Have you ever had a dream about being lost in a desert? I have, and I can tell you that not only was it a dream, but it was the absolute worst nightmare I have ever had! Imagine being surrounded by nothing but sand and not having a constant source of water to stay hydrated! Just the name alone has the power to intimidate even the strongest of adventurers. These were my thoughts when I found out I would be going on a field trip through time in Death Valley. The first stop, Badwater, was in the Precambrian era which dates from 1.8 billion years to 570 million years ago, and it completely caught me off guard because it looked absolutely nothing like the Death Valley I had imagined! There was actually water there! Before this stop I thought …show more content…
This was also in the Precambrian time period! At first Mosaic Canyon looked like a normal canyon until you walk about a ¼ mile up it. Here I was pleasantly surprised to find that the canyon narrows into the face of the Tucki Mountain. There was one of the most interesting sites I had ever laid my eyes on. The canyon’s walls had a sort of smooth finish to them and the closer I got I realized that the sides of the canyon were marble! When I took a little time to think about it I realized that the reason the sides of the canyon were like this was because the marble began as limestone. During the late Precambrian era this place was covered by warm sea water. When magnesium was added to the limestone it changed the rock to dolomite, which is a magnesium-rich sedimentary rock. When time began to go on younger rock covered the dolomite. The dolomite was influenced by the pressure and temperature of being covered and this caused the rock to transform into …show more content…
This time period is referred to as the Paleozoic Era which spans from 570 million years ago to 250 million years ago! It was amazing to see how deep Titus Canyon was! The gray rocks that made up the walls of the western side were Cambrian age limestone! These rocks from the Paleozoic time period formed when Death Valley was underneath tropical seas! The reason that Death Valley was submerged was because the rise and fall of the sea level changed the shoreline drastically. It shifted the shoreline to the east and flooded the continent, then eventually the sea level dropped westward and exposed the limestone layer to erosion that we can see
...e morphed it into the quartzite that is seen surrounding the butte (4). Rocks that undergo this process are called metamorphic rock, which is the same as the rock seen years ago by dinosaurs and other extinct creatures. The quartzite rocks were formerly seafloor sediment that was forced upwards, and then surrounded by lava basalt flows. Once erupted through fissures and floods through out most of the area, lava flow eventually created enough basalt to form a thickness of about 1.8 kilometers (1). All of this basalt flow eventually led to the covering of most mountains, leaving the buttes uncovered. The igneous lava flows and loess is reasons that the Palouse consists of such sprawling hills, and rich soil for farming (2). In result of the lava flows, the Precambrian rock Quartzite was formed. And lastly covered by the glacial loess, which were carried by the wind.
The coastal belt of the Franciscan Complex is composed of the youngest and least deformed units and makes up the western quarter of all Franciscan rocks. The rocks of the coastal belt are composed of arkosic sandstones, andesitic graywackes, and quartzofeldspathic graywackes interbedded with radiolarian chert (turbidite deposits) (Blake and Jones, 1981). These sedimentary rocks suggest a depositional environment of deep-sea fan systems with both oceanic and continental provenance. Parts of the belt show evidence of later metamorphism, principally due to subduction. Low-grade blueschist mineral facies are indicated by the presence of minerals such as laumonite and prehnite-pumpellyite (Blake and Jones, 1981). All rock units show evidence of thrust (imbricate) faulting due to the compressional forces of subduction. Ages of the coastal belt run from as little as 40 Ma (Eocene) to as old as 100 Ma (middle Cretaceous).
Many will attest to the grandeur of the natural feature that exists in northern Arizona, but the formation of the Grand Canyon has befuddled geomorphologists to this day. This confusion can be attributed to the Kaibab Plateau, an anomaly considering the Colorado River traverses it seamlessly. Four prevalent hypotheses have been proposed since the 19th century, starting with the lake overflow proposition first brought up by John Newbury and then reinforced by Eliot Blackwelder. Newbury argued that a structure must have ponded an ancient lake causing an overspill to cut into the Grand Canyon. This argument holds that the river must have come after the plateau’s existence. Unbeknownst to Newbury, the structure would be the Kaibab Plateau.
The Walker formation was formed by a volcanic eruption that deposited in large amounts of ash fall that mixed with the lower sediments to form tuff breccia and tuff conglomerates. I believe the Walker formation was deposited first because it is only present now at high elevations, meaning other sediments have covered up the lower ash fall. The Bealville fanglomerate, composed of unsorted granitic boulder debris, could have been formed from active seismic activity. Large earthquakes strike the west coast of California frequently. These earthquakes could have smashed the already laid down granitic sandstone and formed the multiple
The Little Missouri River eroding the mountain range is the reason that the park is as it looks today. The park is believed to be <60 million years old. Over 60 million years ago volcanos all over the west were erupting and spitting out amounts of ash. The rivers near the volcanos were gathering. The rivers began to dry out, leveeing the ash behind. The ash was being dried in layers and turned into sandstone, siltstone and mudstone while the ash layers became bentonite clay. This Bentonite clay is dangerous because it gets people stuck, like quick sand it is located throughout the park. It can pull the car tires un...
Background Information of Death Valley Established as a National Park in 1933 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Death Valley is the largest national park in the continental United States even though its total length is no more than approximately 100 miles in length. The valley is located in the Mojave Desert in eastern California and is surrounded by the Amargosa Range on the east, the Panamint Range on the west, and the Sylvania Mountains and Owlshead Mountains on the northern and southern boundaries. The topography of this region is varied and complex; and has a lengthy geologic history that explains why it is riddled with a variety of sand dunes, craters, and flood-carved canyons to name a few. The total area of the valley is about 3,000 square miles with the lowest elevation being located at the Badwater Basin at 282 feet below sea level. Interestingly enough; however, the highest elevation of the region is 14,494 feet above sea level.
