Outputs

Our findings recently published as Open Access in the journal Earth Surface Process and Landforms, showcases the first quantitative reconstruction of palaeofloods using lake sediments for the UK (Click here for the paper).

For the very large catchment Bassenthwaite Lake catchment in NW England the cluster of devastating floods from 1990 to present is without precedent in our 558-year palaeo-record derived from the lake sediments.

We used the palaeoflood data in conventional flood magnitude and frequency (FMF) analyses to gain a longer-term perspective on flood magnitude recurrence probabilities, showing these extreme floods have longer recurrence intervals than revealed by analysis of shorter duration gauged single station records.

The approach applied for these lakes provides an exemplar of how we can produced long in duration palaeoflood reconstructions from similar lakes around the world.