Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168

www.elsevier.com/locate/catena

Palaeoflood hydrology in a global context

Victor R. Baker *
Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

Abstract

From its origins as a geological study of flood erosion and sediments the science palaeoflood hydrology matured to become an
indispensable means for understanding the hydrology of very large, rare floods. Such floods are increasingly posing risks to human
habitation. More that 3 decades of research in palaeoflood hydrology produced spectacular advances in capabilities for (1) accurately
determining palaeoflood ages, (2) quantifying the magnitudes and dynamics of palaeoflood processes, and (3) incorporating palaeoflood data
into various modeling procedures for risk assessments. Palaeoflood studies now have a global sweep, and it is appropriate to apply the
information they provide to address questions of global environmental change. In doing so, it will be necessary to reconsider aspects of
science – society interactions because of the many failings of these in current practice.
D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Floods; Palaeohydrology; Global change

1. Introduction discharge measurements do not have sufficient record

Global Flood damages are increasing at a spectacular
rate. News headlines proclaim recent flood disasters as
‘‘unprecedented.’’ Flood hydrologists are quoted in claims
that recent floods exceed the ‘‘hundred-year’’, or even the
‘‘thousand-year’’ flood. All this generates the increased
media attention that is cherished by politicians, and
sometimes it even generates increased funding to disaster
relief agencies, hazard managers, and flood researchers.
Fig. 1 shows the long-term trend for flood damages in the
United States.
Related to the increase in flood damages is the claim that
the magnitudes of extreme floods may be increasing
because of global warming (here, ‘‘extreme floods’’ are
considered to be those largest flows with relatively low
probabilities of annual exceedence at any single location, on
the order of 10 2 or less). Although the role of global
warming can be simulated theoretically, the claim of
increasing flood magnitudes must be tested against data, if
it is to be a scientific claim. However, conventional
* Tel.: +1 520 621 7875; fax: +1 520 621 1422.
E-mail address: baker@hwr.arizona.edu.
0341-8162/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.catena.2005.11.016
lengths at stream gages to make a valid test for the ‘‘extreme
floods’’ of interest. With the possible exception of some rare
and scattered records that approach a century in length, the
entire issue is, in a very practical sense, not testable and
therefore nonscientific, unless another data set can be found
with which to make the test.
Although long historical records and palaeoflood data do
have the necessary record lengths to test the hypothesis of
increasing extreme flooding, these aspects of flood science
have generally been accorded minimal attention and minimal
funding, thereby perpetuating the current nonscientific, i.e.,
untested, paradigm of global extreme flood assessment. A
notable, very recent exception to this trend is the European
Commission research programme: SPHERE (Systematic
Palaeoflood and Historical Data for the Improvement of
Flood Risk Estimation).
2. Palaeoflood hydrology
The term ‘‘palaeoflood hydrology’’ was coined by Kochel
and Baker, (1982), but the geological/geomorphological
studies of floods to which it refers have a long scientific
162 V.R. Baker / Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168

Fig. 1. A century of flood damages in the United States, 1903 – 2002. Costs are given in billions of dollars adjusted to 1999. [Data source: http://
www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/flood_stats/Flood_loss_time.series.htm].

tradition, extending to the 19th century (Costa, 1987a;
Patton, 1987). Palaeofloods are past or ancient floods that
occurred without direct observation or recording by humans.
Human observation and documentation of the actual flood-
ing does not occur, as in the case of historical floods. Instead,
it is the signs and physical evidence of the floods that get
documented by the human observers (Baker, 1998a,b). The
archive of such paleofloods is not artificially limited by the
opportunities of humans to observe floods. Instead, there is
an immense archive of natural flood evidence limited only by
the will and understanding to decipher it.
There are many techniques available for inferences
concerning past flood parameters, employing principles of
geomorphology and related aspects of Quaternary stratigra-
phy and sedimentology. Probably the most accurate method
involves slackwater deposits and palaeostage indicators
(SWD-PSI) in stable-boundary fluvial reaches (Baker,
1987, 2000). Slackwater deposits are coarse-grained sedi-
ments conveyed in suspension during highly energetic flood
flows and deposited in areas of flow separation that result in
long-term preservation after the flood recession (Fig. 2).
Layered sequences of slackwater deposits record individual
flood events, which are analyzed and interpreted using
geochronology, sedimentology, and Quaternary stratigraphy
(Fig. 3).
The rivers appropriate for SWD-PSI palaeoflood hydrol-
ogy commonly include bedrock canyons that convey sandy
sediments. Slackwater deposits and palaeostage indicators

