Did the Colorado River Once Run North from Grand Canyon to Montana? Geologic Field Evidence in the Swan River Valley - Pocatello Area of Idaho
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Colorado River did not always run south into the Gulf of California. Studies suggest it may have once flowed north through Idaho and Montana before discharging into the Labrador Sea. During past geologic periods, the river’s path may have taken it through the Swan River Valley-Pocatello area of SE Idaho. Research into this area indicates that it was possibly the site of an ancient riverbed. Did it flow north, as predicted by recent studies? The area underwent large-scale geologic changes through glacial processes, faulting, volcanism, and uplift, causing drainages to shift their courses. In the study area, the bed of the old river valley may have eroded deep into Cambrian and Precambrian quartzites. If exotic quartzite cobbles stranded on high mountain passes in SW Montana were derived from bedrock in the study area, the river must have run north. Over the semester, this project will analyze the geologic history of the study area through analysis which includes literature review, field observations, petrologic analysis, structural interpretation, field measurements of geologic formations, and the GPS co-ordinates of the field sites. A map of the area will be created along with a cross-section of the subsurface geology. By conducting this research we intend to establish if the study area contains the deeply eroded bed of the old north-flowing river. We hope to date remnants of the old river deposits near Pocatello and Swan River Valley, and determine ancient flow directions from field observations. Geology of this area has been studied and mapped extensively. However, the concept of regional tectonics influencing the course of the proposed north-flowing river is a hypothesis that has not been considered. This will contribute to our understanding of tectonic impacts on river systems and help identify possible untapped ground water resources in semi-arid areas.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".