Running head: Little Cottonwood and the Wasatch fault 1 Grading Rubric – Total Points: 100 Include this rubric. Points Library Research – Works Cited Page - APA style; relevant content; college-level sources; websites not allowed – /20 sources must be articles, books, or documents. Site Visit - Field Observations Form - hand written in field, fully completed. /10 - Photos - 6 of your own photos, 2 per page, descriptive photo captions in complete sentences, photos are original and show relevant geologic features. Photos /10 copied from the internet will result in a grade of zero for the assignment. - Map – Your own final hand-drawn map of the site showing geologic features, includes title, north arrow, scale bar, legend of all map elements; use color, show /10 location of photos, show location of relevant geologic features and label them, show human features like roads and trails. This has to be a neat hand drawn map of the park. Final Report - Three-page research paper - Content - Relevant observations and explanations of geologic features, good relationship between your observations and the results of your library research. /20 Scientifically relevant physical geologic features. Show relationship between geologic features to your observations. - Writing style - Research report style that is objective, cites references, and is concise, direct, organized, and structured. Will be free of grammatical and spelling /20 errors. Topic sentences for each paragraph, all sentences in paragraphs relate to main point of paragraph. - In-Text Citations: Followed in-text citation procedures for APA correctly. /10 Total Points /100 Little cottonwood and the Wasatch fault 2 Little Cottonwood and the Wasatch fault Field Observations Form: (to be completed by hand in the field during site visit; prior to going, make and use additional copies of this form as needed in the field.) Your Name: Elmer Damian Site Name: Gilbert Geological Park and Little Cottonwood Canyon Date of Site Visit: 12/06/2015 Other People Present: Brandon Pasker, Sage Mora, Dallin Smith, and Cathy, Manivong, Kristen Hjorth Rock Samples Collected: Quartz monzonite, composed of plagioclase, quartz orthoclase, biotite and hornblende. Human/Cultural Observations: Some of the area is residential and some of the area is protected by the Utah as it is a state park. Besides roads have been built on the fault and a granite mine visible from the road in the canyon Observations of Physical Geologic Elements: (such as rocks; sediments (silt, sand, and gravel); lava flows; old volcanoes; glacial deposits; wetlands; landslides or slump scars; faults; and mine activities. From what we could see from the park, there is a normal fault with a fault scarp coming down on the right side of the canyon. Little Cottonwood stock is young at only 31-million-years old, igneous rock called granite. The classic U-shaped canyon is caused by glacial scouring, moraines, and scattered glacial boulders. Little cottonwood and the Wasatch fault 3 To start off this paper I would like to point out some of the historical facts of this site. We decided to visit the G. K. Gilbert Geologic View Park at the mouth of Little Cotton Wood Canyon. The site itself is a little over 2 acres, so pretty small, and opened in May of 2008. The view itself is an observation deck, in a way, that has a view of the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. It shows of rock features from when there was a glacier as well as fault scarps that reach over 100 feet high. What seems like a regular canyon to any regular person is a gold mine of ancient history to a Geologist. My group also was able to drive through the canyon itself to see the vast and incredible rock features. We were able to see a partial view of the “famed Temple Quarry, where granite of the Little Cottonwood stock has been quarried at various times since the 1860s to construct several prominent buildings in Salt Lake City.”(Eldredge 2008) at the mouth of the canyon there was also a gold mine which explains mine dumps by the former town of “Gold City.” Incredible history to be seen here and I’ll be darn its right in our backyard! This explains the historical importance of our group’s site. Little Cottonwood present a couple of interesting geologic processes, with time the cottonwood valley has been eroding and formed an amazing U-shaped valley, we can see this from the Gilbert Geologic park on Sandy UT, along this valley we are able to see waterfalls, also moraine remnants and glacial erratic, cirques, arêtes and horns. Little cottonwood is conformed mostly by igneous rocks known as quartz monzonite, or more generally called granite, between 32 and 31 mya, magma pushed up through the crust into overlaying rock layers and then