The Origin of Mountains

ISBN-13: 9780415198899 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 368 str.

Cliff Ollier; C. F. Pain; Colin Pain

Opis

This volume describes mountains from all over the world, with an emphasis on mountain landforms, but also looks at their rocks, structure and age. This leads to a deduction on the mechanism which formed them, causing the authors to reject the pre-conceived and well known hypothesis that plate tectonics and folding creates mountains. The book approaches mountains from facts about mountain landscapes rather than theory. It illustrates that almost everywhere, mountains arose by vertical uplift of a former plain, and by a mixture of cracking and warping by earth movements, and erosion by rivers and glaciers, the present mountainous landscapes were created. It also gives evidence that this uplift only occured in the last few million years, a time scale which does not fit the plate tectonics theory. Another part of the evidence, shows that mountain uplift correlates very well with climatic change. Mountain building could have been responsible for the onset of the ice age. It certainly resulted in the creation of new environments.

Spis treści

List of tables, Preface, Acknowledgements, 1. Introduction, 2. Simple plateaus and erosional mountains, 3. Fault block mountains, 4. European mountains, 5. Western North America, 6. The Andes, 7. Asian mountains, 8. Mountains with gravity structures, 9. Volcanoes and granite mountains, 10. Mountains on passive margins, 11. Plains and planation surfaces, drainage and climate, 12. Problems of mountain tectonics, 13. Science and the origin of mountains, References, Index

O autorze

Cliff Ollier is a Visiting Fellow, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University and also Emeritus Professor, University of New England. Colin Pain is Assistant Director, Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Evolution and Mineral Exploitation, Australian Geological Survey Organisation.