 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.


 Cedar Breaks: A Rainbow in Stone

   December 28, 2020

    Cedar Breaks A Rainbow in Stone111111111

    Cedar Breaks A Rainbow in Stone2222222

   Photographer:  Ray Boren
   Summary Author:  Ray Boren

   The ragged west rim of Utah’s  Markagunt Plateau and the canyon
   drainages below mark the transition between the  Colorado Plateau
    physiographic province to the east and the  Great Basin province
   to the west. Here —  over the course of 100 million years —
    sedimentation, geologic  uplift and erosion have exposed and
   chiseled a rainbow-hued landscape featuring  layered cliffs,
    hoodoos,  arches,  pinnacles,  ridges and fins. The
   National Park Service tells us the area’s native  Southern Paiutes
   described the rim’s amphitheaters as  u-map-wich — “the place where
   the rocks are sliding down all the time.” Nineteenth-century settlers
   mistook the region’s  juniper trees for  cedars and called the
   broken bluffs breaks. In 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
   declared the natural spectacle to be  Cedar Breaks National
   Monument.

   The first photograph here, taken late on the afternoon of Oct. 15,
   2020, at  Cedar Breaks’ North View overlook, near the resort village
   of Brian Head, Utah, presents most of those natural art forms in almost
   incandescent whites, yellows, oranges, pinks and reds. A second image,
   a panorama captured earlier the same day from a back-road perch to the
   west, offers an intriguing perspective of much of the  Cedar Breaks
   formation.

   Cedar Breaks’ colorful  sedimentary limestone and  siltstone beds
   and layers were deposited about 60 million years ago, during the
    Late Cretaceous Period. At that time the area hosted a great lake,
   which geologists call  Lake Claron. The lakebed’s subsequent
    Claron Formation — uplifted to over 10,000 feet (3000 m) above sea
   level — is composed of  sands, silts and muds eroded from ancient
   mountain ranges; the  calcareous fossils of water-based organisms;
   plus just enough rusty,  oxidizing iron to tint many of the layers.
   World-renowned  Bryce Canyon National Park, on the eastern edge of
   the nearby  Paunsaugunt Plateau, is also a descendant of Lake
   Claron, which covered an area about the  size of today’s Lake Erie.

   Photo Details: Top - Camera: NIKON D3200; Exposure Time: 0.0040s
   (1/250); Aperture: ƒ/10.0; ISO equivalent: 400; Focal Length (35mm):
   36. Bottom - Same except: Exposure Time: 0.0020s (1/500); Aperture:
   ƒ/11.0; Focal Length (35mm): 105
     * North View Lookout, Utah Coordinates:  37.65716, -112.83466

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Geology Links

     *  Earthquakes
     *  Geologic Time
     *  Geomagnetism
     *  General Dictionary of Geology
     *  Mineral and Locality Database
     *  Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness
     *  This Dynamic Earth
     *  USGS
     *  USGS Ask a Geologist
     *  USGS/NPS Geologic Glossary
     *  USGS Volcano Hazards Program

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   Space Research Association.

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