Wild About Utah

March 7, 2013August 3, 2020

Gypsum Dreams

Gypsum deposits seen off the tour route in Lehman Caves, Great Basin National Park (Along the Western Utah/Nevada border) Courtesy NPS, NPS Photo — Shallow briny lagoon on the
Great Salt Lake where
salt deposits are accumulating
Courtesy and Copyright David Roubik, Photographer

Gypsum deposits seen off the tour route in Lehman Caves, Great Basin National Park (Along the Western Utah/Nevada border)
Courtesy US NPS, NPS Photo

Sheetrock manufactured from Gypsum
near Sigurd, UT by US Gypsum (USG)
Courtesy USG

Gypsum sand from White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
Courtesy
Mark A. Wilson, Photographer,
Department of Geology, The College of Wooster
Public Domain
Courtesy Wikipedia

Many of us slumber nightly amid the mineral sediments of ancient oceans. The Sheetrock walls of your home are made from the marine mineral gypsum. Along with rock salt, gypsum forms as a precipitate from salty brines. In deep stagnant waters, these minerals are concentrated by settling. More commonly, evaporative precipitates accumulate beneath shallow lagoons like those of the Great Salt Lake. Long ago, under a shrinking Lake Bonneville, such evaporates produced the Bonneville Salt Flats.Gypsum Dreams

Gypsum is a pale, soft mineral composed of hydrous calcium sulfate. Both gypsum and rock salt, or halite, are geologically peculiar. Pressed under the weight of overlying rock strata, they become plastic and mobile. Gypsum and halite are light compared to other rock layers and so are squeezed upward to form massive salt domes. The arches of Arches National Park were molded by an underlying gypsum salt dome that bowed the sandstone layers above.

Gypsum can be found in diverse forms. Glass Mountain in Capitol Reef National Park consists of massive translucent slabs of crystalline gypsum, called selenite. As alabaster, it is readily sculpted and carved. Gypsum sand comprises the white dunes southwest of Fillmore Utah, as well as those of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Dehydrated in kilns, gypsum becomes plaster of Paris. Most gypsum is quarried, however, to make wallboard.

Near Sigurd, gypsum-bearing strata are mined and made into Sheetrock. These strata were laid down in the Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed. You can see a surface quarry of gypsum on a hillside just east of Nephi. Precipitated in briny lagoons, buried under rocks, squeezed upward into salt domes, perhaps blown about and sculpted by wind, the gypsum in your Sheetrock walls had a long and active history whose transformative stages you can witness right here in Utah.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy David Roubik
Courtesy US NPS
Courtesy USG, Usg.com
Courtesy Mark A. Wilson
Text: Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society https://www.bridgerlandaudubon.org

Additional Reading:

Ralph Walter Stone. 1920. Gypsum deposits of the United States – Issues 697-701, pages 261-283, https://books.google.com/books?id=k1CsW4ux0-kC

Ege, Carl, The amazing monoliths and “mountain” of gypsum at Lower Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef National Park, Wayne County, Utah, Utah Geological Survey https://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes
/geosights/cathedralvalley.htm

Chronic, Halka, Roadside Geology of Utah, https://www.amazon.com/Roadside-Geology-Utah-Series/dp/0878422285

February 28, 2013March 28, 2018

Why is it Colder at Higher Elevations?

Hi, this is Mark Larese-Casanova from the Utah Master Naturalist Program at Utah State University Extension.

If the old saying that “hot air rises” is true, then why is it colder at the top of a mountain? Let’s think about it in terms inflating a bicycle tire. If we were to use a bicycle pump, it would compress the surrounding air to a greater pressure as the tire is inflated. This causes air molecules to collide at a greater rate, releasing energy in the form of heat. As a result, the bicycle pump would feel warmer to the touch.

Alternatively, if a CO2 cartridge is used to inflate the tire, compressed air is released, resulting in a cooling effect as molecules rapidly move farther apart. On a warm day, the CO2 cartridge will feel cold to the touch, even frosty. So, the greater the air pressure, the warmer the temperature.

