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The great majority of Yosemite Valley's widening, for example, was due to joint-controlled rockfall. In fact, only 10% of its widening and 12% of its excavation are thought to be the result of glaciation. [3] Large, relatively unjointed volumes of granite form domes such as Half Dome and monoliths like the 3,604 ft (1,098 m) high El Capitan.
Humans may have lived in the Yosemite area as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. [1] Habitation of the Yosemite Valley proper can be traced to about 3,000 years ago, when vegetation and game in the region was similar to that present today; the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada had acorns, deer, and salmon, while the eastern Sierra had pinyon nuts and obsidian. [2]
Many Yosemite glaciers have disappeared, such as the Black Mountain Glacier that was marked in 1871 and had gone by the mid-1980s. [94] Yosemite's final two glaciers – the Lyell and Maclure glaciers – have receded over the last 100 years and are expected to disappear as a result of climate change. [95] [96]
Climate change has reduced the number and size of glaciers around the world. Many Yosemite glaciers, including Merced Glacier, which was discovered by John Muir in 1871 and bolstered his glacial origins theory of the Yosemite area, have disappeared and most of the others have lost up to 75% of their surface area. [13]
But the current glacier retreat is accelerated by global warming due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Human activities since the start of the industrial era have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the air, causing current global warming. [3]
Forest thinning is now being conducted at Yosemite National Park. Environmentalists want it to stop, saying the work was never fully vetted. Yosemite undergoes forest thinning due to wildfire risk ...
Tiffany Nguyen wasn't always an outdoors fanatic. The Californian admits that growing up, hiking and camping wasn't always on her radar. But thanks to an impromptu trip to the iconic Yellowstone ...
The oldest rocks in California date back 1.8 billion years to the Proterozoic and are found in the San Gabriel Mountains, San Bernardino Mountains, and Mojave Desert.The rocks of eastern California formed a shallow continental shelf, with massive deposition of limestone during the Paleozoic, and sediments from this time are common in the Sierra Nevada, Klamath Mountains and eastern Transverse ...