Stratigraphic architecture of fluvial fans shaped by downstream changes in avulsion style

Natural river diversion, or avulsion, controls the distribution of channels on a floodplain and channel sandstone bodies within fluvial stratigraphic architecture. Avulsions establish new flow paths and create channels through several recognized processes, or styles. These include reoccupying existing channels, or annexation, downcutting into the floodplain, or incision, and constructing new channels from crevasse‐splay distributary networks, or progradation. Recent remote sensing observations show that avulsion style changes systematically moving downstream along modern fluvial fans but, to date, no studies have assessed the significance of these trends on fluvial fan stratigraphy. Here, spatiotemporal changes in avulsion stratigraphy are investigated within the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation, deposited in the Cordilleran foreland basin during the Late Jurassic epoch. Measured sections and photographic panels were analysed from 23 locations across the Salt Wash extent. Avulsion style was identified in the stratigraphic record by the basal contact of a channel storey with underlying strata: channel–channel contacts indicate annexation, channel–floodplain contacts indicate incision and channel–heterolithic contacts indicate progradation. Contact types change downstream, such that channel–channel and channel–floodplain contacts dominate proximal locations, while channel–heterolithic contacts become increasingly prevalent downstream. Outcrop results were compared to a numerical model of fluvial fan formation and remote‐sensing analysis of avulsions on modern fans. In both additional datasets, channels in proximal fan positions tend to avulse via annexation, reoccupying abandoned channels, while channels in more distal positions tend to avulse via increasingly significant progradation. These findings suggest a relationship between newly recognized downstream changes in avulsion style and well‐established downstream changes in fluvial fan architecture. Furthermore, this suggests that fan architecture can inform interpretations of ancient fluvial dynamics, including avulsion behaviour, and that avulsions can cause stratigraphically significant and measurable changes to fan architecture.