Abstract
Abstract. Neogene deposits of the lower Colorado River valley, especially the Miocene(?) and early Pliocene Bouse Formation, have been the focus of intense debate regarding the early paleoenvironmental history of this important continental-scale river system in southwestern North America and its integration with the proto-Gulf of California. Fine-grained units within these Neogene deposits also hold a promising archive of Pliocene paleoclimate history for this part of the world. Because the depocenter deposits of the Bouse Formation and the deposits that overlie and underlie it are poorly exposed and highly weathered, the formation is ripe for study through collection of drill cores. A workshop was held 28 February–3 March 2019 in Parker, AZ, USA, to discuss how scientific drilling might be employed to help resolve the Bouse controversies and improve our understanding of paleoclimate history in the region.
Highlights
The Colorado River (CR) is one of the longest rivers of North America (2330 km), with a watershed spanning 640 000 km2 of eight US and Mexican states, making it a critical resource for the arid southwestern part of the continent
A key archive of this past history can be found in the late Miocene(?) and early Pliocene Bouse Formation, which crops out and is present in the subsurface along the lower CR valley of western Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California today (Figs. 1, 2) (Metzger, 1968; Buising, 1990; House et al, 2008)
Two broad classes of models have arisen from these interpretations of the Blythe basin deposits, an incursion of marine waters from an evolving protoGulf of California (McDougall and Miranda Martínez, 2014; Dorsey et al, 2018) or a “fill and spill” scenario of CR waters making their way downstream below the Grand Canyon by infilling a series of pre-existing basins as large lakes, which eventually infill with sediment and overtop their sill thresholds, allowing the CR to extend its length downstream towards an ultimate interconnection with the gulf (House et al, 2008; Spencer et al, 2013)
Summary
The Colorado River (CR) is one of the longest rivers of North America (2330 km), with a watershed spanning 640 000 km of eight US and Mexican states, making it a critical resource for the arid southwestern part of the continent. Two broad classes of models have arisen from these interpretations of the Blythe basin deposits, an incursion (or multiple incursions) of marine waters from an evolving protoGulf of California (McDougall and Miranda Martínez, 2014; Dorsey et al, 2018) or a “fill and spill” scenario of CR waters making their way downstream below the Grand Canyon by infilling a series of pre-existing basins as large lakes, which eventually infill with sediment and overtop their sill thresholds, allowing the CR to extend its length downstream towards an ultimate interconnection with the gulf (House et al, 2008; Spencer et al, 2013) Most participants in this debate agree that Bouse Formation deposits in basins upstream from the Blythe basin, while displaying grossly similar stratigraphies and geochemical signatures to that basin, were all fully lacustrine through their history. Understanding the history of the CR, a critical water resource for desert southwestern North America, through its downstream Bouse Formation paleorecords is of value for society as a whole
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