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A Small Look At The Big Picture: Linking Geopotential Height Anomalies To Paleofloods On The Snake River, Idaho And Oregon, Gwendolyn Bernitha Rhodes

All Master's Theses

A combined paleoflood and flood hydroclimatology study on the Snake River in Idaho and Oregon suggests a link between floods and patters of geopotential height anomalies over the North Pacific Ocean. Examination of the paleoflood record in two 4-m (12 ft) tall terraces along the Hells Canyon reach of the Snake River in Idaho and Oregon shows evidence of at least twenty-two late-Holocene extreme floods that occurred approximately 5,000 years. The ages of paleoflood deposits at these sites fall into two time periods, from 5130 ± 40 to 1960 ± 40 yr BP and from 320 ± 40 yr BP …