Glacial-Interglacial Climate Changes Recorded by Debris Flow Grain Size, Eastern Sierra Nevada, California

Abstract:

Uncertainties remain about the sensitivity of eroding landscapes to climate changes over a range of frequencies and amplitudes. Numerical models suggest that simple catchment-fan systems should be responsive to glacial-interglacial climate cycles, recording them in both sediment flux and the grain size distribution of their deposits. However these models are largely untested and the propagation of climatic signals through simple sediment routing systems remains contentious. Here, we present detailed sedimentological data from 8 debris flow fans in Owens Valley, eastern California. These fans have an exceptionally well-constrained depositional record spanning the last 120 ka, which we use to examine how sediment export has varied as a function of high-amplitude climate changes. We find a strong and sustained relationship between debris flow grain size and paleoclimate proxies over an entire glacial-interglacial cycle, with significantly coarser-grained deposits correlated with warm and dry conditions. Our data suggest these systems are highly reactive to climate forcing, with a short response timescale of <10 ka and no evidence of signal buffering, which we interpret to be driven by rapid sediment transfer from source to sink. We demonstrate that debris flow grain size follows an exponential relationship with temperature, coarsening at a rate of ~10 % per °C. Using this observation, and a known relationship between temperature and storm intensity, we propose that the climate signal recorded in these fan deposits captures changing storm intensity during the last glacial-interglacial cycle. This study offers a direct test of existing models of catchment-fan systems, confirming that glacial-interglacial climate changes can be clearly expressed in their grain size records. Our results also suggest that these debris flow deposits contain a high-resolution, testable record of past storm intensity, and that storminess is the primary control on their sedimentological properties.