Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Rock-Ice Feature Inventory for the Sierra Nevada, California, USA, Version 1

Metadata Updated: August 29, 2025

The Sierra Nevada is a tectonic uplift mountain range with a gradual gain in elevation on the west side and a steep escarpment on the east. Most of the mapped locations are east of the Sierran crest. The climate in the region is Mediterranean, with most of the precipitation in the winter months coming as snow at high elevations, but with some monsoonal precipitation in the summer, particularly in the southern end of the range. There is a very steep gradient in decreasing precipitation eastward from the Sierran crest as a result of rain-shadow orographic effects from the predominately eastward-moving Pacific frontal storms. PRISM-estimated (Daly et al. 1994) annual precipitation for the RIF locations ranged from 580 to 1880 mm; July precipitation from 5 to 33 mm. Mean annual maximum temperatures ranged from 1.8 to 15.2 oC, January from -5.7 to 6.2 oC, and July from 11 to 26.3 oC. Mean annual minima ranged from -8.1 to -0.4 oC, January from -15 to -7 oC, and July from 1.2 to 8.9 oC. The highest temperatures and lowest precipitation were largely at relict Pleistocene rock glaciers, which tended to be farthest east of the Sierran crest and lower in elevation. We mapped over 430 RIFs, based on field surveys and grouped them into six classes based on morphology and location. These categories constitute a greater range of frozen-ground features than are commonly described in rock-glacier surveys. Although granitic substrates dominate the Sierra Nevada, they do not in the eastern escarpment, so substrates in the RIF database are about equally divided between granitic and metamorphic. Ages of rock glaciers ranged from current (active) to relict (late Pleistocene). We interpreted the presence of outlet springs, basal lakes, suspended silt in outlet streams, and fringing phreatophytic vegetation, in addition to morphologic indications of current rock movement, as evidence for interstitial ice, either persistent or seasonal.One comma-delimited ASCII file containing information for 430 rock-ice features is available.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date August 29, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date August 29, 2025
Publisher NSIDC;FGDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.7265/yy5v-5y11
Data Last Modified 2025-08-28
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id a64076c6-dd13-4d5e-ab24-9b16b558dc8a
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://nsidc.org/forms/GGD652_or.html?major_version=1
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-119.9,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":38.8,"EastBoundingCoordinate":-118.2,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":34.5}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7359aa7898a98ab1eba71a63db2ebe7239560d77d680127aaf0ff4881a97c53b
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1970-01-01/1970-01-01

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.