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Posts treating: "Coast Ranges"

Friday, 05 January 2018

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A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: The Story Told by a Single Rock 

Geotripper [2018-01-05 07:10:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (8 visits) info
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I'm commemorating a decade of blogging by dredging the archives for some of my favorite posts. 2010 was a turbulent year. We were still in the depths of the Great Recession (at least in our area), my summer trip was cancelled for the only time in the last 29 years, we broke ground on our new Community Science Center (affordable only because of the recession and the drop in construction bids),

A Netherworld Incompatible with the Existence of Life: The Mantle Exposed at Del Puerto 

Geotripper [2015-12-20 01:58:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (704 visits) info

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Our journey into the interior of the Earth has reached a remarkable boundary, the base of the oceanic crust. Beyond the crust, underneath the Mohorovičić discontinuity, lies the mantle, a layer that extends halfway to the center of the Earth. We have been driving up Del Puerto Canyon, a scenic route that crosses the Diablo Range in the central part of California's Coast Ranges. The rocks at

One of Those Precious Days, Seeing Half Dome from the Great Valley 

Geotripper [2015-11-05 09:14:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (148 visits) info

 US
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Sometimes, it is the context that makes something precious. A drink of water on a hot day in the desert, for instance. A few drops of rain in a crippling drought. In our valley, a clear day is a precious thing. The Great Valley of California is surrounded by mountains. The Sierra Nevada rises to an elevation of nearly three miles on the east side, while the Coast Ranges to the west approach

Bath Geological Society - CHANGES 

Geology in the West Country [2015-08-10 17:06:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (165 visits) info

 Neogene,Paleogene; US,CA,KM,CO,
Please note the following changes to our lecture and field trip programmeSeptember 3rdGeological evolution of N American cordilleraDr Doug RobinsonThe North American Cordilleran mountain chain runs N-S along western North America, and reaches up to ~ 500 km in width. The chain consists of a number of mountain ranges such as the Rocky Mountains and Coast Ranges, along with a variety of geological entities including the Basin and Range Province, Colorado plateau, Cascade volcanic arc, Columbia [...]

Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: Into the Realm of the Drowning Dinosaurs 

Geotripper [2015-05-18 09:43:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (638 visits) info

 Neogene,Paleogene; US
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The sediments of the Great Valley Group form the parallel ridges trending diagonally across the photograph. California has a lot of potential for geological mayhem, with the San Andreas and many other faults, mountain-building, and volcanoes of many kinds. But it once was worse. During the Mesozoic era and the early part of the Cenozoic, the entire California coast was rimmed by a

Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: The Alien Bursts Forth in the Diablo Range! 

Geotripper [2015-04-29 08:36:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (140 visits) info

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The strange alien terrane bursts out of the core of the Diablo Range! The next stage of our journey through the most dangerous plate boundary on the planet takes us across the Coast Ranges from the Bay Area to the Great Valley. There are freeways that make the trip easy, but they don't go through the interesting parts. Traveling Interstate 580 at 65mph, one mostly just sees grassy

More Days Like This Please 

Geotripper [2015-02-07 07:32:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (152 visits) info

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Sierra Nevada looking east from the Great Valley. The mountains are in the southern part of Yosemite National Park. I live in one of the most polluted valleys in the United States. The Great Valley of California is a 400 mile long enclosed basin, with the Sierra Nevada to the east and the Coast Ranges to the west. The rivers that flow into the valley exit in only one place, the

Caves in the Coast Ranges? Really? And a National Park? A Peek at Pinnacles 

Geotripper [2014-11-23 07:46:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (688 visits) info

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Bear Gulch Cave at Pinnacles National Park California's Coast Ranges hide some real gems (literally: check out benitoite, for instance). One of my favorites is also the nation's newest national park: Pinnacles National Park. The park was first established as a national monument by Teddy Roosevelt in 1908, and given national park status in 2013. The park preserves the spire-like remains of

4.2 Magnitude Earthquake near San Juan Bautista 

Geotripper [2014-11-20 08:51:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (170 visits) info

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What else are you going to call a restaurant situated right on the San Andreas? A 4.2 magnitude earthquake struck at 10:26 PM PST tonight about 3 miles south of the town of San Juan Bautista in the Coast Ranges of Central California (the official USGS report is here). It was preceded by a magnitude 3.6 foreshock at 10:21 PM. It was felt over a fairly large region, but quakes of this

Viewing Half Dome from the Great Valley 

Geotripper [2014-03-10 05:09:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (591 visits) info

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Once or twice a year the air clears in the Great Valley. Our valley as great as it is, is a closed basin. The Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges make it hard for air pollution and dust to move out of the region, and as such the cities of the San Joaquin Valley (south of Stocton) often appear on the top ten "most polluted air" lists. On those few clear days, my eyes drift east towards the

What Creature of the Great Valley Could Have Snacked on Velociraptors? This one... 

