A Late Quaternary catastrophic flood in the Lahul Himalayas

A Preliminary Assessment of the Geological evidence of the mega floods in the Upper Zanskar Catchement, NW Himalaya

“…7). Seong et al, 2009Srivastava et al, 2017Dortch et al, 2011Coxon et al, 1996 Present study Kumar et al, (in comm. )…”

“…Another outburst event with very high discharge is reported from Braldu valleys of Karakoram Himalaya, where peak discharge of 10 4 m 3 /s scale had reworked the landforms, during the early Holocene (~10 ka) (Seong et al, 2009). Outburst of the proglacial Batal lake, in Chandra Valley, Lahul Himalaya, had released 1.496 km 3 of water in 0.72 days, with an estimated peak discharge of 21000-27000 m 3 /s (Coxon et al, 1996). Evidence of glacial stages in the Tangtse Valley had been overridden by flash flood which occurred due to partial drainage of Pangong Tso, which had released ~18.3 km 3 of water, with estimated discharge of ~110,000 m 3 /s (Dortch et al, 2011) (Fig.…”

Rapid Last Glacial Maximum deglaciation in the Indian Himalaya coeval with midlatitude glaciers: New insights from 10Be‐dating of ice‐polished bedrock surfaces in the Chandra Valley, NW Himalaya

“…At the Pleistocene‐Holocene transition, tributary valley glaciers readvanced at least once into the trunk valley at around 13 ka (recalculated from Owen et al [] and Murari et al []), but there exists no evidence of any trunk‐valley glacier advance at this time or later. Well‐preserved flood deposits in the Chandra River bed resulting from ice dam failure in the Upper Chandra Valley [ Coxon et al , ; Owen et al , ] and preserved Holocene strath terraces [ Adams et al , ] support this interpretation. Our reconstruction suggests a mean ice retreat rate of 37 ± 11 m per year in the Chandra Valley beginning at the end of the LGM.…”

Geochemical and Radiogenic Sr‐Nd Isotope Characterization of Widespread Sandy Surface Sediments in the Great Indian Desert, Thar: Implications for Provenance Studies

“…This observation also attests to additional weathering controls of varying sediment‐water interaction times in the source‐sink journey besides that of monsoonal strength. A bountiful supply of less weathered materials by the Himalayan rivers can easily be expected from moraines reworking, high‐altitude glacial lake outburst floods, and landslides during the deglaciation times (Ballantyne, 2002; Coxon et al., 1996) as well as high rainfall periods (Clift & Jonell, 2021; Goswami et al., 2012; Srivastava et al., 2020; Thamban et al., 2007), and also projected in future warming scenarios (Haeberli et al., 2017; Zheng et al., 2021). Thus, a direct riverine (i.e., glaciofluvial) supply of immature sandy sediments to the Thar Desert is expected from glacial moraines during the deglaciation period soon after the Last Glaciation Maxima (LGM, ∼20 ka BP), and their aggradation followed by a diversion or reduction in the river discharge under hyper‐arid conditions that prevailed in the late Holocene.…”