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PID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08
TID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08
May 7, 2023 - Great Smoky Mountains

   Great Smoky
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   The tall ridges of the Great Smoky Mountains stretch across present-day
   North Carolina and Tennessee, although they predate the formation of
   the United States by millions of years. According to the United States
   Geological Survey (USGS), the mountains were formed between 200 and 300
   million years ago, through uplift of the entire Appalachian region when
   ancestral North America and Africa collided as part of the formation of
   the supercontinent Pangea. The massive uplift caused folding and
   faulting as the mountains formed, as well as earthquakes and a great
   deal of heat. At first, the mountains likely reached higher than the
   Rocky Mountains do today, but the forces of weathering and erosion over
   many millions of years, as well as the changes caused by breakup of
   Pangea, has left only a remnant core of the soaring mountains that
   stood as recently 100 million years ago.

   Today, most of the area is protected as Great Smoky Mountains National
   Park, which covers 522,427 acres divided nearly evenly between
   Tennessee and North Carolina. The crest of the Great Smokies now runs
   in an unbroken chain of peaks that rise more than 5,000 feet for over
   36 miles. Elevations in the park range from 876 to 6,643 feet. The
   tallest mountains are Clingman’s Dome, which rises to 6,643 feet,
   followed by Mount Guyot (6,621 feet), and Mount Le Conte (6,593 feet).

   In 2022, the Great Smoky National Park was the third most-visited
   location in the National Park System, following closely behind the
   nearby Blue Ridge Parkway and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area,
   located in California. Weekends in summer draw heavy crowds on roads
   and popular trails, although solitude may still be found in more remote
   locations, especially in the winter. The beauty of the region also
   draws people to live in cities and towns close to the park boundaries.
   While the increasing human use and climate change bring challenges to
   the ecosystem, natural life in the park remains abundant and quite
   diverse.

   In 1998, scientists began a biological inventory of all life forms
   within the park. Since that time, nearly 10,000 species have been
   discovered living within the park that had previously been unknown in
   the region. About 1,000 of these were new species, having never been
   identified anywhere on Earth before. The extraordinary diversity of
   this park led to the park’s designation as a United Nations World
   Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve.

   On May 4, 2023, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
   (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image
   centered on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The folded nature
   of the mountain ridges is most easily seen on the northwestern slope,
   where white spots of “popcorn clouds” dot the skies. A group of gray
   pixels, arranged like a spider web on the northwestern apex of the arc
   formed by the mountains is Knoxville, Tennessee. In the green forests
   on the eastern slopes, the city of Asheville, North Carolina, is marked
   by a ring of gray pixels with gray lines (roads) extending outward.
   Both of these cities sit well outside park boundaries. Additional gray
   pixels in the southeast mark human development along Interstate 85 in
   North Carolina and South Carolina.

   Image Facts
   Satellite:  Terra
   Date Acquired: 5/4/2023
   Resolutions:  1km (177.8 KB),  500m (491.4 KB),  250m (1004.2
   KB)
   Bands Used: 1,4,3
   Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2023-05-07
 
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