1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Utah
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Utah is a state in the western United States. It became the 45th state admitted to the U. S. on January 4,1896, Utah is the 13th-largest by area, 31st-most-populous, and 10th-least-densely populated of the 50 United States. Utah has a population of more than 3 million, approximately 80% of whom live along the Wasatch Front, Utah is bordered by Colorado to the east, Wyoming to the northeast, Idaho to the north, Arizona to the south, and Nevada to the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast, approximately 62% of Utahns are reported to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS, which greatly influences Utahn culture and daily life. The LDS Churchs world headquarters is located in Salt Lake City, Utah is the only state with a majority population belonging to a single church. The state is a center of transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, in 2013, the U. S. Census Bureau estimated that Utah had the second fastest-growing population of any state. St. George was the metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah also has the 14th highest median income and the least income inequality of any U. S. state. A2012 Gallup national survey found Utah overall to be the best state to live in based on 13 forward-looking measurements including various economic, lifestyle, the name Utah is derived from the name of the Ute tribe. It means people of the mountains in the Ute language, according to other sources Utah is derived from the Apache name Yudah which means Tall. These Native American tribes are subgroups of the Ute-Aztec Native American ethnicity and were sedentary, the Ancestral Pueblo people built their homes through excavations in mountains, and the Fremont people built houses of straw before disappearing from the region around the 15th century. Another group of Native Americans, the Navajo, settled in the region around the 18th century, in the mid-18th century, other Uto-Aztecan tribes, including the Goshute, the Paiute, the Shoshone, and the Ute people, also settled in the region. These five groups were present when the first European explorers arrived, the southern Utah region was explored by the Spanish in 1540, led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, while looking for the legendary Cíbola. A group led by two Catholic priests—sometimes called the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the coast of California, the expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. The Spanish made further explorations in the region, but were not interested in colonizing the area because of its desert nature, in 1821, the year Mexico achieved its independence from Spain, the region became known as part of its territory of Alta California. European trappers and fur traders explored some areas of Utah in the early 19th century from Canada, the city of Provo, Utah was named for one, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah was named after Peter Skene Ogden, in late 1824, Jim Bridger became the first known English-speaking person to sight the Great Salt Lake. Due to the salinity of its waters, Bridger thought he had found the Pacific Ocean
3.
Great Salt Lake Desert
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The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah, United States between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border which is noted for white evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits. On the western edge of the desert, just across the border with Nevada, the desert is cool during the winter and includes unusual plants adapted to the dry conditions. Most of the desert receives less than 8 inches of annual precipitation, the salt crust covering the desert reforms each year when the rain evaporates. The militarys Utah Test and Training Range is in the portion of the desert. The lowest part of Juab County is located just south of the Dugway Proving Grounds, the 1846 Donner Party difficulties in making the crossing contributed to their becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Howard Stansbury explored the desert in 1849, in 1956, I-80 replaced the Wendover Cut-off across the desert, including a straight east-west section for ~50 miles between the Cedar Mountains to the east and Wendover on the Utah/Nevada border. Following a railway completed across the deserts Bonneville Salt Flats in 1910, the world records for highest land speeds are regularly broken here. The Great Salt Lake Desert experiences a climate with hot summers. The desert is an excellent example of a desert climate. The deserts elevation,4,250 feet above sea level, makes temperatures cooler than lower elevation deserts, due to the high elevation and aridity, temperatures drop sharply after sunset. Winter highs are generally above freezing, and winter nights are bitterly cold, media related to Great Salt Lake Desert at Wikimedia Commons
4.
