By LiveScience

The Sierra Nevada mountain range in California and Nevada is rising at what scientists call a pretty good clip, geologically speaking: 1 to 2 millimeters per year. That’s roughly a half-inch every 10 years.

“The exciting thing is we can watch the range growing in real time,” said University of Nevada, Reno’s Bill Hammond, lead researcher on a long-term project studying the rise. “Using data back to before 2000 we can see it with accuracy better than 1 millimeter per year. Perhaps even more amazing is that these miniscule changes are measured using satellites in space.”

The Sierra Nevada range includes the tallest mountain in the continental United States, Mt. Whitney at more than 14,000 feet. Around Lake Tahoe, the peaks are in the 10,000-foot range.

The amount might seem small, but the data indicate that long-term trends in crustal uplift suggest the modern Sierra could be formed in less than 3 million years, which is relatively quick when compared to estimates using some geological techniques.

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