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Basin And Range Province
The Basin and Range Province is a vast physiographic region covering much of the inland Western United States and northwestern Mexico. It is defined by unique basin and range topography, characterized by abrupt changes in elevation, alternating between narrow faulted mountain chains and flat arid valleys or basins. The physiography of the province is the result of tectonic extension that began around 17 million years ago in the early Miocene epoch. The numerous ranges within the province in the United States are collectively referred to as the "Great Basin Ranges", although many are not actually in the Great Basin. Major ranges include the Snake Range, the Panamint Range, the White Mountains, and the Sandia Mountains. The highest point fully within the province is White Mountain Peak in California, while the lowest point is the Badwater Basin in Death Valley at . The province's climate is arid, with numerous ecoregions. Most North American deserts are located within it. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basin And Range Province Boundaries And Landmarks
Basin may refer to: Geography and geology * Depression (geology) ** Back-arc basin, a submarine feature associated with island arcs and subduction zones ** Debris basin, designed to prevent damage from debris flow ** Drainage basin (hydrology), a topographic region in which all water drains to a common area ** Endorheic basin, a closed topographic low area with no drainage outlet ** Impact basin, a large impact crater ** Retention basin, stormwater runoff to prevent flooding and downstream erosion which includes a permanent pool of water ** Detention basin, a man-made basin used to temporarily store surplus water from rivers. ** Sedimentary basin (sedimentology), a low and usually sinking region that is filled with sediments from adjacent higher areas ** Structural basin, rock strata formed by tectonic warping of previously flat-lying strata *** Oceanic basin, a structural basin covered by seawater *** Pull-apart basin, a section of crust separated by the action of two strike-slip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization's work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The agency was founded on March 3, 1879. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior; it is that department's sole scientific agency. The USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS also has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, and Menlo Park, California. The current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is "science for a changing world". The agency's previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its hundredt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico covers ,Mexico ''''. . making it the world's 13th-largest country by are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt
The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt ( es, Eje Volcánico Transversal), also known as the Transvolcanic Belt and locally as the (''Snowy Mountain Range''), is an active volcanic belt that covers central-southern Mexico. Several of its highest peaks have snow all year long, and during clear weather, they are visible to a large percentage of those who live on the many high plateaus from which these volcanoes rise. History The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt spans across Central-Southern Mexico from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico between 18°30'N and 21°30'N, resting on the southern edge of the North American Plate. This approximately 1000 kilometer long, 90–230 km broad structure is an east–west, active, continental volcanic arc; encompassing an area of approximately 160,000 km2. Over several million years, the subduction of the Rivera and Cocos plates beneath the North American Plate along the northern end of the Middle America Trench formed the Trans-Mexican Vol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Plateau
The Columbia Plateau is a geologic and geographic region that lies across parts of the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. It is a wide flood basalt plateau between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains, cut through by the Columbia River. Geology During late Miocene and early Pliocene times, a flood basalt engulfed about of the Pacific Northwest, forming a large igneous province. Over a period of perhaps 10 to 15 million years, lava flow after lava flow poured out, ultimately accumulating to a thickness of more than 6,000 feet (1.8 km). As the molten rock came to the surface, the Earth's crust gradually sank into the space left by the rising lava. The Columbia River Basalt Group consists of seven formations: The Steens Basalt, Imnaha Basalt, Grande Ronde Basalt, Picture Gorge Basalt, Prineville Basalt, Wanapum Basalt, and Saddle Mountains Basalt. Many of these formations are subdivided into formal and informal members and flows. The subsidence of the crust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rio Grande Rift
The Rio Grande rift is a north-trending continental rift zone. It separates the Colorado Plateau in the west from the interior of the North American craton on the east. The rift extends from central Colorado in the north to the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in the south. The rift zone consists of four basins that have an average width of . The rift can be observed on location at Rio Grande National Forest, White Sands National Park, Santa Fe National Forest, and Cibola National Forest, among other locations. The Rio Grande rift has been an important site for humans for a long time, because it provides a north–south route that follows a major river. The Rio Grande follows the course of the rift from southern Colorado to El Paso, where it turns southeast and flows toward the Gulf of Mexico. Important cities, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Española, Las Cruces, El Paso, and Ciudad Juárez, lie within the rift. Geology The Rio Grande rift represents the easternmost ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorado Plateau
