Learning More About What Processes Change the Surface of the Earth

Structural Geology and Plate Tectonics This concerns the changes in the formation of the earth crust and mantle from the smallest to the largest, such as a series of mountains (UWYO, 2011). Conducting a study of these changes requires a conduct of fieldwork in coordination with other scientific disciplines, such as geophysics, geochemistry and petrology. The University of Wyoming has conducted such fieldwork on the different active and ancient areas of crustl and mantle changes.

This fieldwork continues at present on topics, including continental and oceanic extensional tectonics, aboriginal arc-continental collisions, fault systems, crustal studies, fold and fault features and direct dating of these changes (UWYO). These studies looked into the Archean depths in Wyoming province, the Rocky Mountain, the Alps, the Colorado River, the Carribean and the San Andres fault (UWYO, 2011). Researchers have swam and dug into thousands of meters into the ocean in order to look and obtain samples of plate margins for study on land.

What are all these efforts for? The search for answers and increased knowledge on what factors drive the basic processes that change the changes of the earth's crust and mantle -- that is the answer. It also seeks to find out when these processes occur and the rate of their occurrence (UWYO). Our parents, grandparents and other elders tell us how the environment has changed so much today. In their time, they could predict the regularity of rains and typhoons, for example, and they could prepare for these disturbances.

They also observe the swiftness with which day and night replace each day. Days seemed to move slowly in their time. And the recent upheavals in nature are nothing they knew in the past. Global warming and climate change are recent phenomena, which they could not have imagined occurring in the past but which are major threats to life and health to present habitants of the earth today. II. Surface Processes Changes on the surface of the earth take many forms and are not static (Noble, 2015).

The weather may reduce the size of mountains to small hills and rivers may erode and wash their components into the oceans. But the heat underneath the earth can create processes to replace these eroded mountains. The surface of the earth is dynamic and balanced. Some processes reduce elevations while others rebuild and replace elevations. If the earth were static, weather processes would wash all eroded materials into the oceans. Then oceans would have covered the entire planet (Noble).

A major factor in these processes that shape the surface of the earth is water (Noble, 2015). The vast volume of water in nature is not only a major factor in these processes that erode mounts. Without water, these processes would slow down or completely stop. Fiction would prevent ocean and continental plates from colliding. Water erodes mounts and coastal cliffs in the form of rain. As glaciers, it creates fjords, lake basins and even changes the earth's continental shelves. As rivers, water bores through big canyons.

As ocean waves or currents, it pushes away barrier islands, erodes the seafloor and taikes sediment into the ocean basin. These nature-driven tectonic processes, water and the effects of human activity combine to actually shape the earth as we see it today (Noble). From observation, some hidden Power holds and orchestrates the forces or processes.