Week 6- Geologic Interpretations

I visited Death Valley in California. Even though this is the lowest and hottest desert in the United States it has many geologic formations such as valley's, basins, mountains, canyon's and sand dunesThe geologic history of Death Valley is extremely complex and involves different types of fault activity at various periods, in addition to crustal sinking and even some volcanic activity. Essentially, Death Valley is a graben, or rift valley, formed by the sinking of a tremendous expanse of rock lying between parallel uplifted, tilted-block mountain ranges to the east and west. A type of fault activity called block faulting, in which the movement is predominantly vertical, began to form the valley about 30 million years ago. As crustal blocks sank, they formed the great trough of the valley, and other blocks were uplifted to gradually form the adjacent mountain ranges.