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Areas sometimes included when referencing the Appalachian region. Northern section is generally not included. Environmental issues in Appalachia, a cultural region in the Eastern United States, include long term and ongoing environmental impact from human activity, and specific incidents of environmental harm such as environmental disasters related to mining.
An avalanche, similar in mechanism to a landslide, involves a large amount of ice, snow and rock falling quickly down the side of a mountain. A pyroclastic flow is caused by a collapsing cloud of hot ash , gas and rocks from a volcanic explosion that moves rapidly down an erupting volcano .
While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10–40 times the rate at which soil erosion is occurring globally. [7] At agriculture sites in the Appalachian Mountains, intensive farming practices have caused erosion at up to 100 times the natural rate of erosion in the region. [8]
Lithology or the type of rock; Surface topography and changes to surface topography, such as mass wasting and erosion; [8] and; Tectonic activity, such as deformation, the changing of rocks due to stress mainly from tectonic forces, [8] and orogeny, the process that forms mountains.
Human activities have increased by 10–50 times the rate at which erosion is occurring world-wide. Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes ) ecological collapse , both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper ...
Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, structure stratification, rock exposure, and soil type.Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains ...
Tectonic–climatic interaction is the interrelationship between tectonic processes and the climate system. The tectonic processes in question include orogenesis, volcanism, and erosion, while relevant climatic processes include atmospheric circulation, orographic lift, monsoon circulation and the rain shadow effect.
Subsidence frequently causes major problems in karst terrains, where dissolution of limestone by fluid flow in the subsurface creates voids (i.e., caves).If the roof of a void becomes too weak, it can collapse and the overlying rock and earth will fall into the space, causing subsidence at the surface.