Definition
A pluvial lake is a lake that has had considerable, and generally periodic, fluctuation in volume (lake level) in the past, primarily in response to climatic changes. All known pluvial lakes are believed to be of Quaternary age.
General Features
The saline lakes and playas of arid and semiarid continental regions commonly show evidence of former periodic large expansions and desiccations during Quaternary time, in the form of abandoned shorelines as well as lacustrine sediments interwedging with units that record subaerial exposure, such as alluvium, colluvium, eolian sand, loess, weathering profiles, and subaerial unconformities. The changes in lake volume typically have ranged through more than one order of magnitude, and the changes in lake level have been many tens of feet for the smaller lakes and hundreds of feet for the larger ones. Lakes with such a history are called pluvial lakes, because they expanded during wetter intervals of the Quaternary, commonly called pluvi...
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References
Charlesworth, J. K., 1957, The Quaternary Era, with Special Reference to Its Glaciation, London, Edward Arnold, Ltd., 2 vols., 1700pp. (see especially Ch. 41 (Vol. 2), Pluvial Belts, pp. 1112–1145.)
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Hubbs, C. L., and Miller, R. R., 1948, “The zoological evidence—Correlation between fish distribution and hydrographic history in the desert basins of the western United States,” in “The Great Basin, with emphasis on glacial and postglacial times”, Utah Univ. Bull., 38, No. 20, 18–166.
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Morrison, R. B., 1965, Quaternary Geology of the Great Basin, in (Wright, H. E. and Frey, D. G., editors), The Quaternary of the United States, pp. 265–285, Princeton, N.J., Princeton Univ. Press.
Russell, I. C., 1885, Geological history of Lake Lahontan, a Quaternary lake of northwestern Nevada, U.S. Geol. Surv. Monograph, 11, 288pp.
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Snyder, C. T., Hardman, George, and Zdenek, F. F., 1964, Pleistocene lakes in the Great Basin, U.S. Geol. Surv. Misc. Geol. Invest., Map I-416.
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Morrison, R.B. (1968). Pluvial lakes . In: Geomorphology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31060-6_294
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31060-6_294
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