Summit
A summit is a point on a surface, higher in elevation than all points adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex and zenith are synonymous; the term top is used only for a mountain peak, located at some distance from the nearest point of higher elevation. For example, a big massive rock next to the main summit of a mountain is not considered a summit. Summits near a higher peak, with some prominence or isolation, but not reaching a certain cutoff value for the quantities, are considered subsummits of the higher peak, are considered part of the same mountain. A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top. Summit may refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route; the highest summit in the world is Everest with height of 8844.43 m above sea level. The first official ascent was made by Sir Edmund Hillary, they reached the mountain`s peak in 1953. Whether a highest point is classified as a summit, a sub peak or a separate mountain is subjective; the UIAA definition of a peak is.
Otherwise, it's a subpeak. In many parts of the western United States, the term summit refers to the highest point along a road, highway, or railroad. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit and the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit. A summit climbing differs from the common mountaineering. Summit expedition requires: 1+ year of training, a good physical shape, a special gear. Although a huge part of climber’s stuff can be left and taken at the base camps or given to porters, there is a long list of personal equipment. In addition to common mountaineers’ gear, Summit climbers need to take Diamox and bottles of oxygen. There are special requirements for crampons, ice axe, rappel device, etc. Geoid Hill – Landform that extends above the surrounding terrain Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder Summit Climbing Gear List
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous 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 and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Amphibolite
Amphibolite is a metamorphic rock that contains amphibole the species hornblende and actinolite, as well as plagioclase. Amphibolite is a grouping of rocks composed of amphibole and plagioclase feldspar, with little or no quartz, it is dark-colored and heavy, with a weakly foliated or schistose structure. The small flakes of black and white in the rock give it a salt-and-pepper appearance. Amphibolite need not be derived from metamorphosed mafic rocks; because metamorphism creates minerals based upon the chemistry of the protolith, certain'dirty marls' and volcanic sediments may metamorphose to an amphibolite assemblage. Deposits containing dolomite and siderite readily yield amphibolite where there has been a certain amount of contact metamorphism by adjacent granitic masses. Metamorphosed basalt creates ortho-amphibolite and other chemically appropriate lithologies create para-amphibolite. Tremolite, while it is a metamorphic amphibole, is derived most from metamorphosed ultramafic rocks, thus tremolite-talc schist is not considered as'amphibolite'.
A holocrystalline plutonic igneous rock composed of hornblende amphibole is called a hornblendite, a crystal cumulate rock. Igneous rocks with >90% amphiboles, which have a feldspar groundmass, may be a lamprophyre. Metamorphic rocks composed of amphibole, with subordinate epidote, chlorite, quartz and accessory leucoxene and magnetite which have a protolith of an igneous rock are known as Orthoamphibolite. Para-amphibolite will have the same equilibrium mineral assemblage as orthoamphibolite, with more biotite, may include more quartz and depending on the protolith, more calcite/aragonite and wollastonite; the easiest way to determine the true nature of an amphibolite is to inspect its field relationships. If the amphibolite appears to transgress apparent protolith bedding surfaces it is an ortho-amphibolite, as this suggests it was a dyke. Picking a sill and thin metamorphosed lava flows may be more troublesome. Thereafter, whole rock geochemistry will suitably identify ortho- from para-amphibolite.
The word metabasalt was thus coined to avoid the confusion between ortho-amphibolite and para-amphibolite. While not a true metamorphic rock name, as it infers an origin, it is a useful term. Amphibolite as a rock defines a particular set of temperature and pressure conditions known as the amphibolite facies. However, caution must be applied here before embarking on metamorphic mapping based on amphibolite alone. Firstly, for an amphibolite to be classed as a metamorphic amphibolite, it must be certain that the amphibole in the rock is a prograde metamorphic product, not a retrograde metamorphic product. For instance, actinolite amphibole is a common product of retrograde metamorphism of metabasalt at greenschist facies conditions; this will take on the crystal form and habit of the original protolith assemblage. Actinolite schist is the result of hydrothermal alteration or metasomatism, thus may not be a good indicator of metamorphic conditions when taken in isolation. Secondly, the microstructure and crystal size of the rock must be appropriate.
