Academic literature on the topic 'Drained Thaw Lake Basins'

ABSTRACT The Neogene stratigraphic and tectonic history of the Mount Diablo area is a consequence of the passage of the Mendocino triple junction by the San Francisco Bay area between 12 and 6 Ma, volcanism above a slab window trailing the Mendocino triple junction, and crustal transpression beginning ca. 8–6 Ma, when the Pacific plate and Sierra Nevada microplate began to converge obliquely. Between ca. 12 and 6 Ma, parts of the Sierra Nevada microplate were displaced by faults splaying from the main trace of the San Andreas fault and incorporated into the Pacific plate. The Mount Diablo anticlinorium was formed by crustal compression within a left-stepping, restraining bend of the eastern San Andreas fault system, with southwest-verging thrusting beneath, and with possible clockwise rotation between faults on its southeast and northwest sides. At ca. 10.5 Ma, a drainage divide formed between the northern Central Valley and the ocean. Regional uplift accelerated at ca. 6 Ma with onset of transpression between the Pacific and North America plates. Marine deposition ceased in the eastern Coast Range basins as a consequence of the regional uplift accompanying passage of the Mendocino triple junction, and trailing slab-window volcanism. From ca. 11 to ca. 5 Ma, andesitic volcanic intrusive rocks and lavas were erupted along the northwest crest of the central to northern Sierra Nevada and deposited on its western slope, providing abundant sediment to the northern Central Valley and the northeastern Coast Ranges. Sediment filled the Central Valley and overtopped the Stockton fault and arch, forming one large, south-draining system that flowed into a marine embayment at its southwestern end, the ancestral San Joaquin Sea. This marine embayment shrunk with time, and by ca. 2.3 Ma, it was eventually cut off from the ocean. Fluvial drainage continued southwest in the Central Valley until it was cut off in turn, probably by some combination of sea-level fluctuations and transpression along the San Andreas fault that uplifted, lengthened, and narrowed the outlet channel. As a consequence, a great lake, Lake Clyde, formed in the Central Valley at ca. 1.4 Ma, occupying all of the ancestral San Joaquin Valley and part of the ancestral Sacramento Valley. The lake rose and fell with global glacial and interglacial cycles. After a long, extreme glacial period, marine oxygen isotope stage (MIS) 16, it overtopped the Carquinez sill at 0.63 Ma and drained via San Francisco valley (now San Francisco Bay) and the Colma gap into the Merced marine embayment of the Pacific Ocean. Later, a new outlet for Central Valley drainage formed between ca. 130 and ca. 75 ka, when the Colma gap closed due to transpression and right-slip motion on the San Andreas fault, and Duxbury Point at the south end of the Point Reyes Peninsula moved sufficiently northwest along the San Andreas fault to unblock a bedrock notch, the feature we now call the Golden Gate.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes through the Hunza River basin of Pakistan. The current study investigates the creation and effects of end moraine, supra-glacial, and barrier lakes by field visits and remote sensing techniques along the CPEC in the Hunza River basin. The surging and moraine type glaciers are considered the most dangerous type of glaciers that cause Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the study basin. It can be concluded from the 40 years observations of Karakoram glaciers that surge-type and non-surge-type glaciers are not significantly different with respect to mass change. The recurrent surging of Khurdopin Glacier resulted in the creation of Khurdopin Glacial Lake in the Shimshal valley of the Hunza River basin. Such glacial lakes offer main sources of freshwater; however, when their dams are suddenly breached and water drained, catastrophic GLOFs appear and pose a great threat to people and infrastructure in downstream areas. This situation calls for an in-depth study on GLOF risks along the CPEC route and incorporation of GLOF for future policy formulation in the country for the CPEC project so that the government may take serious action for prevention, response to GLOFs, and rehabilitation and reconstruction of the areas.

