Figure 1.
The areas that I decided to explore further are the North Pinyon Mountains and its surrounding areas including a fault name Earthquake Valley. Since we know that the forces and events happening today have been occurring for a very long time which is called uniformitarianism, we can tell many things about the past. It is also good to have data and evidence to back up claims to what is actually occurring as well. I used different maps with rich data to tell different geological characteristics of the area. The first map is a topological/ fault activity map, I can tell the area has many mountains ranges and surrounding it are many fault areas. These leads me to wonder what plates are working in the area that created these mountains and faults. The map also tells you some of these faults slipped pre-Quaternary time (more than 1.8 million years ago). It also helps know if these faults are active in order to tell what areas future earthquakes can occur. Another map (figure 2) that highlights earthquakes zones that are Seismic Hazard aids also in the ability to tell time relationships and sequencing events of the area. Although I think this is not a great piece of data it does tell you that the area is still active and constant change is occurring. The last piece of data is the rocks themselves and their types. The last map tells you some detail of what rocks you can find in the area and their age. This helps establish when these rocks or sediments were formed. Also, it gives us an idea of what the environment was like during the time it was deposited. Some data here suggest there was a lake at one time in the area. Using the law of superposition, we can track the changes in the environment as well. Other data that I would like to have access to would be fossils. It can tell us under what conditions did the organism die and how it was buried.
Figure 2
Figure 3
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