Hall Natural Area

Last updated April 05, 2019

The Hall Natural Area or Harvey Monroe Hall Natural Area is a region on the eastern border of Yosemite National Park in California. The area is located about 1.25 miles (2.0 km) northwest of Tioga Pass, and is approximately four miles (6.4 km) long from north to south and 2.75 miles (4.4 km) wide at its widest point. It lies completely within the Inyo National Forest.^[1]

Yosemite National Park is an American national park located in the western Sierra Nevada of Central California, bounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an area of 747,956 acres and sits in four counties: centered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera County. Designated a World Heritage site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness.

California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second most populous, after New York City. California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs.

Tioga Pass is a mountain pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. State Route 120 runs through it, and serves as the eastern entry point for Yosemite National Park, at the Tioga Pass Entrance Station. It is the highest highway pass in California and in the Sierra Nevada. Mount Dana is to the east of the pass. There are several trailheads into the Yosemite backcountry which begin at Tioga Pass, including the trail to the Gaylor Lakes to the west/northwest, and the rough trail to the summit of Mount Dana. Dana Meadows is immediately south of the pass alongside the highway, as the pass itself is roughly angled north/south as opposed to east/west. Dana Meadows contains several small lakes.

Geography

The Natural Area covers 3,883 acres (1,571 ha). Elevations range from 9,600 feet (2,900 m) along Lee Vining Creek to 12,590 feet (3,840 m) atop Mount Conness. The entire area is drained by Lee Vining Creek, which flows from northwest to southeast. Glaciation strongly affected the topography. Several deeply glaciated northeast-facing cirques are present, with steep headwalls and flats or lakes at their floors. Much of the lower elevation area is stepped topography resulting from differential erosion along jointing planes in the granitic bedrock.^[1]

Lee Vining Creek is a 16.2-mile-long (26.1 km) stream in Mono County, California, flowing into the endorheic basin of Mono Lake. It is the second largest stream flowing into the lake, after Rush Creek.

Mount Conness is a 12,590 foot (3,840 m) mountain in the Sierra Nevada range, to the west of the Hall Natural Area. Conness is on the boundary between the Inyo National Forest and Yosemite National Park. The Conness Glacier lies north of the summit.

Granite A common type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock with granular structure

Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray in color, depending on their mineralogy. The word "granite" comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a holocrystalline rock. Strictly speaking, granite is an igneous rock with between 20% and 60% quartz by volume, and at least 35% of the total feldspar consisting of alkali feldspar, although commonly the term "granite" is used to refer to a wider range of coarse-grained igneous rocks containing quartz and feldspar.

The climate is high Sierran montane with copious winter snowfall. Average annual precipitation is estimated to be more than 25 inches (640 mm). There is great variation in temperature and growing season.^[1]

History and purpose

The Research Natural Area (RNA) program is a nationwide system created to protect a network of federally administered public lands for the primary purposes of maintaining biological diversity, providing baseline ecological information, and encouraging research and university natural history education. In California, the RNA program is administered jointly by the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and Pacific Southwest Region ^[2]

Research Natural Area is a designation for certain protected areas in the United States.

Ecology is the branch of biology which studies the interactions among organisms and their environment. Objects of study include interactions of organisms that include biotic and abiotic components of their environment. Topics of interest include the biodiversity, distribution, biomass, and populations of organisms, as well as cooperation and competition within and between species. Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits. Biodiversity means the varieties of species, genes, and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services.

Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment; leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is called a naturalist or natural historian.

The Hall Natural Area was one of the first established in California (in 1933). The Carnegie Institution of Washington’s studies on genotype-environment interactions made much use of the transplant gardens at the south end of the Natural Area. Since then, other researchers have used the area, studying social organization of Belding ground squirrels, dynamics of wind-blown detritus in snow banks, and community structuring of subalpine forest birds.^[1]

The genotype is the part of the genetic makeup of a cell, and therefore of any individual, which determines one of its characteristics (phenotype). The term was coined by the Danish botanist, plant physiologist and geneticist Wilhelm Johannsen in 1903.

In biology, detritus is dead particulate organic material. It typically includes the bodies or fragments of dead organisms as well as fecal material. Detritus is typically colonized by communities of microorganisms which act to decompose the material. In terrestrial ecosystems, it is encountered as leaf litter and other organic matter intermixed with soil, which is denominated "soil organic matter". Detritus of aquatic ecosystems is organic material suspended in water and piling up on seabed floors, which is referred to as marine snow.

Snow refers to forms of ice crystals that precipitate from the atmosphere and undergo changes on the Earth's surface. It pertains to frozen crystalline water throughout its life cycle, starting when, under suitable conditions, the ice crystals form in the atmosphere, increase to millimeter size, precipitate and accumulate on surfaces, then metamorphose in place, and ultimately melt, slide or sublimate away. Snowstorms organize and develop by feeding on sources of atmospheric moisture and cold air. Snowflakes nucleate around particles in the atmosphere by attracting supercooled water droplets, which freeze in hexagonal-shaped crystals. Snowflakes take on a variety of shapes, basic among these are platelets, needles, columns and rime. As snow accumulates into a snowpack, it may blow into drifts. Over time, accumulated snow metamorphoses, by sintering, sublimation and freeze-thaw. Where the climate is cold enough for year-to-year accumulation, a glacier may form. Otherwise, snow typically melts seasonally, causing runoff into streams and rivers and recharging groundwater.

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The William O. Douglas Wilderness is a designated wilderness in the central portion of the state of Washington. It includes 169,081 acres (68,425 ha) located between the U.S. Route 12 and State Route 410 and is jointly administered by the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It shares a boundary with the Mt. Rainier National Park on the west; Norse Peak Wilderness lies to the north, Goat Rocks Wilderness to the south. Approximately 25 miles (40 km) of the Pacific Crest Trail travel along the Cascade Range crest within its boundaries. It contains scattered peaks, sharp ridges, steep slopes and hundreds of small lakes and potholes. Much of the wilderness is drained by tributaries of the Naches River.

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References

1 2 3 4 This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Department of Agriculture document "Harvey Monroe Hall - Research Natural Areas" by Taylor, D.W..
↑ This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Department of Agriculture document "Research Natural Areas" .

Coordinates: 37°57′29″N119°17′46″W / 37.958°N 119.296°W / 37.958; -119.296

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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[psw-1] 1 2 3 4 This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Department of Agriculture document "Harvey Monroe Hall - Research Natural Areas" by Taylor, D.W..

[psw2-2] This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Department of Agriculture document "Research Natural Areas" .

Hall Natural Area

Contents

Geography

History and purpose

Related Research Articles

References