Cataclysms on the Columbia tells two stories. One follows geological research that challenged the scientific paradigm of the early 20th century, and the other chronicles the result of that research: the discovery of powerful prehistoric floods that shaped the Pacific Northwest. The cataclysms at the end of the last Ice Age left a scabland of buttes, dry falls, and rocky gorges, but it took the detective work of geologist J Harlen Bretz to prove it to the world. His lifetime of research and unshakeable belief changed geology forever.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments to the First Edition
Acknowledgments to the Second Edition
Preface
Part I: The World of Geology
Chapter 1: The Living, Changing Earth
Chapter 2: Detecting the Clues to the Past
Part II: The Bretz Saga
3: Early Days
4: Too Many Clues?
5: Scars with a Difference: The Channeled Scablands and Gigantic Gravel Bars
6: The Unthinkable Heresy: Catastrophism vs. Uniformitarianism
7: Solving the Jigsaw Puzzle
8: The Great Controversy
9: The Revisionists: Allison, Hodge, and Flint
10: “Unusual Currents”: Pardee Breaks the Silence
11: Vindication
Part III: The Rest of the Story
12: Major Researchers Since Bretz
Part IV: The Landscape Before and After the Missoula Floods
13: Setting the Stage for the Floods: Geology, Life, and Witnessing the Floods
14: During the Cataclysms and Immediately Afterward
15: After the Missoula Floods
Part V: Following the Floods from Source to Sea
16: Glacial Lake Missoula and the Purcell Trench Ice-Dam: From Missoula, Montana, to Spokane, Washington
17: Rathdrum Prairie and Glacial Lake Columbia: Gateway to the Scablands: From Pend Oreille to Spokane
18: The Channeled Scablands: Grand Coulee and Moses Coulee
19: The Heart of the Channeled Scablands
20: Lake Lewis Basins
21: Wallula Gap to The Dalles: Lake Condon
22: The Dalles to Portland: The Columbia Gorge
23: The Portland-Vancouver Basin: A Story of Erosion and Deposition from Incoming and Outgoing Flood Waters
24: The Willamette Valley South of Portland and the Tualatin Valley West of Portland
25: Portland to the Pacific Ocean
Part VI: Floods from an Even More Distant Past
26: Ancient Cataclysmic Floods
Part VII: The Conclusion and the Future
27: The Conclusion But Not the End
Appendices and Resources
Index
About the Authors
Ooligan Press Acknowledgements
About the author
Scott Burns is a professor of geology at Portland State University.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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