Pedernales Falls Research
Pedernales Falls was one of the stops on our journey through the Texas Hill Country. Located around 32 miles directly west of Austin, Pedernales Falls is a very popular state park known for its beautiful scenery and amazing hiking trails. The entire park includes 5,211 acres of land which was acquired from private owners in 1970 and then turned into a public park a year later. Another interesting fact about this park is that it is located on the Edwards Plateau which is an elevated region of Central Texas that the Hill Country, which marks the eastern boundary, is a part of. Now the main reason people visit the park is because of the Falls. The Falls are a stretch of the Pedernales River that drops 50 feet in elevation over 3,000 feet. The limestone that makes up the riverbed have been uplifted and eroded away, revealing an incredible stair step-style effect. During times of rain, this stair step portion of the falls is extremely susceptible to flash flooding so it is good to check the weather forecast before venturing out onto the giant limestone steps. When gathering our research, we did not look around the Falls portion of the river, instead we went to a calmer portion of the river which can be seen in the story-map below.
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As an entire class analyzing Pedernales Falls, we decided to break up into separate research teams in order to gather as much information as possible. In teams of two, we investigated the Geology, Hydrology, Plant Biology, and Animal Biology both on and away from the river. This information was needed for a story map, so the main type of data collection was images of each group's subject matter within the park. By the end of the day, we had numerous images of different types of plants, animals, and rock formations. We used a GPS to tag each photo with coordinates so we could integrate it into the story map. With each unique specimen, we needed to gather information on it based on its location in relation to the falls. After it was all put together, certain trends became visible as well as an understanding of how biologically diverse this area is, all of which can be experienced in the story-map below. The red points on the map represent the Geology, the purple points are areas where evidence of flooding was present, blue points represent aspects of Animal Biology, and the green Plant Biology.