Week 7

Fig 1.  Titus Canyon. Credit: Photo by Tom Bean, NPS

Before we wanted to road trip all over California, a destination I have chosen for us to see was Death Valley. I wanted to learn more abouts the different rocks formation there and I stumble across the website that was about the geology of Death Valley. I went to there image gallery and I found Titus Canyon to be beautiful. In figure 1 you can see the layered rocks and how each layers are different colors. I would like to know about what rocks each layer are because they look so beautiful stacked upon one another. The rocks here are curved and that lead me believe the rocks are folded. The folds were probably due to compressional forces. I would examine the the folded rock and the layered rocks and see if I can determine the oldest to youngest rocks. A geological map probably would help me determine the age of the rocks as well as relative dating.

Fig 2. Titus Canyon Mosaic Credit: Photo by Tom Beans, NPS

My next destination that I wanted to visit was the Titus Canyon Mosaic. In figure 2 You could see huge dark blue colored blocks are encased in a light blue color ground mass. I want to know how the big blue rocks got encased like that and how they are blue instead of a normal earthy color. Knowing what the rocks are made of can lead me to how they became blue. I would have to go examine the rocks in person and see if I can tell what type of rocks they are, but if I can’t a geological map can help me determine the rock types of this Titus Canyon Mosaic. From there, I can do more research on the components that makes up these blue rocks.

Fig 3. Golden Canyon Credit: Ray Nordeen

My last stop that I want to go on is the Golden Canyon. From figure 3  You can tell that there are no cross-cutting relationships in the picture so I know from superposition and original horizontality is that the bottom layer should be the oldest and the youngest layer should be on the top. I want to know what types of sedimentary rocks made up these layers and what geological events occurred to create the Golden Canyon. I also want to figure out what each layers of the Golden Canyon are made of and how old each layers are. To figure this out I would have to look and the standard geological column which was made from radiometric age determination. A geological map that I can use to figure out the age of the rocks or the types of rocks for Golden Canyon is a structural map. A structural map can help me find what kinds of rocks are in that area and the color from the structural map can tell me what age these rocks layers are.