Since Mountain Press started the Roadside Geology series forty years ago, southern Californians have been waiting for an RG of their own. During those four decades�which were punctuated by jarring earthquakes and landslides�geologists continued to unravel the complexity of the Golden State, where some of the most dramatic and diverse geology in the world erupts, crashes, and collides. With dazzling color maps, diagrams, and photographs, Roadside Geology of Southern California takes advantage of this newfound knowledge, combining the latest science with accessible stories about the rocks and landscapes visible from winding two-lane byways as well as from the region�s vast network of highways. Join Arthur Sylvester, an award-winning UC Santa Barbara geologist, and Elizabeth O�Black Gans, a geologist-illustrator, as they motor through mountains and deserts to explore the iconic features of the SoCal landscape, from boulder piles in Joshua Tree National Park and brilliant white dunes in the Channel Islands to tar seeps along the rugged coast and youthful cinder cones in the Mojave Desert. Whether you want to find precious gemstones, ponder the mysteries of the Salton Sea, or straddle the boundary between the North American and Pacific Plates, be sure to bring this book along as your tour guide.
California's geology makes headlines when faults shift, volcanoes puff steam, and coastal bluffs fall into the sea. This book explores the state's recent rumblings and tremulous past with the aid of full color illustrations. Photographs showcase multihued rock, from red chert and green serpentinite to blue schist and gray granite. The geologic information, particularly for the Klamath Mountains, Modoc Plateau, and northern Sierra Nevada, has been updated to reflect new geologic understanding of these complex areas. Features detailed, easy to read color geologic road maps based on the 2010 Geologic Map of California.
With its active fault systems, complex landforms, and myriad natural habitats, southern California boasts a rich and dynamic geologic environment. This abundantly illustrated volume at last provides an up-to-date, authoritative, and accessible resource for students and general readers interested in southern California's geology and native plants. Covering an extensive area, north from San Diego to Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada and east to the Mojave and Colorado deserts, its unique, comprehensive approach brings together for the first time the basic principles of geology, the story of plate tectonics, in-depth discussion of the geology of many specific locales within the region, and information on identifying southern California's native plants.
"Mount Diablo and the geology of the Central California Coast Ranges are the subject of a volume celebrating the Northern California Geological Society's 75th anniversary. The breadth of research illustrates the complex Mesozoic to Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the plate boundary"--
California has some of the most distinctive and unique geology in the United States. It is the only state with all three types of plate boundaries, an extraordinary history of earthquakes and volcanoes, and it has many rocks and minerals found nowhere else. The Golden State includes both the highest and lowest point in the continental US and practically every conceivable geological feature known. This book discusses not only the important geologic features of each region in California, but also the complex geologic four-dimensional puzzle of how California was assembled, beginning over 2 billion years ago. The author provides up-to-date and authoritative review of the geology and geomorphology of each geologic province, as well as recent revelations of tectonic history of California’s past. There are separate chapters on some of California’s distinctive geologic resources, including gold, oil, water, coastlines, and fossils. An introductory section describes basic rock and mineral types and fundamental aspects of plate tectonics, so that students and other readers can make sense of the bizarre, wild, and crazy jigsaw puzzle that is California's geological history.
The book begins with an introductory chapter that briefly reviews California's geology followed by a series of road guides with the local particulars. The authors tell you what the rocks re and what they mean. Useful graphics and charts supplement the t
From wave-cut rock cliffs and sea caves to gravel beaches and coastal dunes, California’s coastline has enthralled visitors from around the world. A Coast to Explore describes the origins of these coastal features and unravels the wonderful mystery of how the birth of the San Andreas Fault system created what we see today. Miles O. Hayes and Jacqueline Michel have been mapping the coast of California since the 1980s as part of a larger initiative to protect coastlines around the world from hazardous oil spills. A Coast to Explore is the culmination of their work. Through a delightful narrative, it details the geological evolution of central California’s coast from Bodega Bay to Point Conception, including the effects of erosion during El Niños, the impacts of tsunamis, and the formation of spectacular raised marine terraces. Key ecological resources are described for each of the major subdivisions of the coast. Through richly illustrated diagrams, full-color photographs, and satellite images, A Coast to Explore takes readers on a fascinating journey of discovery so they can better understand why the Central California coast is so remarkable.
At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults. The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect—in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century no less than in the earthquakes of the twentieth—and always with relevance to a newly understood geologic history in which half a dozen large and separate pieces of country are seen to have drifted in from far and near to coalesce as California. McPhee and Moores also journeyed to remote mountains of Arizona and to Cyprus and northern Greece, where rock of the deep-ocean floor has been transported into continental settings, as it has in California. Global in scope and a delight to read, Assembling California is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolving and dissolving lands.