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Exam 2 Study Guide

I. Continental drift and plate tectonics including Pangea, major plates made of lithosphere and asthenosphere allowing movement, and plate boundaries such as divergent, convergent, and transform fault boundaries. II. Earthquake causes including elastic rebound and fault slippage, seismic wave types, and measurement using seismograms. III. Volcano formation from partial melting of the mantle, and eruption types depending on magma composition such as felsic or mafic. Mountain building occurs at convergent boundaries through processes like orogeny.

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37 views

Exam 2 Study Guide

I. Continental drift and plate tectonics including Pangea, major plates made of lithosphere and asthenosphere allowing movement, and plate boundaries such as divergent, convergent, and transform fault boundaries. II. Earthquake causes including elastic rebound and fault slippage, seismic wave types, and measurement using seismograms. III. Volcano formation from partial melting of the mantle, and eruption types depending on magma composition such as felsic or mafic. Mountain building occurs at convergent boundaries through processes like orogeny.

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lemaramelia
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Topic: Earth Science Study Guide

I. Continental Drift
- Alfred Wegner's hypothesis of continental drift - 1915
- Evidence supporting continental drift such as the continental jigsaw puzzle, matching fossils,
rock types and structures, and ancient climates
- Pangea

II. Earth's Major Plates


- Earth's major plates made up of oceanic and continental lithosphere (strong, rigid layer)
- Asthenosphere (weak sphere) allowing for movement in upper most portion
- Plate - a distinct piece of the lithosphere that has boundaries on all sides which are called
plate boundaries
- continental margins - edges of continents where they meet the oceans and seas.
❖ These lead to active margins (continental argos that are plate boundaries)
❖ Passive boundaries (continental margins that are not plate boundaries)

III. Plate Boundaries


- Divergent (ocean ridges and seafloor spreading), convergent (oceanic-continental
convergence, oceanic-oceanic convergence, continental-contiental convergence), and
transform fault boundaries
- Continental Margins- edges of continents where they meet the oceans/seas, leads to active
margins (continental margins that are plate boundaries) and passive margins (continental
margins that are not plate boundaries)

● Convergent boundaries
- Plate boundaries where the lithosphere is destroyed (destructive plate margins)
- Subduction zones - where one plate (lithosphere) bends and sinks down
(subduction) into the asthenosphere beneath another plate
- Deep-ocean trenches develop at subduction occurs
- Earthquakes and volcanic activity also occur.
- Angles of subduction range from a few degrees to 90 averaging about 45
- Depends on density

● Convergent zones
- Oceanic-oceanic
❖ Creates volcanic island arcs
❖ Back-arc basin-depression formed behind a volcanic island ar
- Continental-contiental
❖ Subduction ends with two continental plates collide (collision)
❖ Continental plate density is so low that they cannot be subducted, so the
former trench becomes a suture (linear belt formed by rocks)
● Oceanic - continental convergence
- Downgoing plate - plate that is being subducted
- Overriding plate - plate that is not sinking/not being subducted

IV. Earthquakes
- Causes of earthquakes
- Seismic waves and locating the epicenter
- earthquake: a vibration caused by the sudden breaking or frictional sliding of rock in the earth
- fault: a fracture on which one body of rock slides past another
- Focus: the location where a fault slips during an earthquake (also called the hypocenter)
- epicenter: the point on the surface of the earth directly above the focus of an earthquake
- fault trace: the intersection between a fault and the ground surface
- creep: movement along faults occurs gradually and relatively slowly and smoothly. Fault
displacement without significant earthquake activity.

● Why do earthquake occur


- Elastic rebound - “springing back” of a rock once an earthquake has occurred
and the rock returns back to its original shape
- Most earthquakes are produced by the rapid release of elastic energy stored in
rock stress.
● Surface waves (Rayleigh and love waves) - complex motion, causes great destruction,
great amplitude and slowest velocity

● P - waves (fastest) and s waves (moderate) surface waves (slowest)


- P-wave: primary waves
- Compression - push/pull
- Fastest
- Travels through liquids, solids and glasses
- S-waves
- Secondary waves
- Shear
- Slower than p-waves
- Travel through solids

● Earthquake measurement
- Seismogram - data record from a seismograph. It depicts earthquake wave
behavior
- P-waves first, s waves are second and surface waves are last

