Geology Notes

An introduction to the geochemical and geophysical sciences logically begins with mineralogy,
because Earth’s rocks are composed of minerals—inorganic elements or compounds that have
a fixed chemical composition and that are made up of regularly aligned rows of atoms. Today
one of the principal concerns of mineralogy is the chemical analysis of the some 3,000 known
minerals that are the chief constituents of the three different rock types: sedimentary (formed by
diagenesis of sediments deposited by surface processes); igneous (crystallized from magmas
either at depth or at the surface as lavas); and metamorphic (formed by a recrystallization
process at temperatures and pressures in the Earth’s crust high enough to destabilize the
parent sedimentary or igneous material). Geochemistry is the study of the composition of these
different types of rocks.

During mountain building, rocks became highly deformed, and the primary objective of structural
geology is to elucidate the mechanism of formation of the many types of structures (e.g., folds
and faults) that arise from such deformation. The allied field of geophysics has several
subdisciplines, which make use of different instrumental techniques. Seismology, for example,
involves the exploration of the Earth’s deep structure through the detailed analysis of recordings
of elastic waves generated by earthquakes and man-made explosions. Earthquake seismology
has largely been responsible for defining the location of major plate boundaries and of the dip of
subduction zones down to depths of about 700 kilometres at those boundaries. In other
subdisciplines of geophysics, gravimetric techniques are used to determine the shape and size
of underground structures; electrical methods help to locate a variety of mineral deposits that
tend to be good conductors of electricity; and paleomagnetism has played the principal role in
tracking the drift of continents.

Geomorphology is concerned with the surface processes that create the landscapes of the
world—namely, weathering and erosion. Weathering is the alteration and breakdown of rocks at
the Earth’s surface caused by local atmospheric conditions, while erosion is the process by
which the weathering products are removed by water, ice, and wind. The combination of
weathering and erosion leads to the wearing down or denudation of mountains and continents,
with the erosion products being deposited in rivers, internal drainage basins, and the oceans.
Erosion is thus the complement of deposition. The unconsolidated accumulated sediments are
transformed by the process of diagenesis and lithification into sedimentary rocks, thereby
completing a full cycle of the transfer of matter from an old continent to a young ocean and
ultimately to the formation of new sedimentary rocks. Knowledge of the processes of interaction
of the atmosphere and the hydrosphere with the surface rocks and soils of the Earth’s crust is
important for an understanding not only of the development of landscapes but also (and
perhaps more importantly) of the ways in which sediments are created. This in turn helps in
interpreting the mode of formation and the depositional environment of sedimentary rocks. Thus
the discipline of geomorphology is fundamental to the uniformitarian approach to the Earth
sciences according to which the present is the key to the past.