Amphibolite facies conditions are experienced at temperatures in excess of 500 °C and pressures less than 1.2 GPa, well within the ductile deformation field. Gneissic texture may occur nearby, if not mylonite zones and ductile behaviour, including stretching lineations may occur. While it is not impossible to have remnant protolith mineralogy, this is rare. More common is to find phenocrysts of pyroxene, olivine and magmatic amphibole such as pargasite rhombohedra, pseudomorphed by hornblende amphibole. Original magmatic textures crude magmatic layering in layered intrusions, is preserved. Amphibolite facies equilibrium mineral assemblages of various protolith rock types consist of: Basalt ortho-amphibolite. Amphibolite facies is a result of continuing burial and thermal heating after greenschist facies is exceeded. Further burial and metamorphic compression will lead to eclogite facies metamorphism. In dry rocks, additional heat may result in granulite facies conditions. Uralite is a particular hydrothermally altered pyroxenite.
The texture is distinctive, the pyroxene altered to fuzzy, radially arr
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, the natural hazards that threaten it; the organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology, geography and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility; the USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. The USGS employs 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia; the USGS has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, Menlo Park, California. The current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is "science for a changing world." The agency's previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its hundredth anniversary, was "Earth Science in the Public Service." Since 2012, the USGS science focus is directed at six topical "Mission Areas", namely Climate and Land Use Change, Core Science Systems, Ecosystems and Minerals and Environmental Health, Natural Hazards, Water.
In December 2012, the USGS split the Energy and Minerals and Environmental Health Mission Area resulting in seven topical Mission Areas, with the two new areas being: Energy and Minerals and Environmental Health. Administratively, it is divided into six Regional Units. Other specific programs include: Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide; the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location and magnitude of global earthquakes. The USGS runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the United States under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System; the USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, the public, both domestic and worldwide, about significant earthquakes. It maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research, it conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards. USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast.
As of 2005, the agency is working to create a National Volcano Early Warning System by improving the instrumentation monitoring the 169 volcanoes in U. S. territory and by establishing methods for measuring the relative threats posed at each site. The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time; the USGS collaborates with Canadian and Mexican government scientists, along with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, to produce the North American Environmental Atlas, used to depict and track environmental issues for a continental perspective. The USGS operates the streamgaging network for the United States, with over 7400 streamgages. Real-time streamflow data are available online. National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center implements partner-driven science to improve understanding of past and present land use change, develops relevant climate and land use forecasts, identifies lands and communities that are most vulnerable to adverse impacts of change from the local to global scale.
Since 1962, the Astrogeology Research Program has been involved in global and planetary exploration and mapping. In collaboration with Stanford University, the USGS operates the USGS-Stanford Ion Microprobe Laboratory, a world-class analytical facility for U--Pb geochronology and trace element analyses of minerals and other earth materials. USGS operates a number of water related programs, notably the National Streamflow Information Program and National Water-Quality Assessment Program. USGS Water data is publicly available from their National Water Information System database; the USGS operates the National Wildlife Health Center, whose mission is "to serve the nation and its natural resources by providing sound science and technical support, to disseminate information to promote science-based decisions affecting wildlife and ecosystem health. The NWHC provides information, technical assistance, research and leadership on national and international wildlife health issues." It is the agency responsible for surveillance of H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks in the United States.
