The Elements of Geology Part 15

The Highlands of Scotland meet the Lowlands on the south with a bold front of rugged hills along a line of dislocation which runs across the country from sea to sea. On the one side are hills of ancient crystalline rocks whose crumpled structures prove that they are but the roots of once lofty mountains; on the other lies a lowland of sandstone and other stratified rocks formed from the waste of those long-vanished mountain ranges. Remnants of sandstone occur in places on the north of the great fault, and are here seen to rest on the worn and fairly even surface of the crystallines. We may infer that these ancient mountains were reduced along their margins to low plains, which were slowly lowered beneath the sea to receive a cover of sedimentary rocks.

Still later came an uplift and dislocation. On the one side erosion has since stripped off the sandstones for the most part, but the hard crystalline rocks yet stand in bold relief. On the other side the weak sedimentary rocks have been worn down to lowlands.

RIFT VALLEYS. In a broken region undergoing uplift or the unequal settling which may follow, a slice inclosed between two fissures may sink below the level of the crust blocks on either side, thus forming a linear depression known as a rift valley, or valley of fracture.

One of the most striking examples of this rare type of valley is the long trough which runs straight from the Lebanon Mountains of Syria on the north to the Red Sea on the south, and whose central portion is occupied by the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea. The plateau which it gashes has been lifted more than three thousand feet above sea level, and the bottom of the trough reaches a depth of two thousand six hundred feet below that level in parts of the Dead Sea. South of the Dead Sea the floor of the trough rises somewhat above sea level, and in the Gulf of Akabah again sinks below it. This uneven floor could be accounted for either by the profound warping of a valley of erosion or by the unequal depression of the floor of a rift valley. But that the trough is a true valley of fracture is proved by the fact that on either side it is bounded by fault scarps and monoclinal folds. The keystone of the arch has subsided. Many geologists believe that the Jordan- Akabah trough, the long narrow basin of the Red Sea, and the chain of down-faulted valleys which in Africa extends from the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb as far south as Lake Nya.s.sa--valleys which contain more than thirty lakes--belong to a single system of dislocation.

Should you expect the lateral valleys of a rift valley at the time of its formation to enter it as hanging valleys or at a common level?

BLOCK MOUNTAINS. Dislocations take place on so grand a scale that by the upheaval of blocks of the earth's crust or the down- faulting of the blocks about one which is relatively stationary, mountains known as block mountains are produced. A tilted crust block may present a steep slope on the side upheaved and a more gentle descent on the side depressed.

THE BASIN RANGES. The plateaus of the United States bounded by the Rocky Mouirtains on the east, and on the west by the ranges which front the Pacific, have been profoundly fractured and faulted. The system of great fissures by which they are broken extends north and south, and the long, narrow, tilted crust blocks intercepted between the fissures give rise to the numerous north-south ranges of the region. Some of the tilted blocks, as those of southern Oregon, are as yet but moderately carved by erosion, and shallow lakes lie on the waste that has been washed into the depressions between them. We may therefore conclude that their displacement is somewhat recent. Others, as those of Nevada, are so old that they have been deeply dissected; their original form has been destroyed by erosion, and the intermontane depressions are occupied by wide plains of waste.

DISLOCATIONS AND RIVER VALLEYS. Before geologists had proved that rivers can by their own unaided efforts cut deep canyons, it was common to consider any narrow gorge as a gaping fissure of the crust. This crude view has long since been set aside. A map of the plateaus of northern Arizona shows how independent of the immense faults of the region is the course of the Colorado River. In the Alps the tunnels on the Saint Gotthard railway pa.s.s six times beneath the gorge of the Reuss, but at no point do the rocks show the slightest trace of a fault.

RATE OF DISLOCATION. So far as human experience goes, the earth movements which we have just studied, some of which have produced deep-sunk valleys and lofty mountain ranges, and faults whose throw is to be measured in thousands of feet, are slow and gradual. They are not accomplished by a single paroxysmal effort, but by slow creep and a series of slight slips continued for vast lengths of time.

