The first of March 1872, Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), 18th President of the United States of America (1869-1877), decreed the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, the first example of a protected nature reserve in the world. This date may be useful to recall the importance of parks and, more generally, of respect and preservation of nature's marvels.
The Yellowstone National Park is located in its major portion, in the north-western state of Wyoming (USA), with small areas in the states of Montana and Idaho, occupying a large area of the Rocky Mountains. Founded in 1872, and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978, Yellowstone is the oldest national park in the world and is one of the largest intact temperate zone ecosystems remaining on Earth.
The park, with an area of 8,980 km ² (nearly 900,000 hectares), consists of a series of plateaus, with an average height of 2,400 meters above sea level and dominated by Mount Washburn, is crossed by several rivers. The longest of these rivers, with its 1080 km, is the Yellowstone River, a tributary of the Missouri River, which flows through its entire length from south to north, finally jumping into the lake of the same name and from there into a deep canyon, creating two magnificent waterfalls: Upper Falls and Lower Falls (91 m high, double that of Niagara Falls). Inside the park there are several walking paths and trails, with a total extension of 1,600 km.
The park owes its fame to the geothermal features of the subsoil. The presence of more than 300 geysers, the largest of which are capable of emitting at regular intervals jets of water at 200 ° C capable of up to 50 meters in height, make it the area with the highest density in the world. There are also numerous hot springs, an abundance of minerals present in these waters lead to the formation of cones and terraces, among which we can mention, with its 90 meters, the Mammoth Hot Springs.
Legendary and celebrated in a number of films is the presence of the immense caldera (55 km to 72 km) of a "supervolcano", which experts say could erupt in the future emitting huge amounts of ash that is deposited on the whole of North America. Recent data have shown that the presence of an accentuated slope of the land has led to the emptying of a lake, testifying to the increase in pressure that magma into the ground beneath.
There are different within the park other rock formations, such as mud volcanoes (accumulations of rocks very fine wet from spring water) or the Tower Falls, 40 meters high waterfall, the Golden Gate Canyon and Obsidian Cliff, a training obsidian height of about 50 meters.
From the point of view of wildlife, the park owes its importance for being populated by rare and often endangered. The whole of the park there are grizzly, baribal (the American black bear), wolves, American bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep (sheep wild American), wapiti (family of deer), elk, goats, snow, mountain lions and otters North American river.
The flora of the park is mainly composed of tall trees (such as Pinus contorta, very frequent). In the woods are also present trees with a short leg of each type. Very rich undergrowth, with berries, mosses and fungi of various species.
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