Wednesday, October 22, 2008

An alluvial fan


This (rather short) post is for my office mate Christina Carr, because she gets off on alluvial fans. This is an alluvial fan I photographed (in action!!!) this summer along the coast of Oregon. Based on the size, gradient, sediment, and geomorphology, this can be characterized as a debris flow fan. You can clearly see abandoned (and more importantly, unvegetated) depositional lobes, in addition to a new channel incision to the left of the old lobe.

4 comments:

BrianR said...

wow! that is awesome!

Silver Fox said...

I love alluvial fans.

Syverine said...

Ooooh! Drool! Or some other bodily fluid!
-You know that a small change in base level could have momentous effects on classification (alluvial fan vs. fan delta). You will just have to go back now and see if it was transitory and got washed away by a low frequency- high magnitude event, or if it is resilient!

Christina said...

Wow! Somehow I am just now seeing this. Nice picture Bobby, and great blog.