Large - Scale Block Faulting During Deposition of the Windermere Supergroup (Hadrynian) in southeastern British Columbia

1976 ◽  
Author(s):  
M G Lise ◽  
R A Price
1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. McMechan ◽  
R. A. Price

Middle Proterozoic (~1500–1350 Ma) Belt–Purcell strata exposed in the Purcell and southwestern Rocky Mountains were affected by at least three distinct episodes of deformation and regional metamorphism. The oldest episode (1300–1350 Ma) apparently terminated Belt–Purcell sedimentation and involved folding, regional metamorphism, and granitic intrusion. The second episode (800–900 Ma) occurred during deposition of the Windermere Supergroup and involved uplift, block faulting, and low-grade regional metamorphism. Mesozoic–Cenozoic metamorphism, deformation, and plutonism overprinted the results of the earlier deformation and metamorphism.Illite crystallinity and muscovite polymorph ratios indicate that Purcell strata in the Mount Fisher area are in the lower green-schist to prehnite–pumpellyite facies of regional metamorphism. In the Steeples and Fisher blocks this metamorphism is related to structures that formed during the Late Cretaceous – Paleocene deformation. However, in the Sand Creek block the regional metamorphism is related to the development of a spaced cleavage that is folded by a Late Cretaceous – Paleocene nappe. Regional considerations suggest that this cleavage formed during the 1300–1350 Ma episode of deformation and metamorphism.The "East Kootenay orogeny" as currently defined embraces the two older episodes of tectonism. It is proposed that the term East Kootenay orogeny be restricted to designate the 1300–1350 Ma episode and that the term "Goat River orogeny" designate the 800–900 Ma episode of tectonism. The East Kootenay and Goat River orogenies appear to be correlative with the Racklan and Hayhook orogenies recognized in the northern Canadian Cordillera.


1991 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1541-1552 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J. Hofmann ◽  
E. W. Mountjoy ◽  
M. W. Teitz

Shallow-water clastic beds flanking stromatolitic carbonate mounds in the upper part of the Vendian Miette Group (Windermere Supergroup) of the Rocky Mountains contain a poorly preserved, soft-bodied fauna that comprises morphologically very variable discoid remains; these include the taxa Beltanella sp., cf. B. grandis, Charniodiscus? sp., Irridinitus? sp., Nimbia occlusa, Protodipleurosoma sp., cf. P. rugulosum, and Zolotytsia? sp. and seven types of dubiofossils.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Kieta ◽  
Philip Owens ◽  
Ellen Petticrew

<p>The Nechako River Basin (NRB) in central British Columbia is a large (52,000 km<sup>2</sup>), regulated basin that supports populations of sockeye and chinook salmon and the endangered Nechako white sturgeon. These important species are experiencing population declines and one potential cause of this decline is excess sediment, which can clog their spawning habitat and reduce juvenile success. This excess sediment is likely the product of a combination of factors, the most visible being the significant land cover changes that have occurred in the basin, which includes pressure from forestry and agriculture, the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic, and large-scale wildfires in 2018. Focusing specifically on the impact of the 2018 wildfires on sediment transport from upland burned areas to adjacent waterways, this research aimed to determine the spatial and temporal contamination of tributaries and the mainstem of the Nechako River with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are produced during the combustion of organic matter and have been identified as toxic to aquatic organisms and to humans. Additionally, this study intended to determine if burned areas were a more significant contributor of sediment than unburned areas and better understand the utility of PAHs as a potential tracer. Source soil samples were collected in 2018 and 2020 from burned and unburned sites, and suspended sediment samples were collected throughout the ice-free period from 2018-2020 in three tributaries and three mainstem sites. All samples were analysed for PAHs, magnetic susceptibility, colour, and particle size. Results from the fall 2018 source samples show a significant difference in PAH concentrations between unburned and burned soils, and while concentrations of PAHs in source soils in 2020 were lower than in 2018, they were still elevated compared to unburned soils. Sediment samples showed that concentrations of total PAHs are higher in the mainstem sites than in the tributaries, with the greatest concentrations consistently found at the most downstream site on the mainstem of the Nechako River. Concentrations across sites were highest in samples taken during the spring snowmelt period in 2019, have decreased throughout the rest of the sampling period (2019-2020), and are well below sediment quality guidelines for total PAHs. In addition to determining the spatial and temporal extent of PAH contamination, this study also aims to use PAHs along with colour and measurements of magnetic susceptibility to trace sediments associated with the 2018 wildfires. The high cost of PAH analysis limits the number of samples that can be analysed and thus, these additional tracers will allow for the use of models such as MixSIAR that improve with a more robust number of samples. As large-scale megafires continue to burn across the globe, understanding their potential to contribute PAHs to local waterbodies and potentially be used as a tracer is as prescient as ever.</p>


