Brian F. Atwater 1982 <p>The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the arm of the San Francisco Bay estuary that reaches into the Central Valley of California, differs from typical coastal-plain deltas in three important respects. &nbsp;First, rather than meeting the ocean individually and directly, all major waterways of this delta discharge via a single constricted outlet into a chain of estuarine bays and straits. &nbsp;Second, in the most common vertical sequence of deposits, peat and mud deposited in tidal marshes and swamps (tidal wetlands) directly overlie alluvium or eolian sand, a sequence recording a landward spread of tidal environments rather than the seaward migration of fluvial environments that is typical of coastal-plain deltas (Cosby, 1941, p. 43; Thompson, 1957, p. 12; Shlemon and Begg, 1975, p. 259; Atwater and Belknap, 1980). &nbsp;Finally, intensive human use has led to a peculiar set of conflicts involving rights to water and responsibilities for flood-control levees (Kockelman and other, 1982).</p> application/pdf 10.3133/mf1401 en U.S. Government Printing Office Geologic maps of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California reports