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Ringold Formation
The Ringold Formation is a geologic formation in Eastern Washington, United States. The formation consists of sediment laid down by the Columbia River following the flood basalt eruptions of the Columbia River Basalt Group, and reaches up to thick in places. It preserves fossils dating back to the Neogene period. Exposures of the Ringold Formation can be found from Hanford Reach National Monument north to the Moses Lake area. Large portions of the formation are buried by other sediment deposits, extending as far as Wallula Gap southeast of Kennewick. In recent years, irrigation water entering the groundwater system has destabilized some Ringold Formation slopes and cliffs, causing landslides. The formation was named in 1917 for a school of the same name that existed at the time. Ringold School was located on the Franklin County side of the Columbia River to the south of Savage Island. Geology During the flood basalt eruptions before the sediments were laid down, the Columbia R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia River
The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven US states and a Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any North American river entering the Pacific. The Columbia has the 36th greatest discharge of any river in the world. The Columbia and its tributaries have been central to the region's culture and economy for thousands of years. They have been used for transportation since a ... [...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] |
Landslide
Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated grade (slope), slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients, from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater, in which case they are called submarine landslides. Gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, but there are other factors affecting slope stability that produce specific conditions that make a slope prone to failure. In many cases, the landslide is triggered by a specific event (such as a heavy rainfall, an earthquake, a slope cut to build a road, and many others), although this is not always identifiable. Causes Landslides occur when the slope (or a portion of it) undergoes some processes that change its condition from stable to unstable. This is essentially due to a decrease in the She ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanford Reach Sand Dune
Hanford may refer to: Places *Hanford (constituency), a constituency in Tuen Mun, People's Republic of China *Hanford, Dorset, a village and parish in England * Hanford, Staffordshire, England *Hanford, California, United States * Hanford, Iowa, United States *Hanford, Washington, a community depopulated by the U.S. government in March 1943 Schools * Hanford School, a school in Hanford, Dorset * Hanford High School, a high school in Richland, Washington Other uses *Hanford (surname) *Hanford Site, a nuclear complex *Hanford Tri-State Airlines or Mid-Continent Airlines * USS ''Hanford'' People with the given name * Hanford Dixon (born 1958), American football player and sports announcer * Hanford MacNider (1889–1968), American diplomat and US Army General See also *Handford, a surname *Hanford Carnegie Museum *Hanford Reach, a free-flowing section of the Columbia River *Hanford Reach National Monument The Hanford Reach National Monument is a national monument in the U.S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erosion
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distinct from weathering which involves no movement. Removal of rock or soil as clastic sediment is referred to as ''physical'' or ''mechanical'' erosion; this contrasts with ''chemical'' erosion, where soil or rock material is removed from an area by dissolution. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, or for thousands of kilometres. Agents of erosion include rainfall; bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and waves; glacial plucking, abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and mass movement processes in steep landscapes like landslides and debris flows. The rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Typically, physical erosion procee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cascade Range
The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as the North Cascades, and the notable volcanoes known as the High Cascades. The small part of the range in British Columbia is referred to as the Canadian Cascades or, locally, as the Cascade Mountains. The latter term is also sometimes used by Washington residents to refer to the Washington section of the Cascades in addition to North Cascades, the more usual U.S. term, as in North Cascades National Park. The highest peak in the range is Mount Rainier in Washington at . part of the Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. All of the eruptions in the contiguous United States over the last 200 years have been from Cascade volcanoes. The two most recent were Lassen Peak from 1914 to 1921 and a major ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pend Oreille River
