Chapter 1

Time and Terrestrial Change

Geologist deal with immense spans of time, typically of the order of thousands to
millions to billions of years. On these time scales, human events and human history
are but a brief instant. In August of 1883 after 200 years of dormancy a small
volcanic island named Krakatoa, located between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
Geologic Events in Human History
Dramatic events like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, river floods, and tsunamis
greatly impressed early peoples, leading naturally to a catastrophic of erath history.
Subtle events producing slow geologic changes, such as the rise or fall of the sea
level and the gentle warping up (uplift) and down (subsidence) of the earths crust,
were long overlooked.
From the short time perspective of human history, geologic events can be either
short-lived and dramatic (such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and floods), or so
slow that they are virtually imperceptible (such as crustal uplift or subsidence).
Most geologic phenomena must be measured on a scale unfamiliar to the layperson.
For example, although a five-years flood is a rare event on th human scale of years
and decades, it is commonplace on the geologic scale of millions of years. And
continous, subtle changes like the rise of mountains and the erosion of an entire
continent, which are imperceptible to humans, produce important result on the
geologic scale of time. Changes may show different patterns:
- Linear change occurs at a constant rate, where as the more common nonlinear
change does not.
- Some geologic changes are nonrepeating, but others are repeating.
- Of repeating changes, those that repeat in a regular fashion through time are
periodic or rhythmic, those that do not recur regularly are episodic.
The catastrophic view of the earth dominated