Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T20:00:40.847Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Major features of the Earth and plate tectonics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Michael R. W. Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Simon L. Harley
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Get access

Summary

The father of geology, James Hutton, in the late eighteenth century provided the insights which led nearly a century later to the first understandings of how mountains are constructed and what causes them. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Lapworth, Peach and Horne, and Clough in Britain, and Argand, Bertrand, Heim and others working in the Swiss Alps, revolutionised our understanding of what the German geologist Kober called ‘orogens’ and of the process of orogenesis, the building of mountains.

To understand the significance of orogens, it is necessary to know something about plate tectonics, which has been remarkably successful in explaining many of the features of the Earth. In particular it deals with large-scale dynamic processes in the planet. Plate tectonics developed from the preceding ideas of continental drift, but in essence originated from an idea put forward in the 1960s by H. H. Hess. Hess postulated a surprising concept: that the ocean floor is in motion and is older as one moves away from submarine mountains known as mid ocean rises: for this reason the model became known as sea-floor spreading. The ocean floor is like a giant conveyor belt, and the interesting question is, where does it go? What this idea meant was that, for the first time in the history of geology, attention was turned on the oceans rather than the continents.

Type
Chapter
Information
Orogenesis
The Making of Mountains
, pp. 1 - 9
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, E.B. 1935 Tectonic Essays: Mainly AlpineOxfordClarendon PressGoogle Scholar
Holdsworth, R.E.Buick, I.S.Hand, M.Continental Reactivation and ReworkingGeological Society of London, Special Publication 184 57
Le Pichon, X.Francheteau, J.Bonnin, J. 1973 Plate Tectonics: Developments in Geotectonics 6 Amsterdam, London, New YorkElsevierGoogle Scholar
Moores, E.M.Twiss, R J. 1995 TectonicsNew YorkW.H. Freeman and CompanyGoogle Scholar
Windley, B.F. 1995 The Evolving ContinentsNew YorkJohn Wiley and SonsGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×