As internal processes, mountain building and volcanic activity, elevate Earth’s surfaces, external processes, weathering and erosion, breakdown and move Earth’s surfaces down slope. It’s a continuous rock cycle, and water movement contributes greatly to Earth’s external weathering and erosion processes, sculpting earth’s surfaces throughout the course. As water evaporates from the ocean and precipitates over the mountains, river systems are established; and in their many shapes and forms, move eroded rock material from the surface towards the ocean, further disintegrating material along the way. River systems move Earth’s surface materials, while shaping its landscapes.
Weathering and erosion are part of Earth’s rock cycle. Earth’s internal pressures force material up towards the surface, and once rock material is exposed, it is subject to Earth’s external forces powered by the sun and gravity. The external processes of weathering and erosion moves material downslope, where it is again subject to Earth’s internal forces; it is a continuous rock cycle. Weathering is the mechanical, chemical, or organic
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The Mississippi River discharges an average of 611,000 cubic feet of water per second, facilitating the transportation of approximately half a billion tons of sediment to the Gulf of Mexico (Lutgens, Tarbuck, & Tasa, 2014, p.88-89). By the time sediment reaches the lower Mississippi River, its deep smooth meandering channel is transporting mostly silt and clay, while eroding the outside banks of its curves, as it deposits material on the insides of its bends. Furthermore, this type of eroding and depositing activity causes formation of oxbow lakes, where the corners of meandering curves that are closest to each other erode away creating new channels (National Geographic, 2015, para.3-4). The Mississippi River shapes Earth’s landscapes
1. 225 MY : Weathering and erosion of very old folded rocks on an area
Hydrosphere of the Mississippi River A Case Study of * River management * People interfering in the hydrosphere * A flood management scheme River Basin / Catchment area The source of the river is the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains to the north. There are many hundreds of tributaries including the Red River, Missouri river and the river Ohio. The mountains form the river's watershed. From Minneapolis the river flows South-East into Iowa where it flows south as far as Davenport. At Davenport it is joined by more small tributaries.
The one feature common to the Hoover Dam, The Mississippi river and the three gorges dam is that they all tried to control nature’s swings, specifically in the form of flooding. Before the Hoover dam was built, the Colorado river “used to flood spectacularly…but after 1900 the Colorado provoked a vehement response” (Pg 177). The response was simple, but large. The U.S. built several large dams, including the Hoover dam, on the Colorado to decrease its flooding and increase power and irrigation. Unfortunately, just as human control of the Colorado’s flooding increased, its organisms and habitats were detrimentally influenced, and the water became more and more salinated.
This report is to see the effects of stream erosion and transportation of sediment caused by running water in the North Fork Cosumnes River California. The field repot was conducted on July 9, 2014 by Joel Morsey and John Morsey. I chose this location because I used to go there with my family when I was younger to swim in the river. I was interested to see how low the river was, because of the drought California has been having and to see the effects of erosion in more detail because the water would be much lower.
As sea level rose and fell over Louisiana in previous centuries, the Mississippi River carried large loads of sediment to the Gulf Coastal area from the core of the North American continent and deposited it on the rim of the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to the twentieth century, 5 million acres of land were compliments of the large influxes of mud from the river’s mammoth basin, extending from Montana to New York State. Organic matter from highly productive marine waters has been deeply buried under the whole state and far offshore, turning into petroleum. During other dry periods, large beds of salt were laid down through evaporation. Human engineering has temporarily tamed the river, most of the time, preventing it from dumping its valuable land building sediment all over the place. As a result, coastal Louisiana is sinking out of sight, starved of fresh material.
Upper Mississippi River Basin Coordinating Committee, Upper Mississippi River Comprehensive Basin Study, vol. 1 and 5 (1972)
One of the processes is plate tectonics. The landform is the Connecticut River Valley. The Connecticut River was formed by the WIsconsin Glacier. North America and Africa moved apart. The rifts are located on lowlands in Connecticut. Large amounts of rain would run off land higher than the valley. Also, that could cause flooding and erosion deposits sediment into the valley. Plate tectonics shift to raise the land for erosion to wear down. Connecticut was very close to the equator. Plate tectonics shifted and dug a huge hole. The Wisconsin Glacier covered our entire state including Long Island, New York. Meltwater was collected and it created Lake Hitchcock.
