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Timing and patterns of basin infilling as documented in Lake Powell during a drought

Lincoln Pratson¹, John Hughes-Clarke², Mark Anderson³, Thomas Gerber^1,*, David Twichell⁴, Ronald Ferrari⁵, Charles Nittrouer⁶, Jonathan Beaudoin², Jesse Granet³ and John Crockett^6,

^{1 1}Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, P.O. Box 90227, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA
^{2 2}Ocean Mapping Group, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 5A3, Canada
^{3 3}National Park Service, Glen Canyon NRA, P.O. Box 1507, Page, Arizona 86040, USA
^{4 4}U.S. Geological Survey, 384 Woods Hole Road, Quissett Campus, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543-1598, USA
^{5 5}Bureau of Reclamation, P.O. Box 25007, Denver, Colorado 80225, USA
^{6 6}School of Oceanography, University of Washington, P.O. Box 357940, Seattle, Washington 98195-7940, USA

Between 1999 and 2005, drought in the western United States led to a >44 m fall in the level of Lake Powell (Arizona-Utah), the nation's second-largest reservoir. River discharges to the reservoir were halved, yet the rivers still incised the tops of deltas left exposed along the rim of the reservoir by the lake-level fall. Erosion of the deltas enriched the rivers in sediment such that upon entering the reservoir they discharged plunging subaqueous gravity flows, one of which was imaged acoustically. Repeat bathymetric surveys of the reservoir show that the gravity flows overtopped rockfalls and formed small subaqueous fans, locally raising sediment accumulation rates 10–100-fold. The timing of deep-basin deposition differed regionally across the reservoir with respect to lake-level change. Total mass of sediment transferred from the lake perimeter to its bottom equates to ~22 yr of river input.