In the Aspen mining district in Colorado faulting is now going on at a comparatively rapid rate. Although no sudden slips take place, the creep of the rock along certain planes of faulting gradually bends out of shape the square-set timbers in horizontal drifts and has closed some vertical shafts by shifting the upper portion across the lower. Along one of the faults of this region it is estimated that there has been a movement of at least four hundred feet since the Glacial epoch. More conspicuous are the instances of active faulting by means of sudden slips. In 1891 there occurred along an old fault plane in j.a.pan a slip which produced an earth rent traced for fifty miles (Fig. 192). The country on one side was depressed in places twenty feet below that on the other, and also shifted as much as thirteen feet horizontally in the direction of the fault line.

In 1872 a slip occurred for forty miles on the great line of dislocation which runs along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the Owens valley, California, the throw amounted to twenty-five feet in places, with a horizontal movement along the fault line of as much as eighteen feet. Both this slip and that in j.a.pan just mentioned caused severe earthquakes.

For the sake of clearness we have described oscillations, foldings, and fractures of the crust as separate processes, each giving rise to its own peculiar surface features, but in nature earth movements are by no means so simple,--they are often implicated with one another: folds pa.s.s into faults; in a deformed region certain rocks have bent, while others under the same strain, but under different conditions of plasticity and load, have broken; folded mountains have been worn to their roots, and the peneplains to which they have been denuded have been upwarped to mountain height and afterwards dissected,--as in the case of the Alleghany ridges, the southern Carpathians, and other ranges, --or, as in the case of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, have been broken and uplifted as mountains of fracture.

Draw the following diagrams, being careful to show the direction in which the faulted blocks have moved, by the position of the two parts of some well-defined layer of limestone, sandstone, or shale, which occurs on each side of the fault plane, as in Figure 184.

1. A normal fault with a hade of 15 degrees, the original fault scarp remaining.

2. A normal fault with a hade of 50 degrees, the original fault scarp worn away, showing cliffs caused by harder strata on the downthrow side.

3. A thrust fault with a hade of 30 degrees, showing cliffs due to harder strata outcropping on the downthrow.

4. A thrust fault with a hade of 80 degrees, with surface baseleveled.

5. In a region of normal faults a coal mine is being worked along the seam of coal AB (Fig. 193). At B it is found broken by a fault f which hades toward A. To find the seam again, should you advise tunneling up or down from B?

6. In a vertical shaft of a coal mine the same bed of coal is pierced twice at different levels because of a fault. Draw a diagram to show whether the fault is normal or a thrust.

7. Copy the diagram in Figure 194, showing how the two ridges may be accounted for by a single resistant stratum dislocated by a fault. Is the fault a STRIKE FAULT, i.e. one running parallel with the strike of the strata, or a DIP FAULT, one running parallel with the direction of the dip?

8. Draw a diagram of the block in Figure 195 as it would appear if dislocated along the plane efg by a normal fault whose throw equals one fourth the height of the block. Is the fault a strike or a dip fault? Draw a second diagram showing the same block after denudation has worn it down below the center of the upthrown side.

Note that the outcrop of the coal seam is now deceptively repeated. This exercise may be done in blocks of wood instead of drawings.

9. Draw diagrams showing by dotted lines the conditions both of A and of B, Figure 196, after deformation had given the strata their present att.i.tude.

10. What is the att.i.tude of the strata of this earth block, Figure 197? What has taken place along the plane bef? When did the dislocation occur compared with the folding of the strata? With the erosion of the valleys on the right-hand side of the mountain?

With the deposition of the sediments? Do you find any remnants of the original surface baf produced by the dislocation? From the left-hand side of the mountain infer what was the relief of the region before the dislocation. Give the complete history recorded in the diagram from the deposition of the strata to the present.

