Reconciling historical and contemporary evidence of aeolian-based, gully annealing processes in Glen, Marble, and Grand Canyon, USA

In the absence of large Colorado River floods in Glen, Marble, and Grand Canyons since the completion of Glen Canyon Dam, the geomorphic process most able to counteract the effects of gully incision on terraces and slopes above the contemporary active Colorado River channel is aeolian sand transport that can partially or entirely fill (anneal) small gullies. Whereas gully-formation processes have been much studied, relatively little is known about processes of gully annealing. Aeolian-based annealing has been observed in several instances in the modern Colorado River corridor operating on time scales of months. However, individual, short-term occurrences of aeolian deposition that counteract gully erosion have not yet been expanded into a landscape-scale evaluation of the prevalence of gully-annealing processes over longer time scales (years-decades) along the post-dam corridor. The extent that aeolian or other annealing processes might slow, or temporarily reverse, gully incision and erosion is important in this system because of the propensity for erosion damage to locations of cultural significance that are extensive on terraces and slopes above the contemporary active Colorado River channel. Moreover, the reduction of mainstem fluvial sediment inputs to the system since completion of Glen Canyon Dam might impact the potential of aeolian redistribution of Colorado River-derived sediment as an effective gully annealing mechanism on upper slopes and terraces. We present an investigation of the extent that observations of (i) historical annealing and (ii) contemporary annealing potential, reconcile with (iii) literature and/or model-based estimates of relative rates of gully formation and aeolian deposition in this system. The central question of this work is whether these complimentary lines of evidence support aeolian infilling as a viable mechanism for annealing gullies in Glen, Marble, and Grand Canyons, and analogous systems. We examine the evidence for historical annealing using aerial photos from select reaches of the river from the 1930s to present. We examine contemporary evidence of annealing potential through analysis of the connectivity of active aeolian sediment sources with existing gullies. This includes remote sensing analyses of active aeolian sediment based on a multispectral biological soil crust index as a proxy for erodibility, vegetation cover and spacing derived from image classification, gully feature extraction from digital surface (elevation) models, and physically-based investigation of connectivity between these important landscape components. Results highlight the importance of interactions between aeolian and hillslope processes for counteracting contemporary gully erosion of concern for cultural and natural resource management.