Category Social Sciences

The Redwood National and State Parks is a group of several state parks and one national park located in California. As the name suggest, it was set up to protect the remaining redwood forests.

The redwood trees are one among the tallest, oldest, and one of the most massive tree species on Earth. Along with the redwood forests, the parks preserve other indigenous flora, fauna, grassland prairie, cultural resources, portions of rivers and other streams, and 60 kilometres of pristine coastline.

The Redwood National and State Parks is made of the Redwood National Park and California’s Del Norte Coast, Jedediah Smith, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Parks. At the time when these parks were set up, almost 90 per cent of the native redwood trees were logged off. The revival works are progressing successfully.

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The Grand Canyon is one of the most visited places in Arizona. It is a gorge of the Colorado river. This rocky structure is at least 17 million years old. The river had eroded the canyon since then to form what we see today.

The Grand Canyon is 446 km long, up to 29 km wide and is around 2 km deep in some places. The narrowest point us more than six kilometres wide. Nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers are exposed in the Grand Canyon. These layers contain millions of years of geological history. Some of these layers are two billion years old.

The Grand Canyon was designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1979.

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Braulio Carillo National Park in Costa Rica exists within a volcanic conservation area. The Park was built in order to limit the developments in the area after the construction of the Limon Highway, a road of industrial importance.

The Park hosts the Barva Volcano, several other dormant volcanoes, various rivers and crater lakes. More than 90 per cent of the Park is covered with forests. The vegetation in the Park varies according to the altitude; there are cloud forests in high altitudes and tropical rainforests in lowlands.

Braulio Carillo has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in Costa Rica. More than 600 species of trees, 530 species of birds and 135 species of mammals thrive here.

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Banff National Park of Canada has mesmerized thousands of people with its otherworldly beauty. It is the first and oldest national park of Canada.

With the terrain shifting from glaciers and ice fields to coniferous forests and picturesque lakes, Banff is located in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. The mountains here were formed 80 million years ago, when the sedimentary rocks were pushed over to a side to form a new rock strata. Glaciers had covered most of the Park earlier.

Now, they are found only on the mountain slopes. They include the Columbia Icefield, the largest uninterrupted glacial mass in the Rockies. The current shape of the mountains can be credited to erosion from water to ice. Banff National Park has a subcratic climate, it spreads over three eco regions- the montane, subalpine, and alpine.

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Cabo Pulmo is home to the only Pacific coral reef in the Sea of Cortez which is estimated to be at least 20,000 years old. It is in fact one of the oldest and the northernmost coral reef in the Pacific Ocean.

The reef system in Cabo Pulmo supports at least 200 tons of fish of great commercial value. The Park is surrounded by rocky outcrops that are at least a thousand years old. There are also layers of sandstone that hold a lot of fossils.

For many years, this precious place was unprotected. But through the tenacious efforts of the Cabo Pilmo community, in 1995, the waters offshore from Cabo Pulmo were designated a National Marine Park by the Mexican government.

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Every year, scores of migratory aquatic birds including spoonbills, flamingos and pelicans come to nest in the marshy lands of Cuba’s Caguanes National park. But, the number of these birds declined in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Sugar mills around the Park polluted the Park and this was the reason behind the decline in their numbers. Three sugar mills were shut down after this in order to reduce pollution. As a result, the number of migratory birds visiting the Park is increasing since then.

Caguanes National park covers the Caguanes peninsula as well as the Guayaberas swamps and mangroves. There are many caves, arches and niches that open to the sea. This Park is home to 200 varieties of animals out of which 24 are endemic. 112 species of birds nest in the marsh and coastal areas.

Picture Credit : Google