Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau

In an earlier post I mentioned Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, by Ron Blakey and Wayne Ranney. For this background, see The Coconino Chronicles August 11, 2008.

We were able to attend their lecture on Wednesday night. The book arrived from Amazon on Monday, so the timing was just right.

The book is as good as I thought it would be. You can get a feel for what Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau is all about on Dr. Blakey's website.

The lecture gave a really helpful overview and Wayne Ranney talked about how the maps are made, which was extremely interesting. The video of the lecture should be available soon onthe Grand Canyon Association website. I will post that update as soon as I get an update.

We've been following Dr. Blakey through his website for a long time. It is great to see the publication of this book. If you want to purchase it, I would highly recommend Amazon.com because the price is so good.

More Wayne Ranney Books

On August 11, 2008 we talked about Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau by Ron Blakey and Wayne Ranney. Today I want to share information about four other Ranney books:

• Carving Grand Canyon: Evidence, Theories and Mystery
• The Verde Valley: A Geological History
• Canyon Country
• Sedona Through Time: Geology of the Red Rocks

If you're interested, you can find out how to order them at Wayne Ranney. I got mine through Amazon.com.

All are small, but very readable and extremely informative, overviews of the geologic history of these four areas on the Colorado Plateau.

Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau

Come October, we will be able to hold in our hands the landscapes of hundreds of millions of years of geologic history. Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, by Ron Blakey and Wayne Ranney will be published. You can pre-order it at Amazon.com. I already did.

If you're a fan of Ron Blakey at NAU and the amazing maps he makes available to us on the Internet or of Wayne Ranney and his writing about the geologic history of the Sedona, Verde Valley and the Grand Canyon, this new book is a long awaited collaboration.

You can read about Ancient Lanscapes of the Colorado Plateau at The University of Arizona Press or at the Grand Canyon Association.

And there's more, the two authors will be giving a lecture, Tracing the Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, as part of the Canyon Country Community Lecture Series. See the details on the website, about the lecture in Prescott on Sunday, November 16, 2008 and in Flagstaff on Wednesday, November 19, 2008.

This is really something to look forward to--one more contribution to our understanding of the Colorado Plateau by these two brilliant geologists.

Environmental History of the Colorado Plateau

What a fantastic resource for learning about this beautiful area. NAU website, Colorado Plateau-Land Use History of North America (CP-LUHNA) is described on its front page, "This website provides an introduction to the environmental history of the Colorado Plateau. It summarizes a vast body of research from multiple disciplines in an easily accessible format."

I can't begin to describe the vast amount of information available here. So, here are the broad categories covered:

• People
• Biota
• Places
• Tools
• Change
• Trends
• Research

The bibliographic database is temporarily unavailable as of the time of this post. But, I believe this is an unparalleled introduction to the environmental history of the Colorado Plateau. Congratulations to this group for an amazing job. This is part of the Land Use History of North America project by the USGS.

Colorado Plateau at NAU Cline Library

You can take a fascinating virtual trip back through the history of the Colorado Plateau by visiting Colorado Plateau Digital Archives at Northern Arizona University's Cline Library. (Soon we'll take a little road trip down to Cline Library, NAU, Flagstaff. I'll post some pics and the location of the library.)

One of my favorite exhibits is Beyond the Rainbow: The Photographs of James J. Hanks which, in addition to almost 450 digitally scanned negatives from 1027 and 1928, gives access to repeat photography that allows us to see some of Hanks' photographs side-by-side with 2005 pictures of the same sites.

This exhibit is just one part of an ongoing work to make the Colorado Plateau Collections, held by Cline Library, more accessible to students, researchers and the general public. Whether you visit these archives online or at the Library, it is a trip you don't want to miss.