Future of Arches NP

Arches National Park is an arid region of Utah considered to be a “high desert” due to the 25 % lack of plant cover and water.  Back in the Triassic- Jurassic period the area was underwater.  Slowly the area dried up leaving a massive salt plane along with several thousand feet of sediment that over time has turned into sandstone.  A unique feature in this area, are the arches that are created using mechanical and chemical weathering.  The process is very slow and takes several hundred if not thousands of years to take place.

  The park will look fairly similar to what it does today.  That being said some of the current arches might have collapsed and new arches would have had time to form.  This is based of the theory of Uniformitarianism in that deserts age slower due to lack of weathering and erosion being limited. The transport (flashfloods few and far between) and weathering is limited (wind is whimpy).

It is hard to say what it would be like ten thousand years from now but I hypothesize that there would be more extensive stony areas like the Sandstone Organ, Fiery Furnace, and Tower of Babel (inselbergs).  Evidence for this is that there are erosional landforms that have already shown up in the region of Arches national park.  This landscape changes very slowly but in this time period more of the softer materials would be carried away to reveal more stony areas.

In a million years the arches will probably be gone completely and the area might slowly turn back into a giant lake such as it was during the late Jurassic period. This might occur based on the earth’s pattern of climate change and the fact that as of right now we could be heading into an interglacial period, which could potentially drastically change the current environment in Arches National Park.

Arches National Park is an environment that changes very slowly due to its status as a desert. For this reason, this landscape could remain in a similar state to how it is now for a long period of time. However depending on environmental factors the landscape could change drastically within a million years.

Weather

Weather Patterns

           
The table below shows the temperatures by month for Arches National Park. According to this chart it is common for the days to reach well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer (June – August) with a typical average of 70 degrees.  The temperature in winter averages about 40 degrees but it can get all the way down to 0 degrees.  The best time to visit the park would depend on if you liked warmer or colder temperatures. Most people look for moderate temperatures during the time of their visits so from April to May and September to October would be a great time to go to Arches.  This way you could be in the park during the best time of the year.  During the late summer there is a monsoonal period that can bring in thunderstorms and flash floods.

	Average High	Average Low	Extreme High	Extreme Low	Days Above 100	Days Below 32
Jan	44	22	63	-1	0	28
Feb	52	28	73	9	0	22
March	64	35	87	13	0	10
April	71	42	93	25	0	3
May	82	51	105	33	1	0
June	93	60	110	43	6	0
July	100	67	116	51	16	0
Aug	97	66	109	44	12	0
Sept	88	55	105	36	1	0
Oct	74	42	106	23	0	2
Nov	56	30	79	12	0	18
Dec	45	23	69	5	0	26

http://www.parkreservations.com/arches/weather.htm

         Michael Riffle took this amazing picture of spectacular cumulonimbus clouds, which can be found at the site below.  This picture shows an incoming storm during the monsoon season.  

https://plus.google.com/112617127041903537004/posts/VYVkTGJCd73

        This is a picture of lightning taken from the Arches National Parks facebook page.  It shows both forked (on the right) and ribbon lighting (on the left).

http://www.facebook.com/ArchesNationalPark?rf=208594442483987

Weathering, Erosion and Soils

Salt weathering created the sandstone arches in Arches National Park. Salt weathering is a combination of mechanical and chemical weathering.  Using the bad diagram from class I can show the mechanical weathering of frost wedging from water making its way in between the joints, cracks and other physical feature and breaking away the sandstone over time. Also over time wind and water would clean out the sediment.  The only problem with this bad diagram is the wind is “wimpy” and can’t exert enough force to blast a hole in the wall of sandstone, so part 3 of the diagram is wrong. For the second part we bring in chemical weathering specifically the dissolution of the cemented material by carbon dioxide and water making carbonic acid.  When the carbonic acid reacts with the calcium carbonate in the soil then it makes calcium bicarbonate. Chemically written out (from lecture)

Most of the soils in this region are under the classification of Aridsols.  This being said the other type of soil is biological crust; this is living groundcover mosses, green algae, micro fungi, and bacteria.  It is estimated by some that they are over 2 billion years old and some uses are to trap and disperse water, bind soils together, and fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil.  This is important for Arches National Park to understand because it will lead to better land use practices and decreases the effect of tourism in the area. (soil information taken from soil lecture and http://www.nps.gov/arch/naturescience/soils.htm )

  

Sources

Bad diagram is from class lecture along with chemical formula

Rock fins picture

http://geotripperimages.com/Erosional_Processes/Weathering.htm

Soil close up picture

Seedling in biological soil crust

NPS Photo by Neal Herbert

http://www.nps.gov/arch/naturescience/soils.htm

soils paragraph based off of in class soils lecture and http://www.nps.gov/arch/naturescience/soils.htm

landscape

          The geology of Arches National Park lies on top of a salt bed that is thousands of feet thick. This makes sense because Utah has massive salt planes to this day.  According to the National Park Services geology field notes the sandstone has been dated back to the Triassic and Jurassic periods ranging from 210- 145 million years ago.  The Arches are made up of sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks are more or less cemented together after years of layering and compacting.  In most cases you can see the banding or strata. The layers that the sediment was deposited in are normally seen as straight lines.  However in some cases there are monoclines and anticlines that form due to faults and folding that happened in the area millions of years ago. 

Source's

Geology Fieldnotes: Arches National Park. (2005, 01 04). Retrieved from http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/arch/

The pictures below where found at the nature park services in the pdf below

 http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/arch/arch_gre_rpt_view.pdf

Introduction

My name is Ronald Singer I am geography major with an emphasis in environmental science. I grew up in Alamosa, Colorado, which is in southern Colorado and is a desert area. My blog is going to talk about Arches National Park in Utah. The San Luis Valley where I grew up is a desert albeit a different kind of desert than the one that Arches NP is in. I find the rock formations in that area fascinating and I am planning a trip out there this fall to photograph and explore the area.  Hopefully over the course of this semester I will be able to find out more about the area and how it was formed.  

My background photo is from the web, but I will have my own photographs to use in a couple of weeks.
(2008). Arches np. (2008). [Web Photo]. Retrieved from http://sevennaturalwonders.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/shutterstock_70273240.jpg