11. Which is the older fault, in Figure 198, or When did the lava flow occur? How long a time elapsed between the formation of the two faults as measured in the work done in the interval? How long a time since the formation of the later fault?

12. Measure by the scale the thickness lie of the coal-bearing strata outcropping from a to b in Figure 199. On any convenient scale draw a similar section of strata with a dip of 30 degrees outcropping along a horizontal line normal to the strike one thousand feet in length, and measure the thickness of the strata by the scale employed. The thickness may also be calculated by trigonometry.

UNCONFORMITY

Strata deposited one upon, another in an unbroken succession are said to be conformable. But the continuous deposition of strata is often interrupted by movements of the earth's crust, Old sea floors are lifted to form land and are again depressed beneath the sea to receive a cover of sediments only after an interval during which they were carved by subaerial erosion. An erosion surface which thus parts older from younger strata is known as an UNCONFORMITY, and the strata above it are said to be UNCONFORMABLE with the rocks below, or to rest unconformably upon them. An unconformity thus records movements of the crust and a consequent break in the deposition of the strata. It denotes a period of land erosion of greater or less length, which may sometimes be roughly measured by the stage in the erosion cycle which the land surface had attained before its burial. Unconformable strata may be parallel, as in Figure 200, where the record includes the deposition of strata, their emergence, the erosion of the land surface, a submergence and the deposit of the strata, and lastly, emergence and the erosion of the present surface.

Often the earth movements to which the uplift or depression was due involved tilting or folding of the earlier strata, so that the strata are now nonparallel as well as unconformable. In Figure 201, for example, the record includes deposition, uplift, and tilting of a; erosion, depression, the deposit of b; and finally the uplift which has brought the rocks to open air and permitted the dissection by which the unconformity is revealed. From this section infer that during early Silurian times the area was sea, and thick sea muds were laid upon it. These were later altered to hard slates by pressure and upfolded into mountains. During the later Silurian and the Devonian the area was land and suffered vast denudation. In the Carboniferous period it was lowered beneath the sea and received a cover of limestone.

THE AGE OF MOUNTAINS. It is largely by means of unconformities that we read the history of mountain making and other deformations and movements of the crust. In Figure 203, for example, the deformation which upfolded the range of mountains took place after the deposit of the series of strata a of which the mountains are composed, and before the deposit of the stratified rocks, which rest unconformably on a and have not shared their uplift.

Most great mountain ranges, like the Sierra Nevada and the Alps, mark lines of weakness along which the earth's crust has yielded again and again during the long ages of geological time. The strata deposited at various times about their flanks have been infolded by later crumplings with the original mountain ma.s.s, and have been repeatedly crushed, inverted, faulted, intruded with igneous rocks, and denuded. The structure of great mountain ranges thus becomes exceedingly complex and difficult to read. A comparatively simple case of repeated uplift is shown in Figure 204. In the section of a portion of the Alps shown in Figure 179 a far more complicated history may be deciphered.

UNCONFORMITIES IN THE COLORADO CANYON, ARIZONA. How geological history may be read in unconformities is further ill.u.s.trated in Figures 207 and 208. The dark crystalline rocks a at the bottom of the canyon are among the most ancient known, and are overlain unconformably by a ma.s.s of tilted coa.r.s.e marine sandstones b, whose total thickness is not seen in the diagram and measures twelve thousand feet perpendicularly to the dip. Both a and b rise to a common level nn and upon them rest the horizontal sea-laid strata c, in which the upper portion of the canyon has been cut.

Note that the crystalline rocks a have been crumpled and crushed.

Comparing their structure with that of folded mountains, what do you infer as to their relief after their deformation? To which surface were they first worn down, mm' or nm? Describe and account for the surface mm'. How does it differ from the surface of the crystalline rocks seen in the Torridonian Mountains, and why? This surface mm' is one of the oldest land surfaces of which any vestige remains.

It is a bit of fossil geography buried from view since the earliest geological ages and recently brought to light by the erosion of the canyon.

