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A tour through the park offers visitors breathtaking mountain scenery, including panoramic views, tumbling streams, and mature hardwood forests stretching to the horizon. The landscape of the Great Smokies has undergone profound changes throughout the ages. Great smoky mountains features rocks in this area are mostly of a sedimentary type. That is, they were formed by accumulations great smoky mountains features soil, silt, sand, and gravel deposited into a huge shallow sea.
Over millions of years, more and more sediments were deposited, becoming layers of hard rock some nine miles or more thick. Approximately million years ago, drifting continents gradually collided in a climactic mountain building episode. As the continents collided, tremendous pressures were generated which deformed the once horizontal sedimentary rocks into folded structures.
An entire belt of folded and faulted rocks extends over 2, miles from what is now Maine to Georgia and is known collectively as the Appalachian Mountains. The Great Smoky Mountains are but a small portion of that range.
The Appalachian Mountains are among the oldest mountains in the world. Through great smoky mountains features eons, forces such as wind, rain, freezing, and thawing have eroded the Smokies once craggy surfaces. The movement of mammoth ice sheets during the Pleistocene Epoch, from two million to ten thousand years ago, further modified the environment of the Smokies. Although the glaciers did not reach this far south, their influence on the climate of the Smokies region produced alpine conditions on the higher crests.
The numerous boulders found in the park’s streams today originated during this time as they were broken off cliffs and ledges by freezing and thawing activity. The Smokies are among the tallest mountains in the Appalachian chain. Within /5458.txt park, elevations range from about ‘ to 6,’, with sixteen peaks rising more than 5, feet.
Mount Le Conte towers to 6,’ from a base of 1,’, making it the tallest but not the highestmountain in the East. The park’s highest summit, Clingmans Dome, is the third tallest peak east of the Mississippi River.
In the Smokies high country, over 85″ great smoky mountains features rain falls on average each year, feeding over 2, miles of rushing mountain streams and rivers that flow through the park. The park abounds with the two ingredients essential for ссылка на страницу and an elevation gradient. Waterfalls dot the waterways throughout the park, attracting over ,00 visitors each year to the great smoky mountains features better known asheville best breakfast nc in. The glacial influence on great smoky mountains features Smokies climate, coupled with the range of elevation and the southwest to northeast layout of these mountains, accounts for the great smoky mountains features variety of living things found in the park.
Five forest types within the park support over 1, species of flowering plants and at least 4, non-flowering varieties. In fact, the forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park are world renowned for their biological diversity.
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› grsm › learn › nature › naturalfeaturesandecosystems. Small bodies of metamorphosed igneous rocks, called dikes, are found from near Fontana Dam to Clingmans Dome. Quartz veins and pegmatite are.
Great smoky mountains features.Nature & Science
Over species of native vascular plants and nearly non-vascular plants are considered rare, generally found in small populations or having five or fewer occurrences within the Park. National Park Service preserves and maintains 78 structures within the national park that were once part of the numerous small Appalachian communities scattered throughout the range’s river valleys and coves.