Landscape Evolution of Continental-Scale River Systems (eBook)

James W. Sears is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Montana, where he taught structural geology, tectonics, and planetary geology from 1982 to 2021, prior to which he taught at Auburn University from 1978 to 1982. Dr Sears has over 300 research publications, including research papers, geologic maps, field guides, and abstracts, has co-edited two Geological Society of America Special Papers and has contributed to several others. Dr Sears currently does geologic mapping with the State Map Program at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. He actively publishes research, with papers in Geological Association of Canada and Geological Society of America journals.

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Landscape Evolution of Continental-Scale River Systems: A Case Study of North America's Pre-Pleistocene Bell River Basin provides a detailed case study and complete analysis of this continental-scale North American paleo-river system. The book uses detrital zircon provenance data to link incision of the Grand Canyon to deposition of its erosional products in a giant drowned delta in the Labrador Sea, in the context of sedimentary source-to-sink processes and Plio-Pleistocene continental drainage changes. The case study describes the tectonic changes in this continental-scale paleo-river system, with global implications, and contrasts this system to other continental-scale river systems around the world. This book is a valuable reference for postgraduate students, academics and researchers in the fields of geology, fluvial geomorphology and other geosciences. Readers will be able to use this detailed case study to better understand the implications for how active tectonics of headwaters regions influence delta deposition in continental-scale river systems around the world.Details the landscape evolution of a continental-scale paleo-river system using detrital zircon geochronology with fluvial processesProvides a multidisciplinary case study with applications to other continental-scale river systems around the worldCompares and contrasts the Bell river to the Amazon and uses these examples as analogs to discuss other systems