Physical Geography: Landforms

We begin the semester with an exercise looking at the Earth’s landforms, by which I mean the Earth’s land surface or crust.
We start with a series of maps showing the position of the continents over the last 250 million years. The map below shows that the
name for this combined land mass is 1. Pangaea or “all Earth.” About 200 million years ago, this supercontinent split into northern
and southern continents during the Triassic. The southern continent, 2. Gondwanaland, takes its name from the Gondi—a tribal
people living in India. The place where they live today had by 65 million years ago detached itself from this southern continent. The
name 3. Laurasia combines Asia with Laurentian, a name related to the St. Lawrence River, which drains the Great Lakes and
flows past Montreal, Quebec’s biggest city.
Compare 65 million years ago to the map on this page, which shows the position of the continents today. The 4. North America was
still joined to Eurasian Plate via Greenland, but 5. Africa had nearly assumed its shape and position today below Eurasia. 6.
India was still in middle of the ocean, but slowly moving north on a collision course with Eurasia. What was driving this movement
and continues to drive it today? You might think of the globe as a giant pot of boiling jam, with scum floating about on the top as the
hot jam boils below. The blocks bump into each other or separate from each as currents of jam rise from below. So, too, the blocks of
the Earth's crust either collide, with one side 7. subduct under the edge of the other, or separate from each other. It sounds
cataclysmic, but the plate movement occurs at roughly the rate at which your fingernails grow. This map below shows plate movement
current areas of convergence and subduction. Note the areas spreading apart (in sold red) and the areas crunching together (in blue).
Most of the spreading happens beneath the oceanic 8. crust, with the exception of places like the Ethiopian Highlands. Look in east
Africa for the red dots. Here the very old 9. African Plate is slowly splitting in two. The new plate has already been named the 10.
Somali Plate.
 This map below illustrates the area of sea-floor spreading very clearly. New sea floor forms as lava cools where the plates on
either side of the spreading center are pushed apart (the solid red lines). In other words, the age of the ocean floor is 11. younger as
you move toward the spreading center. If you ever wondered how computer scientists build models of how the continents will be
arranged several million years from now, now you know. Spreading centers tell them a lot about where the continents are going and
where they have been.
 This map shows the plates around Japan, which include several minor plates not shown on the previous map. Convergence,
subduction, and transform movement all take place here in a rather small area. This area has extremely active faults as a result, largely
because two oceanic and one continental plate are interacting in very close proximity. The Philippines Plate subducts beneath the
Amur Plate here, while the Pacific Plate subducts beneath both the Philippines and Okhotsk plates. The 12. Philippine and the
Okhotsk also rub together, marked by the purplish line, and may be more responsible for Japan’s earthquakes than the subduction of
the two large oceanic plates. It’s similar to the San Andreas Fault in California.
 Of all the continents Africa most resembles a massive block of unbroken crust on the map below. It shows the uplift of the
continent, where the crusts character is perhaps most clearly revealed in 13. Kenya/Tanzania near Mt. Kilimanjaro in the east
Africa, the 14. Ethiopian Highlands in the northeast, and then the Atlas Mountains of 15. Morocco in the far northwest. Africa is
also uplifted, however, in a flat 16. plateau in the south, especially along the southern coast in the country of 17. South Africa. The
ridge and its outcrop are part of a larger plateau called the 18. Drakensberg Mountains that run the length of the southern coast.
 Most of Africa is composed of this ancient crustal block. Note the bits of the continent shaded in the color 19. purple. Here
volcanoes have cracked the surface at one time or another, most visibly in Ethiopia but also in lots of other places. Notice, for
example, the line of volcanic activity inside the "elbow" of West Africa (the Gulf of Guinea). The map also shows a fair amount of
light yellow or cream color. These areas are blanketed with 20. Loess, or “windblown” sediments. They are found most extensively in
the great northern desert, the Sahara.
