Tag Archive for: Utah Geological Survey

Utah Geological Survey

GeoSight— Wall Arch, a Fallen Giant

geosights-wall-arch-beforeDuring the night of August 4, 2008, Utah lost a popular giant when Wall Arch, a prominent arch along the Devils Garden Trail in Arches National Park, collapsed.

While not the largest or most famous arch in the park, Wall Arch was still a favorite due to its proximity to Landscape Arch along the always-busy trail. With a measured span of 55 feet, it was ranked as 12th largest in the park (some publications and Web sites give the span as 71 feet – this is actually the “breadth”, a dimension that is not useful for comparing arches).

While no arch lasts forever, it is still extremely rare to see such a dramatic example of “geology in action.” We do not have a good geologic tool for dating arch formation, but we are sure that Wall Arch had stood nearly unchanged for hundreds, and probably thousands of years.

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Utah Geological Survey

GeoSight— Fantasy Canyon

geosights-fanatsy-canyonGeologic Information: The sandstone layer in which the pinnacles, pillars, arches, and knobs of Fantasy Canyon are formed consists of ancient river channel sediments. The underlying and overlying rock layers sandwiching the sandstone layer, and creating scenic badland topography around the canyon, are finer grained floodplain deposits.

During the Eocene Epoch, 55 to 34 million years ago, the Fantasy Canyon area was at the fringe of a vast subtropical lake – Lake Uinta – that at peak level stretched from the Wasatch Plateau to western Colorado. The lake was in a drying phase and retreating westward by the end of the Eocene.

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Utah Geological Survey

GeoSight— Cascade Springs

cascade-springsGeologic Information: The area around Cascade Springs is underlain by coarse-grained glacial sediment deposited when glaciers covered high elevations of the Wasatch Range approximately 30,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Beneath the glacial deposits, bedrock consists of Cambrian-age (about 500 million years old) quartzite, shale, sandstone, and limestone. These rocks were transported eastward 30 to 50 miles during low-angle faulting on the Charleston-Nebo thrust fault around 80 million years ago. As a result of the faulting, the bedrock in the vicinity of the springs is tilted and highly fractured.

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Utah Geological Survey

MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATION 08-3DM

MP-08-3dmGEOLOGIC MAP OF THE WHITE CANYON–GOOD HOPE BAY AREA, GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, SAN JUAN AND GARFIELD COUNTIES, UTAH
R.E. Thaden, A.F. Trites, Jr., T.L. Finnell, and G.C. Willis

The digital database on this CD was derived from plate 1 of U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1125, published in 1964, with many modifications and additions by the Utah Geological Survey.  The map depicts gently folded Pennsylvanian, Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic strata exposed in the White Canyon, Good Hope Bay, Hite, and Red Canyon areas in and near Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and includes parts of a large historical uranium mining district.

CD (1 pl., scale 1:100,000 [contains GIS files])

MP-08-3DM……….$24.95

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Utah Geological Survey

OPEN-FILE REPORT 549DM

ofr-549Interim Geologic Map of the Seep Ridge 30′ x 60′ Quadrangle, Uintah, Duchesne, and Carbon Counties, Utah, and Garfield and Rio Blanco Counties, Colorado
Douglas A. Sprinkel

Web only- 3 pl., 1:100,000, contains GIS data (supercedes OFR-507)

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Utah Geological Survey

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERIES 93

pi-93FOSSIL ENVIRONMENTS IN UTAH
Carole McCalla

Colorful images show Utah’s different environments over the past 500 million years. Selected fossils from each environment are identified and range from ocean trilobites, to fresh-water fish, to plants, to dinosaurs, and Ice Age mammals.

1 p. (2 sided) flyer
PI-93……….free

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Utah Geological Survey

St George 30′ x 60′ 3-D Geologic Map and Virtual Field Trip

map-overlayThrough the use of computers and the Internet, and virtual globes such as Google Earth, we now have a way around the inherent limitations of depicting the third dimension on a standard paper geologic map. To help users gain this 3-D advantage, the UGS created an overlay of the new geologic map of the St. George 30′ x 60′ quadrangle in southwest Utah. This 3-D visualization brings the map to life, dramatically showing the relationship between geology and topography. A virtual field trip for the St. George 30′ x 60′ quadrangle, which uses placemarks to highlight selected geologic features, was also created.

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Utah Geological Survey

MAP 230

map-230GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE GOSHEN VALLEY NORTH QUADRANGLE, UTAH COUNTY, UTAH
Donald L. Clark, Robert F. Biek, and Eric H. Christiansen

This quadrangle is located in central Utah within the eastern Basin and Range Province, and includes parts of Goshen Valley and the Mosida Hills (also called southern Lake Mountains) along the west and south margins of Utah Lake.  Bedrock in the northwest part of the map area includes folded and faulted Mississippian-age strata and a few exposures of Tertiary volcanic rocks related to the Soldiers Pass volcanic field.  The majority of the quadrangle is covered by Quaternary surficial deposits, which are primarily associated with lacustrine deposition at and near the Provo level of Lake Bonneville, and with subsequent alluvial-fan development.

CD (2 pl., 1:24,000)
M-230……….$14.95

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Utah Geological Survey

OPEN-FILE REPORT 539

OFR-539MINERALOGY AND FLUID CHEMISTRY OF SURFICIAL SEDIMENTS IN THE NEWFOUNDLAND BASIN, TOOELE AND BOX ELDER COUNTIES, UTAH
Blair F. Jones, William W. White III, Kathryn M. Conko, Daniel M. Webster, and James F. Kohler

This CD contains a 53-page report (plus 43-page appendices) that details a three-year field study of Newfoundland Basin’s shallow-brine aquifer and associated playa and lacustrine sediments. Chemical and mineralogical characterization was performed on brine and selected core samples collected from the shallow-brine aquifer and sediments intercepted by 24 boreholes and 8 sets of nested monitoring wells. Aquifer tests were also conducted on specific boreholes and monitoring wells. Ground-water-brine transport in sediments of the shallow-brine aquifer occurred mainly in the permeable sedimentary facies, and possibly in vertical fissures observed in mudflat-clay facies. TEQUIL predicted mineral-sequence plots, from simulated step-wise evaporation of pore-fluid brines from peripheral and central-basin core samples, demonstrated that near-surface pore-fluid brines (<5-foot/1.5-meter depth) were a mixture of pre-West Desert Pumping Project ground water and Great Salt Lake brine. Conversely, pore fluids from core depths ranging from 5 to nearly 7 feet (1.5 to 2.1 meters) below ground level had predicted mineral sequence plots similar to the pre-pumping ground-water brine.

CD (53 p. + 43 p. appendices)
OFR-539……..$14.95

Utah Geological Survey

SURVEY NOTES volume 41, number 2

survey-notes-cover-41_2UTAH’S NATURAL ROCK ARCHES

This issue contains:

*   What is the Biggest Natural Arch in the World?
*   Ancient Landslides of the Beaver Dam Mountains
*   Virtual Geologic Map Overlays
*   Energy News: Utah’s Renewable Energy Zone Assessment
*   GeoSights: Wall Arch—A Fallen Giant
*   Survey News
*   Teacher’s Corner
*   New Publications

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