Transcript Badlands National Park - Brown-Leach15

By: Bennett Gorbatoff
Badlands National Park,
South Dakota, USA
Badlands National Park
Badlands Wilderness Area
Stronghold Unit
Palmer Creek Unit
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People have been fascinated by the Badlands throughout history.
Native American stories and legends recognize the Badlands
geology, landscape, and fossils.
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Early Europeans, homesteaders, ranchers, and the state of South
Dakota also recognized the Badlands and wanted to protect it.
The Badlands National Monument was established in 1939.
It was redesignated Badlands National Park on November 10,
1978.
There are over 200,000 acres of protected land within the park
consisting of spires, a grass prairie, eroded buttes, and pinnacles.
The National Park Service manages the park.
The Oglala Lakota Tribe also helps manage some areas of the
park.
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The landscape is roughly half badlands geologic formations and
half mixed grass prairie ecosystem.
The Badlands geologic formations are made up of rugged spires
and deep canyons.
The mixed grass prairie ecosystem is alive with a variety of plants
and animals.
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Erosion, along with freezing and thawing and natural down-slope
movement, has resulted in rugged and colorful landforms.
One of the stranger landforms are pillars of rock called hoodoos
or “toadstools”. This landform is created when harder sandstone
is supported by softer clay material.
Sandstone
Clay
Toadstool
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Scientists have found 39 mammal species, 9 reptile species, 6
amphibian species, 206 bird species, and 69 butterfly species.
The park also contains fossil resources.
The White River Badlands contains the largest known number of
late Eocene and Oligocene mammal fossils.
Fossil research from the Badlands has given significant information
to the science of vertebrate paleontology in North America.
Fossil Poaching
 A major concern at
Badlands National Park.
 Park Rangers educate the
public and visitors about
the importance of not
taking fossils from the
park.
Prairie Fires
 Have occurred naturally through lightening for centuries.
 Native American used to start fires to move out animals.
 In the 20th century, people started stopping fires.
 The Park now has an active fire management program.
 Each year the park burns a set number of acres of prairie. The
prairies recover quickly, usually in 3 to 4 weeks.
Reintroduction of the Black-Footed Ferret
 Badlands National Park was selected as one of the areas in the U.S.
to reintroduce the endangered black-footed ferret.
 Approximately 25 to 30 ferrets now live in the Badlands.
 The wild born ferrets in the park are now producing babies of
their own.
• The Badlands is made up of layers
of rock.
• The layers were formed from
deposits of sand, silt, clay and
volcanic ash which were cemented
together into sedimentary rock.
• As the environment of the Badlands
changed over the years, so did the
types of deposits.
• The picture to the right is an
example of a typical rock formation
in the Park.
• Each layer was formed during a
different time period beginning 75
million years ago.
28-30 million years ago
30 million years ago
30-34 million years ago
34-37 million years ago
37-69 million years ago
69-75 million years ago
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The black-footed ferret was close to extinction in the 1970s.
Artificial insemination was used to help bread the ferrets in
captivity. Once their numbers had grown large enough, they were
reintroduced into the Badlands National Park in 1994.
The National Park Service has monitored air quality in the
Badlands National Park for more than 10 years using light
technology. Light is emitted from one telescope and received by
another 2.5 miles away.
The National Park Service monitors grasslands in the Park.
Chemicals are sometimes used to control the unhealthy spread of
non-native plants.
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The Badlands is largely the result of two basic geologic processes:
deposition and erosion.
The Badlands were deposited in layers of tiny grains of sediments
including sand, silt, clay and volcanic ash that cemented together
into sedimentary rocks.
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The sedimentary rock layers were deposited from 75 to 26 million
years ago.
The layers similar in character are grouped into units called
formations. The oldest formations are at the bottom and the
youngest are at the top, illustrating the principle of superposition.
Different environments including sea, tropical land, woodlands
with rivers, and volcanic activity, caused different sediments to
accumulate in the park at different times.
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Erosion began in the Badlands about 500,000 years ago when the
Cheyenne River captured streams and rivers flowing from the
Black Hills into the Badlands region.
The streams and rivers cut down through the rock layers, carving
fantastic shapes into what had once been a flat floodplain.
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The Badlands erode at the rapid rate of about one inch per year.
Evidence suggests that they will erode completely away in
another 500,000 years, giving them a life span of just one million
years.
Not a long period of time from a geologic perspective.
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