Blog
Save
Email
Print
ShareOrogeny is the process of mountain building, and may be studied as a tectonic structural event, as a geographical event and a chronological event, in that orogenic events cause distinctive structural phenomena and related tectonic activity, affect certain regions of rocks and crust and happen within a time frame.
The physical manifestations of orogenesis, the process of orogeny, are orogenic belts or orogens.
An orogen is different from a mountain range in that an orogen may be completely eroded away, and only recognizable by studying (old) rocks that bear the traces of the orogeny.
Orogens are usually long, thin, arcuate tracts of rocks which have a pronounced linear structure resulting in terranes or blocks of deformed rocks, separated generally by dipping thrust faults.
These thrust faults carry relatively thin plates of rock in from the margins of the compressing orogen to the core, and are intimately associated with folds and the development of metamorphism.
For more information about the topic Mountain building, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Mid-ocean ridge — A mid-ocean ridge or mid-oceanic ridge is an underwater mountain range, formed by plate tectonics. This uplifting of the ocean floor occurs when ... > read more
Lithosphere — The lithosphere is the solid outermost shell of a rocky planet. On the Earth, the lithosphere includes the crust and the uppermost layer of the ... > read more
Continental crust — The continental crust is the layer of granitic, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks which form the continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to ... > read more
Crust (geology) — In geology, a crust is the outermost layer of a planet.
The crust of the Earth is composed of a great variety of igneous, metamorphic, and ... > read more
Geology of the Alps — The Alps form a part of a Tertiary orogenic belt of mountain chains along the southern margin of the continents Asia and Europe, called the Alpide ... > read more
Geologic fault — Geologic faults or simply faults are planar rock fractures which show evidence of relative movement. Large faults within the Earth's crust are the ... > read more
Alpine Fault — The Alpine Fault is a geological fault, known as a right-lateral strike-slip fault, that runs almost the entire length of New Zealand's South Island. ... > read more
Recommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:
Other bookmarking and sharing tools:
more 