The Amazing Colorado

A picture of the continental divide and a simple
example of the watersheds.

Colorado has a lot of interesting physical geographic features but the two that we will talk about are the continental divide and the Colorado plateau. The Colorado mountains are included in the continental divide, the high elevation of the mountains located in central Colorado separates the continent’s watersheds. “A region's watershed is the area of land where all of the water is under it or drains off of it and goes into the same place" (Epa.gov). Colorado’s high elevation will determine if water in North America will flow west to the Pacific or east to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi basin. Another interesting physical landform in Colorado is the Colorado Plateau. This plateau is the biggest plateau in the world covering a total area of 130,000 square miles. This plateau also has a very geologically intriguing feature of being extremely stable. This has kept it around for about 500 to 600 million years with very little movement or breakdown.

An educated guess looking a thousand years into the future for the landscape of Colorado would lead one to conclude that Colorado itself will not experience much change. Due to geologic time, a thousand years is too short to notice any measurable landscape shifts in this region. We can hypothesize this because Colorado does not lie on any faults or any plates. Therefore a landscape change in a thousand years is not probable.

After ten thousand years however, you could probably start to see some sort of measurable difference in the height of our Rockies. This difference would not be big at all but since the Rockies are growing at a rate of about 5 to 10 millimeters a year. You could calculate that they would’ve grown about two inches in the ten thousand year period. The Rockies are growing due to the subduction, going under and sinking, of the Farallon plate under the North American plate. This event happened around 70 million years ago to get the Rockies close to what the are now and the Rockies are growing now because of the isostatic rebound of that event. The surface tends to rise or sink as the lithosphere rises or sinks in the asthenosphere trying to reach an equilibrium of pressure between the two layers. Right now the lithosphere is rising in its attempt to get to equilibrium.

In one million years if the growth of the Rockies, it continues at the rate it is currently going, you will have estimated that the Rockies will have grown about 16 feet. This is due to the influence of the isostatic rebound going on that was explained in the paragraph above. The Rockies are the only thing in all of Colorado’s landscape that are having a significant change going on. Also you can assume that the Colorado plateau will not see any change at all in this time period due to its extreme stability.

Wrapping it all up you can say that in time the Rocky Mountains will keep growing and keep expanding at some rate and our unique physical geographic features will keep staying sexy.

A picture of the beautiful Colorado Plateau showing a
small portion of its true size. 

Works Cited http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/whatis.cfm 

http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/isost.html#Isostatic

http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/province/rockymtn.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Plateau

http://clasfaculty.ucdenver.edu/callen/1202/

An Introduction to Us

This is a blog for people who love the Colorado outdoors and appreciate the spectacular glory of nature! We are four friends who happened to land in the same class and are really into living life to the fullest! This is a little bit about ourselves.

I am Melissa Peabody, a Business Marketing major born and raised In Littleton Colorado! I love to dance and  have for 9 years ! I'm currently in training  to become  a broncos cheerleader in fall 2014 (: I love to shop and spend time with my family and friends I have a very upbeat personality and love people!

I am Alex Tziolis, a freshman undergraduate Geography (Urban Studies) major at the University of Colorado at Denver. I was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1993, lived there for roughly seven years until 2000 where my family moved to Athens, Greece. After twelve years in Athens and finishing my high school studies in 2012, I decided to come to Denver for a year to pursue my interests in urban studies. Despite being an urban rat most of my life, I do enjoy viewing physical and natural geography as well.

I am Trevor Burkholder. I am a Business Marketing major, I come from the land of potatoes. I moved out here to enjoy the beautiful mountains of Colorado and go to the college of my dreams. I am an avid snowboarder and love the outdoors, if I'm not snowboarding then I am out biking or fishing. All around I am a pretty relaxed guy with an interest in the unknown. 

Hello, I am Corey Cooper Stevens and have lived in Colorado my entire life. The intriguing part about living in Colorado is the spectacular opportunity the region provides its inhabitants with a vast array of topography. I have spent my time in Colorado becoming an accomplished musician, student, fly fisherman, mountain biker, skier, hiker, water skier, and all around healthy human being. Attending CU Denver is the first part of a long list of educational goals that I would like to accomplish throughout my life with the dream of someday attending CU Boulder to study law. Creating this blog will help me to further explore the region that I call home and become more inspired to pursue a lifestyle rich with understanding and appreciation. 

Weather Patterns of the Climate of Denver

Cumulonimbus Clouds over The University of Colorado Denver Campus

Denver is a well known place for having bipolar weather at certain times of the year. It may come as a surprise to most people that March is actually the number one month in Colorado for snow followed by April as the number two month. The recent storms that have hit Denver this April are common for this area’s climate.This is due to two different bodies of air called air masses, which are filled with different pressures, temperatures and humidity; that collide over Colorado.  Continental and Maritime Tropical air masses travel northward up into the North American continent where the air meets cooler Polar Continental air masses that come from the North. When the two masses of warm and cool air meet over the Central American plains often extremes in weather can occur. The warmer more humid Maritime Tropical air that comes from the gulf meets with cooler less humid continental polar air forcing the tropical air  to ascend above the northern cooler air which forms large cumulonibus clouds that cause most thunderstorms over the Denver region. Cumulonimbus storm clouds can be massive and carry hundreds of millions of gallons of water, these cumulonimbus clouds are formed by the process of the ascent of the sub-tropic air currents rising above the moving in cold air mass. Vital to both Colorado’s arid climate and the drainage basin of the Colorado river. Categorized as a dry steppe climate, Colorado has semi-arid weather patterns that are often times unpredictable and bring the region in an out of times where water is plentiful for years, and other years where severe droughts occur. This specific climate is classified as BSk on the Koppen climate classification commonly referrerd to as the aforementioned dry steppe climate. The Koppen climate classification is one of the most used climate classifications in the world, it combines annual/monthly temperatures and precipitation.

