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Zion National Park
Zion National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals (including 19 species of bat), and 32 reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones: desert, riparian, woodland, and coniferous forest. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches. The lowest point in the park is at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is at Horse Ranch Mountain. A prominent feature of the park is Zion Canyon, which is long and up to deep. The canyon walls are reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone eroded by the North Fork of the Virgin River. Human habitation of the area started about 8,000 years ago with small ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zion Canyon
Zion Canyon (also called Little Zion, Mukuntuweap, Mu-Loon'-Tu-Weap, and Straight Cañon; ''weap'' is Paiute for canyon) is a deep and narrow gorge in southwestern Utah, United States, carved by the North Fork of the Virgin River. Nearly the entire canyon is located within the western half of Zion National Park. Description The beginning of the canyon is usually delineated as the Temple of Sinawava, a vertical-walled natural amphitheater nearly deep. The canyon begins much further upstream, however, and runs southward about through the Narrows to reach the Temple, where a seasonal tributary of the North Fork plunges over a tall waterfall during spring runoff and after heavy rain. The gorge then runs southwest through the national park, approaching deep in places. While the canyon rim is dominated by desert, the canyon floor supports a forest and riparian zone watered by the North Fork Virgin River. The gorge then merges with Pine Creek Canyon as it winds out of the national p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riparian Zone
A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by hydrophilic plants. Riparian zones are important in ecology, environmental resource management, and civil engineering because of their role in soil conservation, their habitat biodiversity, and the influence they have on fauna and aquatic ecosystems, including grasslands, woodlands, wetlands, or even non-vegetative areas. In some regions, the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone, riparian corridor, and riparian strip are used to characterize a riparian zone. The word ''riparian'' is derived from Latin '' ripa'', meaning " river bank". Characteristics Riparian zones may be natural or engineered for soil stabilization or restoration. These zones are important natural b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgin River
The Virgin River is a tributary of the Colorado River in the U.S. states of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The river is about long.Calculated with Google Maps and Google Earth It was designated Utah's first wild and scenic river in 2009, during the centennial celebration of Zion National Park. History The first known Euro-American party to encounter the Virgin was led by Jedediah Smith in 1826. Smith named it "Adams River", after then-president John Quincy Adams.Smith, Jedediah S., arrison G. Rogers and George R. Brooks (ed.). ''The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith: His Personal Account of the Journey to California, 1826–1827'', p. 55. Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 9771989. Later explorer and mapmaker John C. Fremont reported that it was called "Rio Virgen" but did not state the origin of the name. Hiram Chittenden speculated that Smith had later renamed the river after Thomas Virgin, who was badly wounded in an 1827 attack by Mohave people during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Navajo Sandstone
The Navajo Sandstone is a geological formation in the Glen Canyon Group that is spread across the U.S. states of southern Nevada, northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, and Utah as part of the Colorado Plateau province of the United States.Anonymous (2011b''Navajo Sandstone''. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. last accessed August 18, 2013 Description The Navajo Sandstone is particularly prominent in southern Utah, where it forms the main attractions of a number of national parks and monuments including Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area,''Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area - Rock Climbing.'' Southern Nevada District Office, Bureau of Land Management, Reno, Nevada |
Horse Ranch Mountain
Horse Ranch Mountain is an mountain in the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park in northeastern Washington County, Utah, United States, that is the highest summit within the national park. It rises above Camp Creek to the north and Taylor Creek to the south. Its neighbors include Tucupit Point, to the south, and Timber Top Mountain is situated to the south-southwest. See also * List of mountains in Utah Mountains in Utah are numerous and have varying elevations and prominences. Kings Peak, in the Uinta Mountains in Duchesne County, Utah, is the highest point in the state and has the greatest prominence. It has elevation and prominence . It ... References External links Photographs of the Kolob Canyon area* Mountains of Utah Mountains of Washington County, Utah Zion National Park Highest points of United States national parks {{Utah-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Arch
