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What can be found in the Central Valley?
The valley encompasses all or parts of 19 California counties: Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, Placer, San Joaquin, Sacramento, Shasta, Solano, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Tulare, Yolo and Yuba….Central Valley (California)
| Central Valley | |
|---|---|
| Rivers | Sacramento River, San Joaquin River, Kings River |
What type of sediment makes up the aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley making them particularly susceptible to compaction and permanent storage loss?
More than half the thickness of the continental sediments is composed of fine-grained (clay, sandy clay, sandy silt, and silt) stream (fluvial) and lake (lacustrine) deposits susceptible to compaction.
What are some geographical features of Central Valley?
The Central Valley is outlined by the Cascade, Sierra Nevada, and Tehachapi mountain ranges on the east, and the California Coast Ranges and San Francisco Bay on the west. The broad valley floor is carpeted by vast agricultural regions, and dotted with numerous population centers.
What type of aquifer is the Central Valley aquifer?
basin-fill aquifer system
The Central Valley of California (fig. 71) contains the largest basin-fill aquifer system in Segment 1. The valley is in a structural trough about 400 miles long and from 20 to 70 miles wide and extends over more than 20,000 square miles.
Where is the Central Valley aquifer system?
The Central Valley Aquifer system of Central CA lies in a large structural basin running approximately North-South, between the Coast Ranges to the West and the Sierra Nevada mountains to the East (Figure 22).
Was the Central Valley an inland sea?
The Central Valley began filling with sediments, now thousands of meters deep, in the Cretaceous period about 80 million years ago. Originally an inland sea, it filled with enough sediment to become mostly dry land by 1.5 million years ago.
What is the Central Valley aquifer used for?
Groundwater pumping Groundwater in the Central Valley is primarily used for irrigation needs in the agriculture industry and is retrieved using wells. During drought years, groundwater pumping is increased due a shortage of surface water available to farmers.
What type of sediment is found in the Central Valley?
Depending upon location, deposits of fine-grained materials-mostly clay and silt-make up as much as 50 percent of the thickness of the valley-fill sediments. Three hydrologic subregions coincide with drainage basins within the Central Valley ( fig. 71 ).
How thick is the sediment in the Sacramento Valley?
In total, the ocean left behind deposits that ranged in thickness from about 25,000 feet in the Sacramento Valley to about 20,000 feet in the San Joaquin Valley. These deposits are mostly consolidated and have minimal permeability.
What are the physical features of the Central Valley?
The Central Valley is bounded on the west by the Coast Ranges and on the east by the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada. The valley has only one surface-water outlet, the Carquinez Strait east of San Francisco Bay.
How thick are the sediments at the southern end of Yellowstone?
These continental sediments are as thick as 9,000 feet at the southern end of the valley and have an average thickness of about 2,400 feet ( fig. 76 ). The continental sediments consist mostly of fluvial, basin-fill, or lake deposits of sand and gravel interbedded and admixed with clay and silt ( fig. 77 ).