Ceology’s Impact on the Economy of the United States
Geology’s Impact on the Economy of the United States The United States has benefited economically from a number of developments in its geological history.Consider first the birth of the Rocky Mountains and its effect on the biogeography of the Great Plains,which reach from the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in the West to the Mississippi River in the East,and which have contributed enormously to agricultural productivity.Before the creation of the mountains,a process geologists refer to as the Laramide orogeny,beginning some 80 million years ago,the region now known as the Great Plains was a tremendous inland sea.The emergence of the Rockies,however,plugged the water’s entry from the Pacific and Arctic oceans,creating conditions favorable to the eventual emergence of forest cover on the plains.The mountains also dried out the land by capturing the moisture of the clouds on their western side,creating a huge rain shadow that left the plains to the east in an even more arid state,precisely an environment suitable for the growth of grass.Meanwhile,the rain that did fall in the mountains washed away sediments and deposited them further east with each passing year,covering the old seabed with a layer of loose silt that was hundreds of feet thick and producing in the process one of the most level stretches of land on Earth.The Rockies,by drying out the landscape of the plains,encouraged the growth of grasses,which, due to complicated root systems that can exploit even the smallest amount of moisture,flourish in such an environment.Into these grasslands the American pioneer eventually forged,prepared to break the sod and replace it with another grass:the wheat so fabulously adapted to life in an arid locale.
