EPOD - a service of USRA
The Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) highlights the diverse processes and phenomena which shape our planet and our lives. EPOD will collect and archive photos, imagery, graphics, and artwork with short explanatory
captions and links exemplifying features within the Earth system. The
community is invited to contribute digital imagery, short captions and
relevant links.
EPOD 20th - Bisti Wilderness Mushrooms
October 01, 2020
Bisti0240ac_15oct19 (002)
Bisti0171c_14oct19
January 2020 Viewer's Choice We’re celebrating 20 years of Earth
Science Picture of the Day during the month of September...and more,
there are just too many to fit into 30 days! Today’s photo features a
popular EPOD from the past. Thanks to all of our followers (on the
blog, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) for supporting us. Thanks also
to all of you who’ve submitted your photos. We’re most appreciative.
This EPOD was originally published January 9, 2020.
Photographer: Ray Boren
Summary Author: Ray Boren
Those venturing into northwestern New Mexico’s stark
Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness can be forgiven for feeling like an
incarnation of English writer Lewis Carroll’s (aka Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson) beloved Alice. Hikers find themselves trekking through a
virtually trailless, hoodoo-strewn desert — often encountering
eroded, stone-capped formations, many of which look very much like
hefty, lithified mushrooms. These, however, lack a hookah-smoking
caterpillar like the one illustrator John Tenniel depicted in
Carroll’s 1865 fantasy, “ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
In the first photograph here, taken on October 15, 2019, one such hiker
makes her way through a maze of Bisti hoodoos sometimes dubbed
“Mushroom City.” In a second photo, taken the previous evening, on
October 14, 2019, a lone hoodoo casts a mushroom-like shadow as the
setting Sun illuminates the landscape.
The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the 45,000-acre
(18,211-hectare) wilderness, set aside by the U.S. Congress in 1984 on
the fringe of the Navajo Reservation, describes the combined
western Bisti and eastern De-Na-Zin badlands as a fantastic landscape
of strange rock formations, some bearing fossils. Weathering and
erosion have carved interbedded sedimentary layers of
sandstone, limestone, shale, mudstone, silt,
lignite coal and volcanic ash into hoodoos and other shapes.
The sediments were laid down up to 70 million years ago in a river
delta that fed into North America’s Western Interior Seaway, as
well as swamps and ponds.
The word Bisti derives from a Navajo language description (Bistahí)
of the shale, or adobe, hills. De-Na-Zin is from the Navajo for
standing cranes, depicted on a petroglyph panel. The hills, bluffs,
cliffs and outcrops range in color from predominant shades of gray and
tan to red, purple, black and off-white. Besides mushrooms, several
miles into the badlands visitors encounter other odd, and sometimes
towering, pinnacles and spires, often topped by erosion-resistant
cap rocks. Some feature gravity-defying cantilevered wings. There
are also arches and windows, petrified logs, alien eggs —
and, as some describe it: a dragon’s head.
Photo Details: Top - Camera: NIKON D3200; Exposure Time: 0.0020s
(1/500); Aperture: ƒ/11.0; ISO equivalent: 250; Focal Length (35mm):
24. Bottom - same except: Exposure Time: 0.0040s (1/250); Aperture:
ƒ/10.0; ISO equivalent: 400; Focal Length (35mm): 28.
* Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico Coordinates: 36.2921,
-108.1298
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More...
Geography Links
* Atlapedia Online
* CountryReports
* GPS Visualizer
* Holt Rinehart Winston World Atlas
* Mapping Our World
* Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
* Types of Land
* World Mapper
-
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