deposited features (Fig. 1 Babcock Ridge 6 Northrup Canyon 11 S. Lake Pend Oreille 1B; Figs. DR1–DR49 and Table DR1 [see footnote 1]) compared with diatom record from northeast Pacific. Circles represent ages on flood- 2 Wenatchee Rafted 7 Withrow Moraine 12 Matawa Fan deposited boulders except for Northrup Canyon (site 6), which is on 3 Wallula Gap 8 Ephrata Fan 13 Pateros Bar bedrock; diamonds represent ages on ice-rafted boulders. All errors are 4 Purcell Trench 9 Wenatchee Bar 14 Pangborn Bar reported at 1σ and include uncertainty in 10Be production rate. Green line represents percent of freshwater diatoms from northeast Pacific 5 Spirit Lake Ripples 10 Chelan Moraine and indicates pulses of large flooding events (Lopes and Mix, 2009). Figure 1. Maps of the Pacific Northwest (United States) during the late B: Mean ages for Withrow moraine of Okanogan lobe (site 7, 15.4 ka) Pleistocene. A: Map of Pacific Northwest with blue regions representing and Purcell Trench Lobe (site 4, 15.7 ka) are shown as vertical black maximum extent of Cordilleran Ice Sheet, green regions representing lines, and range of uncertainty for these two ages (1σ error) is shown glacial lakes, and brown regions representing flood-inundated areas. as gray rectangle. Age and its uncertainty of maximum extent of Puget Region outlined by black rectangle is area shown in panel B. B: Map lobe (see text) is shown as blue rectangle. Proxy records of sea-surface showing sample locations (red symbols). Base map is adapted with temperatures (SST) from Santa Barbara Basin (offshore California) permission from Ice Age Floods Institute (Richland, Washington, USA). (red line: ratio of dextral to sinistral Neogloboquadrina pachyderma) Circles represent flood-deposited boulders; squares, glacier-deposited (Hendy et al., 2002) and Gulf of Alaska (blue line: alkenone-derived K′ boulders; and diamonds, ice-rafted boulders. Individual site numbers paleotemperature [U 37]) (Praetorius et al., 2015). C: General interpre- are shown within each symbol and correspond to Figure 2 and to Fig- tation of flood and glacier events as constrained by new 10Be ages.