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| Appalachian Mountain Ranges. IMAGE CREDIT: Wikipedia |
This week I decided to visit one of the oldest
continental mountain systems in the world. The Appalachian Mountains. The
Appalachian Mountains trend southwest to northeast from central Alabama all the
way to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The mountain system itself can be
split into 7 different physiographic (Physiography - a sub field of geology
that aims to understand the forces that produce/change rocks, oceans, weather,
and global fauna and flora patterns) provinces.
Each of these distinct provinces contain differing
geological evidence and are composed of unique rocks and mineral deposits. The
history of the Appalachian Mountains reveals a violent series of subsequent continent-continent
convergences. The stress involved with the creation of the Appalachian Mountains
over billions of years was compression, not tension. As the continental plates
continued to collide with each other mountain ranges were slowly uplifted from
the landscape. This can also otherwise be referred to as Orogenesis (the process
in which a section of the earth’s crust is folded and deformed by lateral
compression to form a mountain range.)
Taking a look at the some of the exposed rocks in the
Appalachian Mountains reveals several folds, lending credibility to the assumption
of convergent plate activity. The fault along the Appalachian Mountains would
be a thrust fault, where older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. This is
also typical in the type of tectonic activity we are seeing evidence of in the
Appalachian Mountains.
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