Flood sequences and paleofloods

Rajiv Sinha

Several parts of the world frequently experience large floods and understanding the temporal variability of the flooding events at historic scale and to pinpoint the causal factors have been popular research topics. Several large floods in southeast Asia have occurred during the post-1950 period and a majority of these coincide with the excess monsoon epochs. However, the identification of pre-historic floods (paleofloods) in sedimentary records has always been a challenge. Even though several large rivers in the world are highly susceptible to floods, only some of them are geomorphologically suitable for paleoflood analysis. Paleoflood data are increasingly becoming important for flood risk assessment as the classical flood frequency analysis using historical flood data are often not adequate in several regions. It is equally important to understand the feedbacks of landuse changes, sediment dynamics, and climate change on floods. We welcome abstracts on this important area of research which requires an integration of sedimentology with hydrology and geomorphology for process understanding of flood sequences and paleofloods.