 EPOD - a service of USRA

The Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) highlights the diverse processes
and phenomena which shape our planet and our lives. EPOD will collect and
archive photos, imagery, graphics, and artwork with short explanatory
captions and links exemplifying features within the Earth system. The
community is invited to contribute digital imagery, short captions and
relevant links.


 EPOD 20th - Bisti Wilderness Mushrooms

   October 01, 2020

    Bisti0240ac_15oct19 (002)

    Bisti0171c_14oct19

    January 2020 Viewer's Choice We’re celebrating 20 years of Earth
   Science Picture of the Day during the month of September...and more,
   there are just too many to fit into 30 days! Today’s photo features a
   popular EPOD from the past. Thanks to all of our followers (on the
   blog, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) for supporting us. Thanks also
   to all of you who’ve submitted your photos. We’re most appreciative.
   This EPOD was originally published January 9, 2020.

   Photographer:  Ray Boren
   Summary Author:  Ray Boren

   Those venturing into northwestern New Mexico’s stark
    Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness can be forgiven for feeling like an
   incarnation of English writer  Lewis Carroll’s (aka Charles Lutwidge
   Dodgson) beloved Alice. Hikers find themselves trekking through a
   virtually trailless,  hoodoo-strewn desert — often encountering
   eroded, stone-capped formations, many of which look very much like
   hefty,  lithified mushrooms. These, however, lack a hookah-smoking
   caterpillar like the one illustrator  John Tenniel depicted in
   Carroll’s 1865 fantasy, “ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

   In the first photograph here, taken on October 15, 2019, one such hiker
   makes her way through a maze of Bisti hoodoos sometimes dubbed
   “Mushroom City.” In a second photo, taken the previous evening, on
   October 14, 2019, a lone hoodoo casts a mushroom-like shadow as the
   setting  Sun illuminates the landscape.

   The  Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the 45,000-acre
   (18,211-hectare) wilderness, set aside by the U.S. Congress in 1984 on
   the fringe of the  Navajo Reservation, describes the combined
   western Bisti and eastern De-Na-Zin badlands as a fantastic landscape
   of strange rock formations, some bearing fossils.  Weathering and
   erosion have carved  interbedded  sedimentary layers of
    sandstone,  limestone,  shale,  mudstone,  silt,
    lignite coal and  volcanic ash into hoodoos and other shapes.
   The sediments were laid down up to  70 million years ago in a river
   delta that fed into North America’s  Western Interior Seaway, as
   well as swamps and ponds.

   The word  Bisti derives from a Navajo language description (Bistahí)
   of the shale, or adobe, hills.  De-Na-Zin is from the Navajo for
   standing cranes, depicted on a petroglyph panel. The hills, bluffs,
   cliffs and outcrops range in color from predominant shades of gray and
   tan to red, purple, black and off-white. Besides mushrooms, several
   miles into the badlands visitors encounter other odd, and sometimes
   towering, pinnacles and spires, often topped by  erosion-resistant
   cap rocks. Some feature gravity-defying  cantilevered wings. There
   are also  arches and windows,  petrified logs,  alien eggs —
   and, as some describe it:  a dragon’s head.

   Photo Details: Top - Camera: NIKON D3200; Exposure Time: 0.0020s
   (1/500); Aperture: ƒ/11.0; ISO equivalent: 250; Focal Length (35mm):
   24. Bottom - same except: Exposure Time: 0.0040s (1/250); Aperture:
   ƒ/10.0; ISO equivalent: 400; Focal Length (35mm): 28.
     * Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico Coordinates:  36.2921,
       -108.1298

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Geography Links

     *  Atlapedia Online
     *  CountryReports
     *  GPS Visualizer
     *  Holt Rinehart Winston World Atlas
     *  Mapping Our World
     *  Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
     *  Types of Land
     *  World Mapper

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   Space Research Association.

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