Test Questions with 100 Verified Answers

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GLY 3163 Module 4 - Death Valley & Grand Teton Test/ Questions with 100% Verified Answers/ Rated A+

What is officially the lowest spot in Death Valley? - ANSWER - Badwater Spring, elevation of minus 282 feet

Badwater Spring in Death Valley - ANSWER - - Lowest part of DV

• Spring issues from a frontal fault on the Black Mountain (can be seen in background

as a series of breaks in this alluvial fan)

• Water gets there by moving through the sediment in the valley until it encounters the

fault and is forced upwards along the faults and comes out of the surface

The resulting steps in the alluvial fan are called what? - ANSWER - Fault scarps

• The fault is actually cutting the fan meaning it must be recently active

In Death Valley, the extension crust has been so extreme over the past several million years that ...? - ANSWER - the foot wall faults / the normal faults actually cut through the rocks that were once part of the deep middle crust some 10 miles or so beneath the surface

(DV) These normal faults cut into the middle crustal rocks that at the time, were hot enough that they could ... - ANSWER - They could actually slow the flow a lot like we think of the asthenosphere flowing beneath lithosphere.

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In Death Valley, middle crustal rocks have been gradually transported to the fault surfaces from the middle crust due to ...? - ANSWER - Extension (extensional events)

• These rocks look like the backs of turtles due to the deep seated rocks growing

metamorphic mineral fabrics aligned with the extension direction on the falls which made them very resistant to erosion

• The detachment normal fault separates sedimentary and metamorphic rocks

(DV) What are the names of the turtleback landforms? - ANSWER - 1. Black Mountain

• Copper Canyon
• Mormon Point

In Death Valley, the erosion of the desert mountain ranges causes what? - ANSWER - Sediments to be brought into the valleys or the basins

How are sediments transported in Death Valley? - ANSWER - - Dry stream beds that fill with water during occasional flash floods end at alluvial fans where the streams lose gradient and drop coarse grain sediment.

• Finer material like mud gets washed into ephemeral lakes at the base of the mountain

ranges.

How are the fans adjacent to the mountain range shaped? (DV) - ANSWER - Shaped by how active the mountain front is

• Western side fans at the base of Panamint Range grow together into an apron we call

a Bajada

• Eastern side, the oval shaped alluvial fans on the Black Mountain side of Death Valley

develop as sediments transported out of the Black Mountains are covered up and get tilted and abandoned due to the uplift along the range front fault

In Death Valley, what causes older alluvial fan deposits to be progressively tilted back towards the main Basin and Range fault? - ANSWER - Normal faulting

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