The air around us doesn’t feel like it weighs much, but it’s obvious that it has some mass whenever a helium balloon is released. The balloon, filled with a gas that is lighter than the air in our atmosphere, floats up into the sky. If we think about the amount of air sitting on top of the ground at Utah’s lowest elevation of 2,178 feet above sea level at Beaver Dam Wash in the southwest corner of the state, and compare it to Utah’s highest elevation of 13,538 feet at King’s Peak, that’s an extra 11,360 feet of air! As a result, air pressure is about one and a half times as much at Beaver Dam Wash as it is at King’s Peak. With that increased pressure at lower elevations comes increased temperatures. In fact, with every thousand feet lower in elevation, average temperatures increase about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

On average, annual temperatures are about 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in Salt Lake City than up at the Town of Alta, just ten miles up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Even early pioneers noticed this, and decided to settle along the warmer foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. To this day, most of Utah’s population along the Wasatch Front benefits from longer growing seasons and lower heating bills, while taking advantage of higher, cooler elevations for hiking on a summer day or skiing in winter.

For Wild About Utah, I’m Mark Larese-Casanova.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy and Copyright Mark Larese-Casanova
Text: Mark Larese-Casanova

Additional Reading:

Altitude.org Air Pressure Calculator. https://www.altitude.org/air_pressure.php

If hot air rises, why is it cold in the mountains? Colorado State University Little Shop of Physics. https://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/tenthings/ExpansionCooling.pdf

Joule-Thomson Effect. Princeton University. https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Joule%E2%80%93Thomson_effect.html

Utah’s basement — Beaver Dam Wash is state’s lowest elevation. Deseret News. Sept. 3, 2006. https://www.deseretnews.com/article/645197370/Utahs-basement–Beaver-Dam-Wash-is-states-lowest-elevation.html?pg=all

Western Regional Climate Center. https://www.wrcc.dri.edu/

February 21, 2013May 1, 2016

Til Death Do Us Part

Audio: mp3 Listen to WildAboutUtah

Click for a larger view of a pair of Tundra Swans. Courtesy the US FWS, Tim Bowman, Photographer — Tundra Swan Pair
*Cygnus columbianus*
Courtesy US FWS
Tim Bowman, Photographer

Hi, I’m Holly Strand.

Each year we celebrate Valentine’s Day by expressing our love and devotion to a significant other. While humans are the only species that actually celebrate it, we aren’t the only animals who bond together as couples. Monogamy–or long term pair bonding as animal behaviorists call it–is practiced by over 90 % of birds. Along with a modest number of mammals, including wolves, beavers, voles and gibbons. Even a few fish pair up.

Monogamy may have evolved for different reasons among different groups of animals. For some, female dispersal may have played a role. If females are few and far between–as is the case with white tail ptarmigans–there is a tendency to pair up. Perhaps additional potential mates are too far away too bother. For males, monogamy can save a lot of time and energy. Monogamous males don’t have to fight over females or bother with first time courtship rituals. And by closely guarding a single female , males can protect their genetic investment.

There are advantages for females too. With a mate, you can get a little assistance around the nest or den. Male partners can help incubate eggs, guard against predators and help feed the kids. The fact that male and females are equally suited to care for chicks may explain why monogamy is so much more common among birds. The male improves his chances for reproductive success by investing in just one female’s little ones. The situation is different in mammals. Mammal males just can’t step in and help as much with gestation and lactation. So perhaps that’s why only 3% of mammal species form pair bonds.

The offspring of monogamous pairs tend to be pretty helpless at birth. Having two caregivers means that the you can take more time to mature. This long, slow development leads to larger brain sizes. Humans demonstrate this phenomenon very well as we parent our children longer than any other species on earth!

The tundra swan is Utah’s best example of monogamy in the wild. Young tundra swans date around a bit when they are young, but they eventually settle down with a single mate for life. They build and defend a nest together and raise the kids. But then they stick together the rest of the year as well. Greetings and courtship rituals such as head bobbing and dipping and ritual bathing strengthen their commitment toward each other.

You can see these beautiful swans in massive numbers twice a year when they migrate through Utah. Tens of thousands of them stop by the Great Salt Lake on their way to either the Arctic tundra or to central California.

