Climate-driven drainage reorganization of small mountainous rivers in Taiwan (East Asia) since the last glaciation: The Zhuoshui River example

Abstract As an important component in East Asia sediment source-to-sink systems, small mountainous rivers in Taiwan deliver disproportionately large amounts of sediments to oceans. Although the modern fluvial sediment transport processes, discharge fluxes and sediment compositions have been well investigated, the drainage evolution of these mountainous rivers remains understudied and sediment fluxes are expected to vary greatly in glacial-interglacial cycles due to the tremendous climatic fluctuations. To define how the drainage of Taiwan mountainous rivers has evolved since the last glaciation, we target a sediment core (98 m in length) from the Zhuoshui River delta, western Taiwan and use sediment petrography, heavy mineral analysis, detrital zircon U Pb geochronology and clay mineralogy to investigate provenance variations and river basin evolution since 60 ka. Sediments of the last glaciation show comparatively high illite crystallinity index values, low metasedimentary lithic fragment and stable heavy mineral contents and similar detrital zircon U Pb ages with downstream signatures, indicating prominent sediment contributions from the Coastal Plain and Western Foothills regions (elevation 1 km). We suggest that headward extension and drainage capture since the deglaciation, which was most likely due to the increasing monsoon rainfall, account for the provenance variations in the discharged sediments. This implies a climate-driven drainage reorganization of the small mountainous rivers in Taiwan since the last glaciation. Our findings highlight the previously-overlooked, variable provenance information from Taiwan in glacial-interglacial cycles, and the dynamic source signatures are important to East Asia sediment source-to-sink studies.