Harris, Ann G., Tuttle, Esther, and Tuttle, Sherwood D., 2004, Geology of National Parks, 6th ed., Kendall/Hunt Publishing, Dubuque, Iowa, 882p.

The details of this syllabus are subject to change with the changing needs of the class. Changes may include exam dates so attend class regularly to remain abreast of any changes.

Name the first national park. What year was the park established?
What was Cornelius Hedges' contribution to the national park concept?
What role did Ferdinand V. Hayden play is establishing Yellowstone National Park?
Describe the 1906 Antiquities Act.
What new federal agency was created by the 1916 National Parks Service Act?
What is the difference between a national park and a national monument?
When did the earth form?
What is meant by the statement, the earth is compositionally layered?
What is the temperature of the center of the earth?
What is magma?
What are igneous rocks?
What is the difference between volcanic and plutonic rocks?
Name at least 4 national parks that contain active volcanoes.
Define mafic magma in terms of silica content, volatile content, and temperature range.
Define silicic magma in terms of silica content, volatile content, and temperature range.
What is a geothermal gradient?
What are typical geothermal gradients?
What are shield volcanoes? What type of magma is involved?
Given an example of a national park that contains shield volcanoes.
Discuss the evolution of a shield volcano.
What is a hot spot?
What two volcanoes lie within the boundaries of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park?
What type of volcanoes are in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park?
Where is Hawaii Volcanoes National Park located (island and location on the island)?
Given Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes, which is highest? Which is presently the most active?
What is pahoehoe lava?
What is aa lava?
What is a lava tube? Skylight? Lava cascade?
Draw a cross section of a typical single mafic lava flow (basalt).
What are columnar joints? Vesicles?
When did Mauna Loa first become active?
When was the last eruption of Mauna Loa?
Where is Kilauea located?
Name the most active volcano on the Earth.
When was the last eruption of Kilauea?
Name at least three national parks that contain active silicic volcanoes.
Describe the 2 phases of eruption common with silicic magma.
What are pyroclastics?
What is a stratovolcano? Discuss the evolution of a stratovolcano.
What is a composite volcano?
Where is Yellowstone National Park [specific location within state(s)]
What relation does Yellowstone National Park have with the Snake River Plain?
When did the Island Park area become volcanically active?
Describe the 630 Ka eruption in the Yellowstone Plateau.
What volatile is most responsible for generating explosive power in Yellowstone?
How is obsidian formed?
What is a caldera?
How did the Yellowstone caldera form?
Describe how geysers work.
What is the geothermal gradient (in degrees/kilometer) in Yellowstone?
What is Old Faithful?
What criteria are used to predict the time of eruption of Old Faithful?
How long does a typical eruption of Old Faithful last?
Precisely define hot spring.
What is Grand Prismatic Spring?
What is the temperature of Grand Prismatic Spring?
What causes the red, yellow, orange, and brown coloring along the margins of some hot springs?
What is sinter? How does it form?
What is travertine? How does it form?
What are mud pots? How do they form?
What are fumaroles? How do they form?
What are tectonic plates?
Where is the Juan de Fuca plate?
What role does the Juan de Fuca plate play in the creation of the Cascade Mountains?
What is subduction?
What type of volcano is Mount Rainier?
How high is Mount Rainier?
What months of the year is the summit ice-free?
When did Mount Rainier volcano first become active?
What is a cinder cone? How do they form?
Draw a cross sectional view of a stratovolcano.
When did Mount Rainier reach its maximum height? How high was it?
What is a mudflow?
Describe the two ways, discussed in class, that mudflows formed in Mount Rainier National Park.
How far did the Osceola mudflow flow? What caused it?
What is a glacial outburst flood? How do they form?
When was the last eruption of Mount Rainier?
How can seismographs be used to tell if magma is moving?
Is an eruption of Mount Rainier imminent?

