WMOD00314

• Project Name: Uintah Ecology Project
• Title: Potential Ecological Impacts of Snowpack Augmentation in the Uintah Mountains, Utah
• Date: 4/20/1981
• State: UT
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

THE UINTA MOUNTAINS

The Uinta Mountains lie in the northeastern corner of Utah. Unlike
other major North American mountain ranges, the long axis of the Uintas
is oriented east and west rather than north and south. The range is
large in both areal extent and elevation. Over 13,620 km2 (5.26 x 103
mi2) of land lie above the 2,135 m (7,000 ft) contour in the range.
Twenty-six peaks rise above 3,965 m (13,000 ft) in the Ui~tas. Kings
. !i'
Peak in the center of the range rises to an elevation of 4,117 m (13,498
ft) and is the highest point in Utah.
The Uintas give rise to four of Utah's major rivers: the Bear,
3 . 6
Duchesne ,Provo and the Weber. About 1. 8 km (1. 6 x 10 acreft) of
surface runoff water are produced annually by the Uintas (Wasatch
Nati.onal Forest 1976 and Jeppson et a1. 1968). About 68 percent of that
water feeds into the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado
(Jeppson et al., 1968). The Uinta Mountains are thus a major watershed
of the Upper Colorado River Drainage Basin.

GEOLOGY

The Uintas are th~ result of an early Cenozoic uplift of a deep

(over 15,250 m) sequence of sedim~ntary beds that had accumulated in the

Uinta trough throughout most of recorded geological time (Hansen 1969).

The oldest recorded rocks now exposed in the area (Red Creek Quartzite)

are shown to be about 2.3 billion years old by radiometric da~ing

methods (Hansen 1969). The gigantic anticlinal uplift that forms the

range rises abruptly from the valley floor of the Kamas Valley on the

west, but its upward incline is more gentle at the east end of the range

4

I
I'
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
1
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I