The world has been shaped by many events. Like a sculpture each piece was a result of an event that made it that way. The Snake River Canyon is no different, most of upper Utah and part southern Idaho show the scars of an event that rocked the landscape into what it is today. When researching and digging in the region you can find remnants of an old marine environment, from sediment deposits to river terraces hundreds of feet high. It’s confusing to think of the area as a giant lake with sandy beaches and powerful waves, but the overflow of this huge lake is what created most of the landscape you can see today. The great Bonneville flood was the world second largest flood, emptying over 32,000 square miles of lake volume. (Utah Geological Society) The flood that the this overfill caused carved through many areas and created the beautiful valley that can be seen there. However, this didn’t just happen over night. The pre-flood history, flood event, specific flood deposits all played an important role in shaping this large Geological marvel. Understanding what happened back then can give us a good glimpse into better understanding the region today, which can lead to better predicting and preserving for the future.
The Grand Canyon is one of the most amazing natural wonders in the world. It was originally deposited sediment that was lithofied, and turned into sedimentary rock. The rock was then carved out by hydraulic processes (Warneke). These processes, all combined, took almost three to six million years to form the Grand Canyon. Continued erosion by wind and rain in the present time continues to shift what the canyon looks like, and make it different as time goes on ("Grand Canyon Facts").
...se two tectonic plates generated intense friction and pressure that generated enough heat to melt rocks. The descent of denser oceanic Farallon Plate into the asthenosphere produced magma that was made from basalt or andesite. Which is dark colored rocks with little silica. The buoyant magma pushed through the silica-rich continental crust, partially melting the crust that it moved though, and becoming more granitic in composition. About 100 million years ago, the granitic magma pooled at depths of only 2 to 5 miles beneath the surface (United States of America). The granitic terrain that makes up the Sierra, was once thought to have only local variations but was produced from one large mass of rock. It has been discovered however that hundreds of intrusions caused the variations in the granite that is displayed in Yosemite and in the Sierra Nevada range (Huber).
Soon after the sea reached longer distance westward and the sandy tidal deposits were converted to deep water deposits. Mancos Shale is the name given to represent these deposits, which are comprised of organic material and small particulates. Another interesting fact to note is that this type of sediment consists of fossils. These remains can include prehistoric shell fish, shark teeth, and many other types of organisms. The hills seen at the foundation of the mesa in the Montezuma Valley are comprised of gray
Abbeys first survival hint to the desert is, “stay out of there. Don’t go. Stay home and read a good book.”(p. 204) What fun is staying home if people have the chance to go and explore the desert? Getting a hands on experience and being able to explore the desert in real life is more educating than sitting at home reading a dull book on the desert. David Alloway (1999) once said, “the historical fact is however, that the human race was cradled in arid lands and people are well adapted to survive in deserts.”( 1) Alloway is a teacher at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and he teaches a desert survival class. His class philosophy is “not to fight the desert, but to become part of its ecosystem.”( 1) So the first hint or suggestion before you attempt to go into the desert is being prepared.
...hy this is like this is because this picture is taken of ruin called cliff palace in mesa Grande. The ruins are getting older and therefore are not as new looking as they were 130 years ago. This photo is really cool to
When John Wesley Powell conducted his first expedition through the Grand Canyon in 1869, he and his team barely survived the arid desert conditions. Despite their beleaguered situation, Powell recognized the “great antiquity of the earth” in the landscape of the Grand Canyon, and determined to return under more opportune conditions. While the names Powell gave to geologic formations did not always accurately
When you love the Desert Southwest, sometime, somewhere, you will stumble into the writings of Ed Abbey. Like me, Ed was not born there; he discovered his love of the place while riding a boxcar through it on a trip across the US; I discovered mine on a trip through myself. His writings helped lead me home, for that is what the desert southwest is to me: home. I don’t live there for one simple reason, i.e., I have not yet been able to put myself in the financial situation I need to be in. For now, I visit when I can, mostly during my long vacations at Christmas.
The geologic history of the Rocky Mountains has come about as an aggregation of millions of years. Briefly speaking, the formation of the Rockies transpired from hundreds and millions of years of uplift by tectonic plates and millions of years of erosion and ice have helped sculpt the mountains to be what we see today. The majority of the rocks that make up the Rocky Mountains began as simple shale, siltstone, and sandstone accompanied by smaller amounts of volcanic rock which formally built up for approximately 1.8 to 2 billion years in the ancient sea. By 1.7 to 1.6 billion years, these sedimentary rocks got caught in the zone of collision between parts of the earth’s crust and its tectonic plates. The incredible heat at the core of the mountain range then recrystallized the rock into metamorphic rock by the heat and pressure of the collision forces. Eventually, the shale would be transformed into both schist and gneiss. It is believed that granite found in the Rocky Mountain parks came from pre-existing metamorphic rock created shortly after the formation of the earth. Ultimately, the high mountains of the period were slowly eroded away to a flat surface exposing metamorphic rocks and granite. This process occurred around the period of 1,300 to 500 million years ago. This flat surface would become covered with shallow seas and rocks from the Paleozoic period and would be deposited and eventually cover the surface. There is...