Interior Western United States

The GSA Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City provided a large and diverse terrain for field trips—from the Basin and Range to the Rocky Mountains, from the Snake River Plain, across the Colorado Plateau, to the Mojave Desert. This volume contains 22 field trip articles, nearly all of those run at the 2005 meeting. All combine the latest research with useful road logs to spectacular and often classic geologic settings. The regional tour has a core of structure and stratigraphy-paleontology contributions, and is rounded off with volcanic, glacial, lacustrine, fluvial geomorphology, neotectonic, geologic hazard, and geoarchaeology articles.
Birth of the lower Colorado River—Stratigraphic and geomorphic evidence for its inception near the conjunction of Nevada, Arizona, and California
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Published:January 01, 2005
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CiteCitation
P.Kyle House, Philip A. Pearthree, John W. Howard, Keith A. Bell, Michael E. Perkins, James E. Faulds, Amy L. Brock, 2005. "Birth of the lower Colorado River—Stratigraphic and geomorphic evidence for its inception near the conjunction of Nevada, Arizona, and California", Interior Western United States, Joel L. Pederson, Carol M. Dehler
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Abstract
A detailed record of the late Cenozoic history of the lower Colorado River can be inferred from alluvial and (likely) lacustrine stratigraphy exposed in dissected alluvial basins below the mouth of the Grand Canyon. Numerous sites in Mohave, Cottonwood, and Detrital valleys contain stratigraphic records that directly bear on the mode, timing, and consequences of the river’s inception and integration in the latest Miocene–early Pliocene and its subsequent evolution through the Pleistocene. This field trip guide describes and illustrates many of these key stratigraphic relationships and, in particular, highlights evidence that supports the hypothesis of cascading lake-overflow as the principal formative mechanism of the river’s course downstream from the Grand Canyon.
- Arizona
- Basin and Range Province
- California
- Cenozoic
- Clark County Nevada
- Colorado River
- field trips
- fluvial features
- geomorphology
- landform evolution
- lithostratigraphy
- models
- Mohave County Arizona
- Nevada
- North America
- paleogeography
- paleomagnetism
- rivers
- road log
- San Bernardino County California
- surficial geology
- United States
- upper Cenozoic
- Bouse Formation
- Chemehuevi Formation