MN331- Engineering Geology and Mapping

Lecture 1: Deformation of Rocks by Natural

Forces
PLATE TECTONICS

Why is the Earth so restless?

What causes the ground to shake violently, volcanoes to
erupt with explosive force, and great mountain ranges to rise
to incredible heights?
Scientists, philosophers, and theologians have wrestled with
questions such as these for centuries. Until the 1700s, most
Europeans thought that a Biblical Flood played a major role
in shaping the Earth's surface. This way of thinking was
known as "catastrophism," and geology (the study of the
Earth) was based on the belief that all earthly changes were
sudden and caused by a series of catastrophes. However, by
the mid-19th century, catastrophism gave way to
"uniformitarianism," a new way of thinking centered around
the "Uniformitarian Principle" proposed in 1785 by James
Hutton, a Scottish geologist. This principle is commonly
stated as follows: The present is the key to the past. Those
holding this viewpoint assume that the geologic forces and
processes - gradual as well as catastrophic -- acting on the
Earth today are the same as those that have acted in the
geologic past.

The dynamic processes, driven mainly by heat

and gravity and resultant convection within and
below the lithosphere (in the mantle), move
plate units either away from each other or
against each other (both situations can affect a
plate); this general motion is called plate
tectonics.
Plates diverge from ridges within oceanic basics
and converge against boundaries of other plates
causing melting, volcanism, metamorphism,
mountain building, rise/fall of crustal blocks,
continental growth and splitting.

Definitions
What is a plate?
= is a large, rigid slab
of solid rock
What is tectonics?
- comes from greek word
to build
- Plate tectonic -

Theory of plate tectonics

states that the Earth's
outermost layer is
fragmented into a dozen or
more large and small plates
that are moving relative to
one another as they ride
atop hotter, more mobile
material.

Earthquake Epicenters

Major Tectonic Plates

Four types of Plate Margins or Boundaries

Divergent plate

Subduction plate

Convergent plate

Transform fault

SEAFLOOR SPREADING - Testing

E.g, lava erupted in the geologic

past, when the north magnetic pole
was in the northern hemisphere,
preserved a positive magnetic
anomaly

In contrast, lava erupted in the

geologic past, when the north
magnetic pole was in the southern
hemisphere, preserved a negative
anomaly.

Type of Plate Motion

The ways that plates interact depend on their relative motion and
whether oceanic or continental crust is at the edge of the lithospheric
plate. Plates move away from, toward, or slide past each other. Geologists
call these divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries.