The Wasatch Plateau is located south and east of the southernmost part of the Wasatch Range in central Utah and is in the transition zone between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range physiographic provinces.
Utah’s Colorado Plateau is famous for its striking vistas and dazzling colors. Hues of red, pink, maroon, yellow, brown, and white create an array of stunning rock colors that attract visitors from all over the globe. From the red rocks of the Navajo Sandstone to the Vermilion Cliffs of the Moenave and Kayenta Formations to the pink, crimson, and chocolate cliffs of the upper Grand Staircase, many who visit the Colorado Plateau wonder what gives the rocks their brilliant colors.
Introduction Although my degree is in geology & geophysics, and not nuclear or astrophysics, I’v always had a keen interest in physics and would love to go back to school one day and get a graduate degree somewhere in that field. My advanced physics, geochronology and geophysics classes in college really interested and excited me. At just the age […]
This is one of those things that once you see, you can’t un-see. . Introduction to the New Theory It was during my undergraduate or graduate work toward my degree in geology and geophysics that I first noticed that the majority of Northern Russia, Siberia and Northern Alaska were never fully glaciated during recent Ice […]
Tourists and geologists alike come from all over the world to see and study the magnificent exposures of geologic units displayed in Utah’s Colorado Plateau region. Of particular interest is the Grand Staircase, which is an immense sequence of sedimentary rock layers that stretches south from Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument […]
When most people think about geysers, they picture a Yellowstone- like hot spring where pressure from steam sends a tall column of water into the air. In Utah, however, several “geysers” erupt due to the same process that causes soda pop to shoot out of the can when you hold your finger over t he […]
Although the geology of the Zion National Park includes nine known exposed formations, Zion is predominately the result of one spectacular unit, the Navajo Sandstone. Zion’s formations represent about 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation in a large ancient Jurassic basin. The Navajo is part of a super-sequence of rock units called the Grand Staircase, the time exposed […]
(exposed in Arizona’s Grand Canyon) The Vishnu schist is part of the Vishnu complex in the exposed basement rocks of the Grand Canyon region. This metamorphic layer was formed by the intrusion of plutonic masses from under the crust and the deposit of sediment from an eroded mountain chain. The oldest rocks in the Vishnu […]
What is the Zion Virgin River Narrows? (Zion National Park) The Narrows is the narrowest section of Zion Canyon. It is an 18 mile gorge or canyon filled by the Virgin River just upstream from the part of Zion where the roads and trails end. This gorge, with walls a thousand feet tall and the […]
