Abstract

The Beatty scarp is a prominent topographic scarp located immediately south of the town of Beatty, Nevada. Early workers interpreted the feature to be a Quaternary fault scarp, but recent studies indicate that the feature is a fluvial scarp marking the former channel margin of the Amargosa River. Detailed topographic scarp profiles indicate that the Beatty scarp is nearly 30 m in height and has maximum scarp-slope angles of 35^o. Because the age of the scarp is constrained at about 9000 to 13,000 yr, the Beatty scarp provides an important reference datum for scarp degradation studies and morphologic analyses in southern Nevada.

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