Little Cottonwood Canyon Research Paper

On April 29, 1903 30 million cubic meters of rock fell from the east face of Turtle Mountain in southwestern Alberta, Canada. Over 70 people in the town of Frank were killed as well as the entrance to the Frank mine being blocked with miners inside. This landslide is one of the largest slides that has eyewitnesses as well as a strong scientific study. (Alberta Geological Survey, 2013)

The west coast of North America has been tectonically and volcanically active for billions of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California were born of volcanoes, and magma has been erupting in the Long Valley to the east of the mountains for over three million years (Bailey, et. al., 1989). However, the climactic eruption of the region occurred relatively recently in the region's geologic history. About 760,000 years ago, a huge explosion of magma warped the Eastern Sierra into the landscape that exists today. The eruption depleted a massive magma chamber below the earth's surface so that the ceiling of the chamber imploded, forming what is now known as

Mesa Verde National Park on the Colorado Plateau contains many geological aspects of interest, including its sedimentary rock layers, its canyons, its alcoves utilized by ancient people and how these alcoves were formed. Mesa Verde National Park is located in the southwest corner of Colorado, close to the Four Corners area, on top of a high mesa overlooking the Mancos River (Harris et al. 2004). The park, covering 81 square miles, consists of several main sedimentary formations that are characteristic to the park (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). Canyons are carved into the sedimentary rock, with the cave dwellings found high on their steep walls. These dwellings are an especially unique aspect to the Mesa Verde National Park, and are built out of large alcoves. The alcoves were produced by weathering and erosion of the sedimentary rock type. To better understand how these alcoves formed, we must understand the geology of Mesa Verde National Park and how it has developed over history.

This valley, future home of a ski resort and other activities, has a history of its own. It is divided into three major areas: The Poplar Region, The Bud Site, and the Gasville, areas which descend from North to South respectively. It is assumed that climatological conditions are similar to those found in the same area thousands of years ago, with some minor changes in temperature that may have increased due to the Green house effect and global warming.

A period of volcanism resulted in igneous intrusions within the Raton Basin-Sierra Grande Uplift Province that was sourced from the upper mantle about 26. 6 billion years ago and is associated with parallel dikes and sills (Higley, 2007). Igneous rocks are common within the Raton Basin and include Tertiary dikes and sills that range in age from 6.7 to 29 5 million years ago (Flores and Bader, 1999). One of the main differences between dikes and sills is that dikes are longer lived magma conduits and sills are features that form when magma is in neutral buoyancy with the surrounding rock (Rooper et al., 2006). These volcanic events are associated with hydrothermal alteration of coal within the basin (Higley, 2007).

Cedar Breaks started to form when the plates of the earth started to change. A plate called the Pacific plate plunged under the lighter continent. Ginormous sections of the earth’s crust headed eastward along a low angle called “thrust faults”. This time of faulting known as the sevier orogeny, formed a chain of mountains to the west of what is now Cedar Breaks National Monument.

The Raton Basin is a structural basin situated in Las Animas and Huerfano counties of southeastern Colorado, and Colfax County of northeastern New Mexico (Speer, 1976). Although millions of years ago the Raton Basin was much different than the present. Colorado and New Mexico were covered by large shallow seas (Murray, 1978). The Basin is bounded on the west by the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range and on the east by two subsurface elements, the Apishapa Arch and the Sierra Grande Uplift. The Apishapa Arch is a northwest-southeast oriented structural extension of the Wet Mountain Uplift which terminates the basin on the northeast, whereas the Sierra Grande Uplift is a northeast-southwest oriented subsurface arch that forms the basin 's

The Blue Ridge Mountains sit within a larger tectonic area that includes part of the smoky mountains and Appalachian mountain chain. The Blue Ridge Mountains sit upon a large thrust plate area that has experienced repeated movement in the orogeny process as the Appalachians were built. This process occurred during the Proterozoic to the Paleozoic period (Tectonic Setting of the Southern Appalachians). Evidence of the faulting includes sedimentary zones at the end of the thrust. Within the thrust areas is high-grade metamorphic rocks and some igneous rocks from intrusion during collision events (Hatcher, R). Evidence of the intrusions are the dikes which can be seen and the large granite facies throughout the area (Grant, Willard).