Name the subducting plate responsible for the igneous rocks in Yosemite.
When (Ma) did igneous activity begin in the Yosemite region?
What are intrusive igneous rocks? How do they differ from volcanic igneous rocks?
How can you distinguish an intrusive rock from a volcanic rock?
What are plutonic rocks?
What is granite? Rhyolite? Gabbro? Basalt?
Compare the age of Sierra Nevada igneous activity with that in the Cascade Mountains.
Why do we see volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains and plutons in the Sierra Nevada Mountains?
What is a pluton? Batholith?
If igneous activity in the Sierras was largely over 80 Ma why haven't the mountains eroded to low lying hills?
What is exfoliation? Why does it occur?
What state is Yosemite National Park in?
What year was Yosemite established?
What is an ice cap?
What is firn?
Define glacier.
Why do glaciers move?
How thick does ice have to be before it begins to flow plastically due to its own weight?
How fast do glaciers move?
What is the zone of accumulation? Zone of ablation? Snowline?
What are crevasses?
What two factors, discussed in class, control the whether a glacier advances or recedes?
What two major variables control will control these two factors?
Define alpine glacier. Valley glacier.
Discuss two ways that glaciers erode rocks.
Discuss the processes of glacial plucking and glacial abrasion.
What is glacial polish? What causes glacial polish?
What process creates "U-shaped" valleys? "V-shaped" valleys?
Define arête, horn, cirque, and hanging valley.
How do hanging valleys form?
Define drift, till, outwash, erratic.
Define moraine, recessional moraine, terminal moraine, lateral moraine, and medial moraine.
How does each moraine form?
What are sequoias?
Where is the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park?
When was Glacier National Park established?
When was Waterton Lakes National Park established?
When was the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park established?
What is a drainage divide? The continental divide?
Compare the size of the present day glaciers in Glacier with those on Mount Rainier.
When did the glacial features form in Glacier National Park?
Define col.
What is orographic precipitation?
Why does orographic precipitation occur?
What is a Chinook wind? Why do they form?
Where is the Going-to-the-Sun highway?
Where is the weeping wall? Why does it weep?
What is an avalanche chute? How might you recognize one?
What are sedimentary beds?
What is the principle of original horizontality?
What is the principle of superposition?
What are folds? Anticlines? Synclines?
What are faults?
Define hanging wall, footwall, thrust fault.
How old are the oldest rocks in Glacier National Park?
What is Rodina?
What is a continental shelf?
When (Ma) did the Lewis thrust form?
What is a klippe?
Give an example (name) of a klippe in the Glacier National Park area.
Name the only national park in Michigan.
What year was Isle Royale National Park established?
What are geologic formations?
What are flood basalts? How do flood basalts form?
When (Ma) were the flood basalts on Isle Royale extruded?
What kind of fault is the Isle Royale fault?
What are hydrothermal fluids?
What are vesicles? Amygdules?
What is chlorastrolite? Where does it form?
How do continental glaciers differ from alpine glaciers?
How extensive were the Pleistocene continental glaciers?
How thick were the continental glaciers during the Pleistocene?
Which half of Isle Royale is dominated by glacial erosion?
What are glacial striations?
On what half of Isle Royale do glacial deposits occur?
Why do we have erosion on half the island and deposition on the other half?
What is a drumlin?
What is a lighthouse?
Why is Isle Royale National Park a popular scuba diving area?

