Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arisen from the same cause, usually an orogeny . [ 1 ]
Schist typically forms during regional metamorphism accompanying the process of mountain building and usually reflects a medium grade of metamorphism. Schist can form from many different kinds of rocks, including sedimentary rocks such as mudstones and igneous rocks such as tuffs .
This area now forms much of the Interior Plains and the slope of the Appalachians below the mountains proper. [7] This area has been covered by a shallow inland sea, which became the site of deposition for most of the overlying sedimentary rock. [citation needed] The sea receded as the continent rose becoming covered by stream, lake, and wind ...
[a] The Tarim sedimentary basin borders the range on the north and the Lesser Himalayas on the south. Melt waters from glaciers, such as those south and east of K2, feed agriculture in the valleys and contribute significantly to the regional fresh-water supply.
Shields can be very complex: they consist of vast areas of granitic or granodioritic gneisses, usually of tonalitic composition, and they also contain belts of sedimentary rocks, often surrounded by low-grade volcano-sedimentary sequences, or greenstone belts. These rocks are frequently metamorphosed greenschist, amphibolite, and granulite facies.
A foreland basin is a structural basin that develops adjacent and parallel to a mountain belt. Foreland basins form because the immense mass created by crustal thickening associated with the evolution of a mountain belt causes the lithosphere to bend, by a process known as lithospheric flexure.
A major mountain range formed with the closing of the oceans, spanning thousands of kilometers across Pangaea. Known as the Variscan orogeny in Central Europe, the mountain building event left remnant highlands throughout Europe, northwestern Africa and North America. The Alps and the Bohemian Massif were affected by the orogeny.
A long chain of mountain ranges or highlands, especially those formed by the same orogeny and spanning the length of a continent along tectonic boundaries. The term is used in particular to refer to the American Cordillera , an almost continuous system of parallel ranges lining the west coasts of North, Central, and South America.