Water Stewardship Information Sources
| Citation | Friele, PA and Clague, JJ. 2009. Paraglacial geomorphology of Quaternary volcanic landscapes in the southern Coast Mountains, British Columbia. Geological Society, London, Special Publicaitons 320: 219-233. |
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| Organization | SFU |
| URL | http://www.sfu.ca/cnhr/papers/Friele%20and%20Clague%20GSL%202009.pdf |
| Abstract/Description or Keywords | An important paradigm in geomorphology is paraglacial sedimentation, a phrase first used almost 40 years ago to describe reworking of glacial sediment by mass wasting and streams during and after continental-scale deglaciation. The concept has been extended to include nonglacial landforms and landscapes conditioned by glaciation. In this paper we apply the paraglacial concept to volcanoes in southern British Columbia, Canada, that formed, in part, in contact with glacier ice. The Cheekye River basin, a small watershed on the flank of a volcano that erupted against the decaying Cordilleran ice sheet, has a Holocene history marked by an exponential decay in debris-flow activity and sediment yield. Its history is consistent with the primary exhaustion model of the paraglacial cycle. At larger spatial scales, this primary sediment is reworked by rivers and transported downstream and augmented by stochastic geomorphic events. Repeated large landslides from Mount Meager volcano in southern British Columbia have delivered a disproportionate volume of sediment to the fluvial system: although occupying only 2% of the watershed area, 25–75% of the 10 km3 of sediment deposited in Lillooet River valley during the Holocene originated from the volcano. In these cases a significant overall reduction in sediment yield must await the removal, by erosion, of volcanic edifices, a process that could take up to millions of years. These examples of paraglacial activity on Quaternary volcanoes are end members in the spectrum of landscape response to Pleistocene deglaciation. |
| Information Type | article |
| Regional Watershed | Howe Sound & Sunshine Coast |
| Sub-watershed if known | Cheekye River |
| Aquifer # | |
| Comments | |
| Project status | complete |
| Contact Name | Pierre Friele |
| Contact Email | [email protected] |