What year was Grand Canyon National Park established?
What are the three major rock types that geologists divide all rocks into?
What are igneous rocks? How do they form?
What are sedimentary rocks? How do they form?
What are metamorphic rocks? How do they form?
What are clastic sedimentary rocks?
What is weathering?
What are sedimentary beds? How do they form?
What is lithification? What are the two processes we discussed in class?
What is the principle of original horizontality?
What is the principle of superposition?
What is the principle of lateral continuity?
What are formations? Groups? Supergroups?
What is a geologic map?
Define unconformity, angular unconformity, nonconformity, disconformity.
What are fossils? Microfossils? Trace fossils?
Know the geologic Eras and Periods.
What are the Eras based upon?
What is the time before the Cambrian Period called?
The oldest rocks in the exposed in the Grand Canyon are what age?
What is the name of the oldest formation exposed in the Grand Canyon?
Define orogeny.
What type of rock is the Vishnu schist? How old is the Vishnu Schist?
If I want to see the Vishnu Schist would I look for it near the rim or the bottom of the canyon?
How old is the Zoroaster Granite?
How old is the Unkar Group?
How old is the Chuar Group?
What is Rodinia? When did it form?
What type of unconformity separates the Precambrian Chuar Group from the Cambrian Tapeats Sandstone?
What type of unconformity separates the Cambrian Mauv Limestone from the Devonian Temple Butte Limestone?
Name the two periods, discussed in class, during which sand dunes formed in this area.
What was the typical erosion rate in inches/1000 years of the Colorado River before building of the dams?
The majority of the carving of the Grand Canyon has occurred over how many years?
Define base level?
What influence does base level have on stream erosion?
What body of water does the Colorado River flow into?
Define stream gradient.
What influence does stream gradient have on stream erosion?
What influence does water volume have on stream erosion?
What is stream load?
What influence does stream load have on stream erosion?
In what state is Bryce Canyon National Park.
What is the grand staircase that geologists speak of?
Why did the stair-step pattern of the grand staircase develop?
Which rock types in southern Utah tend to form escarpments?
Which rock types in southern Utah tend to erode easily?
What year was Bryce Canyon established as a national park?
What is sheet wash?
What are rills?
What are joints?
What roll do joints play in the formation of Bryce Canyon features?
Most of the exposed rocks in Bryce Canyon National Park are part of what formation?
What depositional environment was the Claron Formation deposited.
What age is the Claron Formation?
What is differential erosion?
What is a hoodoo? Discuss how hoodoos form.
What role do joints and differential erosion play in the formation of hoodoos?
What is a window? Discuss how windows form.
Define weathering.
Discuss the process of frost wedging.
What three conditions, discussed in class, are necessary for frost wedging?
At what temperature does water freeze?
When water changes phase from a liquid to a solid does its volume increase or decrease?
By what percent does it increase of decrease?
In what part of Bryce Canyon NP is frost wedging most common?
What is hydrolysis?
Write a balanced chemical equation showing an example of a hydrolysis reaction.
What is hydration?
Write a balanced chemical equation showing an example of a hydration reaction.
Discuss how hematite alters to limonite.
What is dissolution?
Discuss dissolution in terms of the roll of the polarity of a water molecule.
What is solution weathering?
Draw an accurate diagram of a water molecule, labeling the ions and their charges.
Write a balanced chemical equation showing an example of a carbonation reaction.
In what part of Bryce Canyon NP would you expect carbonation reactions to be more common?
What is oxidation?
Write a balanced chemical equation showing an example of an oxidation reaction.
Discuss the roll of exposed surface area in the weathering process.
What is spheroidal weathering? Why does it occur?
Why do the corners of rocks tend to weather faster than other areas?

In what state is Mammoth Cave National Park located?
When was Mammoth Cave NP established?
In what rock type are the caves formed?
Be prepared to discuss the carbonation process in detail, including balanced equations.
What do we call water that infiltrates the ground?
Discuss the flow of groundwater through pore spaces, fractures, and bedding planes.
Water is the vadose zone, zone of aeration, phreatic zone, and zone of saturation.
What are domepits, how do they form?
What are vertical shafts, how do they form?
What are tubular passages, how do they form?
What are speleothems, flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, and columns?
Are the above more common in the vadose or phreatic zone? Why?
Know the location of Carlsbad Caverns National Park
What year was Carlsbad Caverns established as a national park?
What is the trend of the Guadalupe escarpment?
What is the main rock type exposed in the Guadalupe escarpment?
What is the age (period) of the Capitan Limestone?
In what depositional environment was the Capitan Limestone deposited?
What is a reef?
At approximately what latitude was the Delaware Basin during deposition of the Capitan Limestone.
Know the conditions, discussed in class, that favor large reef development.
Discuss why is the Capitan Limestone massive instead of thinly bedded.
What is the likely source of the acid that dissolved the limestone in Carlsbad?
Give the chemical formulas for carbonic and sulfuric acids.
What life form is the primary source for hydrocarbons?
Write a balanced chemical formula for the creation of sulfuric acid from hydrogen sulfide.
Be able to locate Great Basin National Park.
In what mountain range is Great Basin National Park located?
In what years was Great Basin National Park established?
What is the Great Basin?
What are the oldest (era) rocks exposed in Great Basin National Park?
In what depositional environment were the Paleozoic rocks of Great Basin National Park deposited?
In what depositional environment was the Prospect Mountain quartzite deposited?
In what depositional environment was the Pioche shale deposited?
What is a stock?
Discuss the difference in metamorphism between shallow and deep silicic intrusions.
What was the style of thrusting in the Sevier orogeny?
Under what kind of stress does thrust faulting occur?
Under what kind of stress does normal faulting occur?
What are listric normal faults?
How do folds forms during normal faulting?
What is the Basin and Range?
How does the Great Basin differ from the Basin and Range?
What is a horst?
What is a graben?
Is the Snake Range a horst or a graben?
In what park are the Lehman Caves?
In what type of rock are the Lehman Caves?
In what park is the Lexington Arch?
What type of rock is the Lexington Arch made of?
What is the difference between an arch and a natural bridge?
Grand Teton material to be added later