The Grand Canyon has plenty of volcanic rocks near the bottom and the top. ICR, Institute for Creative Research, has been involved in a project for years to date these volcanic rocks. this study has come a long way to show that many of the Grand Canyon strata could have formed rapidly, and that the erosion of the Canyon by the Colorado River has not been going on for millions of years.

Mount Saint Helens stands south of Seattle 100 miles, helping to create part of the Cascade Mountain Range. Before May 18th of 1980, the mountain was the center of a recreational paradise, and a prosperous timber industry. It all changed though on March 20th of 1980, when a 4.2 magnitude Earthquake woke Mount St. Helens from a slumber that had lasted roughly 120 years. The Earthquake was a danger symbol though for many Geologists, because in most cases, it is a symbol for an eruption that is going to happen. When this word got out, many Geologists became geared with the best equipment, hoping to study the eruption of the Volcano. What they didn’t know, though, is that they were about to witness one of the

The bedrocks in the Handcart Gulch consist of Proterozoic meta-sediment and meta-igneous rocks and Tertiary porphyry intrusive rocks (Bove et al 2012, Lovering 1935). Bove et al., (2002) measured rock properties including mineralogy, alteration, and bulk chemistry from recovered cores. Four deep wells (WP1-WP4) were located in the upper portions of the watershed, and nine shallow wells were along the main channels (HC wells). The WP1 was located on ridge top of Webster Pass at 3687 m, and drilled to a depth of 610 m, and WP2 was located in the upper portions of the watershed, and dilled to a depth of 460 m. The felsic rocks in WP1 and 2 were hydrothermally altered due to the intrusion, and the degree of alteration varied with depth. In upper sections, the rocks were altered to quartz-sericite-pyrite mineral assemblages, whose depths extended to 300 m in WP1 and 200m in WP2. In deeper sections, the rocks were weakly altered to propylitic assemblages that contain calcite, chlorite, and primary feldspars.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a long dipping fault that separates the Juan de Fuca and North America plates, and it also stretches from northern Vancouver Island to northern California. Volcanoes and earthquakes are two of the tectonic and geological activities that occur in the “zone”, which create the hazards, such as ash falls and mudflows. The subduction zone has a long sloping fault, therefore it is capable of producing large earthquakes. The Cascadia Subduction Zone is also “scarier” than the San Andreas Fault because it can deliver a bigger earthquake and even tsunami than San Andreas Fault. It has produced earthquakes that were magnitude 9.0 or greater before, and it is predicted that it is likely to happen again in the future. The

The structure of a basin is important for subsidence as well as accumulation of sediments that influence coal deposition within the basin. The Raton Basin is a foreland basin which formed during the Laramide Orogeny (Rooper et al., 2006). The Raton Basin as a whole covers approximately 4,000 square miles in southeastern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico (Flores and Bader, 1999). The Raton Basin is an elongate asymmetrical basin, where the sedimentary rocks are very steep, overturned, as well as faulted, on the east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Keighin, 1994). The basin is bounded on the west side by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, on the northeast side by the Apishapa arch, and on the southeast side by the Sierra Grande-Las Animas arch (Flores and Bader, 1999). The Raton Basin

Like many other parts of the American Southwest, historic arroyo cutting in the late 1800s and early 1900s created extensive exposures of Holocene alluvium on the southern Colorado Plateau. Since the 1920s (Bryan, 1925), these exposures have been studied by scores of geologists and archaeologists interested in documenting climate and landscape change and deciphering its causes. Many landmark studies have been conducted, but despite this long history of research, few questions have been satisfactorily resolved.

Our first stop today is Vishnu Schist. Exactly how Grand Canyon was made is controversial and we have not been able to know the specific year or identify the process on how it was made. Grand Canyons’ stratigraphy was deposed somewhere in between 2 billion years and 230 billion years ago. The oldest rock formation is the Vishnu schist that is on the bottom of the all the rock basements, while the youngest rocks, the Kaibab plateau is on the top. The Vishnu basement is made of gneiss, granite and schist. When plate tectonic of the ocean floor sediment “crashed” and basalt with the North American continent it resulted the Vishnu mountains. The black and silver mica Schist of the Vishnu was formed under pressure and heat when sedimentary and igneous rocks was metamorphosed.