In the Leptis Magna site, the honeycomb weathering is found on steep surfaces in the salt
Erosion is when the elements such as wind, water, and ice remove pieces of land. (“What is Coastal Erosion?”) Coastal Erosion takes place when destructive waves wear parts of the coast away. Four ways in which this takes place are corrasion/abrasion, hydraulic action, attrition, and corrosion/solution. (“Internet Geography”) Corrasion/abrasion is when materials are hurled at the base of cliffs through waves. Hydraulic action is when waves hit the base of a cliff and air is compacted, when the wave leaves air is rushed out and often this causes the material to break. Attrition is when the waves cause rocks and pebbles to smash into each other and eventually break into pieces. Finally, Corrosion/solution is when certain types of cliff erode from the result of acids in the sea. (“Internet Geography”) Coastal Erosion is the natural process of taking land away permanently from one place to put it somewhere else. (“What is Coastal Erosion?”) Eroding coastlines are an abundant and important topic because it can change people’s surroundings in a negative way. I would like to address the questions surrounding Coastal Erosion.
Ice dams in the Clark Fork area that backed up Glacial Lake Missoula actually caused some of the largest floods known to man. As ice will float, these ice dams would periodically rise up and burst, catastrophically flooding the Rathdrum Prairie, eastern Washington and into northern Oregon. Locally, these floods brought in glacial till and deep deposits of outwash that obliterated the St. Joe River once running through the Rathdrum Prairie. The southernmost edge of these deposits terminated where Coeur d’Alene exists today, damming the old St. Joe River and creating Lake Coeur d’Alene (Alt and Hyndman, 73). The new lake received the entire flow of the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe Rivers, more than could be absorbed through the gravel deposits, thereby causing the lake to overflow and seek a new course, now known as the Spokane Ri...
The earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago from the nebula cloud of gas that created the Sun and the other planets present in the Solar System. Ever since then, the earth’s surface has been constantly changing; the primary reason for this is because of tectonic plates. Even though, humans have existed on Earth for around 200,000 years, humans have been responding to the challenges of living on a planet with a constantly changing surface by using scientific evidence and technology to help them adapt to a constantly changing environment.
Geophysics, which studies the physics of the Earth, has led to many important findings about the Earth and how it is made. Seismologic studies of planet Earth have revealed new information about the inside of the Earth that has helped to give new openings to plate tectonic theory. Due to geophysical studies, we now know that the Earth is made of several significant layers. Each one of these layers has its own properties. The crust is the outermost layer of the Earth. The crust is made up of the oceans and continents. The crust has a fluctuating thickness, being thirty to seventy-five kilometers thick in the continents and ten to fifteen kilometers thick in the ocean basins. The crust is made up mainly of alumino-silicates (Fowler p472).
Chemical Weathering is when water weakens the structure of the rock and Mechanical Weathering is where water seeps into the rock face causing fragments of rock to break off.
Rain forms when water vapor condenses and falls, the more it condenses the more it falls. Some raindrops are not pure and are filled with other materials, this is known as acid rain. Acid rain is a huge problem all over the world. Acid rain is mixture of chemicals, like fossil fuels and the atmosphere, it then comes down as rain, snow, hail, and sleet. The burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of acid rain. When oil and coal are burned they create sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide. (" Acid Rain | US EPA") The mixture of all the chemicals and heavy winds blow the compounds across many borders.
There are lots of environmental issues going on globally. The earth faces problems such as pollution, global warming, waste disposal, and loss of biodiversity. These are just a small amount of issues out of the so many. These environmental problems pose an abundant amount of risk to the health of humans and animals. There needs to be a solution to all these problems and that is by informing others, so that way everyone can make the environment a better place.