Diverging The Southern Death Valley.

   The reason for the examination of the Snake River plain in one of my previous posts was to get a clue to processes behind Yellowstone caldera and a clue to forces that are global to the west of NA and are parallel to the coastline.

   Now, why not to search for other possible examples of intra-continental diverging processes? Why not to start with one of the most famous US valleys - Death Valley? Its southern part, just around the Confidence Hills seems to show a good example of the process.
  
   Navigate to Shoreline Butte, Southern Death Valley, near Ashford Junction, California State Highway 178. South to this junction are the Confidence Hills. Set map mode to "Terrain" and have a look at mountains to South-West and at mountains to North-East of the Confidence Hills. Imagine, if the part of the valley the Confidence Hills are placed on, were shrunk, the mountains would fit each other quite nicely. Thus, at least this part of the Death Valley was formed by a diverging process.
  
   That's enough for a blog post, I think. The importance of the understanding that many (if not most) plains/valleys on the west of the USA were formed by the diverging processes is hard to overestimate. Particularly it's important in rethinking the Slab Gap Hypothesis, but let's leave it to another blog post.
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reposted from http://sukhotinsky.blogspot.com/
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