The Pend Oreille River ( ) is a tributary of the Columbia River, approximately long, in northern Idaho and northeastern Washington in the United States, as well as southeastern British Columbia in Canada. In its passage through British Columbia its name is spelled Pend-d'Oreille River. It drains a scenic area of the Rocky Mountains along the U.S.-Canada border on the east side of the Columbia. The river is sometimes defined as the lower part of the Clark Fork, which rises in western Montana. The river drains an area of , mostly through the Clark Fork and its tributaries in western Montana and including a portion of the Flathead River in southeastern British Columbia. The full drainage basin of the river and its tributaries accounts for 43% of the entire Columbia River Basin above the confluence with the Columbia. The total area of the Pend Oreille basin is just under 10% of the entire Columbia Basin. Box Canyon Dam is currently underway on a multimillion-dollar project for a fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clearwater River (Idaho)
The Clearwater River is in the northwestern United States, in north central Idaho. Its length is ,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. , accessed May 3, 2011 westward from the Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border, and joins the Snake River at Lewiston. the Lewis and Clark Expedition descended the Clearwater River in dugout canoes, putting in at downstream from Orofino; they reached the Columbia Bar and the Pacific Ocean about six weeks later. By average discharge, the Clearwater River is the largest tributary of the Snake River. The River got its name for the Niimiipuutímt naming as ''Koos-Koos-Kia'' - "clear water". The drainage basin of the Clearwater River is . Its mean annual discharge is , Northwest Power and Conservation Council Course In the small town of Kooskia, the Middle Fork and South Fork of the Clearwater River join their waters to form the main stem of the Clearwater. The larger Middle Fork i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington (state), Washington, and Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Some broader conceptions reach north into Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, and east into western Montana. Other conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Cascade Mountains, Cascade and Coast Mountains, Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the region's history, culture, geography, society, ecosystems, and other factors. The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, and the Northwest Plateau (also commonly known as "British Columbia Interi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tri-Cities, Washington
The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities ( Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. The cities border one another, making the Tri-Cities seem like one uninterrupted mid-sized city. The three cities function as the center of the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, which consists of Benton and Franklin counties. The Tri-Cities urban area consists of the city of West Richland, the census-designated places (CDP) of West Pasco and Finley, as well as the CDP of Burbank, despite the latter being located in Walla Walla County. The official 2016 estimate of the Tri-Cities MSA population is 283,869, a more than 12% increase from 2010. 2016 U.S. MSA estimates show the Tri-Cities population as over 300,000. The combined population of the three principal cities themselves was 220,959 at the 2020 census. As of April 1, 2021, the Washington State Office of Financial Management, Forecasting D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horse Heaven Hills
The Horse Heaven Hills are a long range of high, rolling hills in Klickitat, Yakima, and Benton counties in Washington. The hills are an anticline ridge in the Yakima Fold Belt formed by north–south compression of lava flows in the Columbia River Basalt Group. The highest point is Bickleton Ridge in the west end of the hills. They lie within the rain shadow to the east of the Cascade Range, making them significantly drier and hotter than regions west of the Cascades. The region has been inhabited by Native Americans for centuries, who had settlements surrounding the Horse Heaven Hills. They used the range both as hunting grounds and as a geographic boundary between different tribes. The Lewis and Clark Expedition represents the first known Europeans to reach the area. European settlement followed, with the introduction of modern farming techniques. In recent years, wineries have become an important economic driver in the region and the Horse Heaven Hills AVA was establi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rattlesnake Mountain (Benton County, Washington)
Rattlesnake Mountain (Native American name Lalíik meaning "land above the water") is a 3,531 ft (1,060 m) windswept treeless ridge overlooking the Hanford nuclear site. Parts of the western slope are privately owned ranchland, while the eastern slope is under the federal protection of the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve, a unit of the Hanford Reach National Monument, managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The mountain is the second highest point in Benton County, with its neighbor Lookout Summit surpassing it by only 98 ft (30 m). Rattlesnake Mountain is notable for its high wind speeds, with the highest recorded being around 150 mph (241 kilometers per hour). History The Yakama Nation referred to Rattlesnake Mountain as ''Lalíik'', meaning "land above the water". Some historians speculate that the origin of the name Lalíik refers to the inundation of the Columbia River Plateau during the Missoula Floods, as Rattlesnake would have been one of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
