Ontogeny of a flood plain

The ontogeny of five flood-plain segments is described for a period of 18 yr following a major flood in 1978 on the Powder River in southeastern Montana. The flood plains developed on relatively elevated sand and gravel deposits left within the channel by the 1978 flood. In cross section, the flood plains resemble benches with well-developed natural levees. Flood-plain growth occurred as sediment was draped onto preexisting surfaces in layers of sand and mud a few centimeters to decimeters thick, resulting in some lateral, but mostly vertical accretion. Annual and biannual measurements indicated that, as the flood-plain segments grew upward, the annual rate of vertical accretion decreased as the partial duration recurrence interval for the threshold or bankfull discharge increased from 0.16 to 1.3 yr. It is clear that a constant recurrence interval for overbank flow cannot be meaningfully assigned to this type of flood-plain ontogeny.