ABSTRACT The Pleistocene Okanogan lobe of Cordilleran ice in north-central Washington State dammed Columbia River to pond glacial Lake Columbia and divert the river south across one or another low spot along a 230-km-long drainage divide. When enormous Missoula floods from the east briefly engulfed the lake, water poured across a few such divide saddles. The grandest such spillway into the Channeled Scabland became upper Grand Coulee. By cutting headward to Columbia valley, upper Grand Coulee’s flood cataract opened a valve that then kept glacial Lake Columbia low and limited later floods into nearby Moses Coulee. Indeed few of the scores of last-glacial Missoula floods managed to reach it. Headward cutting of an inferred smaller cataract (Foster Coulee) had earlier lowered glacial Lake Columbia’s outlet. Such Scabland piracies explain a variety of field evidence assembled here: apparently successive outlets of glacial Lake Columbia, and certain megaflood features downcurrent to Wenatchee and Quincy basin. Ice-rafted erratics and the Pangborn bar of foreset gravel near Wenatchee record late Wisconsin flood(s) down Columbia valley as deep as 320 m. Fancher bar, 45 m higher than Pangborn bar, also has tall foreset beds—but its gravel is partly rotted and capped by thick calcrete, thus pre-Wisconsin age, perhaps greatly so. In western Quincy basin foreset beds of basaltic gravel dip east from Columbia valley into the basin—gravel also partly rotted and capped by thick calcrete, also pre-Wisconsin. Yet evidence of late Wisconsin eastward flow to Quincy basin is sparse. This sequence suggests that upper Grand Coulee had largely opened before down-Columbia megaflood(s) early in late Wisconsin time. A drift-obscured area of the Waterville Plateau near Badger Wells is the inconspicuous divide saddle between Columbia tributary Foster Creek drainage and Moses Coulee drainage. Before flood cataracts had opened upper Grand Coulee or Foster Coulee, and while Okanogan ice blocked the Columbia but not Foster Creek, glacial Lake Columbia (diverted Columbia River) drained over this saddle at about 654 m and down Moses Coulee. When glacial Lake Columbia stood at this high level so far west, Missoula floods swelling the lake could easily and deeply flood Moses Coulee. Once eastern Foster Coulee cataract had been cut through, and especially once upper Grand Coulee’s great cataract receded to Columbia valley, glacial Lake Columbia stood lower, and Moses Coulee became harder to flood. During the late Wisconsin (marine isotope stage [MIS] 2), only when Okanogan-lobe ice blocked the Columbia near Brewster to form a high lake could Missoula floodwater from glacial Lake Missoula rise enough to overflow into Moses Coulee—and then only in a few very largest Missoula floods. Moses Coulee’s main excavation must lie with pre-Wisconsin outburst floods (MIS 6 or much earlier)—before upper Grand Coulee’s cataract had receded to Columbia valley.

ABSTRACT Mono Lake occupies an internally drained basin on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada, and it is sensitive to climatic changes affecting precipitation in the mountains (largely delivered in the form of snowpack). Efforts to recover cores from the lake have been impeded by coarse tephra erupted from the Mono Craters, and by disruption of the lake floor due to the uplift of Paoha Island ~300 yr ago. In this study, we describe the stratigraphy of cores from three recent campaigns, in 2007, 2009, and 2010, and the extents and depths of the tephras and disturbed sediments. In the most successful of these cores, BINGO-MONO10-4A-1N (BINGO/10-4A, 2.8 m water depth), we used core stratigraphy, geochemistry, radiocarbon dates, and tephrostratigraphy to show that the core records nearly all of the Holocene in varying proportions of detrital, volcanic, and authigenic sediment. Both the South Mono tephra of ca. 1350 cal yr B.P. (calibrated years before A.D. 1950) and the 600-yr-old North Mono–Inyo tephra are present in the BINGO/10-4A core, as are several older, as-yet-unidentified tephras. Laminated muds are inferred to indicate a relatively deep lake (³10 m over the core site) during the Early Holocene, similar to many records across the region during that period. The Middle and Late Holocene units are more coarsely bedded, and coarser grain size and greater and more variable amounts of authigenic carbonate detritus in this interval are taken to suggest lower lake levels, possibly due to lower effective wetness. A very low lake level, likely related to extreme drought, is inferred to have occurred sometime between 3500 and 2100 cal yr B.P. This interval likely corresponds to the previously documented Marina Low Stand and the regional Late Holocene Dry Period. The BINGO/10-4A core does not preserve a complete record of the period encompassing the Medieval Climate Anomaly, the Little Ice Age, and the historical period, probably due to erosion because of its nearshore position.