Fig. 2. Photograph of the Sakarghat SWD site on the Narmada River, central India. This site preserves a 2000-year record of flooding.
 V.R. Baker / Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168 163

Fig. 3. Stratigraphy of flood units at the Sakarghat site (Fig. 2). Units are numbered 1 – 2. Radiocarbon dates on hearths (yrs BP) are calibrated to calendar years
(cal YR). (From Kale et al., 1997).

Fig. 4. Global map showing locations of representative SWD-PSI palaeoflood hydrology study sites. For most of the plotted sites there are many more studies
in the region than are indicated by the cited reference. Numbered locations are as follows: 1. West and central Texas (Kochel et al., 1982). 2. Southwestern U.S.
(Ely, 1997; Enzel et al., 1994). 3. East slope of the Sierra Nevada (Kellogg, 2001). 4. Columbia River (Chatters and Hoover, 1994). 5. Colorado (Jarrett and
Tomlinson, 2000). 6. Central Appalachians (Springer and Kite, 1997). 7. West-central Spain (Benito et al., 2003). 8. Northwestern Greece (Lewin et al., 1991).
9. Negev Desert (Greenbaum et al., 2001), 10. South Africa (Zawada and Hattingh, 1994; Zawada, 1996). 11. Northwestern India (Kale et al., 2000). 12.
Central India (Ely et al., 1996; Kale et al., 2003). 13. Changjiang (Baker and Kochel, 1988). 14. Huang He (Fucheng et al., 1985). East-central Japan (Jones et
al., 2001). 16. Northwestern Australia (Gillieson et al. 1991). 17. North-central Australia (Wohl et al., 1994). 18. Northeastern Australia (Wohl et al., 1994). 19.
Central Australia (Baker et al., 1987). 20. Coastal Peru (Wells, 1990). 21. South-central France (Sheffer et al., in press). 22. North-central Thailand (Kidson et
al., 2006).
164 V.R. Baker / Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168

are used to infer the past flood stages. Hydraulic flow

models can be used to retrodict peak flood discharges when
field surveys of channel geometry permit the association of
palaeostages with discharges in channels. Sites appropriate
to this sort of analysis have now been documented over
much of the world (Fig. 4). In-depth discussions of detailed
methodologies, sources of error in estimation, and related
issues are beyond the scope of this brief review, but can be
found in papers by Baker, (1987, 2000, 2003); (Webb and
Jarrett, 2002).

