Basin and Range Province - Geography

Geography

The Basin and Range Province includes much of western North America. In the United States, it is bordered on the west by the eastern fault scarp of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and spans over 500 miles (800 km) to its eastern border marked by the Wasatch Fault, the Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande Rift. The Basin and Range Province extends north to the Columbia Plateau and south as far as the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in Mexico, though the southern boundaries of the Basin and Range are debated. Evidence suggests that the less-recognized southern portion of the Basin and Range Province is bounded on the east by the Laramide Thrust Front of the Sierra Madre Oriental and on the west by the Gulf of California and Baja Peninsula with notably less faulting apparent in the Sierra Madre Occidental in the center of the southernmost Basin and Range Province. In the adjacent figure the province includes the Great Basin section (22a, including part of the Mojave Desert), the Sonoran Desert (22b) & Salton Trough (22c) sections, the Mexican Altiplano (22d), and Sacramento section (22e).