Grand Canyon
Topic: Landforms and their Evolution: Rivers, Groundwater, Glaciers, Waves and Wind · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Grand Canyon is a huge canyon cut by the Colorado River into the Colorado Plateau in Arizona, USA. It is about 446 km long and up to about 1.8 km deep. It formed as the river cut down through flat-lying layers of sedimentary rock while the plateau was uplifted. Its walls expose nearly 2 billion years of rock. This makes it a classic textbook case of a canyon with step-like sides.
Example
In the canyon walls, hard rock layers form steep cliffs and softer layers form ledges. Together they give the canyon its staircase-like sides.
Don't confuse with
- Gorge: a gorge has almost straight sides and is about as wide at the top as at the bottom, in hard rock. An example is Gandikota on the Penner in Andhra Pradesh, which is sometimes nicknamed India's "Grand Canyon".