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Chemical weathering takes place when water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other chemical substances react with rock to change its composition. These reactions convert some of the original primary minerals in the rock to secondary minerals, remove other substances as solutes, and leave the most stable minerals as a chemically unchanged resistate .
This occurs because in regions of higher elevation there are higher rates of mechanical erosion (i.e. gravity, fluvial processes) and there is constant exposure and availability of materials available for chemical weathering. [2] The following is a simplified equation describing the consumption of CO 2 during chemical weathering of silicates:
Chemical weathering processes probably play a more important role in deserts than was previously thought. The necessary moisture may be present in the form of dew or mist. Ground water may be drawn to the surface by evaporation and the formation of salt crystals may dislodge rock particles as sand or disintegrate rocks by exfoliation.
Denudation incorporates the mechanical, biological, and chemical processes of erosion, weathering, and mass wasting. Denudation can involve the removal of both solid particles and dissolved material. These include sub-processes of cryofracture, insolation weathering, slaking, salt weathering, bioturbation, and anthropogenic impacts. [4]
The regolith of a region is the product of its long weathering history; leaching and dispersion are dominant during the initial phase of weathering under humid conditions. [1] Saprolites form in high rainfall regions which result in chemical weathering and are characterised by distinct decomposition of the parent rock's mineralogy. [5]
The rate of weathering is sensitive to factors that change how much land is exposed. These factors include sea level , topography , lithology , and vegetation changes. [ 4 ] Furthermore, these geomorphic and chemical changes have worked in tandem with solar forcing, whether due to orbital changes or stellar evolution, to determine the global ...
Abrasion is a process of weathering that occurs when material being transported wears away at a surface over time, commonly occurring with ice and glaciers. The primary process of abrasion is physical weathering. Its the process of friction caused by scuffing, scratching, wearing down, marring, and rubbing away of materials.
Exfoliating slabs of granite, on Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, USA. Exfoliating granite is a granite undergoing exfoliation, or onion skin weathering (desquamation).The external delaminated layers of granite are gradually produced by the cyclic variations of temperature at the surface of the rock in a process also called spalling.