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Holocene Stratigraphy And Chronology Of Mountain Meadows, Sierra Nevada, California, Spencer H. Wood

Spencer H. Wood

Valley-fill deposits, exposed by Twentieth-Century dissection of a number of meadows on the west slope of the southern Sierra Nevada, contain a stratigraphic record strongly affected by secular variations in watershed hydrology during the Holocene. Meadows are situated in low gradient reaches, adaquately supported by seep-age water, where fine textured materials accumulate under present hydrologic conditions• Meadows do not necessarily owe their origin to glacial modification of drainage. Many meadows have formed in both glaciated and unglaciated valleys by a water table rise in valley-fill deposits. Ground water in any meadow drainage basin is annually recharged by snowmelt. Significant evapotranspiration …