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To: Wacka
The Grand Canyon was formed because the land is rising. The river has stayed about the same elevation. The river has eroded the canyon as the land rose about a mile around it.

Astounding. How long has water been flowing uphill, in order to erode the Grand Canyon?

Or, is there some sort of hydrological feature that is somehow limited there, to the highest elevation of this regional uplift, and this forms the headwater of the Colorado River, in the middle of the Grand Canyon?

I'm familiar with the figure of speech, that "water always finds it's own level," but I never knew flowing water to be sentient and desirous of maintaining a certain altitude above sea level, either.

391 posted on 09/05/2009 8:47:18 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry
Astounding. How long has water been flowing uphill, in order to erode the Grand Canyon? Or, is there some sort of hydrological feature that is somehow limited there, to the highest elevation of this regional uplift, and this forms the headwater of the Colorado River, in the middle of the Grand Canyon? I'm familiar with the figure of speech, that "water always finds it's own level," but I never knew flowing water to be sentient and desirous of maintaining a certain altitude above sea level, either.

You show your total ignorance on geology and just facts in general. The river's elevation is about 2000 ft while the South Rim is at 7000 feet, almost a mile higher. It is known that the area of the canyon is or has been rising (didn't have time to find out which). The massive amounts of debris that used to go through the canyon every spring (before man built dams) would carve the the canyon as the land rose.

A smaller example is evident where I live. I live east of SF bay about 10 miles inland. The land is about 350 ft in altitude, while at the Bay it is about sea level. In between are a range of hills about 1000 feet high, formed between the Calavaras and Hayward faults. There is a creek, Alameda Creek, that drains the whole area where I live into the Bay. How did it get over the hills? The easiest and most sensible explanation was that the creek existed when the land was relatively flat. The paralell faults have squeezed the land between them to produce the hills. In Niles Canyon, where the creek flows, the hills are hundreds of feet high with almost vertical sides. You drive through it next to the creek. How else could the creek have gotten over the hills? Using GPS stations, they have shown that the land is rising. Day by day, the canyon is getting imperceptably deeper, based on the hills rising and the creek eroding.

This is happening on a much larger scale at the Grand Canyon.

460 posted on 09/05/2009 2:29:42 PM PDT by Wacka
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