Dr. Jeffrey Moore will present “The Fall of Zion: Timing and Impact of Zion Canyon’s Sentinel Rock Avalanche” on Friday, May 20 at 7:30 p.m. The presentation is part of the Zion Canyon Field Institute’s Fern and J. L. Crawford Lecture Series and will be given at the Canyon Community Center, located at 126 Lion Blvd. in Springdale.
Deposits of the prehistoric Sentinel rock avalanche blocked Zion Canyon over a distance of two miles, damming the Virgin River and creating a lake. Cosmogenic surface exposure dating provides the first direct age of the landslide. Moore will explore the slide dynamics through field mapping and runout modeling that reveal a rock avalanche of enough volume and velocity to create a lake that persisted in Zion Canyon for several centuries. The event played a critical role in defining the modern topography of Zion Canyon, creating the flat and accessible valley floor enjoyed by millions of annual visitors.
Moore is an assistant professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah. His research interests focus on processes controlling rock slope failure, in-situ and remote monitoring techniques for state-of-health sensing, and investigating the hazard and impacts of very large, infrequent landslides. Jeff spent five years studying rock slope instabilities at ETH Zurich in Switzerland after completing his Ph.D. in 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Zion Canyon Field Institute’s Fern and J. L. Crawford Lecture Series is a collaborative presentation of ZCFI and the Division of Resource Management in Zion National Park. For more information, call (435) 772-3264. Lectures are free and open to the public.
Zion Canyon Field Institute is the educational arm of Zion Natural History Association, the park’s nonprofit partner.
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