Essay On The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is one of the greatest natural creations our planet has to offer. Have you ever been amazed by the giant cliffs, massive ridges and the wide array of beautiful colors. Well, after reading this you will know how the Grand Canyon became what it is today.

The Grand Canyon is in the northwest corner of Arizona, bordering Utah and Nevada.
More than five million people visit Grand Canyon National Park per year. The Grand Canyon is roughly 280 miles long, 18 miles wide, and in some places more than 1 mile deep! The estimated volume of this enormous park is estimated to be over 5.5 trillion cubic yards, trillion that’s 12 zeros! While the Colorado River carved this canyon 5-6 million years ago, some scientific evidence brings the

The truth is that no one knows for sure exactly how it was formed, but with scientific research and theories most scientists agree to the same basic ideas. The most powerful forces impacting the creation are erosion and weathering. Which is heavily due to the Colorado River running right down the majority of the canyon. Since the Grand Canyon is located in a desert climate the soil in the Grand Canyon is baked by the sun and it tends to become very hard and cannot absorb water, when the rain come. So while the Colorado River is gushing through the rocks and the root systems are pretty weak over time the erosion really builds up. The Grand Canyon is basically an enormous sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock is formed from other rocks being weathered, either chemically or mechanically into sediments or rock fragments. These rocks are then gone through erosion, which is the process of moving sediments from one place to another. Then, these sediments are deposited all at one place and over time they start to converge and cement as layers which are also known as strata. As time keeps going new sediments deposit and cement together over old ones forming new layers. The process just keeps repeating itself and then finally there are all these layers that make up a Sedimentary

Now, the million dollar question is where did all the rocks com from? The answer to that question is The Continental Drift. The Earth's continents are not fixed in place but rather float on a sea of molten rock, meaning that they move around quite a bit. Over 250 million years, quite a bit can turn into land masses moving thousands of miles. The Earth is made up of 20 Tectonic plates. Seven of these plates are very large and consist of entire continents or sea floors. The plate that the Grand Canyon is located on is called “The North American Plate”. At one time this plate was considerably further south and in result had a very different climate than today. As Tectonic plates collide they can form three different boundaries, one which is a Convergent Boundary. This boundary often leads to mountain building. A much older range of mountains now form the base of the Grand Canyon. The rocks that made up these mountains are now estimated to be around one and a half billion years old. When the sea level rises, land areas which are by the coast and relatively have a low altitude are sometimes submerged in water. This was the case area of the Grand Canyon and is why so many different sedimentary rock layers exist. Each of these was formed by a different period in which the ocean came in flooded the land, stayed for a while, and then pulled back to normal