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Extreme Flood Events over the Past 300 Years Inferred from Lake Sedimentary Grain Sizes in the Altay Mountains, Northwestern China

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Abstract

Understanding the temporal variations of extreme floods that occur in response to climate change is essential to anticipate the trends in flood magnitude and frequency in the context of global warming. However, long-term records of paleofloods in arid regions are scarce, thus preventing a thorough understanding of such events. In this study, a reconstruction of paleofloods over the past 300 years was conducted through an analysis of grain sizes from the sediments of Kanas Lake in the Altay Mountains of northwestern China. Results showed that grain parameters and frequency distributions can be used to infer possible abrupt environmental events within the lake sedimentary sequence, and two extreme flood events corresponding to ca. 1736–1765 AD and ca. 1890 AD were further identified based on canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) and coarse percentile versus median grain size (C-M) pattern analysis, both of which occurred during warmer and wetter climate conditions by referring to tree-ring records. These two flood events are also evidenced by lake sedimentary records in the Altay and Tianshan mountains. Furthermore, through a comparison with other records, the flood event from ca. 1736–1765 AD in the study region seems to have occurred in both the arid central Asia and the Alps in Europe, and thus may have been associated with changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank MA Long and Kanas Scenic Spot Management Committee for their field assistances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Jianchao Zhou, Jinglu Wu & Haiao Zeng

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jianchao Zhou

  3. Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ürümqi, 830011, China

    Jinglu Wu

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  1. Jianchao Zhou
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  2. Jinglu Wu
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  3. Haiao Zeng
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Correspondence to Jinglu Wu.

Additional information

Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFA0603400), National Science Foundation of China (No. 41671200, U1603242)

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Zhou, J., Wu, J. & Zeng, H. Extreme Flood Events over the Past 300 Years Inferred from Lake Sedimentary Grain Sizes in the Altay Mountains, Northwestern China. Chin. Geogr. Sci. 28, 773–783 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-018-0968-0

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