We read, with much interest, the Review article by Beltaos (2025) [1] because the ‘Historical information and Traditional Knowledge’ (H-TK) flood record of the lower Peace River at the Peace-Athabasca Delta, a potentially valuable source of information for assessing change to the delta’s flood regime, has been a focus of scrutiny for several years. This latest article by Beltaos, however, brings to light little to no new knowledge, and it does not appropriately cite prior research. One contribution is the re-evaluation of ‘major’ or ‘large’ ice-jam floods (IJFs) in the H-TK flood record. This includes: (1) a large IJF occurred in 1972 which was not previously recorded; (2) a large IJF may have occurred in 1967 which was not registered in the H-TK flood record; (3) a large IJF that was previously attributed to 1962 occurred in 1963; and (4) a large IJF that was previously attributed to 1942 has questionable accuracy. A key product is the presentation of the H-TK flood record in Figure 5 in [1] as the cumulative number of large IJF events since 1900 in the reach of the Peace River adjacent to the Peace-Athabasca Delta, but it is essentially the same figure from which the same conclusions were drawn previously in a 2018 article [2] by the same author (see Figure 3 in [2]). The only differences we can detect are that a large IJF in 1948 has been added to Figure 5 of Beltaos’ 2025 article [1], along with recent years without major IJFs (2019–2025), since Figure 3 of the 2018 article [2] was generated. Importantly, the author’s analytical approach and the conclusions are no different from those previously communicated in the 2018 article [2]. Yet, Beltaos’ 2018 article [2] is not cited in reference to Figure 5 [1], and it is not listed anywhere in the 2025 article [1], nor are the two independent published Discussions that raised important criticisms of the 2018 study [2] ([3,4]; see Response [5]). Key concerns that were presented in these prior Discussions include over-quantitative application of the qualitative H-TK flood record and questionable statistical approaches to detect patterns and trends in flood frequency. This was then followed by a detailed assessment of the H-TK flood record [6] (see also subsequent Commentary [7] and Response [8]), an exercise that is essentially repeated in Beltaos’ 2025 article [1]. Also uncited is Timoney’s 2024 article [9], which presents the most recent comprehensive assessment of the H-TK flood record and a critical assessment of Beltaos’ 2018 article [2]. We will refrain from presenting detailed explanations of the same criticisms here of Beltaos’ original 2018 article [2] and findings generated from the subsequent work but encourage interested readers to invest in the prior discourse before drawing their own conclusions. Understanding changes to the flood regime at the Peace-Athabasca Delta and their cause(s) is crucial for effective environmental stewardship decisions and policy.
Acknowledgments
The authors have previously published on this topic and participated in related scholarly exchanges. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
References
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