CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Author : Blais-Stevens, A.; Clague, J.J.; Hebda, R.J.; Mathewes, R.W.; and Bornhold, B.D.
Date : 2001.
Title : Record of large, Late Pleistocene outburst floods preserved in Saanich Inlet sediments.
Publication : Canadian Quaternary Association/ Association canadienne pour l'etude du Quaternaire, Annual Meeting 2001. Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, August 20 – 24, 2001.
Issue :
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Abstract
Two anomalous silty clay beds are present in ODP cores collected from Saanich Inlet, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The beds, which date to about 10,500 14C yr BP (11,000 calendar years BP), contain Tertiary pollen derived from sedimentary rocks found only in the Fraser Lowland, on the mainland of British Columbia and Washington just east of the Strait of Georgia. Abundant illite-muscovite in the sediments supports a S-type pluton provenance in the Fraser Lowland. These evidences indicate that the clay beds are probably the distal deposits of huge floods that swept across the Fraser Lowland at the end of the Pleistocene. Muddy overflow plumes from these floods crossed the Strait of Georgia and entered Saanich Inlet, where the sediment settled from suspension and blanketed diatom-rich muds that had accumulated on the fiord floor. The likely source of the floods is ice-dammed lakes in the Fraser and Thompson valleys, which are known to have disappeared at about the time the floods occurred.
Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology