Relation of sediment load and flood-plain formation to climatic variability, Paria River drainage basin, Utah and Arizona

Abstract

Flood-plain alluviation began about 1940 at a time of decreasing magnitude and frequency of floods in winter, summer, and fall. No floods with stages high enough to inundate the flood plain have occurred since 1980, and thus no flood-plain alluviation has occurred since then. The decrease in magnitude and frequency of floods appears to have resulted from a decrease in frequency of large storms, particularly dissipating tropical cyclones, and not from a decrease in annual or seasonal precipitation. -from Authors