1963 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 939-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Lane

Oceanographic data collected in a line of stations extending seaward of the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, were reviewed and analyzed. On the basis of these data and the large-scale meteorological processes of wind, insolation, and precipitation, the characteristic structure of temperature and salinity in the coastal region was denned in five temporal stages throughout the year. These stages are presented as vertical sections along the line with characteristic ranges of values to be found in each of the structural elements.


2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa J. Wood ◽  
Dan J. Smith ◽  
Michael N. Demuth

AbstractRecognizing that climate influences both annual tree-ring growth and glacier mass balance, changes in the mass balance of Place Glacier, British Columbia, were documented from increment core records. Annually resolved ring-width (RW), maximum (MXD), and mean density (MD) chronologies were developed from Engelmann spruce and Douglas-fir trees sampled at sites within the surrounding region. A snowpack record dating to AD 1730 was reconstructed using a multivariate regression of spruce MD and fir RW chronologies. Spruce MXD and RW chronologies were used to reconstruct winter mass balance (Bw) for Place Glacier to AD 1585. Summer mass balance (Bs) was reconstructed using the RW chronology from spruce, and net balance was calculated from Bw and Bs. The reconstructions provide insight into the changes that snowpack and mass balance have undergone in the last 400 years, as well as identifying relationships to air temperature and circulation indices in southern British Columbia. These changes are consistent with other regional mass-balance reconstructions and indicate that the persistent weather systems characterizing large scale climate-forcing mechanisms play a significant glaciological role in this region. A comparison to dated moraine surfaces in the surrounding region substantiates that the mass-balance shifts recorded in the proxy data are evident in the response of glaciers throughout the region.


PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8962
Author(s):  
Upama Khatri-Chhetri ◽  
John G. Woods ◽  
Ian R. Walker ◽  
P. Jeff Curtis

The European Starling (Sturnidae: Sturnus vulgaris L.) is an invasive bird in North America where it is an agricultural pest. In British Columbia (Canada), the starling population increases in orchards and vineyards in autumn, where they consume and damage ripening fruits. Starlings also cause damage in dairy farms and feedlots by consuming and contaminating food and spreading diseases. Damage can be partly mitigated by the use of scare devices, which can disperse flocks until they become habituated. Large-scale trapping and euthanizing before starlings move to fields and farms could be a practical means of preventing damage, but requires knowledge of natal origin. Within a small (20,831 km2), agriculturally significant portion of south-central British Columbia, the Okanagan-Similkameen region, we used 21 trace elements in bone tissue to discriminate the spatial distribution of juvenile starlings and to reveal the geographic origin of the problem birds in fall. Stepwise discriminant analysis of trace elements classified juveniles to their natal origin (minimum discrimination distance of 12 km) with 79% accuracy. In vineyards and orchards, the majority (55%) of problem birds derive from northern portions of the valley; and the remaining 45% of problem birds were a mixture of local and immigrant/unassigned birds. In contrast, problem birds in dairy farms and feedlots were largely immigrants/unassigned (89%) and 11% were local from northern region of the valley. Moreover, elemental signatures can separate starling populations in the Valley yielding a promising tool for identifying the geographic origin of these migratory birds.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Devlin ◽  
Gerard C. Bond

