PEDD 9637 - The Geology and Natural History or Anza-Borrego State Park

Course Description

Anza-Borrego State Park is the largest state park in California. At 600,000 acres, it includes ecosystems of the Colorado Desert and the Peninsular Mountain Range. The region is one of the most active seismic area in North America. The Salton Trough contains two of the three major plate boundaries. The northern end of the East Pacific rise, a diverging plate boundary, is responsible for the -280-foot elevation at the bottom of the Salton Trough, second only to Death Valley. The second boundary type is represented by the San Andreas Transform fault system. The plate interaction here has exposed rocks from 1.5 billion years old to recent sediments 2 million years old. Our field trip will explore volcanism and rifting, granitic intrusions and metamorphism, faults, folds and badlands.