Interstate 80 in Utah
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Interstate 80 is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. The portion of the highway in the U. S. state of Utah is 196. 35-mile-long, from west to east, I-80 crosses the state line from Nevada in Tooele County and traverses the Bonneville Salt Flats—which are a part of the larger Great Salt Lake Desert. It continues alongside the Wendover Cut-off—the corridor of the former Victory Highway—U. S, Route 40 and the Western Pacific Railroad Feather River Route. After passing the Oquirrh Mountains, I-80 enters the Salt Lake Valley, a short portion of the freeway is concurrent with I-15 through Downtown Salt Lake City. I-80 was built along the corridor of the Lincoln Highway and the Mormon Trail through the Wasatch Range, the easternmost section also follows the historical routes of the First Transcontinental Railroad and US-30S. Construction of the highway began in the 1950s, and by the late 1970s most of the freeway across the state of Utah had been completed. The four-and-a-half-mile-long section of I-80 between Utah State Route 68 and the Salt Lake City International Airport was the last piece of the nearly 2, 900-mile-long freeway to be completed. Average daily traffic volumes in 2012 ranged between 6,765 vehicles using the freeway at SR-58 and 121,205 vehicles using the freeway at the Spaghetti Bowl in Downtown Salt Lake City, throughout the state, the highway is also known as the Purple Heart Trail. Out of the states which I-80 passes through, the 196. 34-mile-long segment in Utah is the fourth shortest. The longest stretch of I-80 in a state is the 455. 32-mile-long segment in Nebraska. As part of the Interstate Highway System, the route is listed on the National Highway System, a system of roads that are important to the nations economy, defense. Every year, the Utah Department of Transportation conducts a series of surveys on its highways to measure traffic volumes and this measure is expressed in terms of average annual daily traffic, a measure of traffic volume for any average day of the year. Between seven and 58 percent of the traffic recorded consisted of trucks and these counts are for the portion of the freeway in Utah. The freeway enters Utah from Nevada in the city of Wendover on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats, the cities of West Wendover, Nevada and Wendover are accessible by I-80s only business loop in Utah, whose interchange is just south of Danger Cave. Bonneville Speedway, home to land speed records, is accessible from I-80. In the middle of the flats is a concrete sculpture, Metaphor, The Tree of Utah. Bounded on each sides by military training grounds, the I-80 corridor is overflown by commercial airliners traveling west from Salt Lake City International Airport, the freeway veers north around the Cedar Mountains in a small gap between them and the Lakeside Mountains. Further east, the passes the Stansbury Mountains, which are located in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest
5.
Bonneville Speedway
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Bonneville Speedway is an area of the Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover, Utah, that is marked out for motor sports. It is particularly noted as the venue for numerous speed records. The salt flats were first used for sports in 1912. A reduction of available racing surface and salt thickness has led to the cancellation of events at Bonneville, available racing surface is much reduced with just 2.5 miles available instead of the 9 mile courses traditionally used for Speed Week. Historically, the speedway was marked out by the Utah Department of Transportation at the start of each summer, since at least the 1990s, track preparations have been the responsibility of the event organizers. Days or weeks in advance, the track preparers identify an area best suited for their track layouts, surveyors are brought in to survey the timing trap distances. A day before racing begins, the markers are added. Originally, the straightaway was marked with a black line down its center. This was eventually changed to lines down either side, as the line wore out too quickly. As the costs for painting the lines has gone up, organizations have switched to flags, the last event to use black lines was Speed Week, August 2009. The number of tracks and the sections for each track are set according to what is most beneficial for each event. Large public meets such as Speed Week run as many as four tracks with several timed miles, usually starting with the second mile and running to the fifth mile. Smaller meets that typically only run world record attempts will utilize a single track, with one timed mile, additional marks and cones indicate the end of the track and the position of timing equipment. The annual Speed Week was cancelled in both 2014 and 2015, as were many land-speed racing events, due to deteriorating track conditions, heavy rains caused a layer of mud from surrounding mountains to flow onto the flats, covering approximately 6 mi of the track. Although another section of the flats would normally be used, nearby mining operations had reduced the size of the alternative track. The depth of the salt crust at Bonneville has also been decreasing, measured at as much at 3 ft in the 1940s and 50s, it has been reduced to just 0.17 ft in 2015. Though recent studies have made, the causes of this deterioration are not clear. Some strategies were devised to revert the decreasing salt surface, such as pumping back salt, in late August, the BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials are held
6.
