The complex hydroclimatic response of the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) to climate circulation patterns and their descriptive indices creates significant challenges to water managers, especially given the uncertain future of the climate. This dissertation addresses fundamental questions that surround extreme flooding in the UCRB by combining paleoflood field techniques, two analytical geochronology techniques and several numerical climate data analysis techniques. The three manuscripts included in this dissertation focus on the Dolores River Basin (DRB), a sub-basin within the UCRB in order to answer theoretical questions about the timing and climate patterns associated with extreme floods.It has become widely accepted that extreme flooding in the Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB) is linked to a period when the frequency and intensity of El Nino periods was higher. Within the UCRB, and more specifically, the DRB, the linkages are less clear. The paleoflood chronology that we developed indicates that the peak episodes of flooding in the DRB occurred between roughly 300 A.D. and 1200 A.D. This period of flooding is out of phase with many floods in the LCRB, whose peak floods dominantly clustered in the last 700 years; a period of time coincident with the termination of large floods in the DRB. The chronology that I developed utilizes accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to provide a detailed flood history, highlighting the importance of utilizing independent age control. Alternative, or less accurate chronologies would have resulted had we used AMS 14C or OSL alone, suggesting that some previously studied basins may have incorrect chronologies. The detailed flood chronology of this study has subsequently allowed us to contextualize extreme floods relative to middle--late Holocene climate variability.In an effort to provide a hydroclimatic context for flooding in the DRB, numerical analyses were applied to contemporary climate and streamflow data in order to identify the possible mechanisms that modulate precipitation and streamflow in the Western U.S. and more specifically, the DRB. Results from these techniques indicate that the DRB maintains a complex response to a major North Pacific, low-frequency circulation pattern. The North Pacific circulation modulates the low-frequency component of the DRB's precipitation and flooding, although the high frequency modulation remains very poorly characterized.

Most approaches to interpreting alluvial records in drylands fall into one of two categories: (1) The "arroyo problem," wherein workers study cycles of streambed aggradation and degradation in broad, unconstricted alluvial valleys; and (2) paleoflood hydrology, where alluvial sequences in constricted bedrock canyons are interpreted as paleoflood deposits from streams with stable channel grade and geometry. Both approaches can be valid in their end-member settings, but there is confusion about how the two record types relate in a single drainage. We address this disconnect in Buckskin Wash, an ephemeral stream that consists of a broad alluvial reach draining into a tightly constricted slot canyon. By employing detailed sedimentology, stratigraphy, and geochronology in both the alluvial and constricted reaches of the watershed, we test the hypothesis that the slot canyon deposits are anticorrelated to valley-fill deposits upstream, implying that arroyo cutting is driven by episodic flooding. Alluvial reach deposits are characterized by stratal packages representing incremental, long-term aggradation bound by erosion surfaces representing channel entrenchment. At least four packages younger than ~3 ka are present, the youngest spanning ~0.7 - 0.15 ka. Each is composed of interfingering imbricated gravels, laminated sands, and massive silty clays. Constricted reach deposits consist of five discrete packages, each composed of tabular beds of laminated silty sand that were deposited relatively rapidly. The oldest package dates to ~1.9 - 1.1 ka, whereas the rest of the deposits are younger than ~0.15 ka. Traditional paleoflood techniques would suggest that the constricted reach deposits record a ~1000-year absence of paleofloods followed by ~100 years of frequent, high-magnitude flooding that indeed correlate to arroyo cutting upstream. We argue instead that the constricted reach deposits record an episode of higher preservation potential. Transport of sediment from the alluvial reaches during historic arroyo cutting likely led to a pulse of sediment storage and changed stage-discharge relations in the slot canyon downstream, allowing even moderate floods to overtop existing deposits and be preserved. This new interpretation suggests that, because preservation may be a function of episodic sediment loading from upstream, constricted-reach deposits may not accurately record the paleoflood history of a stream.

No description available.

Stratigraphic records in four basins in the central Black Hills in combination with hydraulic calculations show that all basins have experienced multiple large floods in the last 2,000 years with flow rates substantially larger than those gaged historically. Flood-frequency analyses for the study reaches account for 29 paleofloods inferred from interpretation of stratigraphic records locally extending back 1,000 to almost 2,000 years. The addition of paleoflood data to the gaged and historical data significantly reduced uncertainties related to flood-frequency. For all study reaches the 95-percent confidence intervals about the low-probability quantile estimates (100-, 200-, and 500-year recurrence-intervals) were reduced by at least 78 percent relative to those for the gaged records only. In some cases, 95-percent uncertainty intervals were reduced by 99 percent or more. Additionally, a stratigraphic record of 35 large paleofloods and four large historical floods during the last 2,000 years (including several floods not used in the frequency analyses due to age constraints) reveal four flooding episodes at A.D.: 130-40, 640-670, 900-1290, and 1410 to present. During the Medieval Climate Anomaly (~A.D. 900-1300) the Black Hills experienced 13 large floods compared to nine large floods in the previous 800 years. This high concentration of large flooding events were likely caused by: 1) instability of air masses caused by stronger than normal westerlies; 2) larger or more frequent hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean; and/or 3) reduced land covering vegetation and an increase in forest fires caused by the severe drought. By examining the response of streamflow to the MCA, it seems likely that if severe long-term drought conditions persist for the Black Hills region, an increase in the frequency and magnitude of large floods can be expected. The Black Hills paleofloods represent some of the largest known floods, relative to drainage area, for the United States. Many of the other largest known United States floods are in areas with physiographic and climatologic conditions broadly similar to the Black Hills--semi-arid and rugged landscapes that intercept and focus heavy precipitation from convective storm systems.