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| Title: | Overturned mega boulders on coastal cliff-tops and in bedrock river channels : can cosmogenic nuclides constrain tsunami and palaeo-flood |
| Authors: | Fink, D Fujioka, T Mifsud, C Nanson, G Felton, A |
| Keywords: | Australia Tsunami Isotopes ROCK BEDS FLOODS HYDRAULICS |
| Issue Date: | 23-Mar-2011 |
| Publisher: | 12th International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS-12) |
| Citation: | Fink, D., Fujioka, T., Mifsud, C., Nanson, G., Felton, A., (2011). Overturned mega boulders on coastal cliff-tops and in bedrock river channels: can cosmogenic nuclides constrain tsunami and palaeo-flood? 12th International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS 12), 20th - 25th March 2011. Museum of New Zealand: Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand. |
| Abstract: | Jacks Waterhole at the Durack River in the Kimberley region of north west Australia is an exposed
bedrock paleo-channel, excavated by hydraulic plucking of well-jointed bedrock. This section of
the channel consist of arc-shaped disconnected stacks of imbricated meter-sized slabs dislodged
from bedrock steps immediately upstream of the boulder-filled channel. The semi-arid climate is
punctuated by summer tropical storms/cyclones causing occasional violent floods. High magnitude
floods with high flow velocities are required to erode and transport such large rock slabs.
Along the south-eastern Australian coastline, at Little Beecroft Head, large detached sandstone
boulders are found unconformably on horizontal cliff top escarpments and benches of identical
lithology some 20-35 meters above present day sea-level. For some boulders, local stratigraphy
indicates transport from the nearby cliff face, implicating tsunami or exceptional storm events. In
other cases, an interpretation of differential erodibility along bedding strata, slow emergence and
preservation from the contemporary platform is applicable.
For both locations, detailed geomorphic mapping, cross-bedding orientation and tracing from the
identified detachment site clearly indicates that boulders have experienced at least one flipping
event. Consequently, previously buried surfaces are instantaneously exposed to an enhanced
production rate of cosmogenic nuclides. The possibility of dating the ‘flipping’ event depends largely
on a comparison of measured cosmogenic concentrations from 4 surfaces (upper and lower
boulder, shielded and exposed bedrock) to that predicted on the boulder as a function of boulder
thickness.
In this paper, we describe our model and its sensitivity to boulder thickness, inheritance and postflipping
time. Preliminary results of 10Be and 26Al analysis from flipped and non-flipped boulders at
Jack’s Waterhole and Little Beecroft Head are given.Copyright (c) 2011 AMS12. |
| URI: | http://www.gns.cri.nz/ams12/ http://apo.ansto.gov.au/dspace/handle/10238/4254 |
| Appears in Collections: | Conference Publications
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