Geology of the Great Basin area Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Geology of the Great Basin area - Essay Example The floor of the valleys of great basin is four or five thousand feet above sea level (Fiero, 9). Surface water is removed from the basin not by drainage but by evaporation alone (Fiero, 9). There are many streams flowing through the basin like tributaries of the Deschutes, John Day, Owyhee, and snake river (Fiero, 8). The tributaries of Colorado have created deep canyons in the southern part of the great basin. But the most important feature of Great Basin is â€Å"interior drainage of rivers and streams into remnant pleistocene lakes or playas† (Sturtevant and D’Azevedo, 6). The geological character of the great basin comes under the category, ‘Basin and Range’, which is a geological region with â€Å"uplifted and tilted ranges separated by broad elongated basins† (Fiero, 9). Great basin, is geologically, a part of the Basin and range that spreads over Nevada, Utah, Oregone, Idaho, Wyoming and also New Mexico and Arizona (Sturtevant and D’Az evedo, 6). There are geological evidences showing the existence of â€Å"deep lakes and rushing rivers† in pre-historical period, in the Great Basin (Sturtevant and D’Azevedo, 33). In the northern part, the basin has volcanic lava covers amounting to thousands of feet depth (Fiero, 9). Around 2000 and 1000 B.C., the Mount Mazama had erupted and this was the source of lava and volcanic ash spread over the north of Great Basin (Sturtevant and D’Azevedo, 35).