For sources, pictures, and archives of past programs, go to www.wildaboututah.org

For Wild About Utah, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Image: Courtesy US FWS, images.fws.gov
Text: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading

Limpert, R. J. and S. L. Earnst. 1994. Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: https://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/089

Mocka, Douglas, and Masahiro Fujiokab. 1990. “Monogamy and long-term pair bonding in vertebrates” Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Volume 5, Issue 2, February 1990, Pages 39–43

Reichard, Ulrich and Christoph Boesch. 2003. Monogramy: mating Strategies and Partnerships in Birds, Humans and Other Mammals. Cambridge University Press.

Schultz, Susanne and Robin I.M. Dunbar. 2010. “Bondedness and sociality”
Behaviour, Volume 147, Number 7, 2010 , pp. 775-803(29).

Schultz, Susanne and Robin I.M. Dunbar. 2010. Social bonds in birds are associated with brain size and contingent on the correlated evolution of life-history and increased parental investment. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. Volume 100, Issue 1, pages 111–123, May 2010.

February 14, 2013January 24, 2021

Hearts

Hearts abound this time of year – gracing cards, storefronts, and of course, chocolates. And while the heart symbol bears little resemblance to the organ itself, their abundance of late has caused me to consider my own heart, beating away largely unacknowledged all these years.

In its simplest form, the heart is a pump. Its sole function is to keep the blood in your body on the move, partnering with your lungs to deliver life-giving oxygen to each and every hard-working cell, from the top of your head to the tip of your pinky toe. Most hearts have two distinct features – an atrium where blood collects on its way into the heart and a ventricle which pumps the blood back out.

But even with these shared components, not all hearts are alike. Throughout the animal kingdom, hearts take on a variety of forms. Fish, for example, have a two-chambered heart: one atrium that collects blood and one ventricle that pumps it back out. Blood journeys from the heart to the gills, where it picks up oxygen and then continues on its way, delivering its cargo to the body before making its way back.

Amphibians and reptiles, with the exception of the crocodile, have a three-chambered heart consisting of two atria and one ventricle. One atrium is designated for the oxygen-poor blood that is headed towards the lungs while the other is reserved for oxygen-rich blood coming back from the lungs and headed out into the rest of the body. In the shared ventricle, blood from both atria mix slightly, resulting in a somewhat inefficient system that nonetheless seems to meet the needs of the animals it serves.

Mammals and birds have taken the heart one evolutionary step further with the development of a four chambered heart that fully separates oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. Blood flowing in from the lungs enters the left atria and is pumped out to the body by the left ventricle, while blood returning from the body enters the right atria and is pumped to the lungs via the right ventricle. Because of this total separation, the blood leaving a mammal’s heart contains more oxygen than a reptile’s – a huge metabolic advantage that helps support our warm-blooded fast-paced lifestyle.

Two-, three- and four-chambered hearts are considered closed circulatory systems, meaning the fluid, or blood, is fully enclosed within blood vessels. Insects, on the other hand, have an open circulatory system which means that they don’t have blood vessels at all. Instead their bodies are simply full of fluid that is continually circulated with the help of multiple simple hearts that pass liquid through as they contract and relax.

Lastly, there are some organisms that don’t need hearts at all! These creatures absorb oxygen through their skin and are small or thin enough that oxygen easily diffuses to all parts of the body. Some jellyfish, for example, have a body wall only two cells thick that separates their internal body space from the water around them.

Without our comparatively complex hearts, we probably wouldn’t be able to do what we do as humans and mammals. So take a moment during this Valentine’s season to acknowledge your amazing heart. Throughout the course of your lifetime it will beat upwards of 2 billion times and will pump as much as 100 million gallons of blood through its chambers. A pretty amazing feat for something we only celebrate once a year.

For the Stokes Nature Center and Wild About Utah, this is Andrea Liberatore.

Credits:
Text: Andrea Liberatore, Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon.

Additional Reading:

Campbell, N.A. (1996) Biology, Fourth Edition. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Menlo Park CA

Bailey, Regina (2013) Circulatory System: Types of Circulatory Systems. https://biology.about.com/od/organsystems/a/circulatorysystem.htm

Meyer, J.R. (2005) Insect Physiology: Circulatory System. North Carolina State University. https://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/tutorial/circulatory.html