Week 7 - Death Valley

Checking out Death Valley National Park

Artist's Drive

Artist's Drive

This is probably one of the most fascinating things I have seen. It almost looks surreal! The Artist's Drive Formation consists of blues, greens, reds, coppers, and browns spotted against the mountain faces. I would like to know which minerals cause which colors during chemical weathering and hydrothermal processes. Particularly, I'm interesting in why these colors appear here and not other places of volcanic origin. For example, the St. Francois Mountains in Missouri have their origins in ancient caldera ash-flows and ash-falls, but the most color you will there are reds and pinks.

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point

Another breathtaking scene from Death Valley, which I need to add to my bucket list. Fine-grain sediments hint of a massive water source millions of years ago. The bed consists of mudstone, silt, and clay. Uniquely, the mudstone forms a protective "shingle" that keeps water from penetrating the soil below. I would like to know why that specific form is realized when the silt and clay compress. Is that common to mudstone and found anywhere else you have a sedimentary layer?  What other rocks can be ascertained from the tilted layers? Igneous from some prehistoric volcanic incident (which I am sure as the area was quite active millions of years ago)?

Saratoga Springs

Saratoga Springs

While not the most striking site in Death Valley, it is the most surprising to me. The lush landscapes around the springs seem like they were transplanted from somewhere in the Midwest, like Nebraska or Iowa. Badwater is believed to have been lush and green between 2000 and 4000 years ago, so I wonder if Saratoga Springs somehow survived a similar fate. What does the soil composition look like here versus Badwater? Why are the processes at work here different from Badwater? Is Saratoga Springs dying out as well, and at what rate? These are all questions that I immediately thing of looking at this.