Flora of Georgia and surrounding states
Botany is the realm of natural history where I hit my fullest stride. It began innocently, back in college, when I *had* to take a botany class. I lucked out to have a most gentle and magnificent professor, A. Lee Haines at Los Angeles Pierce College, who loved taking classes on field trips to our nearby Santa Monica Mountains. We *had* to do a plant collection representing 25 families and *had* to keep a field notebook with *all* the pertinent data about our collection.
I got the bug. When I transferred to Humboldt State to complete my BS in natural resources, I audited the plant taxonomy class on my own. I did the same thing when I worked on my MS in recreation and park management at the University of Oregon. Both professors were amazed that a student would even want to do this as most only take the class because they *had* to.
I'm still taking notes, but the plant press is mostly unused as now the camera takes its place, illustrated by this Confederate daisy [Helianthus porteri (A. Gray) Pruski 1998] being visited by an unidentified bumble bee at Davidson-Arabia Nature Preserve atop Arabia Mountain.
I got the bug. When I transferred to Humboldt State to complete my BS in natural resources, I audited the plant taxonomy class on my own. I did the same thing when I worked on my MS in recreation and park management at the University of Oregon. Both professors were amazed that a student would even want to do this as most only take the class because they *had* to.
I'm still taking notes, but the plant press is mostly unused as now the camera takes its place, illustrated by this Confederate daisy [Helianthus porteri (A. Gray) Pruski 1998] being visited by an unidentified bumble bee at Davidson-Arabia Nature Preserve atop Arabia Mountain.
The Landscape of Georgia and the Southeastern United States
Landforms of the Conterminous US, USGS Map I-2206
Landforms
The land that has been my home since 1979 is amazingly varied. From the vast flatness of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains to the ancient Appalachian Mountains, this landscape is home to an uncountable number of incredible organisms. With some 300 million years of erosion and evolution, the topography, flora and fauna of the Southeast is rich.
I am fascinated by the landscape and its history, the science of geomorphology. I look at the landscape and wonder just how it came to be: what forces created it; what organisms first colonized and developed, flourished, perished or adapted and evolved to create the biosphere there today. The connection between geology and botany gives me great pleasure to explore.
If you click here, it will open a new window where you can get this digital map of the entire conterminous United States. It does an amazing job of showing landforms.
The land that has been my home since 1979 is amazingly varied. From the vast flatness of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains to the ancient Appalachian Mountains, this landscape is home to an uncountable number of incredible organisms. With some 300 million years of erosion and evolution, the topography, flora and fauna of the Southeast is rich.
I am fascinated by the landscape and its history, the science of geomorphology. I look at the landscape and wonder just how it came to be: what forces created it; what organisms first colonized and developed, flourished, perished or adapted and evolved to create the biosphere there today. The connection between geology and botany gives me great pleasure to explore.
If you click here, it will open a new window where you can get this digital map of the entire conterminous United States. It does an amazing job of showing landforms.
Geology of Georgia and the Southeastern United States
A tapestry of time and terrain: USGS Map I-2720
A Tapestry of Time and Terrain
Here, the landform map has geology overlaid on it. The colors represent the ages of the rock with the yellows being younger and the pinks to purples being older. Click here for the full map and explanation brochure.
The mountains and Piedmont were formed by the collision of continents that raised the supercontinent Pangaea's Mountains that may have rivaled (or even surpassed) the Himalayas. The exposed hard rock is intensely metamorphosed, in many places several times. Granite outcrops pop up throughout the Piedmont. There is rock from ocean bottoms, beach sands, continental shelf cliffs, island volcanoes, and the remnants of the first supercontinent, Rodinia, from a billion years ago.
During the Cretaceous the ocean level rose and flooded all that we now call the Coastal Plain. This is easily seen on this map as lapping against the higher mountains and extending well up the Mississippi embayment. The major force operating today is erosion, but with that comes isostatic rebound where the land, having weight removed from it, rises, just as ice cubes do in ice tea as they melt.
Here, the landform map has geology overlaid on it. The colors represent the ages of the rock with the yellows being younger and the pinks to purples being older. Click here for the full map and explanation brochure.
The mountains and Piedmont were formed by the collision of continents that raised the supercontinent Pangaea's Mountains that may have rivaled (or even surpassed) the Himalayas. The exposed hard rock is intensely metamorphosed, in many places several times. Granite outcrops pop up throughout the Piedmont. There is rock from ocean bottoms, beach sands, continental shelf cliffs, island volcanoes, and the remnants of the first supercontinent, Rodinia, from a billion years ago.
During the Cretaceous the ocean level rose and flooded all that we now call the Coastal Plain. This is easily seen on this map as lapping against the higher mountains and extending well up the Mississippi embayment. The major force operating today is erosion, but with that comes isostatic rebound where the land, having weight removed from it, rises, just as ice cubes do in ice tea as they melt.
Recent Bird Sightings around Marietta, Georgia