page_title: Lake Manly
section_title: Hydrology
hierarchical_section_title: Lake Manly / Hydrology
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing the system of once-interconnected Pleistocene lakes in eastern California (USGS)
context_page_description: Lake Manly was a pluvial lake in Death Valley, California, covering much of Death Valley with a surface area of 1,600 square kilometres during the so-called "Blackwelder stand". Water levels varied through its history, and the chronology is further complicated by active tectonic processes that have modified the elevations of the various shorelines of Lake Manly; during the Blackwelder stage they reached 47–90 metres above sea level. The lake received water mainly from the Amargosa River and at various points from the Mojave River and Owens River. The lake and its substantial catchment favoured the spread of a number of aquatic species, including some lizards, pupfish and springsnails. The lake probably supported a substantial ecosystem, and a number of diatoms developed there.
  In Death Valley, lakes existed during different times in the geological past. After some poorly defined lake stages during the Miocene, Pliocene and early Pleistocene, the first large lake stage occurred about 185,000–128,000 years ago during the Tahoe glacial stage and formed the Blackwelder shorelines.
context_section_description: The size of pluvial lakes, such as Lake Manly, is governed by the balance between inflow by precipitation or rivers or streams and evaporation, if one assumes that seepage and overflow are not important. This can make the surface of such lakes a useful gauge for paleoclimatic conditions. The principal water supplies to Lake Manly were the Amargosa River, the Mojave River and the Owens River, which yielded a large integrated drainage system over the southwestern Great Basin. The total surface area of Lake Manly's catchment was about 65,806 square kilometres (25,408 sq mi). Contrary to what early researchers first speculated it is however likely, that the three rivers never reached Lake Manly simultaneously.
caption: The Owens River-Lake Manly system
exif: {}