Valo S.

Gonzalez

GEO-151

Assignment 4
1. Why do mountains stay high for so long after they form?
Mountains owe their existence to two factors, the heat that drives plate tectonics and the effects

of gravity. Tectonics cycles of mountain building known as orogeny are illustrated through

the process of either subduction or accretion -uplift and erosional processes. In Eastern

North America, the Appalachian Mountains continue to exits more than 200 million years

after the plate collisions that formed them. Given rates of erosion these mountains should

have worn flat tens of millions of years ago yet they still stand indicating that some uplift

must be continuing. The cause of this late stage uplift was discovered in 1859 by a British

surveyor G.B. Airy. While working in India, Airy discovered that plumb-bobs, iron weights

used to measure sighting instruments, were less attracted by the gravity from the nearby

Himalayan mountains than they should have been. If the Himalaya were directly underlain

by the same dense rock presumed to form most of the Earth’s interior. This suggested there

was less mass present beneath the Himalaya than previously thought. To explain this

discrepancy Airy concluded that a low density root must lie beneath the range. Geophysical

studies have since confirmed that the crust beneath the Himalayas extends to a depth of 75

kilometers, twice as thick as ordinary continental crust. It’s now known that most mountain

ranges are underlain by crustal roots floating atop the hot plastically-deforming mantle. The

roots grow as a result of compression during plate convergence. As mountain ranges are

worn down, their roots are buoyed upward by the mantle. Because the mantle is far stiffer

than the most fluid lava, the crust floats upward quite slowly sustaining a hilly topography in

the landscape for hundreds of millions of years. As the crust raises rocks from deeper levels

in side of the earth are brought to the surface and worn away. Since tall mountains have

roots that are likely just as deep beneath the surface, far more mass lies hidden from view

than can be seen at the surface. This state of equilibrium is known as isostasy, which is
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Valo S. Gonzalez

GEO-151

Assignment 4
observed where the Earth's strong lithosphere exerts stress on the weaker asthenosphere

which, over geological time flows laterally such that the load of the lithosphere is

accommodated by height adjustments. In the case mentioned previously regarding the

Himalaya, the height of the mountains is accounted for by the continued impacting of the

Indian plate because Himalaya are, in fact, not in a state of isostatic balance with the

lithosphere. An analogy may be made with an iceberg - it always floats with a certain

proportion of its mass below the surface of the water. If more ice is added to the top of the

iceberg, the iceberg will sink lower in the water. If a layer of ice is somehow sliced off the

top of the iceberg, the remaining iceberg will rise. Similarly, the Earth's lithosphere "floats"

in the asthenosphere. Ultimately mountain building ends, giving way to erosion.

2. Distinguish between joints and faults.

Joints and faults are types of fractures. A joint is a fracture along which no movement has taken

place, usually caused by tensional forces. Joints form at shallow depths in the crust where rock

breaks in a brittle way and is pulled apart slightly by tensional stresses caused by bending or

regional uplift. A fault is a fracture or break in the rock along which movement has taken place.

One might expect more earthquakes to occur near faults. For geologists, an active fault is

regarded as one along which movement has taken place during the last 11,000 years. Most faults

today, are however, inactive.