Internal and external processes that shape the landscape

Internal and external processes that shape the landscape

Introduction

The earth’s surface was shaped by a combination of several methods that are caused by actions of water, ice, wind, human operations, and volcanic activities, which alters the stability of earth’s materials and hence changes earth’s topography.  The drastic changes influence most of these actions in the climatic changes. The internal and external processes cause physical and chemical reactions on the earth’s materials, and these bring a configuration change on the earth’s surface. The procedures are interconnected; that is, the occurrence of one action leads to a series of other effects. For example, human activities of removing and replacing the landscape hasten the steps of soil erosion. Human activities, especially agriculture, have caused most of the earth’s processes. The features formed to the actions included mountains, valleys, hills, glaciers, loess, rivers,  plateaus, plains, and many other features.

The internal processes

These processes are also known as the endogenic, whose force emanates from the energy within the earth. The energy is generated from tidal friction, radioactivity, rotation, and excess heat from the earth’s origin.  The earth’s crust is dynamic. It moves vertically and horizontally on the earth’s axis as it rotates. In the past, the movement was faster than the rate it is moving now, and hence the internal processes have reduced their intensities. Some of the internal processes include plate tectonic movements, volcanic eruptions, continental movements, and earthquakes.

Plate tectonic movements

This can be explained with the theory of plate tectonic theory, where the earth was believed to be one single plate joined together to form a single continent called Pangaea. Then they separated over the years to form two continents called Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Due to collision, the continents continued to separate to form the seven continents; Africa, South America, North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Antarctica. Scientists using the jigsaw the fit proof noticed how well Africa and South America fit together, even when far apart. Due to plate tectonic activities, the continents are slowly moving farther apart or closer together. When the plates push against each other or collide over periods of years, one plate slides on top of the other, creating fault movements that generate earthquakes and volcanoes, which then mountains.

Volcanic eruptions

A volcano is an area where molten rock that is magma from the earth’s mantle reaches the earth’s surface as lava. Most of the volcanoes occurred due to plate tectonic activities when the plates are either diverging or converging. When the volcanic eruption is occurring, it results in the formation of conical volcanos, poisonous gasses, and flowing lava. It results in many features, which include; lava domes, mud volcanoes, underwater volcanoes, subglacial volcanoes, volcanic cones, fissure vents, and many more features.

Earthquakes

This is the sudden shaking of the earth’s surface caused by the seismic waves in the earth’s crust. Earthquakes are caused by several reasons that include natural forces, which include the sudden release of energy in the earth’s crust due to gravity, elastic strain, the mass motion of large bodies, or even chemical reactions. Tectonic forces; during the diverging and converging of the plate’s energy is produced, which makes the earth’s surface shake. Volcanic activities when the magma has been emitted the earth’s surface, there is a great generation of energy which is felt on those areas that are around the volcanic area. Artificial induction; human activities such as mining, filling of large reservoirs, the detonation of underground nuclear explosions, and injection of fluids into deep wells generate energy, causing an earthquake. On the earth, surface earthquakes cause changes such as changes in the flow of water bodies, rising, falling and tilting of ground surfaces, landslides, mudflows, and liquefaction of sandy surfaces.