Tag Archives: Landforms

Acadia National Park Landforms

In , Roosevelt signed a bill that did precisely that. Lots of seasonal specials; outdoor dining, pre-ordering with curbsite pickup. Directory of stores and restaurants.

Plate Tectonics & Our National Parks

Hotels Near North Cascades National Park

Check attractions’ websites for updates to scheduling and other details, especially for activities affected by weather. Every region, from the historic homes and gardens of the Berkshires to the beaches of Cape Cod offers memorable adventures for the whole family.

On the Vineyard, explore the gingerbread houses of Oak Bluffs or the amazing red cliffs at Aquinnah or head to bustling Edgartown for shopping and dining. Back in Falmouth, there are fabulous beaches and bike paths as well as all the Cape has to offer, from its 14 lighthouses to Cape Cod Baseball League, arts venues, antiquing, nature preserves and historical sites.

The ferry has a full-service snack bar, and parking is just yards from the docks. Bring your bike or paddle board! Check out a rare suit of jousting armor in the chivalric arms and armor collection or listen to a presentation on what Roman soldiers wore into battle. For children, art carts and touch carts allow them to draw and, yes, touch things. There are also tours and scavenger hunts. Berkshire East is New England’s largest zip destination with three tours to choose from.

The Base Tour is our introductory course… give zipping a try! Then move on to fabulous views of the valley on the Mountain Top Tour. Mountain Top zipping is a great family experience and summer memory.

Ready for tour number three? The Valley Jump is fun to the extreme. You will love it. This tour has been featured in the Washington Post. Come, fly above the tree tops! Route 2 Mohawk Trail Charlemont, MA, Phone: So many amazing activities at this adventure center for all skill levels If you have ever wanted to try zip lining, or whitewater rafting or stand-up paddle-boarding, the place to launch your adventure is Zoar Outdoor in the Berkshires.

Zoar also offers stand-up paddle-boarding, kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing, easy river floats and, at its center in Wilmington, Vt. Experienced instructors and guides are ready to assist or teach people at every skill level, and the equipment they use is first-rate.

Kayaks and paddleboards, for example, are stable enough for first-time users. Lodging options include Hawk Mountain Lodge, 11 cabin tents, five tent sites — and a yurt. Architectural framings and angles vary. Individual decors give a distinct personality to every space.

Check out the T. Ride Thomas the Tank Engine in Thomas Land check the schedule for character breakfasts and meet-and-greets or let the little ones climb and play in the Sodor Play Zone. Trains will take you through scenic cranberry bogs — or examine model trains in the Sodor Balloon Station. An interactive exhibit on Wampanoag history is currently traveling across the state. Wednesdays-Sundays from 10am-5pm.

Advance ticketing is preferred – Please call or visit our website. Interspersed throughout are the vehicles so crucial to those campaigns. The museum also runs tank-driving programs at a separate training ground. Group behind-the-scenes tours and rental strollers are available. After you have relaxed in your spacious one- or two-bedroom condo overlooking that pond, you might head out to the Normal Rockwell Museum, Tanglewood, a botanical garden, a beach, an historic home.

Or just head into Lenox, Lee or Stockbridge to stroll the quintessentially New England streets and sample the excellent restaurants. Inthe citizens of Massachusetts, including over school children, banded together to save the battleship USS Massachusetts from being scrapped, and bring her to the waterfront of historic Fall River on June 12, Over the years, she has been joined by the destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Advanced ticketing required is required. Watch how lumber was cut, meals were prepared, cider…

Plate Tectonics—The Unifying Theory of Geology

A set of islands in northern Maine are now home to Acadia National Park. Tourism significantly increased after the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in , but the long horseback ride to reach the area was a deterrent. Take a nature walk through woods, pastures or along the river. It bought out or built hotels, stores, camps, a dairy, a garage, and other park services.

Yellowstone National Park Landforms

All of these are connected, by landforms, through links provided by streams and rivers that course through the changing elevations, and by the air that circulates between them. Nature does have balances, but they are fluid rather than static, flexible rather than rigid, and experience dynamic fluctuation as opposed to a steady state. Scientists predict that the transition to an increasing population of bison will influence the grasslands in northern Yellowstone differently than elk.

