Valley-floor widths across the Himalayan orogen [dataset]

Schildgen, Taylor F. (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Germany); Clubb, Fiona J. (Durham University, UK); van der Beek, Peter A. (University of Potsdam, Germany); Devrani, Rahul (OP Jindal Global University, India); Sinclair, Hugh D. (University of Edinburgh, UK); Mudd, Simon M. (University of Edinburgh, UK)

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Valley-floor widths across the Himalayan orogen [dataset] Open Access

Himalayan rivers transport ~10^3 Mt of sediment annually to ocean basins. Mountain valleys are an important component of this routing system: sediment storage in these valleys acts to buffer climatic and tectonic signals recorded by downstream sedimentary systems. Despite a critical need to understand the spatial distribution, volume and longevity of these valley fills, controls on valley location and geometry are unknown, and estimates of sediment volumes are based on never-tested assumptions of valley widening processes. Here we extract 1,644,215 valley-floor width measurements across the Himalaya to determine the dominant controls on valley-floor morphology, and to assess sediment storage processes. We use random forest regression to estimate the importance of potential controlling variables, and find that channel steepness, a proxy for rock uplift, is a first-order control on valley-floor width. We also analyse a novel dataset of 1,797 exhumation rates and find that valley-floor width decreases as exhumation rate increases. We therefore suggest that valley-floor width is adjusted to long-term tectonically driven exhumation rather than being controlled by water discharge or bedrock erodibility, and that valley widening predominantly results from sediment deposition along low-gradient valley floors rather than lateral bedrock erosion.

Descriptions

Resource type: Dataset
Contributors: Creator: Clubb, Fiona J. ¹
Contact person: Clubb, Fiona J. ¹
Data curator: Clubb, Fiona J. ¹
Creator: Mudd, Simon M. ²
Creator: Schildgen, Taylor F. ³
Creator: van der Beek, Peter A. ⁴
Creator: Devrani, Rahul ⁵
Creator: Sinclair, Hugh D. ²

¹ Durham University, UK
² University of Edinburgh, UK
³ GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Germany
⁴ University of Potsdam, Germany
⁵ OP Jindal Global University, India
Funder: Natural Environment Research Council
Research methods
Other description
Keyword: Valley width
Himalayan orogen
Channel steepness
Tectonics
Subject
Location
Language
Cited in: doi:10.1038/s41561-023-01238-8
Identifier: ark:/32150/r2z890rt27d
doi:10.15128/r2z890rt27d
Rights: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)
Publisher: Durham University
Date Created

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Depositor: F.J. Clubb
Date Uploaded: 3 February 2023, 17:02:37
Date Modified: 1 August 2023, 08:08:08
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Last modified: 2023:02:03 17:45:53+00:00

Filename: himalaya-valley-widths.zip

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User N. Syrotiuk has updated Valley-floor widths across the Himalayan orogen [dataset]	10 months ago