{"title":"Lake Wellington and West Walker River in Great Basin of western United States: History and genesis","authors":"STEVEN G. Wesnousky, Brad Sion","doi":"10.1002/jqs.3626","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div>\n \n <p>Closed basins within the Great Basin of the western United States were home to numerous lakes during the Pleistocene. One of these paleolakes along the western edge of the Great Basin, Lake Wellington, once filled a 10 × 25-km expanse of Smith Valley to depths approaching 90 m. This and other lakes that existed during the Pleistocene are generally considered to be <i>pluvial</i>, indicating contemporaneity with either or all a period of cooler climate, increased rainfall and snowmelt, and relatively reduced rates of evaporation as compared to today. Here we combine the results of <sup>36</sup>Cl terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating with soils and geomorphic observations to suggest Lake Wellington was not a pluvial lake but instead the result of a large landslide prior to ~43 ± 15 ka along the West Walker River where it exited Smith Valley. The observations collected also reveal an ancestral course of the West Walker River ~85 m above the current river grade. Attributing the elevation difference to incision caused by active 0.05 ± 0.01 mm a<sup>−1</sup> uplift of the underlying Singatse and assuming the ancestral course followed the same path as today places the age of the paleoriver course at ~1.7 Ma.</p>\n </div>","PeriodicalId":16929,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quaternary Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Quaternary Science","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.3626","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY, PHYSICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Closed basins within the Great Basin of the western United States were home to numerous lakes during the Pleistocene. One of these paleolakes along the western edge of the Great Basin, Lake Wellington, once filled a 10 × 25-km expanse of Smith Valley to depths approaching 90 m. This and other lakes that existed during the Pleistocene are generally considered to be pluvial, indicating contemporaneity with either or all a period of cooler climate, increased rainfall and snowmelt, and relatively reduced rates of evaporation as compared to today. Here we combine the results of 36Cl terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating with soils and geomorphic observations to suggest Lake Wellington was not a pluvial lake but instead the result of a large landslide prior to ~43 ± 15 ka along the West Walker River where it exited Smith Valley. The observations collected also reveal an ancestral course of the West Walker River ~85 m above the current river grade. Attributing the elevation difference to incision caused by active 0.05 ± 0.01 mm a−1 uplift of the underlying Singatse and assuming the ancestral course followed the same path as today places the age of the paleoriver course at ~1.7 Ma.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Quaternary Science publishes original papers on any field of Quaternary research, and aims to promote a wider appreciation and deeper understanding of the earth''s history during the last 2.58 million years. Papers from a wide range of disciplines appear in JQS including, for example, Archaeology, Botany, Climatology, Geochemistry, Geochronology, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics, Glaciology, Limnology, Oceanography, Palaeoceanography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Palaeontology, Soil Science and Zoology. The journal particularly welcomes papers reporting the results of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research which are of wide international interest to Quaternary scientists. Short communications and correspondence relating to views and information contained in JQS may also be considered for publication.