Weathering refers to the breakdown and dispersal of rocks and minerals on Earth’s surface by weathering agents like erosion. Deposition occurs when these particles settle elsewhere such as on beaches or sand dunes.
Water is the leading cause of weathering and erosion, both mechanically (water getting into cracks in rocks and freezing, splitting them) and chemically (interacting with rocks). Other causes for weathering include plants and animals such as burrowing rabbits.
Water
Water is the driving force that breaks rocks apart and moves them away from their original locations through erosion. Rain, snow and ice fall fall can act like rivers to move soil or rock layers along their paths through canyons or rivers; or cut gorges deep in canyon walls; wash away layers of soil and rock from little streams called rills before eventually expanding to wider and deeper channels known as gullies.
Water can also contribute to chemical weathering by dissolving minerals in rocks, making the rocks easier for physical or mechanical forces to break apart. Chemical weathering typically occurs where there is plenty of water such as lakes and rivers.
Water erosion forms waterfalls, flood plains, and oxbow lakes. A waterfall typically forms when hard rock lies beneath softer clay or silt layers; as water flows over these surfaces it erodes and drops chunks of hard rock as it goes over them – this same process also creates the large curves in rivers that become oxbow lakes.
Wind
Scotts Bluff National Monument offers an excellent demonstration of weathering and erosion at work, from rock slides to raindrops causing soil particles to dissipate or raindrops washing away rocks one by one – mechanical weathering processes are clearly present here.
Wind is one way the Earth’s surface changes over time. It can transport sand and gravel from one location to the next and cause desert sand dunes to move over time – known as wind erosion. Furthermore, wind helps transport seeds, pollen and seeds between plants as well as animal sources, even carrying ships across oceans!
Water can lead to chemical weathering. Acid rain and other chemicals can break down some types of rocks like limestone, creating caves and cliffs in its wake. River currents also play a part in erosion; this is how Oxbow lakes–those odd horseshoe-shaped ponds along rivers–form.
Ice
Water is usually the main agent in weathering and erosion processes, but ice also plays an important part. Ice can erode rocks both physically and chemically. It can rip chunks away from mountainsides to carve U-shaped valleys. When the glacier recedes it deposits this material as drumlins or outwash plains; or can sculpt rock surfaces into U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, cirques horns or aretes.
Glacial erosion can occur quickly. A glacier can quickly carve a deep U-shaped valley and leave behind an altitude lake called a tarn. When multiple glaciers erode one mountain top from different directions simultaneously, pointed-shaped peaks such as Switzerland’s Matterhorn may form. Horns and aretes may also appear when glaciers move down its side or flow off-mountain slopes before melting glaciers deposit large boulders and bits of rock material they have collected into piles called moraines.
Temperature
At Scotts Bluff National Monument, weathering and erosion are always at work, manifested most clearly by rock slides – an increasingly frequent sight at the park. Other signs may include potholes formed from expanding ice cracks in rocks as well as shifting beaches caused by waves or gravity.
Water is one of the primary forces shaping our landscapes by means of weathering and erosion. It can do this mechanically – such as when raindrops hit rocks with enough force to dislodge soil particles – or it can move sediments over mountains by flowing with river waters carrying away soil with them.
Water can cause chemical weathering when it interacts with rocks and minerals, such as when carbonic acid from water dissolves limestone to form caves. Erosion may happen slowly as is seen with glaciers or it could take place quickly such as when mudslides occur.