View allAll Photos Tagged Geologic
Purnululu National Park UNESCO World Heritage Site
Bungle Bungle Ranges
Kimberley Western Australia
The orange colour of these sandy layers is caused by the iron in the sediments oxidising (rusting).
South Platte Rive, Colorado - My meditative spot. I'm sitting on a rock as I took this. I go here a couple times a week to sit and appreciate the beauty of nature.
A section through a 'cave pearl'. These form in shallow pools in mines and caves from calcite/aragonite precipitating around a nucleus. Continuous movement of the 'pearl', either by water dropping on it or water flowing slowly through the pool, allows precipitation in concentric layers around the whole nucleus - hence the 'pearl'. Eventually the 'pearl' may get too large to be moved around by the water at which point precipitation may only occur on its upper surface effectively turning it into a stalagmite. That's what happened in this case. This is from the floor of a Great Oolite mine - one of the mines used to supply Bath Stone (the stone used to build Bath). It is about 5 cm across.
Mining Drill
Bob Campbell Geology Museum
Clemson University
This was part of the outside display and shows a mining drill that could be used to bore holes for explosive charges..
Azores schematic geology. ©1999 V.H. Forjaz in: Atlas Básico dos Açores, 2004
This schematic shows a fan-shaped triangular microplate with its point of origin east of Santa Maria Island in the Azores-Gibraltar fault zone.
The "feather-pattern" of these long SE-NW trending fractures may be related to a left-handed rotation of the African tectonic plate. Fractures between the "fan blades" would tend to open progressively from E to W and thus allow for the emplacement of today's Azores Islands.
New oceanic crust is being added continuously by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) spreading zone to the western end of the fan blades.
This schematic predates more recent suggestions of short sections of MAR being displaced over several hundred kilometers and observable on São Miguel Island among other places (see: Ron Redfern, 2000/2002, ORIGINS, The evolution of continents, oceans and life). An alternative explanation for short staggered "spreading sections" may be the existence of a conjugate set of northerly-trending feather fractures allowing for local extensional regimes.
JT 2007
Another view from Blackford Hill today, this time zooming towards the southern flank of the Castle rising on its huge rock above the city. How can you not fall in love with a city that gives you endless and magnificent views like this from multiple hills, centuries of architecture, history and literature embedded into that cityscape. And it is always changing, I find myself taking shots of the same spots again and again as the weather changes, the light changes, the shadows move, the seasons alter the quality of the light, it's the same city but it keeps changing and I love it
USA West Coast Fly Drive holiday in the autumn of 1988.
We left the Grand Canyon, heading east towards Cameron on Hwy 64 then north on Hwy 89 to Lake Powell.
We passed more beautiful and dramatic scenery along the way.
Driving on Hwy 89 north of Cameron. It is part of a Navajo Indian Reservation.
These are from the White Pocket, a remote geologic wonder which is located about 25 miles from Page, Arizona - as the crow flies. Getting there, however, is about a 2 hour drive on account of the canyons that are in the way (which make it about a 60 mile drive) and the SANDY road. The last ten miles of the drive are through sand...deep sand. So deep that the under carriage of your vehicle may be plowing through it - it sucks. The scenery on the drive is boring, there is very little hint of what awaits you when you get there. After about an hour of crapping your drawers, worrying that you're going to get stuck in the middle of nowhere; you get out and see this amazing array of colors and shapes. It looks like some nutty pastry chef got carried away with the icing - red, yellow, white and gray swirls of sandstone all over the place. I went with a friend for a sunset and sunrise shoot, with a very peaceful, if somewhat cold (16 degrees) night of camping. It's an amazing place.
This section of the northern California coast has some really interesting geologic phenomena. Such as these discs. They're about 10 feet in diameter and seem to break off in even segments. Of course, I called them Jurassic Krispy Kreme donuts ;-)
Cappadocia region, Turkey.
Devrent Valley (also known as Imaginary Valley) is full of unique rock formations, many of which are said to resemble animal shapes. Personally, although I have an active imagination, I saw few shapes that on cue I could see any critters. There were quite a few unusual shapes among the hoodoos.
This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
While this art installation isn't specifically covered in CSC, I thought I'd include it here anyway.
It's officially dubbed "Cloud Gate," but Chicagoans have nicknamed it "The Bean" (see my other photo of it in this album to see why). This 2004 sculpture by Anish Kapoor has a seamless stainless-steel exterior that attracts tourists and other park visitors like wasps to a picnic jampot. Note how the upper half of the reflected image of the Aon Center (formerly the Amoco/Standard Oil Building) has a roseate glow from the last rays of the setting Sun.
Stainless steel is, in its own way, as geologically derived a material as stone or fired clay. Its base element, iron, is nowadays mostly extracted from Precambrian Banded Iron Formation deposits containing magnetite and hematite. But unlike normal, corroding steel, the stainless variety is an alloy not of iron and carbon, but of iron and chromium extracted from the ore chromite. Nickel and molybdenum are sometimes also added.
