The Rocky Mountains are an incredible mountain range located in North America in the Western Hemisphere. The mountain range stretches from northern Colorado and into southwestern Canada. It is home to a diverse ecosystem, both geographically and biologically and is revered as a monumental landform worldwide.
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...
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...sted of tents and then tents became ranches and farms. Forts and train stations eventually grew into towns and some towns were then able to grow into cities.
Works Cited
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/physical-characteristics-colorado-rocky-mountains-56639.html http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2011/rockies-origin.html http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/romo/ http://www.mountainnature.com/Ecology/ http://www.mountainnature.com/Wildlife/WildlifeEcology.htm http://www.frommers.com/destinations/rocky-mountain-national-park/787037 This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Geological Survey document: T.J. Stohlgren. "Rocky Mountains".
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...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.
(“Facts about mountains for kids) (“Mountains - geography games and videos for kids.” ) Mountains influence the weather and climate around them immensely. They break up wind flows, so the wind either has to go above or around the mountains. The air that is forced up becomes cooler, and condenses into rain, snow, fog, or mist. (Simon, Seymour pg. 21) The western sides of mountains are typically much wetter than the eastern side where very little rain falls at all. This is caused by the rain shadow effect. (Simon, Seymour pg. 21) Mountains also have the ability to create rain forests and deserts. They store water and then release the water in the form of rivers that help with growth of vegetation. The rivers can be used as drinking water or they can be harnessed to create electricity. (Simon, Seymour pg. 27) Some mountains are more prominent in the world’s geography than others. There is a mountain on Mars, Olympus Mons, that is the tallest mountain on any planet on this solar system. Olympus Mons is 14 miles tall. (Hartston, William) The longest mountains are the Andes and the highest mountains are the Himalayas. (“Facts about mountains for kids”) ( Morris, Neil pg. 28) The Mid-Ocean Ridge is an underwater mountain chain that stretches 47,000 miles long. Not all of these mountains were formed in the same
"NPS: Nature & Science» Geology Resources Division." Nature.nps.gov » Explore Nature. Web. 05 Dec. 2011. .
At the end of the last ice age windblown silt covered the lava and basalt deposits. This silt would go on to create the fertile rolling hills of the Palouse. This soil is more than a hundred feet deep in places. Soon, enough time passed for vegetation to take place and more soil started to form.1 The lava flows would end up damming streams flowing from the mountains; in turn forming the current lakes of the region. Layered between the flows of basalt are sand and gravel deposits that washed down from mountains.1
The Powder River Basin is located in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming. According to Luppens et al. (2008), the Powder River Basin is approximately 22,000 square miles in area. The basin itself trends in a north-to-north west direction. The eastern side of the basin dips gently westward, whereas the western side dips much more steeply towards the east. This forms an asymmetrical syncline with the synclinal axis lying closer to the western margin of the basin (USGS, 2013). The Powder River Basin is structurally separated from other basins by Laramide style tectonic landforms, where large portions of Archean basement rock were thrust upwards during the late Cretaceous and Paleocene (Flores, 2004). In Wyoming the Powder River Basin is surrounded by the Bighorn Mountains to the west, the Black Hills to the East, and the Laramie Mountains, Casper Arch, And Hartville Uplift to the South. To the north, in the Montana portion of the Powder River Basin, the Miles City Arch separates the basin from the Williston Basin in North Dakota. The coal beds that were deposited in the basin are mainly sub-bituminous but can also be lignite in rank and range from Cretaceous to Eocene in age. There are four formations that contain coal beds in the Powder River Basin and include the Mesaverde Formation, the Lance Formation, the Fort Union Formation, and the Wasatch Formation. Each of these formations contains several different coal ...
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I was raised in an ultra-conservative Pentecostal Holiness church in the Appalachian Mountains. There were snake handlers in our church. It was thought that it tested one's faith to pick up a poisonous snake -- God wouldn't allow it to bite you if you had faith. However, I was always afraid that to pick up a snake would greatly increase God's propensity to smite me via death by snakebite. I did not have enough faith. I've never encountered a miracle -- I've never had a dream come true. I therefore can't help but lack faith.
living center and therefore raided settled towns and cities for food and riches. Because of
The main theme in Rising from the Plains is the formation of the Rocky Mountains. “Topography grows, shrinks, compresses, spreads, disintegrates, and disappears” (McPhee 27). The physical features of the Earth are temporary and are always changing. The
Blakey, R. C. (1996). Geologic history of western us. Informally published manuscript, Northern Arizona Univ, Flagstaff, AZ, Retrieved from http://www.jan.ucc.nau.edu
Tarbuck E., Lutgens F., Tasa D., 2014, An Introduction to Physical Geology, 5th Ed, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
plant life grow. Then the settlers grew crops, and to solve the issues of droughts and floods,