Owyhee Webinar: Ice-Age Flooding in Lakes Alvord and Coyote

The Owyhee Webinar series is designed to share the natural wonders of the Owyhee with folks far and wide. In this webinar, we are excited to introduce Deron Carter of Linn-Benton Community College.

During the late-Pleistocene, the Alvord and Coyote Basins in southeastern Oregon held large pluvial lakes. As these lakes rose in response to climate change, they released at least one catastrophic flood down the Crooked Creek drainage and into the Owyhee River. Geological evidence of flooding includes incision of deep canyons, scoured bedrock surfaces, and flood deposits that contain boulders up to four meters in diameter. This event, and possible earlier ones, attest to the role flooding played in the landscape evolution of the Great Basin during the ice age. 

More about the speaker

Deron Carter is a Geoscience Faculty member at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon. He spent two years investigating the catastrophic flooding of pluvial Lakes Alvord and Coyote as a part of his graduate studies at Central Washington University. 

All ages and experience levels are welcome. You must register to receive the Google Hangouts link.