Chronology of Pleistocene ice-dammed lake outburst floods in the Altai Mountains, Siberia

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Herget
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 396625339

In the late Pleistocene, some of the largest floods in the world took place in the Siberian Altai Mountains. In the headwaters of the River Ob, advanced valley glaciers blocked the course of the River Chuya and formed ice-dammed lakes that repeatedly drained by catastrophic outburst floods. Previous reconstructions resulted in more or less consistent scenarios of the timing and dynamics of the regional Pleistocene glaciation being the main trigger of the events. Methodological and technological progress in dating techniques have improved knowledge of the temporal dynamics but also increased the uncertainty due to an increasing number of contradictory data. This uncertainty has led some to doubt some previous findings of the chronology of the glaciation and related outburst floods in the Russian Altai Mountains. By the application of state-of-the-art techniques of OSL-dating by experts in the field we want to improve the knowledge of the temporal and spatial dynamics of the outburst floods as indicators of the glaciation in the area, which might be seen as a key location for Central Asia.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants