Light colored cliffs slice through the warm desert tones of Zion National Park in Utah
Image courtesy:NASAEarth/Twitter
NASA Earth on Sunday takes on Twitter to share a photo of the light-colored cliffs slicing through the warm desert tones of Zion National Park in southwestern Utah.
The photograph was taken on June 30, 2022, by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station.
Light colored cliffs slice through the warm desert tones of Zion National Park in southwestern Utah in this photograph taken on June 30, 2022, by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station. https://t.co/66Kpjp3cgF #ISS @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/MJWtXLYCbF
— NASA Earth (@NASAEarth) August 7, 2022
While opposite of many maps, the rotated image depicts the terrain more clearly by minimizing an optical illusion known as relief inversion.
According to the NASA earth observatory, Zion National Park is home to scenic cliffs, slot canyons, protected wilderness areas, endangered species, and archaeological sites.
The park is situated at the boundary of two prominent North American physiographic provinces, the Basin and Range and the Colorado Plateau. The Virgin River flows through the center of the park.
Zion shares geologic history with the Grand Canyon. Both sites include the Kaibab Formation, which is a limestone and siltstone deposit formed in an ancient inland sea.
The significantly younger Navajo Sandstone exposed at Zion forms most of the prominent cliffs throughout the park.
Evidence of human life in the Zion National Park area dates to the Ancestral Puebloan people, who inhabited the region between 2,000 and 8,000 years ago.
