Great Basin Divide
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Great Basin Divide in the western United States is the ridgeline that separates the Great Basin from the
Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...
watershed, which completely surrounds it. The Great Basin is the largest set of contiguous endorheic watersheds of North America, including six entire
USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, a ...
watershed subregions. It contains the watersheds of several large prehistoric and still-existing lakes, most notably
Lake Bonneville Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America. It was a pluvial lake that formed in response to an increase in precipitation and a decrease in evaporation as a result of cooler temperature ...
,
Lake Lahontan Lake Lahontan was a large endorheic Pleistocene lake of modern northwestern Nevada that extended into northeastern California and southern Oregon. The area of the former lake is a large portion of the Great Basin that borders the Sacramento Rive ...
, Lake Manly, and the
Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf ...
. As such, it occupies most of present-day Nevada, about half of Utah, large parts of eastern California and Oregon, and small parts of Idaho, Wyoming, and Baja California. The arid climate of this area ensures that none of the major lake basins are filled to overflowing, and thus no precipitation falling into them reaches the sea. On the other hand, precipitation falling on the exterior of the Great Basin Divide does (theoretically) reach the Pacific Ocean, through a number of different channels. Roughly speaking, the area to the north and northeast of the Great Basin drains into the Columbia River, mostly via the Snake River. Likewise, the area to the south and southeast drains into the
Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...
, a good part of it via the
Green River Green River may refer to: Rivers Canada * Green River (British Columbia), a tributary of the Lillooet River *Green River, a tributary of the Saint John River, also known by its French name of Rivière Verte *Green River (Ontario), a tributary of ...
. The area west of the Great Basin is drained by the
Klamath River The Klamath River (Karuk: ''Ishkêesh'', Klamath: ''Koke'', Yurok: ''Hehlkeek 'We-Roy'') flows through Oregon and northern California in the United States, emptying into the Pacific Ocean. By average discharge, the Klamath is the second large ...
, the Central Valley of California (
Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
and San Joaquin Rivers), and various small rivers of southern California and northern Baja.


References

{{Great Basin watersheds Drainage divides Geography of the United States