Grain size trends reveal alluvial fan sensitivity to late Pleistocene climate change

Abstract:

The effects of climate change on eroding landscapes and the sedimentary record remain poorly understood. The measurement of grain size fining rates in stream-flow dominated deposits provides one way to address this issue because, in principle, these trends embed important information about the dynamics of sediment routing systems and their sensitivities to external forcing. At a fundamental level, downstream fining is often driven by selective deposition of sediment. The relative efficiency of this process is determined by the physical characteristics of the input sediment supply and the spatial distribution of subsidence rate, which generates the accommodation necessary for mass extraction. Here, we measure grain size fining rates from apex to toe on two alluvial fan systems in northern Death Valley, California, which have well-exposed modern and 70 ka surfaces, where the long-term tectonic boundary conditions are known and where climatic variation over this time period is well-constrained. We integrate a self-similar gravel fraction fining model, based on selective sediment extraction, with cosmogenically-derived catchment erosion rates and gravel fining data, to estimate the change in sediment flux that occurred between 70 ka and the present day. Our results show that a 30 % decrease in average precipitation rate led to a 20 % decrease in sediment flux and a clear increase in the down-fan rate of fining. This supports existing landscape evolution models that relate a decrease in precipitation rate to a decrease in sediment flux, but implies that this relationship may be sub-linear. This study offers a new approach to applying grain size fining models to mountain catchments and their alluvial fan systems, and shows fan stratigraphy can be highly sensitive to climate changes over <10⁵ years. However we also observe that this sensitivity is lost when sediment is remobilised and recycled over a time period longer than the duration of the climatic perturbation.