A Little Flood Geology Part V: Conclusion

Part I argued that floods are an important category of geologic processes and showed that hydraulic relationships are nonlinear, resulting in episodic rather than continual geologic change. Part II presented field examples from central Montana in 2011. Part III used information from the central Montana projects to show that geologic processes range from slow and localized to episodic and regional (even unique and global). Geologic paradigms can negatively impact field work for both uniformitarians and diluvialists. These negative effects can be avoided by the �mixed question� approach and �multiple working hypotheses.� In Part IV, limitations of extrapolating from local floods to megafloods and from scientific observation to natural history speculation were discussed. Here, evidence is summarized to highlight some important principles to guide geologic research.