ISSN:
1437-3262
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Geosciences
Notes:
Abstract The Great Basin in the western United States consists of almost level desert basins and alternating parallel mountain ranges. It has sparse, mostly interior, drainage and a few permanent lakes. The climate is arid and semiarid. Fairly large areas are true deserts. The main Cenozoic climatic changes have been: 1. a general cooling during the Tertiary and the early Pleistocene, 2. a progressive drying from the early Miocene into the Pleistocene as a consequence of rise of the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades, and 3. Pleistocene fluctuations between cold-moist and warm-dry ages. The Ice Age left known records of three or four major glaciations, the last of which had two maxima. The glaciations were relatively extensive on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada and just east of the Great Basin, and glaciers existed on several ranges in northeastern Nevada. Each glacial was accompanied by a pluvial, which culminated just after the glacial maximum. The pluvial lakes were largest on Lat. 40°. The histories of the huge lakes Bonneville and Lahontan are incompletely known. During the Mankato-Tioga-Provo'glacio-pluvial maximum the temperature in the Great Basin seems to have been only 2.5–3 C° lower, and the precipitation on the surface of Lake Lahontan (Dendritic Lake) twice as large as now. The Neothermal (Postglacial, Postpluvial), the equivalent of the interglacials, is with long-distance correlation in view subdivided on the basis of the major temperature changes into the Ana-,.Alti-, and Medithermal ages. However, in the dry country of the Great Basin the changes in moisture are more apparent and important. The Altithermal was distinctly drier than the present, and nearly all the basins went dry. About 2000 B.C. several basins began again to contain lakes which remained permanent through some acute brief droughts. These recentmodern lakes attained very moderate maxima some time before Christ, while the glaciers in the adjacent mountains probably reached their greatest extent since the Anathermal during the last centuries.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01803218
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