For more on the Windy City's architectural geology, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
Cappadocia region, Turkey.
Paşabaği means "Pasha’s Vineyard", a name it received after the Byzantine Greek population left the region and the vineyards they planted in the area.
Paşabaği contains some of the most striking fairy chimneys in Cappadocia with twin and even triple basalt rock caps covering the more easily erodible volcanic tuff. Like the cave hotels in modern day Cappadocia, the fairy chimneys of Paşabaği harbor a number of cave dwellings as well as chapels once used by Christian hermits, the most prominent of which is a tri-level chapel dedicated to St. Simeon (Simon) and a hermit’s shelter, built into one of the fairy chimneys with three conical heads.
The Trona Pinnacles are an unusual geological feature in the California Desert National Conservation Area. The landscape consists of more than 500 tufa spires (porous rock formed as a deposit when springs interact with other bodies of water), some as high as 140 feet (43 m), rising from the bed of the Searles Lake (dry) basin. The pinnacles vary in size and shape from short and squat to tall and thin, and are composed primarily of calcium carbonate (tufa). They now sit isolated and slowly crumbling away near the south end of the valley, surrounded by many square miles of flat, dried mud and with stark mountain ranges at either side.
During the Pleistocene, massive runoff spilled from the Sierra Nevada into a chain of inland seas. The system of interconnected lakes stretched from Mono Lake to Death Valley and included Searles Lake. Deep beneath Searles Lake, calcium-rich groundwater and alkaline lake water combined to grow tufa formations. Similar (modern) formations can be found today at Mono Lake to the north. Known as tufa pinnacles, these strange shapes formed underwater 10,000 to 100,000 years ago. The pinnacles did not all form at the same time. They are divided by age and elevation into three groups. The groups are dubbed the northern, middle, and southern groups because they formed during three ice ages.
The northern group is the youngest at 11,000 to 25,000 years old. These are the best examples of what are known as tufa towers. The northern group also include shapes called tombstones, ridges and cones. The small middle group claims only 100 spires, but boasts the tallest "tower", rising 140 feet (43 m). The southern group, includes 200 tufa formations aged 32,000 to 100,000 years old.
The Pinnacles are recognizable in more than a dozen hit movies. Over thirty film projects a year are shot among the tufa pinnacles, including backdrops for car commercials and sci-fi movies and television series such as Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Disney's Dinosaur, The Gate II: Trespassers, Lost in Space, and Planet of the Apes. The music video for Lady Gaga's 2020 single "Stupid Love" was also filmed here.
Source: Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trona_Pinnacles
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Images captured on Nothing Phone 1
This photo, in common with Part 3 of this set, was taken along the summit rim trail of Mount Vesuvius. But now we're looking at a portion of the interior of the Gran Cono crater in portrait rather than landscape format.
I'm not sure if this slide has faded significantly over the years. However, I do remember that walk around the crater, with all its jarring contrasts. There were great pits of shadow alternating with zones of blinding glare. Where the sunlight was, it was searing and it sliced right through the Mediterranean salt haze. The air smelled of hot airborne dust. So the image has a certain veracity regardless of its state of preservation.
In this shot, the rim is less distinct but the succession of light lava and darker tephra strata is more obvious. Also visible are the landslide deposits that fill the lower portion of what once was a considerably deeper hole.
This loose rock blankets the conduit and vent that created the Gran Cono from the 1600s onward. Were a new Plinian eruption to occur, this material would quickly be coughed up and out onto the surrounding terrain. As would much or all of the current cone itself.
Whether that's likely before the Campi Flegrei caldera at the northern end of the Naples metropolitan area lets loose in some major way, I of course don't know. Though I note the latter has seen an uptick of seismic activity recently.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Integrative Natural History of Mount Vesuvius & the Gulf of Naples album.
Princess Arch
Red River Gorge Geological Area
Daniel Boone National Forest
Kentucky
5 Image HDR
Another perspective of Princess Arch in Red River Gorge. The 8 ft tall, 25 ft across natural bridge looks completely different from the opposite side I posted a couple weeks ago. The area to the right just behind the bridge is a popular repelling site. You can also see the graffiti towards the back underbelly of the bridge if you look closely. The arch is only a 0.3 mile hike from the Chimney Tops parking lot.
Angular unconformity at Beach 4, Olympic Coast, Washington. Steeply inclined beds below the unconformity belong to the Hoh Assemblage and are overturned (they get younger towards the left of the photo). Overlying beach gravels were deposited during the Pleistocene at sea level --when sea level was much lower!
Previous post (150913-33e) is a close-up of these rocks from the area behind this outcrop (they appear horizontal because the bedding traces are parallel to the plane of the photo).