The Laguna de Babícora Basin: A Late Quaternary Paleolake in Northwestern Mexico

• Autores: José Ortega Ramírez, Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi, Alfonso Valiente-Banuet
• Localización: Lake basins through space and time / coord. por Elizabeth H. Gierlowski-Kordesch, K. Kelts, 2000, ISBN 0891810528, págs. 569-580
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The Laguna de Babicora lies in the subtropical high pressure climatic belt in the western part of the state of Chihuahua, northern Mexico (29 15'"-29 30"'N; 107 40"'108 00VV) (Figure 1).Atmospheric air mass circulation in the summer is dominated by air fluxes from the east, where as during the winter, air fluxes move from the west and are associated with high atmosphere jet streams(Bryson and Lowry, 1955; Hales, 1974; Neilson, 1986).Annual mean precipitation is 450 mm and average annual temperature is 11.3 C. According to the Koppen classification C(E) (WI) (x), climate is characterized by dry and cold winters (3.5 C mean temperature) and hot and humid summers (20.1 C mean temperature). Vegetationis characterized by arid tropical scrub below 2200m and above this altitude, it is dominated by woodlandscomposed of Juniperus, Quercus, Pinus cembroides, and Pinus oocarpa with chaparral vegetation composed predominantlyof Arctostaphylos pungens. The Laguna de Babicora occupies a graben of approximately 1896 km 2 at 2100m above sea level. This plain is surrounded by mountains ranging in altitude from 2500m to approximately 3000 m above sea level (Figure IB).These mountains contain Miocene-Pliocene rhyolitic rocks at their base interspersed with an desites and ignimbrites, which are capped by Pliocene-Pleistocene rhyolitictuffs and basaltic lava flows. Previous studies(Ortega-Ramirez, 1990, 1995; Urrutia-Fucugauchi et al.,1997;Ortega-Ramirez et al., 1998)have shown that during 569 the Quaternary, especially in the late Pleistocene andHolocene, various sedimentary environments prevailed in the region, such as lacustrine, bog, alluvial, fluvial, and eolian systems.Origin of the Laguna de Babicora Basin is related to early Tertiary compressional and late Tertiary extensionaltectonics, similar to basins in the