Northern Basin and Range ecoregion
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The Northern Basin and Range ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in the U. S. states of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and California. It contains dissected lava plains, rolling hills, alluvial fans, valleys, although arid, the ecoregion is higher and cooler than the Snake River Plain to the north and has more available moisture and a cooler climate than the Central Basin and Range to the south. Its southern boundary is determined by the highest shoreline of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, the western part of the region is internally drained, its eastern stream network drains to the Snake River system. The valleys support sagebrush steppe or saltbush vegetation, mollisol soils are common, in contrast to the aridisols of the Central Basin. Juniper-dominated woodland occurs on rugged, stony uplands, the mountain ranges are covered in mountain sagebrush, Idaho fescue, Douglas-fir, subalpine forests, or aspen. Today, most of the region is used for livestock grazing, dryland and irrigated cropland are found in some areas, but in general the soils are less suitable for agriculture than those in the Columbia Plateau and the Snake River Plain ecoregions. Most public lands in the region are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Northern Basin and Range ecoregion has been subdivided into fourteen Level IV ecoregions, as described below. Level IV mapping is not yet complete in California, and the information below includes only the sections in Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. The Dissected High Lava Plateau ecoregion is a broad to gently rolling basalt plateau cut by deep, sheer-walled canyons, with perennial, Elevation varies from 4,000 to 7,300 feet. The region is less wooded, lower, and more arid than neighboring subregions in the Northern Basin and it differs from sagebrush-dominated regions in the Central Basin and Range in having higher precipitation and colder winters. Juniper-pinyon woodlands grow on rocky and gravelly uplands, understory species are denser and biological soil crusts tend to be more extensive and in better condition than at similar elevations in the Central Basin and Range. Cheatgrass has replaced depleted bunchgrasses in overgrazed areas and it is primarily used for rangeland and wildlife habitat. Contiguous areas in California have not been mapped yet, the Semiarid Hills and Low Mountains ecoregion is higher and more rugged than the sagebrush plains and basins of neighboring regions. It is composed of unglaciated mountain slopes, hills, and alluvial fans at an elevation of 4,600 to 9,000 feet, scattered juniper woodlands grow on shallow and rocky soils. These hills represent the limit for both pinyon and Utah juniper, western juniper replaces them to the west and north. Groves of aspen grow on alluvial fans and along stream networks, with lodgepole pine. Geyer willow and Booth willow are also present in riparian areas, the region includes streams that have been designated for protection as critical or high priority habitat for Yellowstone cutthroat trout and other fish. Water quality has been lightly to moderately degraded by human activities, such as gold mining and livestock grazing
7.
Bureau of Land Management
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President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies, the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The mission of the BLM is to sustain the health, diversity, originally BLM holdings were described as land nobody wanted because homesteaders had passed them by. All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits, the agency manages 221 wilderness areas,23 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Landscape Conservation System totaling about 30 million acres. There are more than 63,000 oil and gas wells on BLM public lands, total energy leases generated approximately $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, and Native American groups. The BLMs roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and these laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution. As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain, France and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored, surveyed, during the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies. After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, England, France, in the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio. By this time, the United States needed revenue to function, Land was sold so that the government would have money to survive. In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted, the Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors. The first years of surveying were completed by trial and error, once the territory of Ohio had been surveyed, in 1812, Congress established the General Land Office as part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands. By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were finally fulfilled, over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land. Several different types of patents existed and these include cash entry, credit, homestead, Indian, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, railroads, state selections, swamps, town sites, and town lots. A system of land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land that was surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory. This pattern gradually spread across the entire United States, the laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing, exploration, and production of selected commodities, such as coal, oil, gas, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees. The Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937, commonly referred as the O&C Act, in 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior. It took several years for new agency to integrate and reorganize
8.
Grove Karl Gilbert
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Grove Karl Gilbert, known by the abbreviated name G. K. Gilbert in academic literature, was an American geologist. Gilbert was born in Rochester, New York and graduated from the University of Rochester, in 1871, he joined George M. Wheelers geographical survey as its first geologist. He then joined the Powell Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region in 1874, becoming Powells primary assistant, during this time he published an important monograph, The Geology of the Henry Mountains. After the creation of the U. S. Geological Survey in 1879, he was appointed to the position of Senior Geologist, Gilbert published a study of the former ancient Lake Bonneville in 1890, of which the Great Salt Lake is a remnant. He named that lake after the army captain Benjamin L. E. de Bonneville, the type of river delta that Gilbert described at this location has since become known to geomorphologists as a Gilbert delta. In 1891, Gilbert examined the origins for a crater in Arizona, now known as Meteor Crater. For a number of reasons, and against his intuition, he concluded it was the result of a steam explosion rather than an impact of a meteorite. Gilberts calculations showed that the volume of the crater and the debris on the rim were roughly equal, further there were no magnetic anomalies. Gilbert argued that the fragments found on the rim were just coincidence. Gilbert would publicize these conclusions in a series of lectures in 1895, subsequent investigations would reveal that it was in fact a meteor crater, but that interpretation was not well established until the mid-20th century. The interpretation of lunar craters as of impact origin was also debated until the mid-20th century and he joined the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. Two weeks after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Gilbert took a series of photographs documenting the damage along the San Andreas fault from Inverness to Bolinas. Gilbert is considered one of the giants of the sub-discipline of geomorphology, having contributed to the understanding of evolution, erosion. Gilbert was a science pioneer, correctly identifying lunar craters as caused by impacts. Gilbert was one of the influential early American geologists. He won the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London in 1900 and he was awarded the Charles P. Daly Medal by the American Geographical Society in 1910. Gilbert was well-esteemed by all American geologists during his lifetime, because of Gilberts prescient insights into planetary geology, the Geological Society of America created the G. K. Gilbert Award for planetary geology in 1983. Gilberts wide-ranging scientific ideas were so profound that the Geological Society of America published GSA Special Paper 183 on his research, craters on the Moon and on Mars are named in his honor
9.
