Paleohydraulic reconstruction of flash-flood peaks from boulder deposits in the Colorado Front Range

摘要

Nine watersheds in the Colorado Front Range with steep bedrock channels were used to test the accuracy of paleohydraulic reconstruction of large flash floods using boulder deposits. The nine basins consist of eight small ungauged basins ranging in size from 1.6 to 29 km2 and the Big Thompson River at the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon, draining 790 km2. Between 1923 and 1976, all nine basins had had one catastrophic flash flood, the magnitude of which has been estimated by the conventional slope-area method.