Rapid Holocene bedrock canyon incision of Beida River, North Qilian Shan, China

Wang, Yiran; Oskin, Michael E.; Li, Youli; Zhang, Huiping

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-191-2022

Articles | Volume 10, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-191-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-191-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 2

Research article

|

14 Mar 2022

Research article |

| 14 Mar 2022

Rapid Holocene bedrock canyon incision of Beida River, North Qilian Shan, China

Yiran Wang, Michael E. Oskin, Youli Li, and Huiping Zhang

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-191-2022-supplement

Data sets

Rapid bedrock canyon incision during a mid-Holocene pluvial period, Qilian Shan, China Yiran Wang https://osf.io/bpvw9/

Short summary

Beida River has an over-steepened reach presently located 10 km upstream of the North Qilian mountain front. It was formed because river incising into the bedrocks inside the mountain cannot keep up with river incising into the soft sediment in the basin. We suggest this over-steepened reach represents a fast incision period 3–4 kyr ago, deepening the canyon for ~35 m within ~700 years. The formation of this reach corresponds to a humid period related to strong Southeast Asian Monsoon influence.