Paleo-Hydraulics and Climate Change Hydraulics
Paleohydraulics involves the application of recent advances in computational hydraulic calculation procedures to retrodict the magnitudes of ancient flow events, particularly extreme floods. Many recent advances have been made in the interpretation of natural records of ancient floods (paleofloods). New tools for quantitative geochronology allow for the precise dating of the paleoflow events, so that it is possible to achieve reliable estimates of paleomagnitudes and frequency (paleoflood hydrology). This information is increasingly being applied to problems of evaluating past climatic change, and the extrapolation of that knowledge into a basis for understanding future climatic change.
The picture shows a paleoflood hydraulic
measurement site on the Colorado River in Marble Canyon, Arizona, used in the following published study:
O'Connor, J.E., Ely, L.L., Wohl, E.E., Stevens, L.E., Melis, T.S., Kale, V.S., and Baker, V.R., 1994, A 4500-year record of large floods on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, Arizona: Journal of Geology, v. 102, p. 1-9.