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Landscapes: Past, Present, and Future Exploring How Landscapes Change Over Millions of Years

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Landscapes: Past, Present, and Future Exploring How Landscapes Change Over Millions of Years National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Zion National Park Landscapes: Past, Present, and Future Exploring How Landscapes Change Over Millions of Years NPS/MARC NEIDIG Contents Introduction 2 Core Connections 2 Background 2 Activities Landscapes: Past 4 Landscapes: Present 6 Landscapes: Future 8 Glossary 9 References 11 Introduction This guide contains background information about how geologic processes and changes over millions of years continually shape the landscape, and directions for three activities that will help students better understand how these processes are still at work in Utah. This guide is specifically designed for fifth grade classrooms, but the activities can be modified for students at NPS/BRYANNA PLOG other levels. Theme Zion has spectacular geology. The arid climate The Earth’s surface is a dynamic system and sparse vegetation expose bare rock and that changes with the activity of volcanoes, reveal the park’s geologic history. Evidence earthquakes, erosion, and other geologic of deposition (sedimentation), lithification, processes. uplift, weathering, erosion, tectonics, and volcanic activity make the park a showcase for Focus changing landscapes. The activities focus on relationship between long-term geologic processes and changes on Deposition (Sedimentation) NPS/CAITLIN CECI the Earth’s surface that have happened in the Zion National Park was a relatively flat basin past, that are still occurring today, and will near sea level 275 million years ago, near the continue to occur in the future. coast of Pangaea, the land area believed to have once connected nearly all of the earth’s Activities landmasses together. As sands, gravels, and muds eroded from surrounding mountains, Landscapes: Past streams carried these materials into the Students will explore what the area basin and deposited them in layers. The sheer surrounding Zion might have been like during weight of these accumulated layers caused past geologic times when each layer was the basin to sink, so that the top surface formed. By creating posters, the NPS/ADRIENNE FITZGERALD always remained near sea level. As the land students depict Zion during past geologic Today’s rocks in Zion National rose and fell and as the climate changed, the Park are the product of millions times and compare with the park today. of years of geologic processes depositional environment fluctuated from and different environments. shallow seas to coastal plains to a massive Landscapes: Present desert of windblown sand. This process of Using a topographic map of Zion, students sedimentation continued until over 10,000 Core Connections identify geological features (e.g., valleys, feet of material accumulated. canyons, buttes, mesas) that are present in Utah Core Curriculum Zion today. Lithification Fifth Grade Science Mineral-laden waters slowly filtered through the compacted sediments. Standard 2: Students will Landscapes: Future understand that volcanoes, During this activity students predict future Iron oxide, calcium carbonate, and silica earthquakes, uplift, acted as cementing agents, and with pressure weathering, and erosion changes to the landscape of southwestern from overlying layers over long periods of reshape Earth’s surface. Utah in 100 million years. time, transformed the deposits into stone. Objective 1: Describe how Ancient seabeds became limestone; mud and weathering and erosion Background clay became mudstones and shale; and river change Earth’s surface. sand and sand dunes became sandstone. Each Zion National Park is located along the edge layer originated from a distinct source and so Objective 2: Explain how of a region called the Colorado Plateau. Uplift, volcanoes, earthquakes, and differs in thickness, mineral content, color, uplift affect Earth’s surface. tilting, and the erosion of rock layers formed and eroded appearance. a feature called the Grand Staircase, a series Objective 3: Relate the building of colorful cliffs stretching between Bryce Tectonics and Uplift up and breaking down of Canyon, Zion, and the Grand Canyon. Earth’s surface over time to the In an area from Zion to the Rocky Mountains, various physical land features. tectonic forces deep within the Earth Zion National Park, 2015 Landscapes: Past, Prsent and Future 2 pushed the surface up creating the Colorado The Virgin River is still excavating. Upstream Plateau. This was not chaotic uplift, but from the Temple of Sinawava, in The Narrows, slow vertical hoisting of huge blocks of the the river cuts through Navajo Sandstone, crust. Zion’s elevation rose from near sea level creating a slot canyon. At the Temple of to as high as 10,000 feet above sea level. Sinawava, the river has reached the softer Uplift is still occurring. Kayenta Formation below. Water erodes the shale, undermining the overlaying sandstone For many millions of years, portions of the and causing it to collapse, widening the Pacific Plate (oceanic