Week 6- Diamond Ringo

I had the pleasure of visiting the Klamath Mountains in northwestern California. The rocks of the Klamath Mountains originated as island arcs and continental fragments in the Pacific Ocean. The island masses consisted of rifted fragments of pre-existing continents and volcanic island masses created over subduction zones. Klamath Mountains are formed from hard and complexly folded and faulted metamorphic and igneous rocks. The terranes include many different types of rocks. Some were formed from volcanic island arcs and their associated volcaniclastic sediments, some were islands of continental crust that had broken away from other continents, some were sedimentary rocks scraped off the ocean floor, and some terranes were large pieces of the oceanic crust itself.  During the accretion, subduction of the plate metamorphosed the overlying rock and produced magma which intruded the overlying rock as plutons. Serpentinite, produced by the metamorphism of basaltic oceanic rocks, and intrusive rocks of gabbroic to granodiorite composition are common rocks within the Klamath terranes.

My three questions I would ask for research:
what parts of the Klamath Mountains are actually apart of the ocean crust itself? How do you know what parts are the ocean crust? This could help us determine what happens when the ocean crust is combined with other sediments.

What type of serpentinite rocks are produced by the Klamath Mountains? How long does it take for the these rocks to form? This could help us determine how may years it took for the rocks to form. And what process it take to create the rocks that people are looking for.