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Earth science

Megafloods downsized

Nature volume 538, pages 174–175 (2016)Cite this article

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A fresh look at the Channeled Scablands of North America shows that the ancient floods that scarred that landscape were smaller than is commonly assumed. This result could revise estimates of similar floods on Mars. See Letter p.229

The enormous canyons of the Channeled Scablands in the northwestern United States, many of which contain no rivers, puzzled geologists for decades. The gradual realization that these canyons were carved thousands of years ago by huge floods spawned by melting glaciers challenged the idea that Earth's surface is shaped by gradual, steady erosion. However, on page 229, Larsen and Lamb1 show that at least one of the canyons was formed by a succession of much smaller floods, a finding that has implications for flood-carved canyons on Mars.

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Figure 1: Competing models of canyon erosion by floods.
Figure 2: Moses Coulee.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. J. Taylor Perron is in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.,

    J. Taylor Perron

  2. Jeremy G. Venditti is in the Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada.,

    Jeremy G. Venditti

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  1. J. Taylor Perron
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  2. Jeremy G. Venditti
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Correspondence to J. Taylor Perron or Jeremy G. Venditti.

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Perron, J., Venditti, J. Megafloods downsized. Nature 538, 174–175 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/538174a

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