A natural arch, natural bridge, or (less commonly) rock arch is a natural landform where an arch has formed with an opening underneath. Natural arches commonly form where inland cliffs, coastal cliffs, fins or stacks are subject to erosion from the sea, rivers or weathering ( subaerial processes). Most natural arches are formed from narrow fins and sea stacks composed of sandstone or limestone with steep, often vertical, cliff faces. The formations become narrower due to erosion over geologic time scales. The softer rock stratum erodes away creating rock shelters, or alcoves, on opposite sides of the formation beneath the relatively harder stratum, or caprock, above it. The alcoves erode further into the formation eventually meeting underneath the harder caprock layer, thus creating an arch. The erosional processes exploit weaknesses in the softer rock layers making cracks larger and removing material more quickly than the caprock; however, the caprock itself continues to er ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slot Canyon
A slot canyon is a long, narrow channel or drainageway with sheer rock walls that are typically eroded into either sandstone or other sedimentary rock. A slot canyon has depth-to-width ratios that typically exceed 10:1 over most of its length and can approach 100:1. The term is especially used in the semiarid southwestern United States and particularly the Colorado Plateau. Slot canyons are subject to flash flooding and commonly contain unique ecological communities that are distinct from the adjacent, drier uplands. Some slot canyons can measure less than across at the top but drop more than to the floor of the canyon. Many slot canyons are formed in sandstone and limestone rock, although slot canyons in other rock types such as granite and basalt are possible. Even in sandstone and limestone, only a very small number of streams will form slot canyons due to a combination of the particular characteristics of the rock and regional rainfall. Around the world Slot canyons are foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
River
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as Stream#Creek, creek, Stream#Brook, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to Geographical feature, geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; examples are "run" in some parts of the United States, "Burn (landform), burn" in Scotland and northeast England, and "beck" in northern England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague. Rivers are part of the water cycle. Water generally collects in a river from Precipitation (meteorology), precipitation through a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monolith
A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive rock (geology), stone or rock, such as some mountains. For instance, Savandurga, Savandurga mountain is a monolith mountain in India. Erosion usually exposes the geological formations, which are often made of very hard and solid igneous rock, igneous or metamorphic rock. Some monoliths are volcanic plugs, solidified lava filling the vent of an extinct volcano. In architecture, the term has considerable overlap with megalith, which is normally used for prehistory, and may be used in the contexts of rock-cut architecture that remains attached to solid rock, as in monolithic church, or for exceptionally large stones such as obelisks, statues, monolithic columns or large architraves, that may have been moved a considerable distance after quarrying. It may also be used of large glacial erratics moved by natural forces. The word derives, via the Latin , from the Ancient Greek word (), from () meaning "one" or "sing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a more resistant layer or layers of harder rock, e.g. shales overlain by sandstones. The resistant layer acts as a caprock that forms the flat summit of a mesa. The caprock can consist of either sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone; dissected lava flows; or a deeply eroded duricrust. Unlike ''plateau'', whose usage does not imply horizontal layers of bedrock, e.g. Tibetan Plateau, the term ''mesa'' applies exclusively to the landforms built of flat-lying strata. Instead, flat-topped plateaus are specifically known as '' tablelands''.Duszyński, F., Migoń, P. and Strzelecki, M.C., 2019. ''Escarpment retreat in sedimentary tablelands and cuesta landscapes–Landforms, mechanisms and patterns.'' ''Earth-Science Reviews, no. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butte
__NOTOC__ In geomorphology, a butte () is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from a French word meaning knoll (but of any size); its use is prevalent in the Western United States, including the southwest where ''mesa'' (Spanish for "table") is used for the larger landform. Due to their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. To differentiate the two landforms, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height. Formation Buttes form by weathering and erosion when hard caprock overlies a layer of less resistant rock that is eventually worn away. The harder rock on top of the butte resists erosion. The caprock provides protection for the less resistant rock below from wind abrasion which leaves it stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canyon
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cut through underlying surfaces, eventually wearing away rock layers as sediments are removed downstream. A river bed will gradually reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water into which the river drains. The processes of weathering and erosion will form canyons when the river's River source, headwaters and estuary are at significantly different elevations, particularly through regions where softer rock layers are intermingled with harder layers more resistant to weathering. A canyon may also refer to a rift between two mountain peaks, such as those in ranges including the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the Himalayas or the Andes. Usually, a river or stream carves out such splits between mountains. Examp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
