Late Cenozoic Drainage History of the Southwestern Great Basin and Lower Colorado River Region: Geologic and Biotic Perspectives

Geological and hydrological history of the paleo–Owens River drainage since the late Miocene
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Published:January 01, 2008
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CiteCitation
Fred M. Phillips, 2008. "Geological and hydrological history of the paleo–Owens River drainage since the late Miocene", Late Cenozoic Drainage History of the Southwestern Great Basin and Lower Colorado River Region: Geologic and Biotic Perspectives, Marith C. Reheis, Robert Hershler, David M. Miller
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From the late Miocene to the middle Pliocene, the current drainage basin of the Owens River probably consisted of a broad, moderate-elevation, low-relief plateau with radiating drainage toward the Pacific Ocean, the northwestern Great Basin (now Lahontan drainages), and the Mojave and Colorado drainages. This plateau probably contained shallow basins, created by an extensional pulse at 12–11 Ma, at the present locations of major valleys. Between 4 and 3 Ma, this plateau was disrupted by a rapid westward step of extensional Basin and Range Province tectonism, which reactivated the Miocene faults and resulted in a linear north-south valley (the Owens...
- aquatic environment
- Basin and Range Province
- Bishop Tuff
- California
- Cenozoic
- Colorado River
- Death Valley
- drainage
- drainage basins
- extension tectonics
- faults
- fluvial features
- geochemistry
- geomorphology
- Great Basin
- habitat
- Holocene
- Inyo County California
- isotope ratios
- isotopes
- Long Valley
- Miocene
- Neogene
- neotectonics
- North America
- O-18/O-16
- Owens Valley
- oxygen
- paleoclimatology
- paleoecology
- paleoenvironment
- paleohydrology
- Pleistocene
- Quaternary
- rivers
- Searles Lake
- Sierra Nevada
- stable isotopes
- tectonics
- Tertiary
- United States
- uplifts
- upper Miocene
- valleys
- water balance
- Mojave River
- China Lake