Geology of the deposits of late Tertiary and Quaternary age along the west border of the San Joaquin Valley, California, from Los Banos to Kettleman City

1958 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.H. Green ◽  
W.A. Cockran
Keyword(s):  
San Joaquin Valley ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Tertiary

scholarly journals Policy Innovation and Governance for Irrigation Sustainability in the Arid, Saline San Joaquin River Basin

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 4733
Author(s):  
Nigel W. T. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
River Basin ◽  
San Joaquin Valley ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
The West ◽  
West Side ◽  
Salt Load ◽  
San Joaquin River

This paper provides a chronology and overview of events and policy initiatives aimed at addressing irrigation sustainability issues in the San Joaquin River Basin (SJRB) of California. Although the SJRB was selected in this case study, many of the same resource management issues are being played out in arid, agricultural regions around the world. The first part of this paper provides an introduction to some of the early issues impacting the expansion of irrigated agriculture primarily on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and the policy and capital investments that were used to address salinity impairments to the use of the San Joaquin River (SJR) as an irrigation water supply. Irrigated agriculture requires large quantities of water if it is to be sustained, as well as supply water of adequate quality for the crop being grown. The second part of the paper addresses these supply issues and a period of excessive groundwater pumping that resulted in widespread land subsidence. A joint federal and state policy response that resulted in the facilities to import Delta water provided a remedy that lasted almost 50 years until the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 was passed in the legislature to address a recurrence of the same issue. The paper describes the current state of basin-scale simulation modeling that many areas, including California, are using to craft a future sustainable groundwater resource management policy. The third section of the paper deals with unique water quality issues that arose in connection with the selenium crisis at Kesterson Reservoir and the significant threats to irrigation sustainability on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that followed. The eventual policy response to this crisis was incremental, spanning two decades of University of California-led research programs focused on finding permanent solutions to the salt and selenium contamination problems constraining irrigated agriculture, primarily on the west side. Arid-zone agricultural drainage-induced water quality problems are becoming more ubiquitous worldwide. One policy approach that found traction in California is an innovative variant on the traditional Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) approach to salinity regulation, which has features in common with a scheme in Australia’s Hunter River Basin. The paper describes the real-time salinity management (RTSM) concept, which is geared to improving coordination of west side agricultural and wetland exports of salt load with east side tributary reservoir release flows to improve compliance with river salinity objectives. RTSM is a concept that requires access to continuous flow and electrical conductivity data from sensor networks located along the San Joaquin River and its major tributaries and a simulation model-based decision support designed to make salt load assimilative capacity forecasts. Web-based information dissemination and data sharing innovations are described with an emphasis on experience with stakeholder engagement and participation. The last decade has seen wide-scale, global deployment of similar technologies for enhancing irrigation agriculture productivity and protecting environmental resources.

A Fossil Flora From Rafted Plio-Pleistocene Mudstones at Regatta Point, Tasmania.

1985 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 497 ◽  
Author(s):  
RS Hill ◽  
MK MacPhail
Keyword(s):  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Fossil Flora ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Pliocene ◽  
Late Tertiary ◽  
Cool Temperate ◽  
Successful Establishment ◽  
Pollen And Spores ◽  
The Common ◽  
Lagarostrobos Franklinii

A Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene flora from Regatta Point on Macquarie Harbour contains pollen, cladodes, flowers and infructescences of Casuarina (s.l.), suggesting that the site of deposition was surrounded by the source plants. However, leaves and shoots of Nothofagus cunninghamii, Eucryphia, Atherosperma moschatum, Quintinia, Acacia, Lagarostrobos franklinii, Phyllocladus aspleniifolius, Podocarpus, Athrotaxis selaginoides and A. cf. cupressoides also occur, along with pollen and spores of the common rainforest species, and it can be inferred that a cool temperate rainforest was present upstream of the site of deposition. This fossil flora represents the earliest evidence to date of modern rainforest elements in Tasmania. Pollen of a number of modern sclerophyll species, including Epacridaceae, Proteaceae and Eucalyptus, is also present. The presence of a Quintinia leaf in the Regatta Point flora is evidence that some species have become extinct in Tasmania relatively recently. Extant Tasmanian rainforests evolved from more diverse Mid Tertiary rainforests, probably in response to the Late Tertiary cooling and repeated Quaternary glaciations. The same environmental vicissitudes may have also been responsible for the successful establishment of eucalypts on the west coast of Tasmania by the Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene, resulting in a vegetation probably similar to that now present around Macquarie Harbour.

The petroleum prospectivity of the Oobagooma Sub-basin and adjacent Leveque Platform, North West Shelf, Australia

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 563
Author(s):  
Paul Harrison ◽  
Chris Swarbrick ◽  
Jim Winterhalder ◽  
Mark Ballesteros
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
Canning Basin ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Tertiary ◽  
Exploration Drilling ◽  
Hydrocarbon Charge

The Oobagooma Sub-basin of the Roebuck Basin includes the offshore extension of the onshore Fitzroy Trough of the Canning Basin. Together with the Leveque Platform, it covers an area of approximately 50,000 km2, yet only 14 exploration wells have been drilled in the area to date, five of which were drilled in the past 30 years. The sub-basin contains sediments ranging in age from Ordovician to Recent. This study examines the petroleum prospectivity of a region that is one of the least explored on Australia’s North West Shelf. Recent exploration drilling has revived interest in the area, with the 2014 Phoenix South–1 oil discovery in the offshore Bedout Sub-basin and the 2015 Ungani Far West–1 oil discovery in the onshore Fitzroy Trough. The two most significant source rock sequences relevant to the Oobagooma Sub-basin are the Carboniferous Laurel Formation and the Jurassic section. The former interval is part of a proven petroleum system onshore and is the source of the gas discovered at Yulleroo and oil at Ungani and Ungani Far West. A thick Jurassic trough to the north of the Oobagooma Sub-basin is believed to be the source of the oil and gas in Arquebus–1A and gas in Psepotus–1. Hydrocarbon charge modelling indicates significant expulsion occurred during both the Cretaceous and Tertiary from both source intervals. Trap timing is generally favourable given that inversion structures formed in several episodes during the Late Jurassic to Late Tertiary. The Early Triassic, now proven to be oil prone in the Phoenix South area (Molyneux et al, 2015), provides an additional (albeit less likely) source for the Oobagooma Sub-basin. These rocks are thin to absent within the Oobagooma Sub-basin, so long-distance migration would be required from deep troughs to the west.

Clay Balls in the West San Joaquin Valley, California

1985 ◽  
Vol xxii (3) ◽  
pp. 287-297
Author(s):  
N. P. PROKOPOVICH ◽  
J. E. ISOM
Keyword(s):  
San Joaquin Valley ◽  
The West
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