Geological Terms
This forms at mountain bases where stream gradient changes abruptly from steep mountains to flat valley floor.
What is an alluvial fan?
This cave in Great Basin formed in Paleozoic Era when groundwater dissolved limestone.
What is Lehman?
These are the tallest trees in the world.
What is a redwood?
These two national parks are found in this geographic region.
What are Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains?
These changed V-shaped canyons into U-shaped canyons.
What are glaciers?
The side to side (lateral) movement along a fault.
What is a strike-slip fault?
The world's oldest trees are found in the park.
What are bristlecone pines?
These geologic features in Redwood NP indicate the land is rising faster than the sea. (Hint: These are also found at Olympic NP.)
What are sea stacks?
This rock is found prominently in Cades Cove.
What is limestone?
The rock directly above a fault.
What is a hanging wall?
The mountain building stage in which tectonic plates collide, causing folding and faulting.
What is orogenic?
The geologic era in which marine and near shore deposition of sedimentary rocks occurred.
What is the Paleozoic?
While its bark is resistant to fire, its pine cones need fire to break seeds out of cones.
What is a sequoia?
Parallel foliated metamorphic rock perpendicular to the direction of maximum stress.
What is a slaty cleavage?
Crustal extension occurred in Grand Tetons due to the bulging magma chamber under this national park.
What is Yellowstone?
When rocks are folded downward in trough pattern with youngest rocks in the middle.
What is a syncline?
Great Basin National Park is located in this physiographic province.
What is Basin and Range?
This park contains Cenozoic granite weathered into Inselbergs.
What is Joshua Tree?
These rocks were formed when Precambrian mafic lava flows metamorphosed.
What is greenstone?
This geological process caused the western block (Grand Tetons) to rise 30,000 vertical feet compared to eastern block.
What is block faulting?
A shallow, circular, clay-lined depression in an enclosed watershed.
What is a playa lake?
Geological process in which high heat flow from the bulging upper mantle causes the crust to stretch and thin
What is crustal extension?
These very large exfoliated rocks are found throughout the Sierra Nevadas, including Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
What are granite domes?
During this orogenic mountain building stage, Maine collided with Northern Europe.
What is Acadian?
This Cenozoic orogeny caused folding and faulting in western North America, including the Grand Teton region.
What is Laramide?