Axel Perez Week 3 Rivers

Illinois River in Oklahoma.

The Illinois River is a river I passed by when I was driving to Oklahoma to visit the state for the first time due to me being stationed there as my first duty station in the United States Air Force. The river was pretty much one very long stream. The valley surrounding the river was a lot of trees just all along the river. There was actually people in floats on the river and as well in boats fishing along the river.

It is a perennial river as there is constantly flowing water year-round for the river. The river does meander a bit as it is very long. The road alongside it basically meanders with the river. As I kept driving down the road, I kept seeing more spots where they were selling different equipment such as rafts and fishing rods to be used on the river. Overall, I didn't get a chance to see the whole thing as it extends into Arkansas, but I managed to see a nice little piece of it.

Week 3 - Rivers

Buck Creek is a relatively small stream running through a park close to my home. It is probably one of my favorite places to take my dog for a walk. This stream is probably only about 40 feet wide and generally only gets to be a couple of feet deep.

Buck Creek after a heavy rain

 In the summers I sometimes stand barefoot in the water and I can feel particles of sediment hitting my feet. This is due to the hydraulic action of the water lifting the sediment from the bottom and carrying it along. I have also noticed that the rocks that are submerged in the water seem to be much more smooth than those that sit higher on the banks, a product of abrasion. This stream usually isn't very deep, however I have seen times after a heavy rain when the water has risen over the banks and flooded a significant portion of the surrounding area, much of the park must be in this stream's floodplain. My favorite part of the stream is near a bridge. A slight bend in the stream has created a small bar where some sediment is deposited making a kind of tiny beach, allowing me to walk right into the water. 

Buck Creek on a normal day

Week Three - Deserts

Mojave Desert

While visiting California last summer, having never been to a desert before, my family and I explored the Mojave Desert. Before arriving, we did some preliminary research. The Mojave Desert is the driest and smallest desert in North America. The Mojave is a very diverse desert with alluvial fans, mesa tops, playa lakes and sand dunes. The Mojave Desert has a typical basin range and topography, with the highest elevation point at 2000 feet and the lowest point at 280 feet above sea level. The lowest point of the Mojave Desert is known as Death Valley; the hottest place in all of North America. It is also home to 2500 different plant and animal species, mostly known for it's native indicator species, the Joshua tree.

Deserts, in general, receive very little precipitation annually, and due to the extreme dry air, experience, a quick evaporation rate. There are three primary contributing factors to the creation of a desert; (1) rain shadow effect, (2) plate tectonics, and (3) location; too far inland and away from water supply. The Mojave Desert is surrounded by the Tehchapi mountain range in the northwest, the Sari and San Bernadino ranges in the South, along with the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The surrounding mountain ranges block precipitation from reaching the Mojave Desert, creating a rain shadow, therefore, the Mojave Desert is a rain shadow effect desert. As clouds make their way up the mountain ranges, the air becomes too dry and cold to hold the precipitation in, resulting in one side of the range receiving the snow or rain, while the other side of the range receives so very little precipitation that a desert forms.

This is a picture of Saline Valley, in Death Valley National Park. This picture illustrates how the Sierra Nevada mountain range acts as a rain shadow. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/rain-shadow/

There are three stages to the formation of a desert; early, middle and late stage. Each stage has unique characteristics associated with it. In the early stages alluvial fans are created. Alluvial fans are the result of sporadic torrential rainfalls that carry large amounts of sediment from the canyons, or run off, which is left at the base of the mountain. The torrential rain fall is typically short and fierce leaving most of the sediment load within a small distance resulting in the creation of cone shaped formations, known as alluvial fans, and seen in the picture below.