Volcanic Landforms: Extrusive Igneous

Lassen Volcanic National Park Visitor Center

Yellowstone’s northern range has been the focus of debate since the s. Frank Cycles and processes are essential connections within an ecosystem. Photosynthesis, predation, decomposition, climate, and precipitation facilitate the flow of energy and raw materials.

Living things absorb, transform, and circulate energy and raw materials and release them again. Life forms are active at all levels. Microbes beneath Yellowstone Lake thrive in hydrothermal vents where they obtain energy from sulfur instead of the sun.

Plants draw energy from the sun and cycle nutrients such as carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen through the system. Herbivores, from ephydrid flies to elk, feed on the plants and, in turn, provide food for predators like coyotes and hawks. Decomposers—bacteria, fungi, other microorganisms—connect all that dies with all that is alive.

The ecosystem is constantly changing and evolving. A wildland fire is one example of an integral, dynamic process. Fires rejuvenate forests on a grand scale.

Some species of plants survive the intense burning to re-sprout. Some cones of lodgepole pines pop open only in heat generated by fires, spreading millions of seeds on the forest floor. Fires recycle and release nutrients and create dead trees or snags that serve a number of ecological functions, such as the addition of organic matter to the soil when the trees decompose.

Elevations are lower, and the area receives less snow than elsewhere in the park. Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mt, the ridge tops and south-facing hillsides are clear of snow, a result of wind and sun. As a result of its incredible biodiversity, relatively complete ecosystem integrity, and year-round access, research conducted on the northern range has Yellowstone National Park Landforms much of our current scientific understanding of native species and the ecological processes that sustain them.

The northern range is a broad grassland that borders the Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mt and Lamar rivers in the northern portion of Yellowstone and into Montana. NPS Biodiversity Each species—no matter how small—has an important role to play in a functioning ecosystem. They all participate in various ecosystem processes like transferring energy, providing nutrient storage, or breaking down pollutants.

That is why biological diversity, or biodiversity, is a benchmark for measuring the health of an ecosystem. Biodiversity can be measured in many ways, including the number of different species also called richness and the abundance of each species also called evenness.

The biodiversity and ecological processes that are protected in the park support a healthy ecosystem. The region appears to have retained or restored its full historical complement of vertebrate wildlife species—a condition unique in the wildlands of the contiguous 48 states.

The extent of wildlife diversity is due, in part, to the different habitats found in the region, ranging from high alpine areas to sagebrush country, from hydrothermal areas, to forests, meadows, and other habitat types. All of these are connected, by landforms, through links provided by streams and rivers that course through the changing elevations, and by the air that circulates between them.

Biodiversity Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mt supports the resilience of an ecosystem.

Intricate Layers The reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone restored an important element of ecological completeness in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This region now contains every large wild mammal, predator or prey, that inhabited it when Europeans first arrived in North America, though not necessarily in the same numbers or distribution. But the wolf is only one factor in the extremely complex and dynamic community of wild Yellowstone. Since wolves were restored, scientists have discovered layers of complexity reaching far beyond the large…

10. The Grand Canyon

They stretch all the way from Newfoundland, Canada to Alabama. Also, from to , elk-calf survival recruitment and total number of the northern elk herd declined. It is well known for its incredible beauty and is well worth a visit.

Landforms In Yellowstone National Park

Gold was first discovered in the area in and by the city began to take shape. In , Colonel William Ludlow , who had previously explored areas of Montana under the command of George Armstrong Custer , was assigned to organize and lead an expedition to Montana and the newly established Yellowstone Park. There is some indication that the dynamic northern grassland system is in a state of flux.

Cycles and Processes

Volcanism at Yellowstone[ edit ] Yellowstone sits on top of four overlapping calderas. US NPS Volcanism at Yellowstone is relatively recent, with calderas that were created during large eruptions that took place 2. The calderas lie over the Yellowstone hotspot under the Yellowstone Plateau where light and hot magma molten rock from the mantle rises toward the surface.

The hotspot appears to move across terrain in the east-northeast direction, and is responsible for the eastern half of Idaho ‘s Snake River Plainbut in fact the hotspot is much deeper than terrain and remains stationary while the North American Plate moves west-southwest over it. Together these eruptions have helped create the eastern part of the Snake River Plain to the west of Yellowstone from a once-mountainous region.

