QRC members lead and participate in a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects from the study of past earth climates and glaciations to shifts in the geographic distributions and evolution of vegetation and faunal communities, to the evolution and dispersals of the genus Homo and the increasing scales of human modification of earth environments through the Holocene. QRC provides a venue for meeting and collaborating with scholars across Quaternary disciplines. We are also fortunate to be able to provide seed funding and small grants for member research projects. We are especially happy to support grad student and junior scholar research activities, much of which leads to larger, external funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation.
Abstract: The largest flood on the Columbia River in the past millennium is evidenced by intertidal deposits that overlap in age with the Bonneville Landslide. The slide, in the 15th century CE, dammed the river at the site of the modern-day Bonneville Dam. This project would characterize physical properties of a silt marker bed downstream, noting sedimentary structures and measuring grain sizes, and to refine the age of the silt’s deposition via 14C samples from within the deposit itself. The proposed observations would dovetail with other efforts to study the landslide and its downstream effects, including whether the dam failed in one or more catastrophic floods.