Elephant Butte (Arches National Park)
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Elephant Butte (Arches National Park)
Elephant Butte is a summit in Grand County, Utah. It is located within Arches National Park, and is the highest point in the park. Like many of the rock formations in the park, Elephant Butte is composed of Entrada Sandstone. Elephant Butte is a flat-topped cap surrounded by numerous towers and fins including ''Parade of Elephants''. Double Arch is also a natural feature of Elephant Butte and was used as a backdrop for the opening scene of ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade''. Precipitation runoff from Elephant Butte drains east into the nearby Colorado River. The first ascent was made September 8, 1953, by Alex Cresswell and Fred Ayres. Geology Elephant Butte lies above an underground salt bed, causing the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. The rock is Entrada Sandstone. Climate Spring and fall are the most favorable seasons to experience Arches National Park, when highs average and lows average . Summer t ...
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Arches National Park
Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world. The park consists of of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than of rain annually. Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was redesignated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018. Park purpose As stated in the foundation document in U.S. National Park Service website: Geology The national park lies above an unde ...
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Fin (geology)
A fin is a geological formation that is a narrow, residual wall of hard sedimentary rock that remains standing after surrounding rock has been eroded away along parallel joints or fractures. Fins are formed when a narrow butte or plateau develops many vertical, parallel cracks. There are two main modes of following erosion. The first is when water flows along joints and fractures and opens them wider and wider, eventually causing erosion. The second is where the rock type (stratum) is harder and more erosion resistant than neighboring rocks, causing the weaker rock to fall away. Fins are considered an intermediary stage of many other erosional geologic features like windows, arches, and hoodoos. The formation of such features is a simplified four-step process. The first step is uplift that results in deep parallel, vertical fractures within the plateau. The second step is weathering and erosion that enlarges the fractures, producing fins. The third step is erosion attacking fins from ...
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Buttes Of Utah
__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 standing ...
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Landforms Of Grand County, Utah
A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins. Physical characteristics Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, stratification, rock exposure and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains) elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodies and sub-surface features. Mountains, hills, plateaux, and plains are t ...
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Devil's Garden
In myrmecology and forest ecology, a devil's garden (Kichwa: ''Supay chakra''Frederickson, M. E., & Gordon, D. (2007). The devil to pay: the cost of mutualism with ''Myrmelachista schumanni'' ants in 'devil's gardens' is increased herbivory on ''Duroia hirsuta'' trees. ''Proc. R. Soc. B''. 274 (1613): 1117-23.David P. Edwards, Megan E. Frederickson, Glenn H. Shepard, and Douglas W. Yu (2009): A Plant Needs Ants like a Dog Needs Fleas: Myrmelachista schumanni Ants Gall Many Tree Species to Create Housing.'' The American Naturalist 174, no. 5: pp. 734-740.) is a large stand of trees in the Amazon rainforest consisting of at most three tree species and the ant ''Myrmelachista schumanni''. Devil's gardens can reach up to sizes of 600 trees and are inhabited by a single ant colony, containing up to 3 million workers and 15,000 queens.Frederickson, M. E., Greene, M. J., & Gordon, D. (2005). Ecology: 'Devil's gardens' bedevilled by ants. ''Nature'' 437: 495-6. In a 2002 to 2004 ce ...
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Balanced Rock
Balanced Rock is one of the most popular features of Arches National Park, situated in Grand County, Utah, United States. Balanced Rock is located next to the park's main road, at about 9.2 miles (14.8 km) from the park entrance. It is one of only a few prominent features clearly visible from the road. The total height of Balanced Rock is 128 feet (39 m), with the balancing rock rising 55 feet (16.75 m) above the base. This rock is the largest of its kind in the park, weighing approximately 3,577 tons, the same as an icebreaker ship or 27 blue whales. Balanced Rock had a smaller sibling named "Chip-Off-the-Old-Block" that collapsed in the winter of 1975–76, the eventual fate of this feature as well. There is also a short loop trail leading around the base of the rock. See also *Balanced Rock (Garden of the Gods) *Balancing rock References External links Arches National Park Balanced Rock pageBalanced Rock of the Hudson Valley – Large perched rock and possibleDru ...
