Channeled Scablands

The Channeled Scablands are a relatively barren and soil-free landscape on the eastern side of the U.S. state of Washington that was scoured by floods unleashed when a large glacial lake drained. These cataclysmic Missoula Floods swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Plateau during the Pleistocene epoch. Geologist J Harlen Bretz coined the term "channeled scablands" in a series of papers written in the 1920s. The debate on the origin of the Scablands that ensued for four decades became one of the great controversies in the history of earth science. The Scablands are also important to planetary scientists as perhaps the best terrestrial analog of the Martian outflow channels.

History

Bretz conducted research and published many papers during the 1920s describing the Channeled Scablands. His theories of how they were formed required short but immense floods (500 cubic miles of water), for which Bretz had no explanation. Bretz's theories met with vehement opposition from geologists of the day, who tried to explain the features with uniformitarian theories.