Cumulus and Cirrus Clouds over The University of Colorado Denver Campus

Souces:

http://clasfaculty.ucdenver.edu/callen/1202/

http://www.wikepedia.com

The Geology of Table Mountain: Golden Colorado

The formation of Table Mountain and it's geologic history

Photo (c) 2007 Andrew Alden, licensed to About.com 

North and South Table Mountains are made up of igneous extrusive basaltic rock, basalt is a form of igneous rock, rocks that are formed by the process of the cooling of Earth’s magma or lava. Extrusive means that these rocks were formed on the surface as opposed to intrusive igneous rocks that are formed below the Earth’s crust. Flows of lava occurred throughout Colorado during the time of the Laramide Orogeny, a regional continental contraction of the North American Plate due  in part to the increase in elevation of the plate as a result of the  subduction of the Farallon plate under the region, this activity  can be dated back to the Tertiary period around 63 million years ago. A combination of weathering and erosion can be attributed to the process of forming the mountains, more robust basalt lava did not erode as quickly as surrounding areas,  therefore the elevation of the top of the rock now rises to more than 450 feet above the surrounding Golden Valley. Table Mountain was separated into North and South respectively by Clear Creek. The river eroded softer rock that is located beneath the harder igneous rock, causing the igneous rock to collapse, forming a small canyon between the mountains. The composition of the layers of rock (also called strata) that make up North and South Table Mountains varies depending on the geologic time frame around which that strata was formed. For example, the uppermost layer of North and South Table Mountains is comprised mostly of densely concentrated mineral crystalline structures that form an overlying layer of mafic basalt rock.  Uniquely, the North Table mountain contains an additional layer, that contains zeolites, which are made up of aluminum, silica and water, thus making it felsic, which represents the softer rock that is beneath the harder mafic rock that is more easily eroded by climatic processes.



Bibliography:

Alden, Andrew. "Geology of Golden, Colorado." About.com Geology. About Guides, 2013. Web.    
    
12 Mar. 2013. <http://geology.about.com/od/geology_co/ig/goldencologeo/>.

Allen, Dr. Casey D. "Volcanic Landforms." Lecture. Introduction to Physical Geography. Mar.
    
2013. Professor Allen's Geog 1202 Syllabus. Clasfaculty. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
    
<http://clasfaculty.ucdenver.edu/callen/1202/Battle/Build/VolcanicEx/Extrusive.html>.

"Igneous Rock." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Feb. 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
    
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igneous_rock>.









 

The Rock Formations at Ken Caryl Ranch

Hogbacks

A hogback is a homoclinal ridge, formed from a monocline. Over time erosion takes place and the softer rock erodes from the harder overlying rock. In time this erosion makes a cliff of visible strata which protrudes out on one side, with adjacent sides that have a similar vertical incline. These particular hogbacks are called the Dakota Hogbacks and were formed by the more erosional resistant Lytle and South Platte Formations protecting the softer, slope-forming Morrison Formation. These hogbacks are part of a very large string of hogbacks that run along our front range, they vary in size, dip and exposure depending where you are. A very good example,  is where we took these pictures, the hogbacks can be seen from Dinosaur Ridge close to Red Rocks Park.

Dakota Hogbacks west of Ken Caryl Valley

Sandstone Red Rocks

We reached the top of this red rock from

the face shown below on the opposite side of the rock,

the picture does not do justice to how large these rocks actually are.

The formation of the sandstone red rocks throughout the eastern front range of the Colorado Rockies can be attributed to events that took place as far back as 600 million years ago. Over about 300 million years, a geological blink of time, the Ancestral Rockies eroded due to a massive intercontinental seaway, paving the way for the creation of the Rocky Mountains formed over the past 70 million years. Earth’s crust or lithosphere is a constantly moving mass that is attempting to balance on the Asthenosphere a molten layer below the lithosphere to create an equal isostatic state or balance of pressure. In this process, the lithosphere’s tectonic plates can interact with other plates and their boundaries.The subduction of the ancient oceanic Farallon plate under the North American plate brought the previously separated Pacific Plate and North American plates together. The isostatic rebound of the North American plate and Colorado Plateau is a result of the Farallon subduction, this event raised the previously eroded and compacted sediments of the Ancient eroded Rockies to expose the strata or layers of rock that form the Ken Caryl Red Rocks.

Clearly Defined Strata

The sandstone rock face that we scaled was actually surprisingly 

easier to climb than originally perceived because of the rocks grainy texture.

Us at the top (above) and the view from the top (below)

An impressive fissure that we found! (crack in the rock)

Bibliography:
"Geological History." Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.<http://ken-carylranch.org/community-
   news/history-of-ken-caryl-ranch/geological-history/>

"Hogback (geology)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 02 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.

Share, Dr. Jack. "The Ancestral Rocky Mountains and Their Eroded Remnants." Web log post.          
    Written in Stone...seen through My Lens. Blogger, 19 Feb. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.