Alluvial fans at base of Telescope Peak.

http://digital-desert.com/geology/alluvial-fans.html

The alluvial fans can be so large that they start to cover the mountain ranges and actually look a bit like a small mountain range themselves. Over time, during the middle stage of desert formation, the alluvial fans begin to spread and connect with fans of other nearby canyons, creating bajadas. Bajadas are known as aprons of sediment and are the home to flat, silty, clay lake beds called playa lakes that are formed after rainfall. Because the evaporation rate in a desert is so high, the playa lakes only last a few weeks. Specific to Death Valley in the Mojave Desert, as the playa evaporates, borax or sodium borate is created. This was of specific interest to my children, as borax is a primary ingredient used to make homemade slime! Below is a photo of a playa lake in the Mojave Desert, known as Soda Lake. Look closely and you will see the encrusted salt formation (sodium borate) left behind during the evaporation process.

Evaporate Crust - Soda Lake, Death Valley 

http://digital-desert.com/soda-lake/

By the late stages in desert formation, the many years of water and wind erosion results in a flat plain or sediment filled basins with isolated large rock formations known as inselbergs. The picture below shows the Mojave Desert native, Joshua tree with an inselberg in the background. 

Joshua Tree National Park - inselberg 

http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000XxICrl9Rsgo/s/750/750/joshua-tree-rock-formation-002470.jpg

The Mojave Desert is rich in geologic history, offers so much to explore and provides insight and understanding to all stages of desert development.

Week 3 - Caño Cristales River, Meta, Colombia

Caño Cristales River                                                                 Credit:http://xploracolombia.com

The Caño Cristales river lies in Meta, Colombia. It is commonly referred to as the "river of five colors." This river looks like most rivers for the majority of the year. The water is clear and the water is cool. There is rocked embedded in the earth below the surface of the running river. You can see dark green moss covering the river rock bed. What makes this river special is what happens for a few short months of the year is that the river becomes filled with vibrant colors.

Caño Cristales River                                                                                                       Credit:https://www.atlasobscura.com

The river changes when conditions are met allowing a very unique plant to grow that turns an almost crimson red. Green and yellow sands spots through the growing plant adding color pops through the flowing water. There is a bluish color added from the water, along with all the shades of color formed from the water running and mixing particulates from the surrounding substances. One way to think about it is the way we make new colors by mixing paints. The river acts as a stirring stick and mixes particulates and dissolves them to make different shades as sedimentary buildup.

The conditions for this phenomenon to occur are not rare but required in order to see the spectacular sight. When conditions are too extreme such as too much rain or not enough rain, the river is either flowing too quickly to allow sunlight to get through to grow the Macarenia clavigera. If there is not enough water in the river, the river cannot support the plant growth or vibrant color mixtures from the running water.

Serranía de la Macarena National Park. Caño Cristales is a section of river within the park which stretches over 62 miles. The park is heavily protected and allows up to 200 visitors per a day. The visitors must use special tour companies in order to tour the area. The park consists of woodland areas and its native species. The river would appear on a topographic map with varying space between contour lines. This is because the river is surrounded by a national park that has multiple changes in elevation. This is what allows the flow of water in the river due to the water running down from higher elevations. 

Week 3- Deserts

Mojave Desert

Picture from a New York Post article

By the Associated Press

This summer I visited the Mojave Desert. The Mojave Desert covers a lot of valleys and is stretched across a few states in the Southwestern United States. When I first arrived to the desert I was amazed by the size of it and how endless it looked. I saw that there were some life forms such as plants that were living there. Portions of the Mojave Desert were most likely the shorelines for lakes, streams, and marshes. The climate often gets hot in the summer and colder in the winter. Because of this the lakes and water sources dried up and left holes in the ground. I went on this trip with my family and I tried to explain to them that this desert was most likely located where it is because of the mountain ranges and the water that used to be there. I explained to my family that it was because of a rain shadow, meaning it was basically shadowed off from any precipitation.The sediments that I observed while I was there were gravel and many igneous rocks. I saw there were places where volcanic rocks and other materials had formed. There were carbonate rocks and granitic rocks. While I was there you could tell that this has been forming for many years and that the climate is always changing. The climate plays a huge role into the type of things you might see at different times. This is a beautiful place to visit and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for something fun to do as a family.