Geotripper [2013-11-28 08:41:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (75 visits) info

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I apologize for the quality of the photographs today; they are from my phone, which is all I had when our latest display specimen arrived in our department. It's an exciting addition to the collection. We have been making a concerted effort over the last decade to raise the quality of science education in our impoverished community, an effort supported by our community with the passage of

Hitting the Road: California's Volcanic Lands 

Geotripper [2013-09-19 09:38:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (49 visits) info
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There are lots of volcanoes in California, in the deserts, the eastern Sierra Nevada, even in the Coast Ranges, but the most recent and most diverse volcanoes are in the north state, in the Cascades Range and the Modoc Plateau. I'm headed up there tomorrow with my students.  We are spending our time in Lava Beds National Monument which sits on the flank of California's biggest volcano

The Geologist's Top 100 List 

About Geology [2013-01-01 02:41:54]  recommend  recommend this post  (87 visits) info

 Neogene,Paleogene
In late 2008 there was a list running around the blogs, Geotripper's "100 Things You've Done, Geologist's version". Looks like I'm halfway through with 50 or so: Boldface entries are things I've done, with notes in parentheses and links when appropriate: 1. See an erupting volcano 2. See a glacier 3. See an active geyser 4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary 5. Observe a river whose discharge is above bankful stage 6. Explore a limestone cave 7. Tour an open pit mine 8. Explore a [...]

Do Real Estate Agents Have to Tell You About This Kind of Thing? California Has Her Faults 

Geotripper [2012-11-19 03:59:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (143 visits) info
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It was the third weekend in November, and thus time for our last field studies excursion of the year. We headed into the Coast Ranges of California, braving rain and wind for a chance to investigate the San Andreas and related faults, and to explore one of the lesser-known gems of the National Park System, Pinnacles National Monument. One of our first stops (and indeed a stop for

The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: Beginnings 

Geotripper [2012-07-02 09:21:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (80 visits) info
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The soil. And water. It's everything. No matter how many toys we invent, the cars, the computers, the planes, all the things we call the necessities of life, without soil we are done for. Without water, life withers away. We all depend on it, no matter how far removed from the land we have become. Central Valley and Coast Ranges from near New Hogan Reservoir The land that is my home,

All of these are not like the other, but, then again they are. 

Geotripper [2012-04-21 06:55:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (142 visits) info
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I asked the other day what three very different places could possibly have in common with each other: the Sierra Nevada, California's Great Valley (others call it the Central Valley), and the Coast Ranges. You could have missed it, as I filled the first part of the post with lots of wildflowers. These landscapes are about as different as could possibly be...the Sierra Nevada is a vast

Some Spring Wildflowers from the Coast Ranges, and a mini-quiz 

Geotripper [2012-04-19 09:58:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (77 visits) info
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Lindley was apparently a busy botanist. Being the non-botanist I am, I was trying to identify some of the spring wildflowers I photographed last week in Del Puerto Canyon in California's Diablo Range. I tracked down two of them, and both were named for Lindley. I don't know if it was for the same person, but I do see on the Google that there was a John Lindley who was an English botanist in

The Other California Compilation Updated 

Geotripper [2012-01-22 07:10:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (31 visits) info
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I posted several entries in my long-running blog series on the "Other California" and realized that I was linking to a compilation page that was woefully out of date. I went through and added more than two dozen entries that I posted over the last two years, including a lot of material for the Sierra Nevada, the Transverse Ranges, and the Coast Ranges. If you are curious about some of areas

Spending a Day in the Earth's Mantle: Exploring Del Puerto Canyon in California's Coast Ranges 

Geotripper [2011-12-04 21:13:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (36 visits) info
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There aren't many places where you can drive into the Earth's mantle. It is the 1,900 mile thick layer that constitutes something like 80% of the volume of the planet, but on the continents it lies hidden beneath many miles of crust. We've never drilled into it, so getting to it isn't easy. Unless you live near California's Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains. In these places, fragments of

A Convergence of Wonders, Day 16: Our Home Mountains, Giant Swimming Reptiles, and a Bunny 

Geotripper [2011-08-08 10:05:00]  recommend  recommend this post  (80 visits) info
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After 15 days and 4,200 miles, we woke up to the last day of our Convergence of Wonders, the geological tour of the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rocky Mountains. It was June 30th. We had traveled through the Cascades and the Coast Ranges, the present-day manifestation of convergence along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. We had traveled across the Columbia Plateau and the Channeled Scablands,
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