Item Detail
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27645
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0
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English
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Late Cenozoid Tephrocronology, Stratigraphy, Geomorphology, and Neotectonics of the Western Black Mountains Piedmont, Death Valley, California : implications for the spatial and temporal evolution the Death Valley fault zone
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Riverside, California
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University of California, Riverside
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Ph.D. Dissertation
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This study presents the first detailed tephrochronologic study of the central Death Valley area by correlation of a Nomlaki-like tuff (>3.35 Ma), tuffs of the Mesquite Spring family (3.1 - 3.35 Ma), a tuff of the lower Glass Mountain family (1.86 - 2.06 Ma), and tephra layers from the upper Glass Mountain family (0.8 - 1.2 Ma), the Bishop ash bed (0.76 Ma), the Lava Creek B ash bed (0.66 Ma), and the Dibekulewe ash bed (0.51 Ma). Correlation of these tuffs and tephra layers provides the first reliable numeric-age stratigraphy for late Cenozoic alluvial fan and lacustrine deposits for Death Valley and resulted in the naming of the informal early to middle Pleistocene Mormon Ploint formation.
Using the numeric-age stratigraphy, the Death Valley fault zone (DVFZ) is interpreted to have progressively stepped basinward since the late Pliocene at Mormon Point and Copper Canyon. The Mormon Point turtleback or low-angle normal fault is shown to have unequivocal late Quaternary slip at its present low angle dip. Tectonic geomorphic analysis indicates that the (DVFZ) is composed of five geomorphic segments with the most persistent segment boundaries being the en-échelon step at Mormon Point and the bedrock salient at Artists Drive.
Subsequent geomorphic studies resulting from the numeric-age stratigraphy and structural relations include application of Gilberts field criteria to the benches at Mormon Point indicating that the upper bench is a lacustrine strandline and the remaining topographically-lower benches are fault scarps across the 160-185 ka lake abrasion platform. In addition, the first known application of cosmogenic [superscript 10] Be and [superscript 36] Al exposure dating to a rock avalanche complex south of Badwater yielded an age of 29.5 [more or less] 1.9 ka for the younger avalanche. The 28 meter offset of the older avalanche may be interpreted as post-160-185 ka yielding a 0.1 mm/year slip rate, or post-29.5 [more or less] 1.9 ka yielding a maximum slip rate of 0.9 nun/year for the DVFZ.
A consequence of these studies is the hypothesis that the turtleback or low-angle normal faults represent a thermally-warped detachment fault related to the Black Mountains igneous complex and do not conform with the present domino or a rolling-hinge models of low-angle normal fault development.