Week 3 - River

Checking out the mighty Mississippi River

St. Louis, Missouri lies on the western banks of the Mississippi River, one of the largest drainage systems in North America. In the 1990s, it was easy to catch a ride on an old steamboat (which doubled as a floating McDonalds at the time) and experience the river like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. This mighty river starts in Minnesota, winding southward until draining into the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. Between of all the tributaries that drain into the Mississippi, it reaches thirty one states in totality.

The Mississippi River

The Upper Mississippi is composed of clay, silt, loam, and sand over a stratum of glacial outwash. This multi-threaded river has numerous bars and small islands, lazily wrapping from it's headwaters to around St. Louis, Missouri. It's width at the source begins at a meager 20 feet but can stretch as wide as three miles in parts of Iowa. The headwater depth is roughly three feet, but deepens to 20 to 30 feet deep near St. Louis. The discharge around the source starts at six cubic feet per second (cfs), increasing to 12,000 cfs in Minnesota, and upwards to 180,000 cfs by the time it reaches St. Louis. A characteristic of this section is the rocky bluffs on both sides of the river, most of which are forested areas. As a kid, my grandfather would take us up to the river to one of the many picturesque camping sites. The bluffs provided plenty to see, and some of the smaller tributaries were perfect for canoeing and fishing. 

The Upper Mississippi

The Middle Mississippi starts around St. Louis, Missouri and reaches into Cairo, Illinois at the confluence of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. Cairo, if you aren't aware, is a very unique town that was slated to be the biggest metropolis in the country because of the confluence of the three biggest rivers in the country. Unfortunately, that never happened and the city collapsed. Driving through it today is depressing, but it's build to become an island during flooding (I recommend looking it up). Anyway, the discharge here can get up to 400,000 cfs, with a depth of 50 to 100 feet, and various widths. The flood of 1993 (that I very vividly remember here in St. Louis) saw as high as 1,000,000 cfs! The speed of the river can reach around two miles per hour.

Middle Mississippi

The Lower Mississippi stretches from Cairo, Illinois to Gulf of Mexico and meanders much more here than anywhere else along its path. This partly due to the high volume of discharge, upwards to 500,000 cfs and more in some parts. As the river spiderwebs though Louisiana, the depth of the river can reach as deep as 200 feet.

Lower Mississippi

Umbria Italy

This photo is one I took while my wife and I were traveling through Italy last fall. We stayed in a little cottage in an area called Umbria, (bordering Tuscany). Among our travels throughout different parts of Italy, I enjoyed this region the most because of the natural beauty of the landscape. Although I am used to mountainous landscapes here in Colorado, this was much different. The forests were much denser and most of the rock found in this area is of the Orvieto type. This kind of rock is extremely soft which causes the ground to easily erode and crumble especially during the rainy season.

Scotland

Last time when I was in Scotland, there were numerous Igneous rocks  that I found wherever volcanic activity has brought, or is bringing, magma, ash etc. to the surface where they form basalt, tufa etc. There are also igneous rocks that form underground, and have become exposed by erosion, eg. granites, intrusive dykes. For example, Edinburgh Castle sits atop an extinct volcano.

Week 2- Glacier

Courtesy of alaska.org

Me and my wife visited the Harvard Glacier at the head of the College Fjord in Alaska. This type of glacier is known as a valley glacier or alpine glacier. Alpine glaciers start on mountains in bowl shaped hollows called a cirque. Then the ice slowly flows out into a valley and forms the alpine glacier.

Courtesy of summitpost.com

The dark lines that you see are called medial moraines. consists of a long, narrow line or zone of debris formed when lateral moraines join at the intersection of two ice streams; the resultant moraine is in the middle of the combined glacier. It is deposited as a ridge, roughly parallel to the direction of ice movement.

Igneous Rock at the Jocassee Gorges in South Carolina

When I lived in South Carolina, I took a road trip on my motorcycle to see the waterfall at the Jocassee Gorges. This waterfall is at the edge of the blue ridge mountains. This area of the mountain range is made up for non native rocks stacked on top of each other. They are made from Igneous rock that has been changed through metamorphosis. I found these pictures of the waterfall online at www.ncwaterfalls.com and is the typical “post card picture” when talking about the Jocassee Gorges.

