Ecosystems in Las Vegas-California Region
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The region between Las Vegas and California on Interstate 5 shows examples of several different ecosystems characteristic of the vast Mojave Desert and includes a portion of the Sierra Nevada range of mountains. The largest portion of Nevada is part of the Great Basin, but this region of Nevada is part of a different structure, the Mojave Desert and related areas. It was formed through a number of geologic forces over millions of years. The topography and climate have not been such as to attract large numbers of human inhabitants until the development of Las Vegas as an entertainment center, and the road from California has become a highly-traveled route precisely because of the creation of that metropolitan area. Those driving the route may see the environs as monotonous and repetitive, with vast stretches of desert territory that seem to be covered with the same type of vegetation and with the same rare sighting of animal life. The region is much more varied than a cursory examination would indicate, however, and also possesses more geologic structures than one might see without looking more closely. The region under discussion was formed through various geologic forces that shaped much of California and Nevada. Geologic history in this area extends back about 1.8 billion years, but the visible part of the region's geology begins about 800 million years ago when the ancient continent of what is now North America broke in two, forming a new ocean basin. Sediments whi
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Area featuring towering sandstone escarpments. These were made over hundreds of millions of years by the work of earth, wind, and fire (Holing 185-186). Red Rock Canyon is 15 miles north of the highway. It is supervised today by the Bureau of Land Management. Those who leave the main highway and enter the canyon will have a 13-mile scenic drive through multicolored sandstone escarpments and a lush valley that was the home of teeming forests and marine creatures in the Jurassic period. The region still shows a wide variety of species of wildlife. The cliffs were formed by powerful geologic forces pushing the escarpments 2,000 feet above the valley floor. Two hundred million years ago, Nevada was beneath a shallow sea and consisted of a floor of gray limestone. Some 95 million years ago, two of the earth's crustal plates collided, and the force pushed up whole sections of buried gray limestone, rising above the younger sandstone. The red color of these cliffs comes from red iron oxide leached after the sandstone was deposited, and wind and rain have since carved steep-walled canyons and fashioned uniformly contoured boulders (Holing 193).
The natural vegetation of the Mojave Desert region was once significant to the Amer
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Approximate Word count = 1678
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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