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May 7, 2023 - Great Smoky Mountains
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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
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
