Paleohydrology of Late Pleistocene Superflooding, Altay Mountains, Siberia

• DOI: 10.1126/science.259.5093.348
• Publication Date: 2006-10-05T23:05:09Z
• Authors: Victor R. Baker; Gerardo Benito; Alexey N. Rudoy
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Cataclysmic flooding is a geomorphological process of planetary significance. Landforms of flood origin resulted from late Pleistocene ice-dammed lake failures in the Altay Mountains of south-central Siberia. Peak paleoflows, which exceeded 18 × 10 6 cubic meters per second, are comparable to the largest known terrestrial discharges of freshwater and show a hydrological scaling relation to floods generated by catastrophic dam failures. These seem to have been Earth's greatest floods, based on a variety of reconstructed paleohydraulic parameters.