Abrupt drainage basin reorganization following a Pleistocene river capture.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30217980.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-06238-6 and PMC identifier 6138651.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
River capture is a dramatic natural process of internal competition through which mountainous landscapes evolve and respond to perturbations in tectonics and climate. River capture may occur when one river network grows at the expense of another, resulting in a victor that steals the neighboring headwaters. While river capture occurs regularly in numerical models, field observations are rare. Here we document a late Pleistocene river capture in the Yimeng Mountains, China that abruptly shifted 25 km<sup>2</sup> of drainage area from one catchment to another. River terraces and imbricated cobbles indicate that the main channel incised 27 m into granitic bedrock within 80 kyr, following the capture event, and upstream propagating knickpoints and waterfalls reversed the flow direction of a major river. Topographic analysis shows that the capture shifted the river basins far from topographic equilibrium, and active divide migration is propagating the effects of the capture throughout the landscape.