Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

There has been renewed debate over the mechanisms and timing of both uplift and erosion in the Colorado Plateau. Yet, in order to understand the patterns of topography and surficial processes in this landscape a third factor of bedrock properties must be considered. We are building a dataset of bedrock strength and exploring it in the context of topographic metrics. Included are rock-strength measures such as Schmidt-hammer compressive strength, Selby rock-mass strength, and laboratory tensile strength measures. To estimate the strength of units too incompetent to test directly, such as the shales prevalent in the region, we utilize functional relations …