United States Army
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The United States Armed Forces are the federal armed forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, from the time of its inception, the military played a decisive role in the history of the United States. A sense of unity and identity was forged as a result of victory in the First Barbary War. Even so, the Founders were suspicious of a permanent military force and it played an important role in the American Civil War, where leading generals on both sides were picked from members of the United States military. Not until the outbreak of World War II did a standing army become officially established. The National Security Act of 1947, adopted following World War II and during the Cold Wars onset, the U. S. military is one of the largest militaries in terms of number of personnel. It draws its personnel from a pool of paid volunteers. As of 2016, the United States spends about $580.3 billion annually to fund its military forces, put together, the United States constitutes roughly 40 percent of the worlds military expenditures. For the period 2010–14, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the United States was the worlds largest exporter of major arms, the United States was also the worlds eighth largest importer of major weapons for the same period. The history of the U. S. military dates to 1775 and these forces demobilized in 1784 after the Treaty of Paris ended the War for Independence. All three services trace their origins to the founding of the Continental Army, the Continental Navy, the United States President is the U. S. militarys commander-in-chief. Rising tensions at various times with Britain and France and the ensuing Quasi-War and War of 1812 quickened the development of the U. S. Navy, the reserve branches formed a military strategic reserve during the Cold War, to be called into service in case of war. Time magazines Mark Thompson has suggested that with the War on Terror, Command over the armed forces is established in the United States Constitution. The sole power of command is vested in the President by Article II as Commander-in-Chief, the Constitution also allows for the creation of executive Departments headed principal officers whose opinion the President can require. This allowance in the Constitution formed the basis for creation of the Department of Defense in 1947 by the National Security Act, the Defense Department is headed by the Secretary of Defense, who is a civilian and member of the Cabinet. The Defense Secretary is second in the chain of command, just below the President. Together, the President and the Secretary of Defense comprise the National Command Authority, to coordinate military strategy with political affairs, the President has a National Security Council headed by the National Security Advisor. The collective body has only power to the President
10.
Officer (armed forces)
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An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. In this sense, officers are not enlisted, but hold appointments from their government that typically remain in force indefinitely unless resigned, the proportion of officers varies greatly. Officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel, in 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13. 7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, historically, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers, in the early twentieth century, the Spanish army had the highest proportion of officers of any European army, at 12. 5%. Within a nations armed forces, armies tend to have a proportion of officers. For example,13. 9% of British army personnel and 22. 2% of the RAF personnel were officers in 2013, having officers is one requirement for combatant status under the laws of war, though these officers need not have obtained an official commission or warrant. Commissioned officers are typically the only persons, in an armed forces environment, a superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a subordinate officer relative to the superior. Non-commissioned officers in positions of authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command per se, many advanced militaries require university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even from the enlisted ranks. In the Israel Defense Forces, a university degree is a requirement for an officer to advance to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the IDF often sponsors the studies for its majors, while aircrew and naval officers obtain academic degrees as a part of their training programmes. In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for British Armed Forces officers, the first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. The third route is similar to the second, in that they convert from an enlisted to a commission, but these are taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs. LE officers, whilst holding the same Queens Commission, generally work in different roles from the DE officers, in the infantry, a number of Warrant Officer Class 1s are commissioned as LE officers. For Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officer candidates, a 30-week period at Britannia Royal Naval College or a 30-week period at RAF College Cranwell, Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a grueling 15-month course. The courses consist of not only tactical and combat training, but also leadership, management, etiquette, until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the British Army were purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, however, operated on a more meritocratic, or at least socially mobile, AOCS also also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate and Naval Aviation Cadet programs. NAVCADs were personnel who held associates degrees, but lacked bachelors degrees, nAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program, but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings. After their initial tour, they would be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelors degree
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