How did the surface mm' come to receive its cover of sandstones b?

From the thickness and coa.r.s.eness of these sediments draw inferences as to the land ma.s.s from which they were derived. Was it rising or subsiding? high or low? Were its streams slow or swift? Was the amount of erosion small or great?

Note the strong dip of these sandstones b. Was the surface mm'

tilted as now when the sandstones were deposited upon it? When was it tilted? Draw a diagram showing the att.i.tude of the rocks after this tilting occurred, and their height relative to sea level.

The surface nn' is remarkably even, although diversified by some low hills which rise into the bedded rocks of c, and it may be traced for long distances up and down the canyon. Were the layers of b and the surface mm' always thus cut short by nn' as now? What has made the surface nn' so even? How does it come to cross the hard crystalline rocks a and the weaker sandstones b at the same impartial level? How did the sediments of c come to be laid upon it? Give now the entire history recorded in the section, and in addition that involved in the production of the platform P, shown in Figure 130, and that of the cutting of the canyon. How does the time involved in the cutting of the canyon compare with that required for the production of the surfaces mm', nn', and P?

CHAPTER X

EARTHQUAKES

Any sudden movement of the rocks of the crust, as when they tear apart when a fissure is formed or extended, or slip from time to time along a growing fault, produces a jar called an earthquake, which spreads in all directions from the place of disturbance.

THE CHARLESTON EARTHQUAKE. On the evening of August 31, 1886, the city of Charleston, S.C., was shaken by one of the greatest earthquakes which has occurred in the United States. A slight tremor which rattled the windows was followed a few seconds later by a roar, as of subterranean thunder, as the main shock pa.s.sed beneath the city. Houses swayed to and fro, and their heaving floors overturned furniture and threw persons off their feet as, dizzy and nauseated, they rushed to the doors for safety. In sixty seconds a number of houses were completely wrecked, fourteen thousand chimneys were toppled over, and in all the city scarcely a building was left without serious injury. In the vicinity of Charleston railways were twisted and trains derailed. Fissures opened in the loose superficial deposits, and in places spouted water mingled with sand from shallow underlying aquifers.

The point of origin, or FOCUS, of the earthquake was inferred from subsequent investigations to be a rent in the rocks about twelve miles beneath the surface. From the center of greatest disturbance, which lay above the focus, a few miles northwest of the city, the surface shock traveled outward in every direction, with decreasing effects, at the rate of nearly two hundred miles per minute. It was felt from Boston to Cuba, and from eastern Iowa to the Bermudas, over a circular area whose diameter was a thousand miles.

An earthquake is transmitted from the focus through the elastic rocks of the crust, as a wave, or series of waves, of compression and rarefaction, much as a sound wave is transmitted through the elastic medium of the air. Each earth particle vibrates with exceeding swiftness, but over a very short path. The swing of a particle in firm rock seldom exceeds one tenth of an inch in ordinary earthquakes, and when it reaches one half an inch and an inch, the movement becomes dangerous and destructive.

The velocity of earthquake waves, like that of all elastic waves, varies with the temperature and elasticity of the medium. In the deep, hot, elastic rocks they speed faster than in the cold and broken rocks near the surface. The deeper the point of origin and the more violent the initial shock, the faster and farther do the vibrations run.

Great earthquakes, caused by some sudden displacement or some violent rending of the rocks, shake the entire planet. Their waves run through the body of the earth at the rate of about three hundred and fifty miles a minute, and more slowly round its circ.u.mference, registering their arrival at opposite sides of the globe on the exceedingly delicate instruments of modern earthquake observatories.

GEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. Even great earthquakes seldom produce geological effects of much importance. Landslides may be shaken down from the sides of mountains and hills, and cracks may be opened in the surface deposits of plains; but the transient shiver, which may overturn cities and destroy thousands of human lives, runs through the crust and leaves it much the same as before.