3. Frequency of palaeofloods

Palaeoflood datasets allow the incorporation of palae-

oflood data into conventional flood-frequency analyses,
thereby greatly extending the data available for risk analyses.
Despite this advance, conventional hydrologists have been
slow to incorporated palaeoflood analyses into their risk
studies. Reasons for this involve a basic philosophical
contrast in the methodological concerns of the palaeohydrol-
ogists and those of conventional hydrologists (Baker, 2003;
Baker et al., 2002).
Palaeoflood hydrology can be considered to be a type of
applied geology, rather than an exercise in applied statistics.
Palaeoflood hydrology determines the actual flood histories
of locations or regions. In contrast, the conventional
approach to flood hazard evaluation is statistical. The goal
is the prediction of the upper tail of a probability distribution
from a small sample of values that are not included in that
tail. The contrast of methodology is also a conflict in
philosophies, which has been stated by Klemes, (1989) as
follows:
...The leap of logic by which instantaneous probabilities are
equated with the historic frequencies of occurrence is
nothing else but a dismissal of any meaning of the historic
process: if anything that happened in the past can happen at
any instant with the same likelihood, then history provides
no meaningful information...
Conventional hydrologists may be tempted to accept
without question the notion that the most reliable data on
floods come from small common floods. They then presume
these small floods to be representative of a larger population
that includes large, rare ones. The known statistical
properties of the small, common floods are extrapolated to
predict those of the unknown large, rare ones. The problem
here, of course, is that the causative processes for the large,
rare floods are commonly totally different than those for the
small common floods presumed to be part of the same
population.
Palaeoflood hydrology generally belies the presumption
that data on large, rare floods is either impossible to achieve
or unreliable when inferred (Baker et al., 2002). These
floods are exactly the ones that preserve the most accurate
Fig. 5. Flood-frequency plots for several representative SWD-PSI palae-
oflood hydrology studies. See text for discussion.
evidence for the retrodiction of their past properties. Thus,
the appropriate extrapolation in palaeoflood hydrology is
from the known properties of very rare, high-magnitude
events (those whose effects are best preserved) to less rare,
but also very big events that pose a great risk to society. By
extrapolating in two directions, conventionally from small
events to the large and palaeohydrologically from very large
events to lesser large events, one may achieve a better
estimate for the intermediate large events that have
sufficient frequency to pose a maximum threat to society.
Fig. 5 illustrates flood-frequency analyses of palaeoflood
data for several rivers around the world. Note that
representative rivers in the central southwest area of the
U.S., the Colorado, the Salt, the Paria, and the Escalante, all
have relatively low slopes for their flood-frequency curves.
In this arid to semi-arid region, the frequent floods are small,
and the rare floods are dominated by either snowmelt or
large frontal systems (Hirschboeck, 1988). In contrast,
frequency curves for the Negev Desert (curves N, Z, and
P on Fig. 5) and the Pecos (west Texas) also come from arid
regions, but the slopes are much steeper. All these curves
likely incorporate the influence of very intense incursions of
tropical weather systems. Thus, the palaeoflood data provide
information that not merely make risk predictions, but also
enhance understanding of flood processes.
4. Global palaeoflood data
Many countries now have research and/or practical
application programs in palaeoflood hydrology, with
activity especially high in the United States, Spain,
 V.R. Baker / Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168 165

Table 1
Properties of some palaeofloods (PFs) from China, C; South Africa, SA; Australia, A; Texas. T; France, F; and Spain, S
River Drainage area (km2) Number of PFs Largest PF (m3 s 1
) Record length years Reference
Changjiang, C 1,000,000 7 110,000 1000 Shih et al. (1985)
Orange, SA 891,780 13 28,000 5000 Zawada, (1996)
Narmada, I 61,642 15 69,000 1700 Ely et al., (1996)
Fitzroy, A 35,000 6 30,000 2000 Wohl et al., (1994)
Pecos, T 9500 30 27,400 9500 Kochel et al., (1982)
Margaret, A 7800 13 20,000 4000 Wohl et al., (1994)
Devils, T 7100 16,700 8700 Kochel et al., (1982)
Katherine, A 6000 9 7000 500 Baker and Pickup, (1987)
Lennard, A 1200 5 2600 2000 Gillieson et al., (1991)
Buffels, SA 5565 6 5600 500 Zawada and Hattingh, (1994); Zawada, (1996)
Herbert 5500 8 17,000 900 Wohl et al., (1994)
Finke, A 4500 8 8200 900 Baker et al., (1987)
Ardeche, F 2372 19 6000 1000 Sheffer et al., (in press)
E. Alligator, A 2000 5 2900 1200 Wohl et al., (1994)
Llobregat, S 1845 8 5100 2500 Thorndycraft et al., (2005)
Wigehout, SA 361 1 2200 – Zawada and Hattingh (1994); Zawada, (1996)

