Landforms and geomorphology

Geomorphic processes
* Endogenic (internal) processes
- Within earth and result in an increase in surface relief
* Exogenic (external) processes
- Originate at Earth’s surface, tend to decrease relief
- Weathering
- Erosion
- Transportation
- Deposition
- Geomorphic agent (e.g. flowing water or ice)

* Endogenic process
- It is the geological processes that occur beneath the surface of the earth - It is associated with energy originating in
the earth’s interior

Types of endogenic processes

- Tectonic movements
- Volcanism
- Metamorphism
- Seismic activities
- Plutonism

How does Endogenic Process works?

- When the ground moves, Rock layers at the surface of the earth are broken, twisted and shaken. - Land is destroyed
in many places and created in other places.
- When the land is shaped by Endogenic Forces we call this ENDOGENIC PROCESSES

Main Endogenic Processes

- FOLDING & FAULTING or Tectonic movements.
- They take place mainly along the plate boundaries, which are the zones that are not stable.

- Endogenic processes cause many major landform features.

Relief
- Low relief (e.g. western Utah)
- High relief (e.g. Great Basin, Rockies, Himalayas)

- "Relief" is essentially the opposite of "flatness".

- Relief is typically defined as the difference in height between the high point and the low point on a landscape, in
feet or in meters.

- It could also be defined more qualitatively: like "low relief plains" or "high relief rolling hills".

- Sometimes we also differentiate a region of otherwise uniform relief by pointing out its elevation, relative to the
surrounding regions.

High relief features

* Endogenic processes exceed rates of exogenic processes

* Great Tetons, Wyoming

* Steady and continuous processes

* Episodic processes

- Punctuated equilibrium

EPISODIC - containing or consisting of a series of loosely connected parts or events

* Punctuated equilibrium

- Earthquakes

- Volcanoes

- Landslide

Punctuated Equilibrium - the hypothesis that evolutionary development is marked by isolated episodes of rapid
speciation between long periods of little or no change.

Tectonic Forces, Rock structure and Landforms

Rock structure

- Nature

- Orientation

- Inclination

- Strike: compass direction of the line that forms at the intersection of a

tilted layer and a horizontal plane.

- Dip: inclination of the rock layer

- Arrangement of affected rock layers

 Three principle tectonic forces:

- Compressional: push crustal rocks together

- Tensional: pull parts of the crustal away from each other

- Shearing: slide parts of the Earth’s crust past each other

Compressional tectonic forces

- Folding: is the bending or crumpling of rock layers

- Ductible (bendable)

- Appalachians

- Rocky Mountains

- Anticlines: upfolds while

- Synclines: downfolds

- Fold limbs: rock layers that form the flanks of anticlinal crests and synclinal troughs

Compressional tectonic forces

* Faulting

- Too rigid to bend when stressed

- Slippage of rocks along a fracture surface

- Fault

- Reverse Fault

- Thrust fault

- Overthrust

Faults

- form in rocks when the stresses overcome the internal strength of the rock resulting in a fracture.

- A fault can be defined as the displacement of once connected blocks of rock along a fault plane.

- This can occur in any direction with the blocks moving away from each other.

- Faults occur from both tensional and compressional forces.

Tensional tectonic forces

- Fault blocks

- Normal fault

- Fault blocks are very large blocks of rock, sometimes hundreds of kilometres in extent, created
by tectonic and localized stresses in the Earth's crust.

- Large areas of bedrock are broken up into blocks by faults.

- Blocks are characterized by relatively uniform lithology.

- The largest of these fault blocks are called crustal blocks.

- Large crustal blocks broken off from tectonic plates are called terranes.

Kinds of faults

- Normal fault: occur when tensional forces act in opposite directions and cause one slab of the rock
to be displaced up and the other slab down.

- Reverse fault: develop when compressional forces exist

- Thrust fault: break in the Earth’s crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks.

- Graben fault: is produced when tensional stresses result in the subsidence of a block of rock. On a
large scale these features known as Rift Valleys.

- Horst fault: development of two reverse faults causing a block of rock to be pushed up.

* Major type of fault

- Strike-slip or Transform fault: are vertical in nature and are produced where stresses are exerted
parallel to each other. A well known of this type of fault is the San Andreas fault in California.

Tensional tectonic forces

* Graben (downward)

- Great basin

* Horst (upward)

- Sinai peninsula
 - Great basin

- Horst and Graben are formed when normal faults of opposite dip occur in pair w/parallel strike
lines.

- Horst and graben are always formed together.

- Graben are usually represented by low lying areas such as rifts and rivers.

- Horst represented the ridges between or on either side of these valleys.

* Down tilted side of a tilted fault blocks

- Death Valley, CA

* Rift valleys

- Crust downdropped between normal faults

- Rift Valley of East Africa

- Rio Grande rift of New Mexico & Colorado

* Escarpment (scarp)

- steep slope/long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively
level areas having different elevations.

= Steep cliff

* Fault Scarp

- Cliff that results from movement along a fault

- Piedmont fault scarps

The term Scarp also describes a zone between a coastal lowland and a continent plateau which
shows a marked, abrupt change in elevation caused by coastal erosion at the base of the plateau.

Great tilted fault block

- Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains

- West side of Sierra dips down gradually

- Sierra Nevada impacts on precipitation, vegetation, animal life, glaciation, and weathering rates
 - Grand Tetons

Shearing Tectonic Forces

* Dip-slip faults

- Vertical displacement

- Normal and reverse faults

- Alaskan earthquake of 1964 (10 meters)

* Strike-slip faults

- Horizontal displacement

- Lateral fault

- San Andreas Fault (west side moving north)

- 2010 earthquake in Haiti

- 1906 San Francisco

Types of Transform Plate Boundaries

connect other boundaries

- Ridge-ridge boundaries

- Ridge-trench boundaries

- Trench-trench boundaries