cooled and solidified before reaching the surface. Quartz monzonite is composed of plagioclase, quartz orthoclase, biotite and hornblende. Magma protruding upwards and cooled quickly and then exposed by weathering and glaciation. Little cottonwood and the Wasatch fault 4 These features include the Wasatch fault line, evidence of glaciations, Lake Bonneville shoreline and Granite bedrock. The Wasatch fault is found at the base of little cottonwood and bells canyon. Little cottonwood canyon is a beautiful place, but how did it form? It formed primarily from the help of the Wasatch fault. Visible from a far, you can clearly see where the fault has pushed up the mountains you see today. The fault sits directly at the base of Little Cottonwood and is the most noticeable fault in the world of its kind, I would definitely advise to go and see it. Glaciations visible throughout little cottonwood where glaciers previously been. Lake Bonneville shoreline shows visible different in sedimentation in the mountain. Granite found all over the park formed from protruding magma, all of these natural geologic features give us information about the place we live in ad what to expect if a unexpected earthquake would happen in the Wasatch Valley. The Wasatch fault is called a normal fault, because the slip is mostly vertical - the mountain block (Wasatch Range) moves upward relative to the adjacent downward-moving valley block. The 240-mile-long fault is sectioned into 10 segments averaging 25 miles in length. Each segment can rupture independently. The Wasatch fault has the dubious distinction of being one of the longest and most active normal faults in the world. The Wasatch fault dips to the west under the valley. The initial point of earthquake rupture, the focus, typically originates about 10 miles below the earth's surface. That places the earthquake epicenter - the point on the ground surface directly above the focus, and usually where the strongest ground shaking occurs - out in the valley. If the earthquake is large enough, rupture can reach the ground surface, displacing the ground along the fault and producing a fault scarp (a steep break in slope) up to 20 feet high. During our trip to Little cottonwood and the Wasatch fault 5 Little Cottonwood we found that this fault scarp has been filled with residential houses and there are people living at risk of their life. As we know that Utah’s is the largest most active fault, Wasatch fault is the largest fault scarps went we enter the park we could see the several different fault scarps from this site because it has once an earthquakes in the past. That what make the landforms to change and creating a beautiful Wasatch mountain that is still there. Little cottonwood glacier was said to be the longest glacier in the Wasatch Range, and had a depth between 450 and 850. The Evidence provides us that I believe the glaciers back in thousands of years of age the glacial features is the U-Shaped Valley of the Little Cottonwood Canyon. There are maybe some several large glacial boulders approximate surface of though glacier that is closed to the moraine crest the lined up side by side of the past as it make up the canyon walls that see around the site from the glacier it has the large rocks or boulders down from the higher part of the canyon. As glaciers change over the years it will leave behind the evidence of erosion or deposition to allow scientists to determine the chronology of past glaciations. If we see the erosion hit the glaciers its can move large rocks, sand/silt, and the rock can transported along the base line of the glaciers. As we see there also a large boulder that are different from the surrounding local of the bedrock or glacial. This will tells us that the boulders and different types of sediment; it is prosperous mining area in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During the Pleistocene, the area was the exit point of a large view of west-flowing trunk glacier into the Salt Lake Valley. When we went along the south side of the valley, the classic U-shape is slightly incised by a V-shape. Travelling up the canyon via highway UT- 210, we parallel the Little Cottonwood Creek for 5 miles. Classic glacial features are apparent along the south side of the valley. Little Cottonwood Valley Little cottonwood and the Wasatch fault 6 preserves evidence of at least 10 glacial cirques and hanging valleys, several of which are compound. Its shows the Little Cottonwood we can easily see the sediments that typically make up its bed load. The Little Cottonwood River system has remaining tailings from mining. The first mining operation in this canyon took place in 1865. There were ore deposits of sliver and lead with some copper, gold, and zinc.