France, Israel, South Africa, India, Australia, Japan, and
China. It has also come to be realized that abrupt climate
change and extreme events could well pose more of a
global change hazard than the mean climate phenomena
predicted by global circulation models (GCMs). For 20
years there has been an overemphasis on developing these
models as the principal tool for dealing with threats to
habitability of the planet because of global change. This
modeling approach may be appropriate for some changes,
such as those directly related to circulation patterns,
temperature changes, and other directly modeled phenom-
ena. However, the accurate prediction of specific meteo-
rological events, notably extreme floods, is far more
difficult to evaluate from these models. In contrast to
unverified predictions of the future given by GCMs,
palaeoflood data provide evidence of real-work cataclysms
that people can understand sufficiently to alter their
perceptions of hazards, thereby stimulating appropriate
action toward mitigation.
Among the discoveries of palaeoflood hydrology in
regard to very large floods of the past is that they can be
documented in many parts of the world (Fig. 4), and that
the properties of these ancient floods can be understood in
considerable detail (e.g., Table 1). Research has also been
shown that certain local areas, including the southwestern
United States (Table 2) and the Negev Desert (Table 3),
are particularly productive of palaeoflood information.
Fig. 6 shows peak flood discharges as a function of
drainage area for the global maximum known events,
plotted as numbered Xs in relation to a line that
approximates the envelope represented by this line. The
numbers refer to the table in Costa, (1987b). Note that some
palaeoflood results (Narmada, N; Fitzroy, Y; Margaret, M;
Pecos, P; Devils, D; and Herbert, H) either fall on or near
the global maximum curve. In addition, there are distinct
trends for the peak palaeoflood data from specific regions of
climatic and physiographic character, including the Negev,
Colorado Plateau.
5. Flood definitions and their consequences
How one conceives of floods has great consequences for
both science and policy. For the hydrologist, a flood is a
river flow height or volume that exceeds some mean or
average flow state over a period of time. Thus, the
hydrological definition seems to direct science toward a
statistical approach. For the policy maker, or the public at

Table 2
Colorado River basin palaeofloods (southwestern U.S.)
River Drainage area (km2) Number of PFs Largest PF (m3 s 1
) Record length years Reference
Colorado 279,350 15 14,000 4500 O’Connor et al., (1994)
San Juan 60,000 10 4300 1000 Orchard, (2001)
Salt 33,650 27 11,900 1100 Fuller, (1987)
Verde 15,000 10 5000 2000 Ely and Baker, (1985)
Salt 11,000 14 4600 2000 Partridge and Baker, (1987)
Virgin 13,000 12 1750 1000 Enzel et al., (1994)
Paria 3670 11 1200 4000 Webb and Jarrett, (2002)
Escalante 3290 18 2100 1000 Webb (1985)
Tonto Cr. 1630 45 1000 280 O’Connor et al., (1986)
Aravaipa 1340 6 970 1100 Roberts, (1987)
Escalante 810 18 720 2100 Webb et al., (1988)
Boulder Cr. 450 3 400 1100 O’Connor et al., (1986)
166 V.R. Baker / Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168

