7 results on '"Salt River"'
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2. Climatic, geomorphic, and archaeological implications of a late Quaternary alluvial chronology for the lower Salt River, Arizona, USA
- Author
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Huckleberry, Gary, Onken, Jill, Graves, William M., and Wegener, Robert
- Subjects
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ALLUVIAL streams , *GEOMORPHOLOGY , *CHRONOLOGY , *ARCHAEOLOGICAL excavations , *FLOODPLAINS , *ACCELERATOR mass spectrometry - Abstract
Abstract: Recent archaeological excavations along the lower Salt River, Arizona resulted in the unexpected discovery of buried late Pleistocene soils and cultural features dating 5800–7100cal YBP (Early Archaic), the latter representing the earliest evidence of human activity in the lower Salt River floodplain thus far identified. Because the lower Salt River floodplain has been heavily impacted by recent agriculture and urbanization and contains few stratigraphic exposures, our understanding of the river''s geological history is limited. Here we present a late Quaternary alluvial chronology for a segment of the lower Salt River based on 19 accelerator mass spectrometry 14C and four optically stimulated luminescence ages obtained during two previous geoarchaeological investigations. Deposits are organized into allostratigraphic units and reveal a buried late Pleistocene terrace inset into middle-to-late Pleistocene terrace deposits. Holocene terrace fill deposits unconformably cap the late Pleistocene terrace tread in the site area, and the lower portion of this fill contains the Early Archaic archaeological features. Channel entrenchment and widening ~900cal YBP eroded much of the older terrace deposits, leaving only a remnant of fill containing the buried latest Pleistocene and middle-to-late Holocene deposits preserved in the site area. Subsequent overbank deposition and channel filling associated with a braided channel system resulted in the burial of the site by a thin layer of flood sediments. Our study confirms that the lower Salt River is a complex mosaic of late Quaternary alluvium formed through vertical and lateral accretion, with isolated patches of buried soils preserved through channel avulsion. Although channel avulsion is linked to changes in sediment load and discharge and may have climatic linkages, intrinsic geomorphic and local base level controls limit direct correlations of lower Salt River stratigraphy to other large rivers in the North American Southwest. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2013
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3. Locational Probability for a Dammed, Urbanizing Stream: Salt River, Arizona, USA.
- Author
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Graf, William L.
- Subjects
AERIAL photographs ,REMOTE-sensing images ,RIVER channels ,SPATIAL analysis (Statistics) ,FLOODS - Abstract
ABSTRACT / Data from historical aerial photographs analyzed with a GIS show that river channel change on the Salt River in the Phoenix metropolitan area of central Arizona has been driven by large-scale regional flood events and local human activities. Mapping of functional surfaces such as low-flow channels, high-flow channels, islands, bars attached to channel banks, and engineered surfaces shows that during the period from 1935 to 1997, the relative areal coverage of these surfaces has changed. Flood events have caused general changes in sinuosity of the low-flow channel, but islands have remained remarkably consistent in location and size, while channel-side bars have waxed and waned. The most important determinant of local channel form and process is sand and gravel mining, which in some reaches occupies more than 70% of the active channel area. The general location of mining is closely related to the location of the moving urban fringe, which serves as a market for sand and gravel during construction. Quantitative spatial analysis of imagery supplemented by field mapping shows that for each location within the general channel area, it is possible to specify a probability of encountering a low-flow channel or other fluvial features. Maps showing the distribution of these probabilities of occurrence reveal the most probable location and configuration of the channel as it occurred in the past. Some reaches have the low-flow channel located persistently within a limited area as a result of bedrock or sinuosity controls, but other reaches dominated by flow separation or shallow gradient have almost no persistence in channel location from one flood to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2000
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4. Restoration and river management in the arid southwestern USA: exploring project design trends and features.
- Author
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Gerlak, Andrea K., Eden, Susanna, Megdal, Sharon, Lacroix, Kelly Mott, and Schwarz, Andrew
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STREAM restoration , *REGULATION of rivers , *RIVERS , *COMMUNITY involvement , *RIVER conservation - Abstract
River restoration activities are becoming increasingly common in many communities today. Such efforts in Arizona are illustrative of a larger ecosystem and river restoration trend underway nationally and internationally. This paper examines river restoration efforts in Arizona in the context of changing federal and state agency missions and local priorities. Restoration projects on four significant rivers are analyzed with a keen look at the design features they share. Multiple purpose goals, collaborative funding and support, community involvement. and monitoring and maintenance emerged as important project design features. We found that the extent to which these features were planned and implemented in any given project varied with several factors such as size, accessibility to urban populations and the mission of the principal sponsoring entity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
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5. Pliocene-Pleistocene stability of the Queen Creek drainage in the Basin and Range Province, eastern Phoenix metropolitan area, Central Arizona.
- Author
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Skotnicki, Steven J., Gootee, Brian F., and Seong, Yeong Bae
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WATERSHEDS , *METROPOLITAN areas , *ENDORHEIC lakes , *EPHEMERAL streams , *DRAINAGE - Abstract
Queen Creek exemplifies a moderately-sized tributary drainage of the Salt River, central Arizona, USA. In contrast to the exoreic Salt River and its immediate neighbor to the south, the exoreic Gila River, Queen Creek has remained an ephemeral stream, losing its discharge as it debouched from its mountain drainage basin throughout the late Pliocene and Quaternary. As a result, only the largest discharge events extended out into the center of the endorheic Higley Basin and then, later, to the Salt River. Data presented here demonstrate that the Queen Creek drainage existed long before the arrival of the Salt River in the Higley Basin, and continued to exist after aggradational piracy diverted the early Salt River around the north side of South Mountain. Thus, Queen Creek not only provides information about the history of internal drainage within the Higley Basin, but it also provides valuable insight about how a local endoreic stream reacts to drainage integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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6. Provenance in drainage integration research: Case studies from the Phoenix metropolitan area, south-central Arizona.
