Does Mount Rainier National Park have soil that is poor in nutrients?

Does Mount Rainier National Park have soil that is poor in nutrients?

Because of the river’s speed, there is a lot of erosion happening creating a mineral rich water flow. However, the topsoil of this place is very poor in nutrients.

What type of volcanic landform is Mount Rainier?

stratovolcano
Mount Rainier is an episodically active composite volcano, also called a stratovolcano.

What is the lava composition of Mt Rainier?

Mount Rainier lava flows consist of andesite and some low-silica dacites, with some minor lava flows containing basaltic andesite. The volume of lava on Mount Rainier is approximately 150 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles), an amount sufficient to fill Seattle’s Safeco Stadium 100,000 times!

What are Mount Rainier’s features?

Mount Rainier and its associated geologic and glacial features. At a height of 14,410 feet, Mount Rainier is the highest volcanic peak in the contiguous United States. It has the largest alpine glacial system outside of Alaska and the world’s largest volcanic glacier cave system (in the summit crater).

What are the major volcanic hazards in the immediate area surrounding Mt Rainier?

Debris flows (lahars) pose the greatest hazard to people near Mount Rainier. A debris flow is a mixture of mud and rock debris that looks and behaves like flowing concrete. Giant debris flows sometimes develop when large masses of weak, water-saturated rock slide from the volcano’s flanks.

What type of landform is Willis wall?

Linear rock ridges or arêtes, locally known as cleavers, separate the glaciers. The Willis Wall is the 3,600- foot- high (1,100 m) vertical headwall that marks the Carbon Glacier cirque. Over a mile wide, the Carbon Glacier cirque is the largest in the Cascade Mountains (Kiver and Harris, 1999).

What is the tectonic setting of Mount Rainier?

Mount Rainier (Figure 2.1) is one of about two dozen recently active volcanoes in the Cascade Range, a volcanic arc formed by subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the North American plate.

How are Stratovolcanoes formed?

An eruption of highly viscous (very sticky) magma tends to produce steep-sided volcanoes with slopes that are about 30–35°. That’s because the viscous volcanic material doesn’t flow that far from where it is erupted, so it builds up in layers forming a cone-shaped volcano known as a stratovolcano.

Did Mount Rainier erupt?

Although Mount Rainier has not produced a significant eruption in the past 500 years, it is potentially the most dangerous volcano in the Cascade Range because of its great height, frequent earthquakes, active hydrothermal system, and extensive glacier mantle.

What is the volume of Mount Rainier?

991 million ft2
Areas and volumes of snow and ice are as follows: Mount Rainier, 991 million ft2, 156 billion ft3; Mount Hood, 145 million ft2,12 billion ft3; Three Sisters, 89 million ft2, 6 billion ft3; and Mount Shasta, 74 million ft2, 5 billion ft3.

What are the hazards of a Mount Rainier eruption?

The most likely hazards at Mount Rainier are debris avalanches, lahars, and floods (Crandell and Mullineaux, 1967; Crandell, 1973; Scott and others, 1992; U.S. Geodynamics Committee, 1994), as well as hazards that occur during eruptions, such as tephra, ballistic projectiles, pyroclastic flows and surges, lava flows.

What type of danger does Mount Rainier pose?

Debris flows
Debris flows (lahars) pose the greatest hazard to people near Mount Rainier. A debris flow is a mixture of mud and rock debris that looks and behaves like flowing concrete.

Is the Mount Rainier National Park a natural resource park?

Mount Rainier is a part of the Cascade-Sierra Mountains Physiographic Province and shares its geologic history and some characteristic geologic formations with a region that extends well beyond park boundaries. The Geologic Resources Inventory produces digital geologic maps and reports for more than 270 natural resource parks.

How are the ice caves on Mount Rainier formed?

Mount Rainier contains large volcanic-ice caves. The ice caves, and fumaroles, near the summit of the volcano are formed as a result of hydrothermal reactions between groundwater and rising gas steam from the underlying magmatic system. Glacial meltwater, rather than hydrothermal processes, also form some of the caves at the park.

Why is Mount Rainier important to the Cascades?

Expansion of the lahar detection system at Mount Rainier will improve the Cascades Volcano Observatory’s overall volcano monitoring and lahar detection capacity and provide more rapid notification to the immediate area and surrounding communities.

What kind of rocks are found on Mount Rainier?

Rocks observed at the volcano indicate a history of minor pyroclastic flows, or rapidly traveling rock and ash, and hydrothermally altered rocks, or rocks showing alterations due to high temperature water.