Table 3
Negev palaeofloods (Greenbaum et al., 2001)
River Drainage area (km2) Number of palaeofloods Largest palaeofloods (m3 s 1
) Record length years Largest gaged flood (m3 s 1
)
Paran (P) 2950 28 2500 470 1080
Zin 1150 29 1500 2000 500
Neqarot 697 29 2400 570 640
Parsat Neqarot 400 5 1500 300 640
Heimar 350 23 1100 300 538
Hatira 266 4 1200 – –
Ramon 214 5 1500 300 68
Upper Neq. 120 83 1400 250 307
Ashosh 68 25 850 1750 400
Upper Zihor 67 350 – –

risk, a flood is a river flow that does significant damage.
This can be specified in statistical terms, of course, but that
is not the only means of communicating flood hazard.
Finally, the geologist/geomorphologist views floods as
flows that exceed some threshold value, such that they
induce significant geological effects. Note that both the
geological and the policy/public definition involve discern-
able effects of floods, not merely numbers, such as the
‘‘hundred-year flood’’. The palaeoflood hydrologist or flood
geomorphologist, in using a geological approach, has very
different opportunities for communicating flood hazards to
the public than does the statistical hydrologist.
The consequences of definitions occur in the activities
that follow from their presumption. The hydrologist needs
statistical samples that define the parameters of a distribu-
tion in time. This means that the required large population of
‘‘floods’’ must emphasize the small, frequent events that
have few discernable effects, either in the way of damages
or in lasting geological indicators. The consequence of the
geological definition of floods is in its focus on the historical
evidence of past flood occurrences. Big, rare floods are not
just numbers at the tail of an ideal probability distribution.
Instead, they are individuals with effects to be studied as
unique historical events, just as it is unique events that act as
the agents of damage in the hazard zones created by human
activity along rivers. Baker, (1998b) discusses the implica-
tions of these approaches to flood hazard policy.
6. Discussion and conclusions
In essence, the rivers that best preserve evidence for
palaeofloods can be considered to be ‘‘self-gauging’’ (Baker
and Pickup, 1987). Just as flood hydrology in the past two
decades has experienced a revolutionary development of
quantitative computer models, so there has also been a
contemporaneous revolution in the methodology for accom-
plishing paleoflood hydrology, and the methodology has
been applied globally. However, whereas the computer
modeling revolution extends mathematical idealizations of
nature to phenomena that defy realistic testing, the palae-
oflood revolution involves the accurate recovery of magni-

Fig. 6. Global peak discharge versus drainage area for representative global palaeoflood studies.
 V.R. Baker / Catena 66 (2006) 161 – 168
tudes and ages for the largest floods to have actually occurred
during past millennia. This is information that can aid conven-
tional flood assessments (Baker, 2000), but it can also be used
unconventionally, for the direct communication of the
perception of flood hazard to those at risk (Baker, 1998b).
In conventional flood science the goal is to develop
general theories about floods and their frequencies in time
and space. These ultimately lead to predictive models. In the
practical application of these advances, flood engineers use
the best results of the scientific research to develop solutions
for practical mitigation problems. This could ideally leads to
the reduction of flood damages as enlightened actions
follow from informed public policies. Of course, what more
often happens is that new flood problems arise, and the new
problems are more intractable than the ones for which the
earlier solutions were devised. Some of the new flood
problems get studied by geologists and geomorphologists,
who, in turn, question the original wisdom of the
engineering ‘‘solutions’’. The various flood experts then
argue as to why flood damages continue to escalate.
In an alternative flood science, palaeoflood hydrological
approaches would be used at the beginning of a hazard
assessment, to discover the realities of natural flood
causation in a region, and to identify the zones that are
hazardous to human development. Flood engineers will then
follow with solutions to real problems intrinsic to specific
locations, and these solutions will be defined in the context
of the actual hazardous processes operative through time
and space. Models and predictions may well be employed
in these solutions, but they will be based on careful
evaluation of their limiting presumptions. Most importantly,
however, there must be a continual appraisal of any im-
plemented ‘‘solution’’ to a flood problem, so that there can
be a modification of that ‘‘solution’’ as more is learned about
the realities of the specific case to which the ‘‘solution’’ has
been applied.
Acknowledgements
The author’s research on palaeoflood hydrology was
supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. This
paper is contribution number 73 of the Arizona Laboratory
for Paleohydrological and Hydroclimatological Analysis,
The University of Arizona.
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