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Petrified Dunes
The Petrified Dunes are a series of rock formations located in Arches National Park in southeastern Utah, United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie .... The dunes can be found just off of the park road between the Courthouse Towers and the Windows Area. The formation was produced when ancient sand dunes hardened into stone under the overlying subsequent material, which later eroded away. References External links Landforms of Grand County, Utah Arches National Park Rock formations of Utah {{Utah-geologic-formation-stub ...
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Fisher Towers
Fisher Towers are a series of towers made of Cutler sandstone capped with Moenkopi sandstone and caked with a stucco of red mud located near Moab, Utah (). The Towers are named for a miner who lived near them in the 1880s. The Towers are world-renowned as a subject for photography and for its classic rock climbing routes. Location The nearest town is Moab, Utah about to the southwest. The area is generally accessed from Fisher Towers Road off of Route 128 which runs along the Colorado River between I-70 and Route 191. Castleton Tower is visible approximately to the southwest from different parts of the Fisher Tower's area. The Towers lie just south of a larger mesa which they are emerging from on a geological time scale. north of the main formation there is a tower which has only partway emerged from the mesa. The Towers are composed of three major fins of rock that run from the northeast closer to the mesa out to the southwest and into a desert valley. The fins are between ...
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Delicate Arch
Delicate Arch is a freestanding natural arch located in Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah, Moab in Grand County, Utah, Grand County, Utah, United States. The arch is the most widely recognized landmark in Arches National Park and is depicted on Vehicle registration plates of Utah, Utah license plates and a postage stamp commemorating Utah's centennial anniversary of admission to the Union in 1996. The 2002 Winter Olympics torch relay, Olympic torch relay for the 2002 Winter Olympics passed through the arch. History Because of its distinctive shape, the arch was known as "the Chaps" and "the Schoolmarm's Bloomers (clothing), Bloomers" by local cowboys. Many other names have been applied to this arch including "Bloomers Arch", "Marys Bloomers", "Old Maids Bloomers", "Pants Crotch", "Salt Wash Arch", and "School Marms Pants". The arch was given its current name by Frank Beckwith, leader of the Arches National Monument Scientific Expedition, who explored the area in the winter o ...
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Fiery Furnace (Arches National Park)
The Fiery Furnace is a collection of narrow sandstone canyons, fins and natural arches located near the center of Arches National Park in Utah, United States. The area is a popular hiking destination that was named for the reddish hue it exhibits in sunset light. The Fiery Furnace contains a variety of plant species, including one of the largest known concentrations of Canyonlands biscuitroot. Fragile ecological features such as biological soil crust Biological soil crusts are communities of living organisms on the soil surface in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. They are found throughout the world with varying species composition and cover depending on topography, soil characteristics, climate, ... and ephemeral pools are also found within the Fiery Furnace, and are vulnerable to visitor impact. Arches National Park has more than 2,000 cataloged sandstone arches, with some being located in the Fiery Furnace, including Walk Through Arch, Crawl Through Arch, Skull Arch, Kissing Tur ...
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Geology Of Utah
The geology of Utah includes rocks formed at the edge of the proto-North American continent during the Precambrian. A shallow marine sedimentary environment covered the region for much of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, followed by dryland conditions, volcanism and the formation of the basin and range terrain in the Cenozoic. Utah is a state in the western United States. Geologic History, Stratigraphy & Tectonics The eastern Uinta Mountains near the Colorado line and the Raft River-Dover Creek Mountains contain the oldest rocks in Utah from more than two billion years ago. Rubidium-strontium dating of the Red Creek Quartzite in 1965 indicated an age of 2.3 billion years. Other geologists found 2.4 billion year old schist and gneiss in the Albion Range Green Creek Complex. Prior to the 1960s, geologists inferred the Vishnu and Farmington Canyon gneiss and schist as Archean in age, but subsequent research indicated an formation between 1.6 and 1.5 billion years ago in the Proterozoic. F ...
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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 also has topographic isolation of , highest amongst summits of Utah having at least 500 meters of prominence. For lists of the top 50 peaks in Utah by elevation, prominence, and topographic isolation, see List of mountain peaks of Utah. This "List of mountains in Utah" should include all of those (but does not yet) and more. To see locations of all mountains having coordinates in this article (primarily from just three counties in the state, so far) together in one map, click on "Map all coordinates using OSM" at the right side of this page. Partial lists of mountains in just a few of Utah's 29 counties are below. Salt Lake County Mountains in Salt Lake County, Utah include: Utah County Mountains in Utah County, Utah i ...
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