Catastrophic flooding, palaeolakes, and late Quaternary drainage reorganization in northern Eurasia

Abstract

We review the long history of Russian scientific study of the major late Quaternary palaeodrainages and palaeolakes in northern Eurasia to provide overviews of (1) past research efforts (mainly published in the Russian language) and (2) recent studies that include contributions from those outside of the former Soviet Union region. There are two major groups of catastrophic flooding phenomena and related palaeodrainage and palaeolake systems in this region: (1) those involving large-scale lowland basins and (2) those involving upland intermontane basins. Many of these palaeodrainages and palaeolakes were active during the late Quaternary, though the available age data are inconclusive in regard to more exact timing and synchronicity. These palaeodrainages and palaeolakes in the late Quaternary are strongly linked with climatic change, most notably to ice age. For the megalakes in large-scale basins, spillover events probably occurred because of impoundment by the late Pleistocene Arctic ice sheets. In some cases, gradual transgressions of the megalakes caused by varying climatic conditions could also have contributed to the spillovers. Some of these spillover events may have been catastrophic. Ice-dammed lakes formed when drainage into intermontane basins was impounded by late Pleistocene alpine-type glaciers. The collapses of the glacier dams caused downstream catastrophic flooding, producing a characteristic suite of flood-related landforms. In the Azas Plateau volcanic field, there is evidence for Icelandic-type subglacial flooding. ARTICLE HISTORY

Dynamic simulation of catastrophic late Pleistocene glacial-lake drainage, Altai Mountains, central Asia

“…Liu et al 2014;Worni et al 2014), during the Quaternary dam-breaks occurred at the megaflood scale (c. > 10 6 m 3 s −1 ). Flooding was a global phenomenon ( Figure 1) with extraordinary spatial extent and repeated frequency (Baker, 1997(Baker, , 2007Mangerud et al 2004Mangerud et al , 2009Mangerud et al , 2013, affecting the surface sedimentary geology across continents (Komatsu et al, 2015).…”

Global systematic diversity, range distributions, conservation and taxonomic assessments of graylings (Teleostei: Salmonidae; Thymallus spp.)

“…These studies, however, do not provide explicit paleo-hydrological pathways or events that may have facilitated these patterns. While some of these hypothesised colonization events are pre-Pleistocene, our knowledge at least of Pleistocene paleodynamics across Russia reveals numerous events of paleohydrological connectivity (via large paleo-lakes and mega floods) across Siberia and through the Ponto-Caspian region into Europe (Komatsu et al 2016). These events have already served hypotheses concerning the phylogeographic structure of Thymallus, Hucho and Brachymystax across their Siberian range (Koskinen et al 2002;Froufe et al 2003a;Weiss et al 2020a).…”

Cybersecurity and Global Geodynamic Risks

“…4. Для того, чтобы уточнить результаты о выраженности геодинамических рисков, необходимы картографические данные о более детальных распределениях движений земной коры [15,16], тектонических нарушениях [17,18] и аномальном гравитационном поле [19,20]. 13 Regarding the cybersecurity problem, the article considers the current issues of geodynamic risks as exemplified by the territory of Cyprus and the adjacent waters of the Mediterranean Sea.…”