At least a dozen of these eruptions were so massive that they are classified as supereruptions. Volcanic eruptions sometimes empty their stores of magma so swiftly that the overlying land collapses into the emptied magma chamberforming a geographic depression called a caldera.

One such caldera, Landforms In Yellowstone National Park Bruneau-Jarbidge caldera Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mt southern Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mtwas formed between 10 and 12 million years ago, and the event dropped ash to a depth of one foot 30 cm 1, miles 1, km away in northeastern Nebraska and killed large herds of rhinoceroscamel, and other animals at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park.

The United States Geological Survey USGS estimates there are one or two major caldera-forming eruptions and a hundred or so lava extruding eruptions per million years, and “several to many” steam eruptions per century. Thus defined, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is the volcanic field which produced the latest three supereruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot; it also produced one additional smaller eruption, thereby creating the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake [10]years ago.

The three supereruptions occurred 2. Helens eruption. The Henry’s Fork Caldera 1. Smaller steam explosions occur as well: an explosion 13, years ago left a 5 km 3. The volcanic eruptions, as well as the continuing geothermal activity, are a result of a great plume of magma located below the caldera’s surface. The magma in this plume contains gases that are kept dissolved by the immense pressure under which the magma is contained. If the pressure is released to a sufficient degree by some geological shift, then some of the gases bubble out and cause the magma to expand.

This can cause a chain reaction. According to analysis of earthquake data inthe magma chamber is 80 km 50 mi long and 20 km 12 mi wide. This is about Landforms In Yellowstone National Park.

An analysis of crystals from Yellowstone’s lava showed that prior to the last supereruption, the magma chamber underwent a rapid increase in temperature and change in composition. The analysis indicated that Yellowstone’s magma reservoir can reach eruptive capacity and trigger a supereruption within just decades, not centuries as volcanologists Landforms In Yellowstone National Park originally thought.

Some geoscientists hypothesize that the Yellowstone hotspot is the effect of an interaction between local conditions in the lithosphere and upper mantle convection. Additionally, the Columbia Basalt flows appeared at the same approximate time in the same place, causing Landforms In Yellowstone National Park about their common origin.

As the Yellowstone hotspot traveled to the east and north, the Columbia disturbance moved northward and eventually subsided. It is suggested that the volcanism may be caused by upwellings from the lower mantle resulting from water-rich fragments of the Farallon Plate descending from the Cascadia subduction regionsheared off at a subducted spreading…

Biodiversity

Also, the northern Yellowstone elk population is subject to several hunts each year. Eruptions can create new islands, build and destroy mountains, and alter landscapes. Jackson Hole is a popular ski destination. Research has been initiated to explore the influence of recent changes in the Yellowstone grazing community on ecosystem processes such as the spatial pattern and intensity of ungulate grazing and grassland energy and nutrient dynamics.

Everglades National Park Landforms

Pine rockland communities require fire for maintenance; they have adapted to promote and resist fire at the same time. Few massive trees survived the logging operations that took place in the s and s. Aquatic animals such as turtles, young alligators, snakes, and fish live in sloughs and they usually feed on aquatic invertebrates, such as the Florida apple snail. The South Florida climate was once arid and semi-arid , interspersed with wet periods.

Everglades National Park Facts

The Shark Valley Observation Tower offers visitors a comprehensive degree view of Everglades landscapes. NPS photo The landscapes we see today in Everglades National Park, and in all of south Florida, are the direct result of geologic events of the past and ongoing environmental processes. Although the activities of humans have altered the south Florida landscape, the geologic record is still intact.

The geologic secrets of the earth are visible to all who learn to recognize them. It is impossible to consider the geology of the Everglades without also considering the hydrology. Primarily consisting of limestone, the bedrock geology of Everglades National Park has responded over time to the ongoing processes of weathering, erosion, compaction of organic sediments, unique hydrologic conditions, and episodes of sea-level rise and fall to produce the landscapes we see today.

UNESCO recognized that the subtropical wetlands, coastal and marine ecosystems, and complex biological processes that make the Everglades a sanctuary for its legendary wildlife would not exist were it not for the underlying geology, which predefines existing Everglades landscapes and ecosystems.