 There’s a reason for the line of volcanoes: the continent is slowly drifting southwest over a hotspot or place of upwelling
molten rock. Volcanic material periodically breaks through the surface as it does. The same thing is happening elsewhere on the
planet, too. If you draw a line southeast from the 21. Midway Islands, you will see a line of increasingly new volcanoes ending in the
islands of Hawaii. Midway is so old that they no longer look like volcanoes. Just very large mounds on the seafloor worn away by
relentless ocean currents.
 The Arabia Peninsula is shown well on this map as a separate crustal block that is drifting to the northeast. It is like a raft
whose nose or leading edge is being pushed into and under Iran. The highest parts of the Arabian Peninsula are on its western edge in
southern Saudi Arabia, the 22. Asir Mountains, of which the very highest plateaus are in the southernmost corner. The eastern edge of
the peninsula is flooded by waters known to us as the 23. Persian Gulf. Arabs in the region don’t use or like that name because
they're not Persians (Iranians), but it’s standard in English. (The alternative is Arab Gulf or simply The Gulf, although that name will
confuse Americans who may think instead of the Gulf of Mexico.) Arabia crumples near the western edge Asia as it drifts. You can
see the result in Iran and its fold-belt 24. Zagros Mountains, which run the length of country’s western border.
 They formed when the collision of Arabia and Asia formed a fold belt. The belt of crumpling continues east through
Afghanistan to a knot in the border-junction area between the countries of Afghanistan, 25. Turkmenistan, 26. China and 27.
Pakistan. It then sweeps southeast in two bands, the 28. Kunlun in China, and the 29. Himalayas in India and Nepal. Between them
lies Tibet; to the north lies the great desert called the Taklamakan and, beyond that, another belt of mountains, the 30. Tian Shan
("Heavenly Mountains").
 India is (like Arabia) a raft farther south. Its leading edge is now the Indo-Gangetic Plain, stretching along the southern toe of
the Himalaya. Notice that the map also shows peninsular India as a plateau. Its Sanskrit name, 31. Deccan, literally means "the
south"). The map suggests that the plateau's edge is called the 32. Western Ghats. The last word literally means “steps.” The
colonial British used to build hill stations here to cool off in the hot season before the monsoon.
 The zone of crumpling bends south east of the Himalaya and China. It crosses western Myanmar (or Burma), south through 33.
Thailand and plunges into the sea to form some of the island chains of the archipelagic nations of Malaysia and 34. Indonsesia. A
parallel line to the east forms the long Malay Peninsula. How long? It's almost near 900 miles from Bangkok to Singapore.
 The Pacific Plate is meanwhile pushing north and west, and its leading edge is being subducted or pushed under Asia, which is
why the ocean floor has trenches, such as the crescent moon-shaped 35. Mariana Trench southeast of Japan and the 36. Aleutian
Trench south of Alaska on the map below, the latter of which is the deepest in world at a mere 36,000ft (6.8 miles) below sea level.
 China proper (roughly green fan-shaped area east of Tibet) is topographically complicated. Notice the extensive area in dark
green in the east? It’s the North China Plain, corresponding to the valleys of the 37. Yellow River, which drains into the Yellow Sea
southeast of Beijing, and the Yangtze River, which drains into the East China at Shanghai (not shown here). This plain is intensively
cultivated, like northern Iowa or southern Minnesota; it's also extremely densely populated unlike Iowa and Minnesota. Another
intensively cultivated area appears on this map. It's the roughly circular area between the North China Plain and Tibet. This is the 38.
Sichuan Basin; it corresponds to the province of Sichuan (previously spelled Szechwan, although the old spelling is still used when
referring to culinary styles.)
 Let's look farther north to Europe. The Alpine system extends from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco all the way east to
Indonesia. The map shows older episodes of mountain-building, too. One can be seen in the northern parts of the British Isles and
Norway that stretches all the way to the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia. Notice its major parts include not only the Alps proper,
but also the 39. Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal, the Pyrenees between France and Spain, the Apennines in Italy, the 40.
Caucasus separating Russia from Turkey, and the Anatolian Plateau in Turkey (not labeled here), among several other ranges. Notice
how the Danube River comes from the Germany west across the Hungarian plains, cuts through the backward S-curve of mountains,
and continues east through the plains between the mountain ranges. The backward-S curve traces the 41. Carpathian Mountains in the
top curve, the Transylvanian Alps in the middle part of the curve, and the Balkan Mountains on the lower curve.
