The Carbonate plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Carbonate’s center stands about 10,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10,350 ft to 11,270 ft, a difference of 920 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Trappers Peak, about 11,990 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, arkose. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Carbonate reaches the Gulf of California by way of Grizzly Creek and the Colorado: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Carbonate; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