crust) subducted canyon. As the plateaus continue to rise, the beneath the thicker, more buoyant North basins drop, and the river cuts, Zion Canyon American Plate (continental crust). This is expanding upstream at a rate of about 10 subduction formed mountains and volcanoes miles of lateral movement every million years. along the west coast, and led to the formation of the Rocky Mountains. Later, changes in Volcanic Activity plate geometry led to the end of subduction Volcanic vents, created as a result of the along much of the West Coast (although weakening of the Earth’s crust during tectonic subduction continues today in the Pacific events, allowed lava flows and cinder cones to Northwest). Instead of being pushed together, form. Cinder was piled several hundred feet the plates began to slide sideways (lateral high in classic cone shapes and lava flowed motion), as is seen today in California’s into valleys. Cinder cones and black basalt San Andreas Fault. This lateral motion flows are visible west of Rockville and on the stretched portions of western North America; Kolob Terrace. creating a region called the Basin and Range. Westernmost Utah is part of the eastern Fractures and Faults edge of the Basin and Range province, where Fractures and their control of canyon erosion stretching continues today along active are one of the most striking features of the faults like the Hurricane and Wasatch Faults. canyons of the Virgin River. The fractures (not Despite the mountain building and stretching faults because there is no displacement) exert that occurred in the surrounding areas, the a strong influence on the erosion of smaller Colorado Plateau rose to its high elevation canyons in the Navajo Sandstone. with little deformation. These fractures are believed to have formed Erosion due to tectonic compression and extension The uplift of the Colorado Plateau gave the forces. The fractures form perpendicular to streams greater cutting force in their descent the direction of the compression and to the sea. The park’s location on the extension. The dominant fracture direction western edge of this uplift caused the streams in Zion is roughly north-south. There are also to tumble off the plateau, flowing rapidly fracture sets that are east-west (Kolob down a steep gradient. These streams began Canyons) and northeast–southwest (Kolob eroding and cutting into the rock layers, Terrace and Hop Valley). forming deep and narrow canyons. While the straight north-south canyons Grain by grain, the Virgin River has carried on either side of Checkerboard Mesa are away several thousand feet of rock that once controlled by large fractures, the criss-cross lay above the highest layers visible today. On fractures on its surface are of a more average, the Virgin River transports one recent origin. The horizontal banding is the million tons of sediment per year. The rate result of differential weathering of the varies dramatically with the flow of the river, crossbedded sandstone, while the vertical with the vast majority of sediment transport cracks are thought to be the result of freeze/ occurring during floods. When the river is low thaw cycles at the surface of the rock. and clear, very little sediment is moving, and much of the transport involves minerals dissolved in the water. Zion National Park, 2015 Landscapes: Past, Present, and Future 3 Landscapes: Past Background There are seven distinct rock layers in Zion Duration National Park which all were deposited 1 hour at different times and from different paleoenvironments. Location Indoors The Kaibab Formation (limestone) is the oldest exposed formation in the park where Key Vocabulary it occurs in small outcrops at the Kolob geologic processes, paleoenvironment, Kaibab Canyons area of the park. (It can also be seen Limestone, Moenkopi Formation, Chinle in the Hurricane Cliffs.) It was deposited Formation, Moenave Formation, Kayenta when a shallow tropical sea covered the area Formation, Navajo Sandstone, Temple Cap and it contains fossils of ancient marine Formation animals. The Moenkopi Formation was deposited in a coastal flood plain Objectives environment of streams and tidal flats, and By the end of the program, students will be consists of reddish brown siltstones and able to a) analyze images of some of Zion’s mudstones with gray gypsum-rich shale rock layers, b) view and discuss images of and limestone beds. Above the Moenkopi the Zion region as its various layers were Formation is the Chinle Formation, a mauve, deposited, and c) create posters showing what gray and white shale. During Chinle time, a the park looks like today and what it looked large river system flowed through the area, like when one of its layers was deposited. bringing large coniferous trees and volcanic ash which eventually led to formation of Method petrified wood. The overlying Moenave After analyzing the rock layers of Zion, Formation, consisting of reddish-brown students connect the geologic layers to siltstones and shales, was deposited by streams paleoenvironments. The activity concludes and lakes. with creation of posters showing the students’ depictions of Zion during past geologic times compared to today.
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