Mountain Belt Building and Continent Growth
A great thickness of sedimentary or volcanic rock is deposited
What is Accumulation Stage?
The rock directly above the fault
What is the hanging wall?
Located in Wyoming, just south of Yellowstone National Park. This park was established in 1929 and was partly the result of generous donations from John D. Rockefeller who became the first billionaire in the world.
What is Grand Teton National Park?
The bending of rock
What are folds?
This landmark is located in Gatlinburg National Park where Paleozoic limestone is exposed at the surface. This softer sedimentary rock weathers more easily than surrounding Precambrian crystalline rock. The limestone also weathers into a soil that can grow a lot more crops than the crystalline rocks.
What is Cades Cove?
The mountain-building stage which begins while the first stage occurs, causes folding and faulting
What is the Orogenic Stage?
The rock directly below the fault
What is the footwall?
This park is located in southern California and is another National Park in the Basin and Range Physiographic Province. This is a very popular location for filming movies in the desert due to its proximity to Hollywood a couple hours drive away.
What is Joshua Tree National Park?
The breaking displacement of rock
What are faults?
In the western part of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks where there is Paleozoic limestone that was metamorphosed to marble in the Mesozoic and the cave was formed in the Cenozoic Era. This cave also has speleothems
What is Crystal cave?
This occurs during isostatic rebound of crustal plates, after orogenic stage, surface weathering and erosion.
What is Crustal Extension, Block Faulting, and Uplift?
The tensional, or extensional, forces pull the rocks apart, create a fault, and the hanging wall falls down relative to the footwall
What is a normal fault?
This park is located in southern California and the lowest place in North America is located here. This is also the hottest and driest place in the United States. The basins are very low elevations here, but there are some mountain ranges that are higher than 11,000 feet above sea level.
What is Death Valley National Park?
The occurrence of rocks folding upwards in an arch. The oldest rocks are in the middle of this arch pattern of rocks, and the rocks get younger as you move away from the fold axis
What is an anticline?
the lowest point in North America. The groundwater that comes out as a spring here is so salty that salt deposits line this spring. You cannot drink this water which is how the landmark got its namesake.
What is the Badwater Basin?
The stable, interior portion of the continent
What is Craton?
The act of compressional forces pushing the rocks together, creating a fault, and the hanging wall is pushed up relative to the footwall. Sort of like pushing a sled up an inclined plane. This results in the shortening of the crust.
What is reverse and thrust faulting?
This park is home to the tallest tree in the world called Hyperion and was only discovered in 2006 because it is hard to tell which tree is the highest relative to each other since the ground surface is not flat and it is hard to measure the height of these trees
What is Redwood National Park?
This term is where rocks are folded downward in a trough pattern. The youngest rocks are in the middle of this type of fold
What is a syncline?
This landmark was formed from groundwater dissolving the Paleozoic limestone. There are also speleothems here that formed after the cave was created and the cave opening was dry. Abasalom Lehman, a rancher who moved to Nevada from Ohio, discovered this cave on his ranch and started giving tours shortly after discovering it.
What is the Lehman Cave?
A continent gains land on the tectonically active margins. It is typically where the oceanic crust subducts under continental crust as in California, Oregon, and Washington
What is Tectonic Accretion?
This occurs where there is lateral movement. These are most common at transform boundaries such as those found at the bottom of the ocean, or on land in places like coastal California where the famous San Andreas runs from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
What is strike-slip faulting?
The smallest national park which is only 9 square miles, or 5,800 acres, is smaller than Caesar Creek State Park in Ohio that is about 7,500 acres of land. The elevation is around a thousand feet here in the central part of the country.
What is Hot Springs National Park?
The rarest form of fold which occurs when one side of rock layers are folded down, not very common, but present in the Colorado Plateau.
What is a Monocline?
This landmark is located less than 90 miles away from Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, which is the lowest point in North America.
What is Mt. Whitney?