You can see the stacked layers of rock in the second picture.

Yosemite National Park - Igneous Rocks

                                                                Yosemite National Park

The first time I visited Yosemite national Park was during a family trip to visit my aunt in San Jose California. It was a magnificent place. These enormous light color rocks are "granite", that what I thought when I first saw them. But taking a closer look, just like the picture above, this rock is actually diorite. Diorite and granite are closely related. Granite is composed mainly of quartz and feldspar while diorite is mainly composed of feldspar and other dark-colored minerals. They are both igneous rocks and are a common example of an intrusive igneous rock. They are called intrusive because they cooled and solidified beneath the surface. When that happens, the process is slow, slow enough for crystals to form. That's why intrusive igneous rocks have larger visible crystals.
This is truly a fascinating place. I can't wait to visit again and perhaps learn a bit more about Geology and igneous rocks.

Trip to El Capitan

Joel Checo

Apple once called their computer operating system El Capitan, and provided those who use their products with a beautiful look at the rock face. This beautiful mountain in the Yosemite national park has graced only my screen until this week. My girlfriend and I traveled to see this true marvel up close and personal. The amazing mountain contains granite which is an ingenious rock like we have been looking at this week in class.

Travel Journal North Table Mountain Golden Cliffs Trail

 For my travel journal I hiked on the Golden Cliffs trail on North Table Mountain, where visitors can visit the southern cliff walls of the mountain. The Table mountains in Golden I found in my research were popular for finding igneous rocks, many of which I found look similar to other postings but I was specifically excited to find a peice of rock pertruding out eroded by water from rainfall as much of the moutain seemed to be weathered from but with a portion of the top of it broken and fallen below. In the rock specimen I noticed that it was dark much like basalt but inside their were no aparent crystals because this specific rock was obsidian and amorphus meaning uncrystalyzed. This is usually formed by fast cooling lava but there were no apparent signs of this as the bubbles were very small and there were no visible signs of large bubbles of air trying to escape as would be evident by rapid cooling normally.  I also found small shards of a shiny black like crystal material which explained why this specimen didn't have the crystal like mineral formation many other rocks had,  I had found volcanic glass! The texture on the glass was noticeably smooth compared to the rest of the specimen which was very neat. I also found that under some peices of the glass material the specimen underneath was still viewable showing the translucency of the glass formed by the complex state of glass

being between a gas and crystal.

The glass unfortunately doesn't show as well in the photo:/

NJ Highlands

The area that I grew up in, in New Jersey is part of the NJ Highlands. This area expands from the Appalachian mountains and has a very diverse geological background.

Hiking is a big activity in NJ because of the mountains and the rocks that have formed. The rocks are mainly sedimentary and igneous do to how and when their formation occurred (approximately 1.3 billion years ago), granite and basalt being some of the most prevalent igneous rocks in the Highlands and in the town that I grew up in (Ringwood, NJ).

In the pictures shown above, the igneous rocks are intrusive, basalt. The intrusiveness can be determined by the area the rocks are in and the rocks are basalt because of the color and texture. The color is daark and light grays and the texture is fine-grained.

Some of the oldest rocks in NJ are located in the Highlands. There is even the Sterling Hill Mine in that same area. We went there on a field trip in third grade when we were learning about geology and were able to "mine" all of the different kinds of rocks that are found throughout NJ and take them home.

Aphrodite Rocks, Cyprus

Last spring break my sister and I visited Cyprus .  Cyprus is a Very beautiful place and a great distraction from reality . We felt like going somewhere different for once . We stayed at a nice hotel kinda far from Aphrodite Rocks .

My sister and I got bored and decided to travel and take tours to see some beautiful sites. We visited Cyprus also known as Petra tou Romulus beach . They have tours for nearly $50 . I thought it was a lot of money on my opinion . We still went on the tour despite the pricing . While on the beach is was filled with tiny pebbles . They really made my feet hurt so I quickly put my shoes back on . Looking out onto the ocean you see Aphrodite Rock. It is a large rock that is far into the ocean . Some people were out in the ocean on top on the rock, having a good time .

