Fire and Ice in Central Idaho: Modern and Holocene Fires, Debris Flows, and Climate in the Payette River Basin, and Quaternary and Glacial Geology in the Sawtooth Mountains

By Jennifer L. Pierce, Grant A. Meyer, Glenn D. Thackray, Spencer H. Wood, Kari Lundeen, Jennifer A. Borgert, and Eric Rothwell
The first part of this trip, addressing the fire and debris-flow history of the area, follows the South Fork Payette River from Banks to Stanley, Idaho. Storm events following recent fires in the South Fork Payette basin have both produced new deposits and have exposed Holocene fire-related debris-flow and flood sediments and other alluvial fan-building deposits that yield insights into Holocene environmental change. The last two parts of the trip, addressing the glacial history, continue southeast of Stanley along Highway 75 to near Sun Valley, Idaho. Stops address glacial-moraine characteristics and sediment cores from the southeastern Sawtooth Mountains and Stanley Basin that provide evidence of late Pleistocene alpine glaciation. A combination of these glacial records with reconstructions of regional equilibrium line elevations produces late-glacial paleoclimatic inferences for the area.

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