Images

Geologist Alexander Lusk investigates slickenlines on the Moab fault near Arches National Park (Utah, USA).

Sunset view across Little Molas Lake, an alpine glacial lake on the west side of the Animas River Valley (San Juan Mountains, Colorado, USA).

Research Geologist Theresa Schwartz takes field notes about the Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of Bat Mountain (Death Valley region, California, USA).

Research Geologist Jens-Erik Lundstern poses as a scale for middle Cenozoic fluvial conglomerates in the Delamar Mountains (southern Nevada, USA). 

Wild burros stand guard on the path to Miocene volcaniclastic rocks of the Death Valley region (California, USA).

Intermountain West Project members pose at the summit of Crested Butte (Colorado, USA) prior to examining the Crested Butte laccolith (from left to right, Jeremy Workman, Allison Dombrowski, Ian Hillenbrand, Amy Gilmer, Kenzie Turner, and Ren Thompson). 

Research Geologist Amy Gilmer walks over carbonate rocks of the Upper Triassic Star Peak Group (northern Humboldt Range, Nevada, USA).

Research Geologist Marieke Dechesne investigates heavy mineral-bearing shoreface deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Trinidad Sandstone (Raton Basin, New Mexico, USA).

The moon sets over an exposure of the Great Unconformity within the Colorado National Monument (Colorado, USA). At this location, Paleoproterozoic granite (foreground) is unconformably overlain by the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation.

Photomigrograph (cross-polarized light) showing branching bunches of calcite filaments grown from algal mats in spring-discharge tufas of Cold Creek Spring (Las Vegas region, Nevada, USA). 

Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) grow on middle Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of the Las Vegas region (southern Nevada, USA).  

Vivid red, orange, and yellow colors highlight hydrothermally altered rocks on East Red Mountain in the Grizzly Peak caldera (Sawatch Range, Colorado, USA).

A view westward from Cottonwood Pass (Sawatch Range, Colorado, USA) into the Taylor Park basin. The peaks in the backgorund are composed of igneous and metamorphic rocks ranging in age from early Paleozoic to Eocene, uplifted along the Taylor Park fault.

Intermountain West Project members discuss an outcrop of the Oligocene-Miocene Troublesome Formation (near Kremmling, Colorado, USA).

The flat-lying rhyolite of Cropsy Mountain overlies the hydrothermally altered Summitville Andesite (San Juan Mountains, Colorado, USA). 

Research Geologist Theresa Schwartz walks over Cenozoic sedimentary rocks in Death Valley National Park (California, USA).

Research Geologist Jens-Erik Lundstern explores multi-colored lacustrine shales of the Oligocene Amargosa Valley Formation (Bat Mountain, California, USA). 

Geologist Michael Frothingham observes strongly deformed rocks of a Proterozoic shear zone in the Medicine Bow Mountains (Wyoming, USA).

Intermountain West Project members Adam Hudson and Michael Frothingham, in collaboration with National Park Service archaeologist Patrick Fristoe, inspect gravel deposits and associated geologic hazards along the Hines Creek fault system, Denali National Park (Alaska, USA).

In an effort to better understand the effects of abandoned mine lands on natural resources, Research Geologists Margaret Berry and Adam Hudson collect samples of ancestral Animas River sediment for geochemical analysis (Durango, Colorado, USA).

Geologic Framework of the Intermountain West project members Adam Hudson, Margaret Berry, Harrison Gray, Cal Ruleman, and Samuel Johnstone perform field work for a topographic asymmetry study in the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado, USA).