Final Blog

The Badlands of South Dakota is a very unique geographical landscape that has been formed over the last hundred million years by a constantly changing climate and environment. Over time, layers of sediment and other materials have collected and built up the layers of rock that the Badlands are made of. Extreme weather and climate change  such as rain, rivers and wind have carved out crevices and canyons in the rock formations creating the tall standing column rock formations that make up the Badlands. Water and wind have worked hand in hand with extreme weather to wash away and erode the rock layers and reveal the many layers of soil and rock buildup and the rich fossil beds trapped inside of the preserved landscape. Some of the extreme weather consists of a sea that covered the entire Badlands at one point in time almost 60 million years ago, followed by changing climate of dry hot weather that eventually turned into a cooler windy climate.
Today's landscape of the Badlands is a cooler desert climate. With high winds and precipitation, the soil erodes an average of 1 inch per year.

Ariel view of stream erosion on upper sediment levels

In 10,000 years, the geography of the land will be similar to how it is now but scaled way smaller. With the continuous erosion patterns, I believe the upper sedimentary layers of sand and silt will be gone because they sit on the top of the rock pillar formations, so they will be the most exposed to the elements. The gorges and crevices will continue to widen as they wash away as well being exposed to the high winds, creating more of a canyon type landscape. Many of the rich fossil beds lie in the middle and upper layers of the formations so in the next ten thousand years most of the fossils should become exposed and will give us a better understanding as of what lived in the badlands over its geographic timeline over the last 100 million years.

In 1,000,000 years, the Badlands will be a vastly different landscape. From what I have learned about how fast the soil is eroding away, over an inch each year. Assuming the continual flooding and wind patterns remain somewhat constant, there will be nothing left of the  Badlands in  less than 1 million years. The Badlands started eroding away roughly half a million years ago and based on research and predictions it will be gone in less than another 500,000 years which is an extremely short period of time based on the geological timeline.

Its hard to tell how the Badlands will look In 100,000,000 years but based on how it has formed in the past and with other elements affecting it, including rivers that run through it and extreme weather patterns, I believe it will flood and become a large body of water depending on how deeply the soil will erode into the ground. After all, the Badlands started as a low lying sea of water before any of the Formations ever began.

Photo Credits:
 stream erosion-http://geology.campus.ad.csulb.edu/people/bperry/GrantPhotos/InlandFlightOct05/BorregoBadlandsStreamErosionOct05L.jpg

How Climate and Weather have shaped Badlands

The climate for the Badlands has been variable and unpredictable with extreme weather that has shaped the landscape and terrain over millions of years. In the layers of rock that form the crevices and formations that make up the badlands are specific markers that show how the climate has changed over the last 40 million years.

28-30 million years ago: the upper layers of the badlands were formed by wind and water that continued to cool the climate. (upper light tan layers)
30-34 million years ago: the brule formation was created when the climate began to dry up and cool down creating the tan and red layers near the upper middle
34-37 million years ago: a subtropical forest that covered the ground would flood and leave many individual layers that hold a dense array of fossilized remains buried in the flooded layers of the chadron formation. (many colored shallow layers in the middle of the formation).
69-75 million years ago:a shallow inland sea stretched across the great plains which formed the bottom black colored layer of Pierre shale rock.

In the last 500,000 years the climate has changed and the wind and river formations that were part of the annual climate began to erode the many layers of rock and carve the gorges that have created the formations of the badlands.

The Badlands have an extremely dry climate,
averaging under 24 inches of rain annually

The current weather of the Badlands desert climate Is very unstable and aggressive consisting of high winds and extremely low humidity. With the predicted climate patterns for the future, the Badlands of south Dakota are expected to be completely gone in the next 500,000 years, which is the blink of an eye when looking at a geological timeline.

Credits:
http://www.nps.gov/badl/planyourvisit/weather.htm
http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USSD0018
Photo Credits:
-column rock formation of the Badlands picture
http://www.nps.gov/badl/naturescience/geologicformations.htm
- Picture of the Dry climate
http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/0c/ae/0cae1d39-c687-46f8-bf6f-690dc6cead96/badlands4.jpg__1072x0_q85_upscale.jpg

 

First Blog: Badlands Formations

The Badlands of South Dakota are home to many unique rock formations that drastically affect the geographical landscape. Due to high amounts of rain and wind the weather plays a large part of shaping the land into canyons, and gullies. Each year the land erodes 1 inch on average. The Badlands erosion was caused by the Cheyenne river converging into other smaller rivers and streams.This extensive amount of eroding uncovers fossilized remains faster and makes the Badlands one of the richest fossil beds in North America. The badlands started eroding roughly 500,000 years ago but Due to rapid eroding, they are predicted to be gone completely in another half a million years which is a short period of time in geological perspective.

Photo Credits:

http://static-www.icr.org/i/articles/af/sedimentary_structure_wide.jpg

The rock that is being washed away by rain and wind is sedimentary rock, which is formed by tiny grains of sediment such as sand, silt, and clay that have been cemented together forming the sedimentary rock. As the sediments are washed away with water and blown off with wind, they begin to reveal the rich amount of fossils buried in the depths of the Badlands. The layers of sediment are visible showing what collected over the millions of years before eroding started.

 

Photo Credits:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Chinle_Badlands.jpg

 

The sedimentary rock is broken into layers called strata, which deposit different types of materials over millions of years that build up and create the badlands. Each sepeate layer is made up of a different material such as sand,silt or clay which is cemented together to form and harden each individual layer to one another.

 

Summary: The Badlands were formed over millions of years of collecting layers of material and building up. The Land was then formed by water and wind erosion that revealed the fossils buried in the sedimentary layers of the earth, and soon the erosion will make the Badlands completely disappear.

Introduction

This blog was created and maintained by Austin Harball.

I am Austin Harball, a sophomore undergraduate in the school of Business at the University of Colorado at Denver. I was born in Colorado and have lived here almost my entire life. This is my blog about the Badlands of South Dakota.

I chose The Badlands because it is a completely new and unique geographical landscape to me, somewhere I've never been but have always wanted to visit. This landscape is unique to me because it is unlike any Colorado environment. The Badlands is like a wall of cliffs that extends hundreds of miles through the plains of South Dakota with its huge ridges and low lying valleys carved out by water over the last half million years. It is one of the worlds richest deposits of mammal fossil beds and is home today to many animals including bison and bighorn sheep. This sparks my interest as an environment not quite like any I've ever seen before, and one I am eager to learn in depth about.

Photo Credit: http://www.emporia.edu