Geography
Originally, Tempe Butte was part of a series of horizontal layers, but through tilting of the strata by the isostatic formation of South Mountain, and millennia of erosion created the distinctive hogback of resistant andesite, over sedimentary deposits and rhyolite beds.
Despite intensive development, the butte and its immediate surroundings continue to support a variety of native vegetation, including saguaro, Buckhorn Cholla, barrel cactus, creosote bush, palo verde, and mesquite. Native wildlife include jackrabbits, and small desert-adapted species such as pack rats.
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Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)