Lecture Topic: Landscape Evolution

Figures 22.5 (or similar image), 22.9, 22.16**, 22.18

Key Terms (only very generally -- elevation, landform, relief, topography)
Tectonic forces drive lithospheric plate movements and the formation of rocks and
structures. Continents gain material around their margins where convergence occurs
where mountain building occurs.
Rocks deformed in the distant past now form continental interiors. Continental margins
experienced more recent tectonic activity and have younger mountains.
The landscape features of a region of Earth attained their form from erosion and
sedimentation acting on an underlying rock type and structure that may be changing by
tectonic processes such as uplift and mountain building.
Landscapes evolve out of some balance between erosion and tectonic uplift. If
uplift is faster, the mountains will rise. If erosion is faster, the mountains will be
lower.

Continents are made and deformed by plate motions. Components of continents

include shields, platforms, and folded and faulted mountain belts.
Rocks deformed in the distant past now form low-lying continental interiors.
Continental margins experienced more recent tectonic activity and have younger
mountains.
A craton is the extensive, flat, tectonically inactive interior of a continent. The
Canadian Shield forms the core of North America. Although intensely deformed
during the Precambrian, this region has been tectonically inactive since and has
been eroded to a low-relief topography.
Sedimentary rocks and sediments cover the Canadian Shield to the south, forming the
interior platform of the Great Plains.
The youngest mountain chain in North America is the North American Cordillera.
The features we recognize today as the mountainous regions of the American West have
a complex orogenic history.
In latest Cretaceous time, the final orogency formed the modern Rocky Mountains in
usual flat subduction. The Laramide orogeny was caused by the North American plate
colliding with and over-riding the Pacific-Farallon Plate. Magmatism reached far inland
from the plate boundary.

The Farallon plate no longer exists.

The different physiographic provinces of the Appalachians exist because of the nature of
the underlying rock. Rock type and structure, derived from the tectonic history and acted
on by erosion, determine the surface features we see today.
The action of rivers eroding the landscape can have a complex relationship with tectonic
processes. An antecedent river flowed initially on flat-lying rocks that were tectonically
folded and uplifted while the stream kept cutting into the new underlying structure.

Folding of sedimentary rocks occurred a long time ago, and those rocks were deeply
eroded to form a flat surface. Subsequently to that erosion, a river developed on the flat
lying surface. Mild regional uplift renewed the erosion by the river. A superposed
stream cuts down into and through a flat-lying surface and exposes pre-existing structure
of folded rocks with varying resistance to erosion.