Everglades humor. Pine forests are present on the higher ground of the Atlantic Coastal Ridge. Where fire has been excluded, pines give way to hardwood hammocks. In wetter areas near the end of the ridge, dwarf pond cypress grow.

Sawgrass prairies extend south of the ridge. A narrow band of mangroves fringes the southeastern coast, and the shallow waters of Florida Bay provide Everglades National Park Landforms abundant food supply for great numbers of wading birds. Map of geologic subprovinces in south Florida. Geographic data provided by St.

Thornberry-Ehrlich, Colorado State University. Satellite image of central and south Florida acquired during the late s. The large blue circular area is Lake Okeechobee and the red area south of the lake is agricultural.

Everglades National Park is to the south. During the summer rainy season, freshwater overflowed the south shore of Lake Okeechobee and flowed about miles, dropping only about 12 to 14 feet in elevation, to reach its southern terminus in Florida Bay.

From the late s, human population has steadily increased in south Florida. Canals, ditches, dams, and levees were built to drain swamps for agriculture, oil and gas exploration, and urban development.

Raised roadbeds, built from the spoils of canal construction, have dammed the natural, low relief, slow moving sheetflow of water from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Thus, people have forever altered the once-steady, slow flow of freshwater through the Everglades, also known as the “River of Grass. The basin has very low relief. The elevation change is only 12 to 14 feet from the maximum near Lake Okeechobee to sea level.

Prior to the digging of canals and building of dams, flow in this drainage system was slow and steady from north to south. Precipitation becomes increasingly acidic as it infiltrates organic plant matter before seeping into the ground. NPS photo Karst is a term used for the Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mt terrain produced by the chemical erosion of carbonate rocks such as limestone and dolomite.

Acidic water dissolves the carbonate rock along cracks and fractures in the bedrock. Over thousands of years, dissolution within pore spaces Glacier National Park To Great Falls Mt along fractures creates increasingly larger voids.

National Park Service biologists assessing the status of solution holes in the karstic Rocky Glades area of Everglades National Park during the winter dry season. NPS photo The extensive carbonate rocks of Florida are inherently porous and have been exposed to weathering processes since the last significant interglacial period led to widespread flooding aboutyears ago….

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The resulting ooids, or spherical grains of limestone, were pushed by longshore currents into the linear Atlantic Coastal Ridge during the Pleistocene. Some species, such as snail kites and apple snails, do well in wet conditions, but wood storks and Cape Sable seaside sparrows Ammodramus maritimus mirabilis do well in dryer circumstances. Peat and marl are considered nutrient-poor soils that foster the growth of specialized vegetation depending on the length of the regional hydroperiod.

Redwood National Park Landforms

The average lifespan of a coast redwood is years, though they have been known to exceed 2, years in age. Representative John E. Redwood National and State Parks offer four complete campgrounds, three in the redwood forest and one on the coast.

Natural Features & Ecosystems

They combine an area ofacres. The parks also protects other native vegetation, grasslands, historical resources and 37 miles of pristine shoreline. In there were over 2, acres of old growth redwoods along the California coastline. This northern area was first the home of Native Americans, but soon noticed by lumbermen and gold miners during the California gold rush.

When the gold mining fell short of expectations, these men started cutting down the Redwood National Park Landforms Redwoods for the development that was occuring in San Francisco, and other towns along the Pacific coast. This unrestricted logging went on for many years until efforts Redwood National Park Landforms started to preserve the giant trees. In the Save-the-Redwoods League was established. Redwood National and State Parks offer four complete campgrounds, three in the redwood forest and one on the coast.

You need to know that there are no trailer hook-ups; there is a charge for each extra vehicle per site; and day use fees are charged. All the campgrounds are California state park campgrounds operated by the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Climate The redwoods thrive in a temperate system and need a lot of rain. The climate is 40 – 60 degrees all year along the redwood coast.

Discover Redwood!

At least bird species have been documented in the forestlands. In the s, at least nine magnitude 6. Much of the Franciscan assemblage consists of rock that has been sheared and lifted from the ocean floor as a result of the plate action along the Cascadia subduction zone. The flood deposited a new layer of soil covering the forest floor.