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Impact of Climate Change on the Occurrence of Late Holocene Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Patagonia: a Sediment Perspective

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Impact of Climate Change on the Occurrence of Late Holocene Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Patagonia: a Sediment Perspective Impact of climate change on the occurrence of late Holocene glacial lake outburst floods in Patagonia: A sediment perspective Elke Vandekerkhove Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sébastien Bertrand Academic year 2020–2021 Submitted to the Faculty of Science of Ghent University in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Science: Geology Members of the examination committee: Prof. dr. S. Louwye (Ghent University, Belgium): chair Prof. dr. M. De Batist (Ghent University, Belgium): secretary Prof. dr. M. Van Daele (Ghent University, Belgium) Dr. B. Amann (Ghent University, Belgium) Dr. B. Reid (Centro de Investigación en Ecosistemas de la Patagonia, Chile) Prof. dr. C. Lange (University of Concepción, Chile) Prof. dr. G. Benito (National Museum of Natural Sciences, Spain) This research was carried out by Elke Vandekerkhove with financial support of the Research Foundation Flanders (Paleo-GLOFs project: n°G0D7916N) To refer to this thesis: Vandekerkhove, E. (2021) Impact of climate change on the occurrence of late Holocene Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Patagonia: A sediment perspective. PhD thesis, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. The author and the supervisor give the authorization to consult and copy parts of this work for personal use only. Every other use is subjected to copyright laws. Permission to reproduce any material contained in this work should be obtained from the author. I Table of Contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Glacial Lake Outburst Floods ................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1. Moraine-dammed lakes ................................................................................................... 2 1.1.2. Ice-dammed lakes ............................................................................................................ 3 1.2. Worldwide GLOF occurrence ................................................................................................... 4 1.3. Relationship between GLOF occurrence and climate .............................................................. 6 1.4. GLOFs in Patagonia .................................................................................................................. 7 1.5. Research questions .................................................................................................................. 9 2. Setting ............................................................................................................................................ 17 2.1. Baker River ............................................................................................................................. 17 2.2. Oceanography of the Baker-Martínez fjord system ............................................................... 18 2.3. Present-day climate and vegetation ...................................................................................... 18 2.4. Quaternary climate and glacier evolution of Patagonia ......................................................... 20 2.5. Baker River floods .................................................................................................................. 23 2.5.1. Late Quaternary GLOFs .................................................................................................. 23 2.5.2. Historical GLOFs ............................................................................................................. 23 2.5.3. Meteorological floods .................................................................................................... 26 3. Methods ........................................................................................................................................ 32 3.1. Multibeam bathymetry .......................................................................................................... 32 3.2. Sediment sampling ................................................................................................................ 33 3.2.1. Fjord ............................................................................................................................... 33 3.2.2. Floodplain ...................................................................................................................... 34 3.2.3. River suspended sediment concentrations .................................................................... 34 3.3. Sediment analysis .................................................................................................................. 35 3.3.1. Medical CT scanning ...................................................................................................... 36 3.3.2. Core splitting .................................................................................................................. 36 3.3.3. Image acquisition ........................................................................................................... 36 3.3.4. Multi-Sensor Core Logging (MSCL) ................................................................................ 36 3.3.5. X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) scanning ................................................................................ 38 3.3.6. Sub-sampling ................................................................................................................. 39 3.3.7. Manual magnetic susceptibility measurements ............................................................ 39 3.3.8. Grain-size measurements .............................................................................................. 39 3.3.9. Loss-On-Ignition ............................................................................................................. 40 3.3.10. Bulk organic geochemistry ............................................................................................. 40 3.4. Chronology ............................................................................................................................ 41 II 3.4.1. Radionuclide dating ....................................................................................................... 41 3.4.2. Radiocarbon dating ........................................................................................................ 42 3.4.3. Charcoal analysis ............................................................................................................ 43 3.5. Historical records ................................................................................................................... 43 3.6. Instrumental records ............................................................................................................. 44 Supplementary Information .............................................................................................................. 49 4. Modern sedimentary processes at the heads of Martínez Channel and Steffen Fjord, Chilean Patagonia ............................................................................................................................................... 51 4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 51 4.2. Setting .................................................................................................................................... 52 4.3. Material and methods ........................................................................................................... 54 4.3.1. Multibeam bathymetry .................................................................................................. 54 4.3.2. Grab sediment samples ................................................................................................. 54 4.4. Results ................................................................................................................................... 54 4.4.1. Basin morphology .......................................................................................................... 54 4.4.2. Sediment properties ...................................................................................................... 60 4.5. Interpretation and discussion ................................................................................................ 63 4.5.1. Submarine channel systems .......................................................................................... 63 4.5.2. Other morphological features ....................................................................................... 67 4.5.3. Implications for paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental research: site selection........... 69 4.6. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 69 4.7. Data availability ...................................................................................................................... 70 Supplementary Information .............................................................................................................. 78 5. Signature of modern glacial lake outburst floods in fjord sediments (Baker River, Chile) ............. 81 5.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 81 5.2. Setting ...................................................................................................................................
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