<em>Abstract.</em>—The Red River of the North basin (RRNB) has an area of about 287,000 square kilometers of the upper Midwestern United States and south-central Canada. The river forms the North Dakota–Minnesota boundary and flows into Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, and then, via the Nelson River, into Hudson Bay. While the Red River main stem remains a sinuous stream similar to early descriptions, the river’s watershed has been altered dramatically by intensive agriculture, wetland drainage, channelization of tributary streams, and dam construction. Early land surveys described a landscape largely covered by prairie and wetlands. However, thousands of kilometers of ditches have been excavated to drain wetlands for agriculture in the United States in the late 1800s to the 1920s, and continuing, in Canada, to the present. Over 500 dams have blocked access to critical spawning habitat in the basin starting in the late 1800s. Also, during the mid-1900s, many of the tributaries were channelized, causing the loss of several thousand stream kilometers. While much of RRNB’s fish assemblage remains similar to earliest historical records, the loss of the lake sturgeon <em>Acipenser fulvescens </em>is a notable change resulting from habitat loss and fragmentation, and overfishing. Additional localized extirpations of channel catfish <em>Ictalurus punctatus</em>, several redhorse <em>Moxostoma </em>species, sauger <em>Sander canadensis</em>, and other migratory fishes have occurred upstream of dams on several tributaries. Presently, efforts are underway to restore migratory pathways through dam removal, conversion of dams to rapids, and construction of nature-like fishways. Concurrently, lake sturgeon is being reintroduced in the hope that restored access to historic spawning areas will allow reestablishment of the species. Proposed construction of new flood control dams may undermine these efforts.

<em>Abstract.</em>—The Red River of the North basin (RRNB) has an area of about 287,000 square kilometers of the upper Midwestern United States and south-central Canada. The river forms the North Dakota–Minnesota boundary and flows into Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, and then, via the Nelson River, into Hudson Bay. While the Red River main stem remains a sinuous stream similar to early descriptions, the river’s watershed has been altered dramatically by intensive agriculture, wetland drainage, channelization of tributary streams, and dam construction. Early land surveys described a landscape largely covered by prairie and wetlands. However, thousands of kilometers of ditches have been excavated to drain wetlands for agriculture in the United States in the late 1800s to the 1920s, and continuing, in Canada, to the present. Over 500 dams have blocked access to critical spawning habitat in the basin starting in the late 1800s. Also, during the mid-1900s, many of the tributaries were channelized, causing the loss of several thousand stream kilometers. While much of RRNB’s fish assemblage remains similar to earliest historical records, the loss of the lake sturgeon <em>Acipenser fulvescens </em>is a notable change resulting from habitat loss and fragmentation, and overfishing. Additional localized extirpations of channel catfish <em>Ictalurus punctatus</em>, several redhorse <em>Moxostoma </em>species, sauger <em>Sander canadensis</em>, and other migratory fishes have occurred upstream of dams on several tributaries. Presently, efforts are underway to restore migratory pathways through dam removal, conversion of dams to rapids, and construction of nature-like fishways. Concurrently, lake sturgeon is being reintroduced in the hope that restored access to historic spawning areas will allow reestablishment of the species. Proposed construction of new flood control dams may undermine these efforts.

