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Late Quaternary valley infill and dissection in the Indus River, western Tibetan Plateau margin
(2014)
The Indus, one of Earth's major rivers, drains large parts of the NW Himalaya and the Transhimalayan ranges that form part of the western Tibetan Plateau margin. In the western Himalayan syntaxis, where local topographic relief exceeds 7 km, the Indus has incised a steep bedrock gorge at rates of several mm yr(-1). Upstream, however, the upper Indus and its tributaries alternate between bedrock gorges and broad alluvial flats flanked by the Ladakh and Zanskar ranges. We review the late Quaternary valley history in this region with a focus on the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar Rivers, where vast alluvial terrace staircases and lake sediments record major episodes of aggradation and incision. New absolute dating of high-level fluvial terrace remnants using cosmogenic Be-10, optically and infrared stimulated luminescence (OSL, IRSL) indicates at least two phases of late Quaternary valley infilling. These phases commenced before similar to 200 ka and similar to 50-20 ka, judging from terrace treads stranded >150 m and similar to 30-40 m above modern river levels, respectively. Numerous stacks of lacustrine sediments that straddle the Indus River >200 km between the city of Leh and the confluence with the Shyok River share a distinct horizontal alignment. Constraints from IRSL samples of lacustrine sequences from the Leh-Spituk area reveal a protracted lake phase from >177 ka to 72 ka, locally accumulating >50-m thick deposits. In the absence of tectonic faulting, major lithological differences, and stream capture, we attribute the formation of this and other large lakes in the region to natural damming by large landslides, glaciers, and alluvial fans. The overall patchy landform age constraints from earlier studies can be reconciled by postulating a major deglacial control on sediment flux, valley infilling, and subsequent incision that has been modulated locally by backwater effects of natural damming. While comparison with Pleistocene monsoon proxies reveals no obvious correlation, a lateor post-glacial sediment pulse seems a more likely source of this widespread sedimentation that has partly buried the dissected bedrock topography. Overall, the long residence times of fluvial, alluvial and lacustrine deposits in the region (>500 ka) support previous studies, but remain striking given the dominantly steep slopes and deeply carved valleys that characterise this high-altitude mountain desert. Recalculated late Quaternary rates of fluvial bedrock incision in the Indus and Zanskar of 1.5 +/- 0.2 mm yr(-1) are at odds with the longevity of juxtaposed valley-fill deposits, unless a lack of decisive lateral fluvial erosion helps to preserve these late Pleistocene sedimentary archives. We conclude that alternating, similar to 10(4)-yr long, phases of massive infilling and incision have dominated the late Quaternary history of the Indus valley below the western Tibetan Plateau margin. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The Indus River, one of Asia's premier rivers, drains the western Tibetan Plateau and the Nanga Parbat syntaxis. These two areas juxtapose some of the lowest and highest topographic relief and commensurate denudation rates in the Himalaya-Tibet orogen, respectively, yet the spatial pattern of denudation rates upstream of the syntaxis remains largely unclear, as does the way in which major rivers drive headward incision into the Tibetan Plateau. We report a new inventory of Be-10-based basinwide denudation rates from 33 tributaries flanking the Indus River along a 320 km reach across the western Tibetan Plateau margin. We find that denudation rates of up to 110 mm k.y.(-1) in the Ladakh and Zanskar Ranges systematically decrease eastward to 10 mm k.y.(-1) toward the Tibetan Plateau. Independent results from bulk petrographic and heavy mineral analyses support this denudation gradient. Assuming that incision along the Indus exerts the base-level control on tributary denudation rates, our data show a systematic eastward decrease of landscape downwearing, reaching its minimum on the Tibetan Plateau. In contrast, denudation rates increase rapidly 150-200 km downstream of a distinct knick-point that marks the Tibetan Plateau margin in the Indus River longitudinal profile. We infer that any vigorous headward incision and any accompanying erosional waves into the interior of the plateau mostly concerned reaches well below this plateau margin. Moreover, reported long-term (>10(6) yr) exhumation rates from low-temperature chronometry of 0.1-0.75 mm yr(-1) consistently exceed our Be-10-derived denudation rates. With averaging time scales of 10(3)-10(4) yr for our denudation data, we report postglacial rates of downwearing in a tectonically idle landscape. To counterbalance this apparent mismatch, denudation rates must have been higher in the Quaternary during glacial-interglacial intervals.
Some of the largest and most erosive floods on Earth result from the failure of glacial dams. While potentially cataclysmic ice dams are recognized to have repeatedly formed along ice-sheet margins, much less is known about the frequency and longevity of ice dams caused by mountain glaciers, and their impact on landscape evolution. Here we present field observations and results from cosmogenic nuclide dating that allow reconstructing a > 100-k.y.-long history of glacial damming in the Shyok Valley, eastern Karakoram (South Asia). Our field observations provide evidence that Asia's second-longest glacier, the Siachen, once extended for over 180 km and blocked the Shyok River during the penultimate glacial period, leading to upstream deposition of a more than 400-m-thick fluvio-lacustrine valley fill. Be-10-depth profile modeling indicates that glacial damming ended with the onset of the Eemian interglacial and that the Shyok River subsequently incised the valley fill at an average rate of similar to 4-7 m k.y.(-1). Comparison with contemporary ice-dammed lakes in the Karakoram and elsewhere suggests recurring outburst floods during the aggradation period, while over 25 cycles of fining-upward lake deposits within the valley fill indicate impounding of floods from farther upstream. Despite prolonged damming, the net effect of this and probably earlier damming episodes by the Siachen Glacier is dominated by glacial erosion in excess of fluvial incision, as evidenced by a pronounced overdeepening that follows the glaciated valley reach. Strikingly similar overdeepened valleys at all major confluences of the Shyok and Indus Rivers with Karakoram tributaries indicate that glacial dams and subsequent outburst floods have been widespread and frequent in this region during the Quaternary. Our study suggests that the interaction of Karakoram glaciers with the Shyok and Indus Rivers promoted valley incision and headward erosion into the western margin of the Tibetan Plateau.
The growing body of research on large-scale mass wasting events so far has only scarcely investigated the sedimentology of chaotic deposits from non-volcanic terrestrial landslides such that any overarching and systematic terminological framework remains elusive. Yet recent work has emphasized the need for better understanding the internal structure and composition of rockslide deposits as a means to characterise the mechanics during the final stages of runout and emplacement. We offer a comprehensive overview on the occurrence of rock fragmentation and frictional melt both at different geographic locations, and different sections within large (>10(6) m(3)) rockslide masses. We argue that exposures of pervasively fragmented and interlocked jigsaw-cracked rock masses; basal melange containing rip-up clasts and phantom blocks; micro-breccia; and thin bands of basal frictionite are indispensable clues for identifying deposits from giant rockslides that may remain morphologically inconspicuous otherwise. These sedimentary assemblages are diagnostic tools for distinguishing large rockslide debris from macro and microscopically similar glacial deposits, tectonic fault-zone breccias, and impact breccias, and thus help avoid palaeoclimatic and tectonic misinterpretations, let alone misestimates of the hazard from giant rockslides. Moreover, experimental results from Mossbauer spectroscopy of frictionite samples support visual interpretations of thin sections, and demonstrate that short-lived (<10 s) friction-induced partial melting at temperatures >1500 degrees C in the absence of water occurred at the base of several giant moving rockslides. This finding supports previous theories of dry excess runout accompanied by comminution of rock masses down to gm-scale, and indicates that catastrophic motion of large fragmenting rock masses does not require water as a potential lubricant.