This place is supposed to be the birth place of Aphrodite , the Goddess of love . The story is that she emerged from the ocean . She chose this rock to begin her life as a human.

Test

Hello Everyone this is a picture I took a couple years ago

Castle Rock - Castle Rock, Colorado

It was a beautiful day about, albeit a bit windy, so today I took a short hike up "Castle Rock," in it's namesake city, Castle Rock, Colorado.

Castle Rock is a rhyolite formation at the top of a hill, formed by a volcanic eruption tens of millions of years ago.  At the base of the rock, you can see the erosion that's taken place over this time, which lead to the Rock's exposure.

Upon inspection, the rhyolite is quite fine grained in texture.  It has a pinkish hue to it in most places, with the occasional grey portion most noticeably on the North side of the Rock.  There are numerous places where you can see the small voids created by rapid cooling of the rock when being created.  I had never looked this closely at the Rock before, but with the small amount of knowledge I've gained over the past week or so, I can appreciate the formation on a whole new level.

All in all, it was a great quick day hike (Only 1.4 miles round trip), and you get a great view of the town below (and Pikes Peak in the background!).

 I would certainly recommend it to anyone in the area! 

Mount Rushmore

Last summer my buddy and I went on a road trip and we decided to stop by South Dakota to check out Mt. Rushmore.  We couldn't help but admire the visages of our former presidents carved into an intrusive igneous rock formation.  The rock formation that would one day become Mt. Rushmore started out as magma underneath the earth's surface.  Over time this molten rock cooled and formed an igneous rock formation. Eventually, this rock formation reached the Earth's surface through a combination of uplifting an erosion which makes it an intrusive rock formation.  The light color of Mt. Rushmore is attributed to the fact that it is made of felsic rock meaning it's comprised of a combination of quartz and feldspar.  The part of the rock formation that was carved into the monument is made up of an aphantic, or fine grained, textured granite because that part of the formation cooled very quickly which gave it the fine grained texture.

After a while my buddy and I got bored of staring at rocks and decided to go to a bar. It was a good day.

The Marble Caves of Chile

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/22/general-carrera-lake-photos_n_4640023.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/22/general-carrera-lake-photos_n_4640023.html

A few days ago, I visited Lake General Carrera in Patagonia, Chile with some family friends to see the beautiful formations of igneous rock.  Using a small raft, we were able to capture the beauty of the blue caves created by nature. The regional metamorphic rock of the cavern walls is marble, but unlike most marble it appears blue in color. Which is from the clear pristine water washing up against the rock, for more than 6,200 years. The Marble Cathedral coined for it beautiful wall shows just how magnificent the geography of the Earth can be. With its relatively soft texture and clean appearance, it likely formed from mineral calcite.

Pike's Peak

    As part of this class I thought it would be fun to take my daughter over to red rocks.  I thought it must be a great place to find some igneous rocks, with how big and weathered some of those formations were.  Unfortunately for me I discovered quickly that the red rocks were in fact sandstone and therefore sedimentary rocks.  This became much clearer when examining the formations up close, as you can clearly see the  made from the erosion of the ancient rocky mountains according to the information plaques in the park.
  Now, you would think that I would do a little more research before heading out again, but instead I decided to just head down and take a family trip to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.  Low and behold, according to the park information booths and posters, Garden of the Gods was in fact also sandstone created from the erosion and weathering of the ancient rocky mountains.
  Not to be deterred, the family and I decided to try head over to Pikes Peak, which thanks to the unusual lack of precipitation in the area this winter was no problem.  We didn't go up the entire mountain, however we did run across some interesting looking rocks that had the color of the sandstone in Red Rocks Park, but a much different texture and appearance.  It was much more course grained than the sandstone.  I didn't think to bring any of the lab kit tools, and since my knowledge of minerals is still very elementary, I could not for sure say what type of minerals it was most made of.  I can however say from the coloration that feldspar (according to our textbook) had to make up a large part of rocks.  Further research after some prompts from the information centers in Pikes Peak lead me to find out that it is in fact known as Pikes Peak Granite.