V. Volcanoes
- Formation of volcanoes
- Factors determining the nature of volcanic activity
- Types of eruptions and volcanic cones
- partial melting - the melting of a rock of the minerals with the lowest melting temperatures
while other minerals remain solid
- felsic magmas - higher silica content, lower fe and mg, higher viscosity (rhyolite)
- mafic magmas - lower silica content, higher fe and mg, lower viscosity (basalt)

VI. Mountain Building


- True mountains form by convergent plate tectonic activity
- Non-tectonic mountains are usually formed by eroding a high plateau
- Orogeny and the processes that collectively produce a mountain belt

●
● Hot spots
- As a plate moves over a hot spot a chain of volcanoes is formed. As these extinct
volcanoes sink below sea level, they become seamounts
VII. Isostasy
- Concept of a floating crust in gravitational balance
- Isostatic adjustment and establishing a new level of gravitational equilibrium

VIII. Mass Wasting


- Downslope motion of rock, regolith, snow, and ice
- Landslides and slope stability (force of gravity pulling on the block (driving force) exceeds the
resistance holding the block in place)
- Controls and triggers of mass wasting such as water, undercutting, and removal of vegetation
- Types of mass wasting such as slumps, block glides, debris flow, creep, and solifluction
- Preventing mass movements through control and stabilization methods

IX. Intrusive Igneous Activity


- Dikes(magma injected into fracture perpendicular to bedding plane), sills(magma injected into
fractures along a bedding plane), laccoliths(similar to a sill but magma more viscous), and
batholiths(largest igneous body)

X. Volcanic Hazards Summary


- Flows, ash and lapilli, ash in the air, the blast, landslides and lahars, earthquakes and
tsunamis, and gas

XI. Mountain Building - Continental - Continental Convergence


- Continental collisions and intense compression and shear causing the crust to thicken through
folding and faulting of the rocks caught up in the collision

XII. Mountain Building - Accretion and Orogenesis


- Orgeny: processes that collectively produce a mountain belt
- Accretion of terranes along a subduction zone can form mountains
- terrane (exotic terrane) - crustal block, bounded by faults, whose geologic history is distinct
from the history of the adjoining crustal block

XIII. The North American Cordillera


- The west coast of North America is comprised of numerous accreted terranes

XIV. Fault Block Mountains


- Mountains that are produced by continental rifting or extension of the crust

XV. Volcanic Island Arcs


- Oceanic – oceanic subduction and hydration of the mantle produces volcanic island arcs
- Convergence of an oceanic plate and continental plate, which results in the formation of a
continental volcanic arc and fold-thrust belts

XVI. Calderas
- Giant volcanic depression usually formed after a large eruption

XVII. Pyroclastic Debris


- Turbulent mixtures of hot gasses and pyroclastic material that travel with great velocity
- Tephra and various sizes such as lapilli, blocks, and bombs
XVIII. Lahars
- Fast-moving volcanic debris flow
- Mobilization of debris by water

● Rock deformation
- Deformation - all the changes in the original shape and/or size of the rock body
- Changes that occur: location or displacement, orientation or rotation, shape or
distortion (stretching, shortening, shear)

XIX. Types of Deformation


- Brittle(cracking and fracturing of material subjected to stress (occurs at shallower depths less
than 10-15 km depth)) and ductile deformation (the flowing of material without cracking or
breaking subjected to stress (occurs at higher temperatures and pressures more than 10-15 km
depth)

XX. Folds
- Layers of rocks that are deformed by tectonic compression
- Forms anticlines, synclines, and monoclines

XXI. Monocline
- Result of the reactivation of steeply dipping fault zones in basement rock

XXII. Domes
- Folded or arched layers with the shape of an overturned bowl that is produced by upwarping
- example: black hills, south dakota
- oldest rocks are in the center

XXIII. Basins
- A fold or depression shaped like a right-side-up bowl that is produced by downwarping
- example: bedrock of Michigan
- youngest rocks are in the center

● Fault block mountains


- Horst - the high block between two grabens
- Graben - a down-dropped crustal block bounded on either side by a normal fault
dipping toward the basin
- Reverse fault - greater than 45 degrees
- Thrust fault - less than 45 degrees

XXIV. Controls and Triggers of Mass Wasting


- The role of water, oversteepened slopes, planes of weakness, removal of vegetation

XXV. Slow Movements


- Creep and solifluction - gradual movement of soil and rock downslope under the influence of
gravity and annual freeze-thaw cycle

XXVI. Preventing Mass Movements - Control and Stabilization


- Water removal, addition of vegetation, retaining walls, rock bolts and avalanche sheds,
increase drainage, reduce undercutting.

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