Geology, Natural Resources and Erosion: California Explained

The state that I had picked out for this assignment is California. What is the plate tectonic setting of your chosen state? What natural resources are mined or extracted there? What erosional or depositional settings such as, mountains to coast found in your state? Also, what is the geologic history of your state? All that and more will be discussed in the following text.

Many items had pulled up when searching for the plate tectonic setting of my state. They were the San Andreas Fault, the Sierra Nevada the mountain range, and the Long Valley Caldera, which is a crater. First, there is the San Andreas Fault. The Pacific Plate (on the west) moves northwestward about the North American Plate (on the east), causing earthquakes along the fault. These two moving plates meet in western California; the boundary between them is

One area of California that happens on a yearly basis in San Francisco. El Nino grinds away at a small portion of the beach pulling some sand out to sea, but, in 2010 bluffs collapsed and a large amount of sand grabbed by the sea for good. California officials expect a rise in sea levels by 14 inches by 2050 due to climate change. Landslides in Northern California are a cause of a lot of erosion. These landslides made by earthquakes, intense or prolonged rainfall, and some by major winter storms that have caused fatalities and property damage. Many areas of the coastal portion of California are subject to the erosion of cliffs. These erosional features make it hard for homeowners and property dealers because of the hazards that come along with cliff falling off one day. There is also the Sierra Nevada’s that I had discussed in some of the text above. This mountain range has broken down by a series of streams which come from rivers like the Yuba, American, Mokelumne, and Kern. These originate in deep valleys carved mainly by glaciers into predominant granite and some