The Colorado Plateau, also known as the Colorado Plateau Province, is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. This province covers an area of 336,700 km2 (130,000 mi2) within western Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, southern and eastern Utah, northern Arizona, and a tiny fraction in the extreme southeast of Nevada. About 90% of the area is drained by the Colorado River and its main tributaries: the Green, San Juan, and Little Colorado. Most of the remainder of the plateau is drained by the Rio Grande and its tributaries. The Colorado Plateau is largely made up of high desert, with scattered areas of forests. In the south-west corner of the Colorado Plateau lies the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Much of the Plateau's landscape is related to the Grand Canyon in both appearance and geologic history. The nickname "Red Rock Country" suggests the brightly colored ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wasatch Fault
The Wasatch Fault is an active fault located primarily on the western edge of the Wasatch Mountains in the U.S. states of Utah and Idaho. The fault is about long, stretching from southern Idaho, through northern Utah, before terminating in central Utah near the town of Fayette. The fault is made up of ten segments, five of which are considered active. On average the segments are approximately long, each of which can independently produce earthquakes as powerful as local magnitude 7.5. The five active segments from north to south are called the Brigham City Fault Segment, the Weber Fault Segment, the Salt Lake City Fault Segment, the Provo Fault Segment and the Nephi Fault Segment. The Wasatch Fault is a normal (vertical motion) fault which forms the eastern boundary of the Basin and Range geologic province which comprises the geographic Great Basin. The Wasatch Mountains have been uplifted and tilted to the east by movement of the fault. The average vertical displacement ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sierra Nevada (U
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily in Nevada. The Sierra Nevada is part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges that forms the western "backbone" of the Americas. The Sierra runs north-south and its width ranges from to across east–west. Notable features include General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume; Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at , the highest point in the contiguous United States; and Yosemite Valley sculpted by glaciers from one-hundred-million-year-old granite, containing high waterfalls. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments. These areas include Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks; and Devils ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fault Scarp
A fault scarp is a small step or offset on the ground surface where one side of a fault has moved vertically with respect to the other. It is the topographic expression of faulting attributed to the displacement of the land surface by movement along faults. They are exhibited either by differential movement and subsequent erosion along an old ''inactive'' geologic fault (a sort of old rupture), or by a movement on a recent active fault. Characteristics Fault scarps often contain highly fractured rock of both hard and weak consistency. In many cases, bluffs form from the upthrown block and can be very steep. The height of the scarp formation is equal to the vertical displacement along the fault. Active scarps are usually formed by tectonic displacement, e.g. when an earthquake changes the elevation of the ground and can be caused by any type of fault, including strike-slip faults, whose motion is primarily horizontal. This movement is usually episodic, with the height of the bluf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Plate, North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as a part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about , about 16.5% of Earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the list of continents and continental subregions by population, fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in List of sovereign states and dependent territories in North America, 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population. In Americas (terminology)#Human ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basin Range Province
Basin may refer to: Geography and geology * Depression (geology) ** Back-arc basin, a submarine feature associated with island arcs and subduction zones ** Debris basin, designed to prevent damage from debris flow ** Drainage basin (hydrology), a topographic region in which all water drains to a common area ** Endorheic basin, a closed topographic low area with no drainage outlet ** Impact basin, a large impact crater ** Retention basin, stormwater runoff to prevent flooding and downstream erosion which includes a permanent pool of water ** Detention basin, a man-made basin used to temporarily store surplus water from rivers. ** Sedimentary basin (sedimentology), a low and usually sinking region that is filled with sediments from adjacent higher areas ** Structural basin, rock strata formed by tectonic warping of previously flat-lying strata *** Oceanic basin, a structural basin covered by seawater *** Pull-apart basin, a section of crust separated by the action of two strike-slip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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