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NASA satellite photo of typical Basin and Range topography across central Nevada. The Basin and Range Province includes much of western North America.In the United States, it is bordered on the west by the eastern fault scarp of the Sierra Nevada and spans over 500 miles (800 km) to its eastern border marked by the Wasatch Fault, the Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande Rift.
Intense volcanism, the horst and graben landscape of the Basin and Range Province originating from the Farallon Plate, and both glaciers and valley lakes have played important roles in the region throughout the past 66 million years. [1]
The Basin and Range Province in the western United States is an extensive region of alternating valleys and ridges caused by horst and graben as well as tilted block faulting. [ 1 ] The Condroz and Ardennes regions of Wallonia are good examples of a succession of horst and graben.
With crustal extension, a series of normal faults which occur in groups, form in close proximity and dipping in opposite directions. [4] As the crust extends it fractures in series of fault planes, some blocks sink down due to gravity, creating long linear valleys or basins also known as grabens, while the blocks remaining up or uplifted produce mountains or ranges, also known as horsts.
Sediment filled the subsiding Furnace Creek Basin as the area was pulled apart by Basin and Range extension. The resulting 7,000-foot (2,100 m)-thick Furnace Creek Formation is made of lakebed sediments that consist of saline muds, gravels from nearby mountains and ash from the then-active Black Mountain volcanic field. [27]
Rifts are linear zones of localized crustal extension. They range in width from somewhat less than 100 km up to several hundred km, consisting of one or more normal faults and related fault blocks. [2] In individual rift segments, one polarity (i.e. dip direction) normally dominates, giving a half-graben geometry. [6]
The Salton Buttes, located within the Salton Sea, are rhyolite lava domes within the basin which were active 10,300 (± 1000) years BP. [6] The Niland Geyser is one of dozens of mudpots and mud volcanoes in the Salton Trough but is the only one in the world known to have moved significantly, affecting the Union Pacific Railroad , California ...
Basin and Range Province of southwestern North America is an example of multiple horst/graben structures, including Death Valley, with Salt Lake Valley being the easternmost and Owens Valley being the westernmost. Lake George Basin, New York, U.S. Lake Tahoe Basin, California and Nevada, U.S. Republic Graben, Republic, Washington, U.S.