Looking for an old continental core, something like the plateau of Africa? It's hard to find, but one exposed bit is in the Scandinavian
Peninsula on this map. It’s an area called 42. Fennoscandia that wraps around the Gulf of Bothnia. Lappland is also wrapped by
mountains near the edge of the Norwegian Sea. Remember these mountains when we reach North America.
 South America, unlike Africa, Asia and Europe, is relatively simple, with a "shield" area or ancient block underlying Brazil
and with a mountain chain rimming the west coast. shows shield areas covered by later sedimentary rocks in light brown. Note that the
sediment carried by the Amazon in light green has over the eons gradually covered the country so that the shield is buried there. In
other words, the light yellow areas north and south of the river are the same crust, but their connection is buried. The 43. Brazillia
Highlands and Guyana Highlands are the same rock as in Africa, to which this South American rock was once attached. This simple
physical map shows the western mountains as the Andes, which run from Venezuela to the tip of Chile. They are relatively new by
comparison. The Brazilian and Guyana Highlands were at least 150 million years old by the time the Andes came along.
 This map shows the Andes trifurcates (splits) into three parallel ranges farther north in Colombia; the Sierra Occidental,
Central, and Oriental. The eastern one splits again and its arms enclose the brackish inlet called 44. Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.
Notice that there's another isolated mountain block on Colombia’s north coast. This block is the 45. Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta Mountains, sharing the name with the city, which rise about 18,000 above sea level and do so only about 25 miles from the sea.
Call it the world's highest coastal mountain range.
 I've saved the U.S. for last. So here we have a simple physical map of its early mountain formation. The 46.
Appalachian Mountains on the east coast were once part of the Caledonian Mountains and British Isles in Europe and the Atlas
Mountains of West Africa. These mountains are among the very oldest on Earth. Some of them are as old as 1.2 billion years. These
ancient rocks antedated most plant and animal life, and the intense pressure and heat that that formed their intrusive layers destroyed
traces of early life. The Precambrian rocks (1.2 billion to 500 million years old) in the Appalachians contain almost no fossils as a
result. They make up what is known as “Old” Appalachia in Europe, Greenland, Canada, and New England.
The previous map is somewhat deceptive, however. The “young” Appalachians (500 million to 250 million years old) extend much
farther west and have a foxtail on this map, the 47. Ozark Plateau, straddling the joint-borders between Missouri, Arkansas and
Oklahoma. The Mississippi River cut it off from the rest of Appalachians. Out west you see the northern Rockies and the Southern
Rockies, which turn into the 48. Colorado Plateau, the farther south you go. Then the mountain ranges on the Pacific coast, which are
really two very different things. The mountains are volcanoes mostly in WA, OR, and northern California, but they are a non-volcanic
block in southern California. The name “Sierra Nevada” includes both kinds of mountains.
Now look closely at the different shades of tan on the previous map. One can see the subtle rise of the land across Oklahoma and the
states to its north all the way to Minnesota. Elevations don't drop again until you hit west coast. Now look east toward Pennsylvania
for the Allegheny Mountains. They are another classic locale for 49. folded belt mountains, like the 50. Zagros we saw in Iran. You
may have noticed, too, the Red River on the western Minnesota and North Dakota border. It's draining north into Canada, and it's
probably the flattest place in the United States. How did it get so flat? Answer: It's part of the floor of glacial Lake Agassiz, which
formed as the continental ice sheet melted about 11,500 years. Silt gradually formed a blanket on its bed. The ice formed a dam
ponding the lake, so when the ice went, so did the lake.
What have we omitted, besides a million details? Mexico for one thing, where (like Bolivia) parallel chains delimit a plateau
called the Mesa or Altiplano. The two chains converge in the south as the country narrows. Australia for another one. It was once
joined to Africa and has a topography and crust formations similar to South America. But let's not belabor the point. The Earth's crust
and rock formations are an ancient but dynamic part of the natural world.