The USGS runs 17 biological research centers in the United States, including the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. The USGS is investigating collaboration with the social networking site Twitter to allow for more rapid construction of ShakeMaps; the USGS produces several national series of topographic maps which vary in scale and extent, with some wide gaps in coverage, notably the complete absence of 1:50,000 scale topographic maps or their equivalent. The largest and best-known topographic series is the 7.5-minute, 1:24,000 scale, quadrangle, a non-metric scale unique to the United States. Each of these maps covers an area bounded by two lines of latitude and two lines of longitude spaced 7.5 minutes apart. Nearly 57,000 individual maps in this series cover the 48 contiguous states, Hawaii, U. S. territories, areas of Alaska near Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay. The area covered by each map varies with the latitude of its represented location due to convergence of the meridians. At lower latitudes, near 30° north, a 7.5-minute quadrangle contains an area of about 64 square miles.
At 49° north latitude, 49 square miles are contained within a quadrangle of that size. As a unique non-metric map scale, the 1:24,000 scale requires a separate and specialized romer scale for pl
Castilleja neglecta
The Tiburon paintbrush or Tiburon Indian paintbrush is an endangered taxon of flowering plant in the broomrape family, Orobanchaceae. It is endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area in California in the United States, where it occurs in Marin and Santa Clara Counties; this plant is listed as threatened by the state of California and endangered by the United States government. This plant is a perennial herb with a bristly purplish stem 15 to 60 centimeters tall; the lance-shaped leaves are 2 to 4 centimeters lobed or not. The inflorescence is up to 2.5 centimeters wide and has bracts in shades of yellow, sometimes to pink or reddish orange. The flowers are 2 centimeters long and vary from green to purple with red or yellow margins; the plant grows on serpentine soils below 300 meters in elevation. Rare species Endangered Species Recovery Plan CalPhotos
Streptanthus niger
Streptanthus niger is an endangered species within the family Brassicaceae. Like other genus members, this herb has wavy petal margins with perimeter calluses that discourage larval herbivory; this plant is endemic to the Tiburon Peninsula of Northern California, occurs at elevations below 150 m on serpentine grasslands. The common name for this species is black jewelflower; this annual herb displays dark purple sepals. The etymology of this genus scientific name derives from the Greek word streptanthus, meaning twisted flower, with reference to the notable wavy margins of the petals; the species name niger relates to the color of the seeds being black, although an alternate account cites the dark color of the petals as the source of the appellation. Streptanthus niger is an annual herb attaining a height of 20 to 70 centimeters; the plant architecture may manifest as simple-stemmed or branching in the upper part. Lower portions of the stems are smooth and hairless; this self-pollinated plant has dark purple black, flower petals.
The zig-zag inflorescence pattern is an identifying characteristic. Sepals measure five to seven mm; the characteristic wavy petal margins have calluses. The leaves of S. niger appear in a basal manifestation and measure less than nine centimeters in length. Chromosomal characterization is 2n=28; this species is considered a subspecies of the bristly jewelflower. There are only two known colonies of Tiburon jewelflower, both of which occur on the Tiburon Peninsula, with a separation of about three km. One of the populations is in the vicinity of the historic Old St. Hilary's Church; the Federal Register listing document noted that S. niger occurs only on grasslands above shallow serpentine soils involving gentle to moderate southwestern facing slopes. The listing statement further notes that: "Serpentine soils are derived from ultramafic rocks such as serpentinite and peridotite, which are found in discontinuous outcrops in the... Coast Ranges". According to the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Service: "species such as Tiburon jewelflower have adapted to serpentine soils and require them to survive".
The Tiburon jewelflower was first collected by Edward L. Greene in the year 1886 at the site of Old Saint Hilary's Church on the Tiburon Peninsula. Streptanthus niger was designated as endangered by the state of California in the year 1990 and listed by the U. S. federal government five years later. By 1998 a Species Recovery Plan had been prepared to provide more specific protection measures for this endangered dicotyledon. For each of the two known colonies, the population has varied between 25 and 2000 over recent years, indicating the precariousness of the species; the California Native Plant Society has placed S. niger on List 1B. Streptanthus niger, Tiburon Jewelflower Jepson Manual treatment