River basins and river characteristics are controlled in part by their tectonic setting, in part by climate, and increasingly by human activity. River basins are defined by the tectonic and topographic features of a continent, which determine the general pattern of water drainage. If a major river drains to the ocean, its mouth is usually fixed by some enduring geologic structure, such as a graben, a downwarp, or a suture between two crustal blocks. The largest river basins constitute drainage areas of extensive low-lying portions of Earth’s crust, often involving tectonic downwarps. The magnitude of river flow is determined by the balance between precipitation and evaporation, summed over the drainage area. Seasonality of flow and water storage within any basin are determined by the seasonality of precipitation in excess of evaporation, modified in some regions by water stored in snow packs and released by melting, and by water stored in wetlands, lakes, and reservoirs. Increasingly the flows of rivers are influenced by human land use and engineering works, including dams, but in South America these anthropogenic influences are generally less intense and widespread than in North America, Europe, and much of Asia. Thus the major rivers of South America can be viewed in the context of global and regional tectonics and climatology. For reference, figure 5.1 outlines South America’s three largest river basins—the Orinoco, Amazon, and Paraguay-Paraná systems—while figure 5.2 shows the locations of rivers referred to in the text against a background of the continent’s density of population per square kilometer. The geologic history of South America has bequeathed to the continent a number of structural elements that are relevant to the form and behavior of its three major river systems. These structural elements are (1) the Andes; (2) a series of foreland basins, approximately 500 km wide immediately east of the Andes and extending southward from the mouth of the Orinoco to the Chaco-Paraná basin, where the crust is depressed by the weight of the Andes and the sediment derived from the mountains; (3) the Guiana and Brazilian shields reflecting Precambrian cratons and orogenic belts of mostly crystalline metamorphic rocks, partly covered with flat-lying sedimentary rocks and deeply weathered regolith; and (4) the Central Amazon Basin, a large cratonic downwarp with some graben structures dating back to early Paleozoic time, which runs generally east-west between the two shields, connecting the foreland basins to the west with a graben that localizes the Amazon estuary at the Atlantic coast.

The Kathmandu Valley was once a lake. Ancient stories tell us the valley was created when the Boddhisattva Manjushree came to worship a divine lotus planted in the lake long before by a messenger of the as yet unborn Buddha. Manjushree could not reach the lotus because of the deep waters, so with a sword he smote the rocks in a narrow gorge and drained the lake. Geological evidence supports the mythic lake that Manjushree is said to have emptied. The Kathmandu Valley is a basin at an altitude of approximately 4,000 feet between the lower and the middle hills of the Himalaya. As the Himalaya were shoved north into the Tibetan plateau, many valleys were created between the folds of the hills. If a landslide were to block the main exit from such a valley, it might begin to fill up with water from rivers and springs. Around two million years ago, it seems a large lake formed in this fashion in the Kathmandu Valley’s bowl of wooded hillsides. Long after, perhaps because of a big earthquake, or a series of jolts over many years, a channel opened a gorge at the west end of the valley. What would later be called the Bagmati River spilled out, finding its way down to what is now the Ganga and leaving the valley dry by around 10,000 years ago. There were, as far as we know, no people living in the path of any such Bagmati flood, so none were harmed. Instead, the draining of the valley led to the superb conditions the earliest settlers would eventually exploit: terraces and knolls, rich soil, springs, rivers, and shallow aquifers. It is enticing to imagine that the myth captures some distant human memory of the events that helped to create this perfect valley. We know these hills and mountains have been a crossroads for restless mankind since before any recorded history. Perhaps even for thousands of years before the oldest inscriptions give us hints about settlements and rulers in the valley, people were peacefully going about their business here.

