The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particularly through lake-effect snow. It is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric body of water that covered much of western Utah.
An evaporite is a water-soluble sedimentary mineral deposit that results from concentration and crystallization by evaporation from an aqueous solution. There are two types of evaporite deposits: marine, which can also be described as ocean deposits, and non-marine, which are found in standing bodies of water such as lakes. Evaporites are considered sedimentary rocks and are formed by chemical sediments.
Travertine is a form of terrestrial limestone deposited around mineral springs, especially hot springs. It often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, cream-colored, and even rusty varieties. It is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot spring or in a limestone cave. In the latter, it can form stalactites, stalagmites, and other speleothems. It is frequently used in Italy and elsewhere as a building material. Similar deposits formed from ambient-temperature water are known as tufa.
Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of water in unheated rivers or lakes. Geothermally heated hot springs sometimes produce similar carbonate deposits, which are known as travertine. Tufa is sometimes referred to as (meteogene) travertine. It should not be confused with hot spring (thermogene) travertine. Tufa, which is calcareous, should also not be confused with tuff, a porous volcanic rock with a similar etymology that is sometimes also called "tufa".
The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine layers, a dark layer during the growing season and a light-hue inorganic layer in the dry season. Each pair of layers is called a varve and represents one year. The sediments of the Green River Formation present a continuous record of six million years. The mean thickness of a varve here is 0.18 mm, with a minimum thickness of 0.014 mm and maximum of 9.8 mm.
Mineral springs are naturally occurring springs that produces hard water, water that contains dissolved minerals. Salts, sulfur compounds, and gases are among the substances that can be dissolved in the spring water during its passage underground. In this they are unlike sweet springs, which produce soft water with no noticeable dissolved gasses. The dissolved minerals may alter the water's taste. Mineral water obtained from mineral springs, and the precipitated salts such as Epsom salt have long been important commercial products.
The Peace–Athabasca Delta, located in northeast Alberta, is the largest freshwater inland river delta in North America. It is located partially within the southeast corner of Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada's largest national park, and also spreads into the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, west and south of the historical community of Fort Chipewyan. The delta encompasses approximately 321,200 ha, formed where the Peace and Athabasca rivers converge on the Slave River and Lake Athabasca. The delta region is designated a wetland of international importance and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The region is large enough that it is considered one of twenty distinct natural subregions of Alberta by the provincial government's Natural Regions Committee.
The Clearwater River is located in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It rises in the northern forest region of north-western Saskatchewan and joins the Athabasca River in north-eastern Alberta. It was part of an important trade route during the fur trade era and has been designated as a Canadian Heritage River.
A sabkha is a coastal, supratidal mudflat or sandflat in which evaporite-saline minerals accumulate as the result of semiarid to arid climate. Sabkhas are gradational between land and intertidal zone within restricted coastal plains just above normal high-tide level. Within a sabkha, evaporite-saline minerals sediments typically accumulate below the surface of mudflats or sandflats. Evaporite-saline minerals, tidal-flood, and aeolian deposits characterize many sabkhas found along modern coastlines. The accepted type locality for a sabkha is at the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, in the United Arab Emirates. Sabkha is a phonetic transliteration of the Arabic word used to describe any form of salt flat. A sabkha is also known as a sabkhah,sebkha, or coastal sabkha.
The Fort McKay First Nation (FMFN) is a First Nations government in northeast Alberta comprising five Indian reserves – Fort McKay 174, Fort McKay 174C, Fort McKay 174D, Namur Lake 174B and Namur River 174A. The FMFN, signed to Treaty 8, is affiliated with the Athabasca Tribal Council and its members are of Cree, Metis and Dene heritage. The FMFN's traditional lands include portions of the Athabasca oil sands.
The geology of Saskatchewan can be divided into two main geological regions, the Precambrian Canadian Shield and the Phanerozoic Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. Within the Precambrian shield exists the Athabasca sedimentary basin. Meteorite impacts have altered the natural geological formation processes. The prairies were most recently affected by glacial events in the Quaternary period.
The Muskeg Formation is a geologic formation of Middle Devonian (Givetian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It extends from the plains of northwestern Alberta to northeastern British Columbia, and includes important petroleum and natural gas reservoirs in the Zama lake and Rainbow Lake areas of northwestern Alberta.
The Clearwater Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous (Albian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta, Canada. It was first defined by R.G. McConnell in 1893 and takes its name from the Clearwater River near Fort McMurray.
The McMurray Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous age of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta. It takes the name from Fort McMurray and was first described from outcrops along the banks of the Athabasca River 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) north of Fort McMurray by F.H. McLearn in 1917. It is a well-studied example of fluvial to estuarine sedimentation, and it is economically important because it hosts most of the vast bitumen resources of the Athabasca Oil Sands region.
The Beaverhill Lake Group is a geologic unit of Middle Devonian to Late Devonian age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin that is present in the southwestern Northwest Territories, northeastern British Columbia and Alberta. It was named by the geological staff of Imperial Oil in 1950 for Beaverhill Lake, Alberta, based on the core from a well that they had drilled southeast of the lake, near Ryley, Alberta.
The Elk Point Group is a stratigraphic unit of Early to Middle Devonian age in the Western Canada and Williston sedimentary basins. It underlies a large area that extends from the southern boundary of the Northwest Territories in Canada to North Dakota in the United States. It has been subdivided into numerous formations, number of which host major petroleum and natural gas reservoirs.
In geology, the Paradox Formation Is a Pennsylvanian age formation which consists of abundant evaporites with lesser interbedded shale, sandstone, and limestone. The evaporites are largely composed of gypsum, anhydrite, and halite. The formation is found mostly in the subsurface, but there are scattered exposures in anticlines in eastern Utah and western Colorado. These surface exposures occur in the Black Mesa, San Juan and Paradox Basins and the formation is found in the subsurface in southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona and northeastern New Mexico.
The Cairn Formation is a geologic formation of Late Devonian (Frasnian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It was named for the Cairn River near its junction with the Southesk River in Jasper National Park by D.J. McLaren in 1955.
The Prairie Evaporite Formation, also known as the Prairie Formation, is a geologic formation of Middle Devonian (Givetian) age that consists primarily of halite and other evaporite minerals. It is present beneath the plains of northern and eastern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba in Canada, and it extends into northwestern North Dakota and northeastern Montana in the United States.
The geology of Ohio formed beginning more than one billion years ago in the Proterozoic eon of the Precambrian. The igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rock is poorly understood except through deep boreholes and does not outcrop at the surface. The basement rock is divided between the Grenville Province and Superior Province. When the Grenville Province crust collided with Proto-North America, it launched the Grenville orogeny, a major mountain building event. The Grenville mountains eroded, filling in rift basins and Ohio was flooded and periodically exposed as dry land throughout the Paleozoic. In addition to marine carbonates such as limestone and dolomite, large deposits of shale and sandstone formed as subsequent mountain building events such as the Taconic orogeny and Acadian orogeny led to additional sediment deposition. Ohio transitioned to dryland conditions in the Pennsylvanian, forming large coal swamps and the region has been dryland ever since. Until the Pleistocene glaciations erased these features, the landscape was cut with deep stream valleys, which scoured away hundreds of meters of rock leaving little trace of geologic history in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