- Author
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Dorn, Ronald I., Skotnicki, Steve J., Wittmann, A., and Van Soest, M.
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ANALYSIS of river sediments , *CASE studies , *METROPOLITAN areas , *ELECTRON probe microanalysis , *DRAINAGE , *ZIRCON analysis - Abstract
Studies of the evolution of drainage systems in extensional settings like the Basin and Range Province of western North America benefit from well drilling as a means of acquiring valuable insight. Cuttings from two wells drilled into sediments of the Phoenix metropolitan region, Arizona, USA, offer new insights into the drainage history of the Salt and Verde river drainage basins. Analyses of detrital zircons with U Pb dating reveal a different signature for Ancestral Salt River Deposits (ASRD) as compared to the underlying basin fill. Trace element, 87Sr/86Sr ratios, and electron microprobe analyses of basalt fragments in the basal deposits of the ASRD in two different wells from Mesa, Arizona, show matches for outcrop sources near Bartlett Dam in the Verde drainage and near Stewart Mountain Dam in the Salt drainage. This indicates that the Salt and Verde rivers were transporting these basalts when the Salt River first flowed into the metropolitan Phoenix area. We employed tephrochronology to determine that the 3.3-Ma Nomlaki tuff accumulated in closed-basin playa deposits located near the present-day junction of the Salt and Verde rivers, providing a maximum-limiting age for the integration of both rivers. Because the age of mountains crossed by the Salt and Verde rivers pre-date <3.3 Ma by tens of millions of years, we rule out antecedence and superimposition as possible mechanisms to explain these transverse drainages. Multiple lines of evidence presented here are inconsistent with drainage piracy from headward erosion for both drainages: (i) headward erosion would have eroded analyzed basalt clasts from outcrop positions prior to drainage integration, and yet these clasts only occur in the lowest deposits of the ASRD; (ii) headward erosion would not be expected to create transverse streams in two distinct river drainages at the same time, and yet basalt clasts eroded from outcrops in the Salt and Verde rivers arrived together in the basal layer of the ASRD deposits, within the temporal resolution of 3 m sampling interval for well cuttings; (iii) headward erosion of the Verde River from the Nomlaki Tuff (providing maximum age of river integration at 3.3 Ma) to the breached Verde Formation-depositing lake at 2.5 Ma would require an extraordinarily fast rate of >12 cm/yr across multiple bedrock uplands; and (iv) Mescal Limestone clasts on the highest Salt River strath terrace cannot be explained by headward erosion. However, all analyzed evidence are consistent with the process of lake overflow. Based on our findings and the use of geomorphic criteria (Douglass et al., 2009), we conclude that lake overflow is the most likely cause of drainage integration of both the Salt River and the Verde River. Unlabelled Image • Verde and Salt rivers integrated drainages after Nomlaki 3.3 Ma eruption • Detrital zircon analyses reveal substantially different source areas of sediment before and after river integration • Mineralogic and geochemical analyses indicate penecontemporaneous arrival of Salt and Verde rivers into the Phoenix area • Antecedence, superimposition, and headward erosion via piracy processes in conflict with new evidence • Lake overflow best explains Verde and Salt rivers integration across the Basin and Range Province of Arizona, USA [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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7. Subsurface evidence for the sudden integration of the Salt River across the internally drained Basin and Range Province, Arizona, USA.
- Author
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Skotnicki, Steven J. and DePonty, Jersy D.
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WATER well drilling , *SURFACE of the earth , *GEOMORPHOLOGY , *ZIRCON analysis , *WATERSHEDS , *ACCESS to archives - Abstract
The dynamics of river systems are most easily studied by observing their present geomorphology exposed at Earth's surface. However, the bulk of these often long-lived transportation and depositional systems is mostly buried at depth and hidden from view. Accessing these subsurface archives is often not possible. The Phoenix 'basin' of Arizona, USA, with its rich collection of water well drilling information, offers a unique opportunity. Clast assemblages of sand and gravel deposits contained in subsurface drill cuttings enable estimates of sediment provenance and, importantly, reveal changes of provenance over time. This study represents more than a decade of drill cuttings analysis and presents a method for evaluating the depositional history of how the Phoenix basin developed a large external river system that crossed a long-lived internally drained basin. This configuration developed after Basin and Range faulting and extension had ceased, allowing the basin to fill to capacity with sediment. When placed in the context of a series of new isopach maps of the subsurface ancestral Salt River deposits, our clast assemblage analysis supports the conclusion that the Salt and Verde rivers appeared suddenly in the geologic record. The ancestral Salt River deposits and other nearby streams crossing the basin each possess a unique clast assemblage that can be used to 'fingerprint' sediments with similar sources. We use these observations to draw conclusions about the age and origin of these streams. Used in conjunction with other types of analyses such as cosmogenic burial dating and detrital zircon analyses, determining clast assemblages of drill cuttings in the context of mapping these assemblages is a powerful new method for estimating the source of sediment and for understanding how the Phoenix basin, and basins in general, fill with sediment. This information is of value in modeling both basin development and groundwater resources in similar contexts in Arizona and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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