<em>Abstract</em>.—Caddo Lake, along with its swamps and tributary bayous, supports a diversity of aquatic ecosystems and has been designated a wetland of global significance by the Ramsar Convention. The life blood of Caddo Lake is the network of tributary creeks and bayous that drain into the wetland complex of the lake’s upper reaches. The ecology of the main tributary, Big Cypress Bayou, however, has been altered by flow regulation by Lake O’ the Pines dam. Additional threats from giant salvinia <em>Salvinia molesta </em>and other invasive plants, water quality impacts, and land uses have added stress to the ecosystem. Several conservation organizations, led by the Caddo Lake Institute, have formed partnerships to address these threats to the watershed. The Sustainable Rivers Program, a partnership of The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), has managed dam operations to enhance the natural ecology of Big Cypress Bayou and Caddo Lake downstream. The Corps has been releasing recommended flows to allow researchers to gather more information to evaluate the success of restoration efforts. Early monitoring results indicate a potential positive response of the fish community to these flow releases. We present results of flow restoration work and associated ecological monitoring. We also summarize floodplain vegetation monitoring, paddlefish restoration and invasive species management projects in Caddo Lake and the Cypress River basin.

In this chapter a short overview of the evolution, geomorphological expression, sedimentary records, and discharge and sediment regimes of the major rivers in western Europe is presented. The rivers Elbe, Weser, Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, Seine, Loire, Garonne, Rhône, and Danube will be separately reviewed but not necessarily in this order and not with equal attention. Emphasis is placed on the Quaternary record and most issues are exemplified by a discussion on phenomena and processes in the Rhine–Meuse delta. As almost all these rivers are strongly influenced by man’s activities, attention is also focused on river management practices, both in a historic context and at present. Finally, modern concepts and plans concerning river conservation and rehabilitation are briefly examined. The foundations of the modern drainage system in north-western Europe were laid in the Miocene when earth movements associated with Alpine orogenesis and the opening of the North Atlantic were at their height (Gibbard 1988). During the Late Tertiary–Early Quaternary the North Sea basin was dominated by an extensive fluvial system that drained the Fennoscandian and Baltic shield through the present Baltic Sea (Overeem et al. 2001; Fig. 6.2). The dimensions of this (former) drainage system were enormous; through empirical relationships based on recent fluvio-deltaic systems the drainage area is estimated to have been in the order of 1.1 × 106 km2. Cenozoic marine and fluvial sediments reach a thickness of more than 3,500 m in the North Sea basin. Quaternary sediments with a thickness of over 1,000 m imply a tenfold increase in sedimentation during this period in comparison to the Tertiary infilling. The fluvial system of Miocene to Middle Pleistocene age has been referred to as the Baltic River system (Bijlsma 1981). It is also designated as the Eridanos delta system by Overeem et al. (2001) named after the legendary Eridanos river in northern Europe mentioned in Greek records (7th century BC). In a seismo-stratigraphic study Overeem et al. (2001) have documented the large-scale basin-fill architecture in terms of external forcing by tectonics, sea-level variations, and climate. The development of this drainage system is attributed to the simultaneous Neogene uplift of the Fennoscandian Shield and the accelerated subsidence of the North Sea basin.

The Ruby Pipeline is a 42-inch diameter pipeline that will transmit natural gas 675 miles from Opal, Wyoming, to Malin, Oregon. The pipeline alignment crosses landforms designated as playas at several locations in Utah and Nevada. Federal agencies reviewing environmental documents requested mitigation based on the concept that playas collect and hold rainwater on impervious clay bottoms for long periods of time, and that an open-cut trench could drain ephemeral lakes by penetrating impervious clay bottom soil layers and permanently alter the surface water hydrology of the playas. Trench plugs,

The Southeast Coast Network (SECN) Wadeable Stream Habitat Monitoring Protocol collects data to give park resource managers insight into the status of and trends in stream and near-channel habitat conditions (McDonald et al. 2018a). Wadeable stream monitoring is currently implemented at the five SECN inland parks with wadeable streams. These parks include Horseshoe Bend National Military Park (HOBE), Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park (KEMO), Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park (OCMU), Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (CHAT), and Congaree National Park (CONG). Streams