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.