Transcript Final Yosemite National Park Project

Yosemite National Park
By: Griffin Simmons
Earth Scientists – look at this playground! Come and
research! Come and enjoy!
Help us keep the beauty!
Here’s Where Yosemite is at!
Yosemite National Park
• The Yosemite Valley became a national park in
1890.
• It became a national park because people were
worried the Yosemite Valley would be destroyed
by:
grazing (farm and wild game animals)
T
timber use (people cutting down trees)
Yosemite National Park
500 million years ago the Sierra
Nevada was beneath an ancient
sea (1).
•The sediment bottom and
molten rock – rose over time to
form granite.
•Glaciers carved valleys
•a river cut a canyon
•The park is 2,000 feet to 13,000
feet above sea level in the earth’s
crust.
•There are giant sequoia trees,
waterfalls, cliffs and rock
formations in this park.
The park mostly is made up of many varieties of
granite rock (mostly over time from magna material).
There is a little bit of metamorphic rock .
(2)
The Sierra Nevada Mountain range is in the
park. The park has flat lands or meadows
that are at sea level along its west edge and
the mountains go up to 13,000 feet above
sea level. The highest peak in the
continental United States is Mount
Whitney is in the park. Also the granite is
shaped into landforms like cliffs, Hetch
Hetchy Valleys, higher peaks in the park,
and domes of rock. There are many lakes in
the park. All lakes in the park are made
from glaciers (2).
The Park is Changing:
Glaciers and Spring floods are reshaping the land. The floods
move rocks and soil.
Environmental Issues
Global warming is making the plants and animals move to higher area to
stay cool.
Meadows, riverbanks, and oak woodlands are sensitive and have been
hurt by human use over time. Many people visit the park every year.
This is causing the erosion of roads and paths over time.
New plants and animals that have not lived in Yosemite before are slowly
moving in and changing things (scientist fear the New Zealand mud snail
which can cover a riverbed changing the current ecosystem.). (3)
Technology Preserving
Yosemite
Over ½ of all of the State of California’s
water supply comes from the high
elevation of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains and the run off from snowmelt.
“However, new sensor and wireless
communication technologies designed
for low maintenance operation, low
power consumption and small,
unobtrusive footprints are providing new
opportunities to monitor mountainous
watersheds.
Such technologies will allow a significant
expansion of data collection vital for
understanding, predicting and informing
about the variability of climate and
water resources in the State and the
Nation.”
(Picture shows Park HydroMet
monitoring system.)
(4)
Yosemite National Park
Bibliography
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(1)www.yosemite.national-park.com/info.htm
(2)www.us-parks.com/yosemite-national-park/landforms.html
(3)www.outdoor.com/places/parks-and-monument/yosemite-national-park
(4)http://tenaya.ucsd.edu/~dettenge/yosemite_networks.pdf
(5)http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/
http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/geology.htm
http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/invasive-species.htm
http://www.nps.gov/yose/parkmgmt/planning.htm
http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/gis.htm
http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/panoramic.htm
http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/maps.htm