The uppermost Proterozoic–Lower Cambrian Hamill Group of southeastern British Columbia contains geologic evidence for a phase of extensional tectonism that led directly to the onset of thermally controlled subsidence in the Cordilleran miogeocline. Moreover, the Hamill Group contains the sedimentological record of the passage of the ancient passive margin from unstable tectonic conditions associated with rifting and (or) the earliest phases of thermal subsidence to post-rift conditions characterized by stabilization of the margin and dissipation of the thermal anomaly generated during the rift phase (the rift to post-rift transition). Widespread uplift that occurred prior to and during the deposition of the lower Hamill Group is indicated by an unconformable relation with the underlying Windermere Supergroup and by stratigraphic relations between Middle and Upper Proterozoic strata and unconformably overlying upper Lower Cambrian quartz arenites (upper Hamill Group) in the southern borderlands of the Hamill basin. In addition, the coarse grain size, the feldspar content, the depositional setting, and the inferred provenance of the lower Hamill Group are all indicative of the activation of basement sources along the margins of the Hamill basin. Geologic relations within the Hamill Group that provide direct evidence for extensional tectonism include the occurrence of thick sequences of mafic metavolcanics and rapid vertical facies changes that are suggestive of syndepositional tectonism.Evidence of extensional tectonism in the Hamill Group directly supports inferences derived from tectonic subsidence analyses that indicate the rift phase that immediately preceded early Paleozoic post-rift cooling could not have occurred more than 10–20 Ma prior to 575 ± 25 Ma. These data, together with recently reported isotopic data that suggest deposition of the Windermere Supergroup began ~730–770 Ma, indicate that the rift-like deposits of the Windermere Supergroup are too old to represent the rifting that led directly to the deposition of the Cambro-Ordovician post-rift strata. Instead, Windermere sedimentation was apparently initiated by an earlier rift event, probably of regional extent, that was part of a protracted, episodic rift history that culminated with continental breakup in the latest Proterozoic – Early Cambrian.


1992 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 1294-1304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murdoch K. McAllister ◽  
Randall M. Peterman ◽  
Darren M. Gillis

Since 1950, stocks of British Columbia pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) have shown up to a 34% decrease in mean adult body weight, causing significant reduction in economic value of commercial harvests. Previous research suggests that this trend is due to size-selective harvesting of large fish, but changes in oceanographic conditions are a plausible alternative. Corrective action by management agencies requires that the true causal mechanism be identified. We therefore examined several possible designs for a large-scale fishing experiment devised to test the size-selective fishing hypothesis. These designs would generate accurate and precise field estimates of the heritability (h2) of growth rate, which is important because it, in combination with the selection differential (D) caused by fishing, determines how rapidly body size changes. Monte Carlo simulations showed that block designs with three to six spatial replicates and relatively short durations generated high statistical power. For example, for h2 = 0.22, D = 0.25 kg, and four spatial replicates, an 8-yr experiment resulted in power = 0.87, which gave a SE < 0.10 for h2 = 0.22. We conclude that some experimental designs have good potential to test the possible effects of size-selective fishing on mean adult size of British Columbia pink salmon.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
A J Timothy Jull ◽  
Marten Geertsema

We present results of radiocarbon dating of charcoal from paleosols and buried charcoal horizons in a unique sequence, which potentially records the last 36,000 yr, from a fan at Bear Flat, British Columbia (BC) (56°16'51’N, 121°13'39”W). Evidence for forest-fire charcoal is found over the last 13,500 ± 110 14C yr before present (BP) or 16,250 ± 700 cal BP. The study area is located east of the Rocky Mountains in an area that was ice-free at least 13,970 ± 170 14C yr BP (17,450–16,150 cal BP) ago. The latest evidence of fire is during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The charcoal ages show a periodicity in large fires on a millennial scale through the Holocene—an average of 4 fires per thousand years. Higher fire frequencies are observed between 2200 to 2800 cal BP, ∼5500 and ∼6000 cal BP, ∼7500 to 8200 cal BP, and 9000 to 10,000 cal BP. These intervals also appear to be times of above-average aggradation of the fan. We conclude that fire frequency is related to large-scale climatic events on a millennial time scale.


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