Fatima Mariella A.

Olendan September 25, 2019

11 – Dell Earth and Life Science

Folds and Faults

The Earth's tectonic plates is converging and diverging against one another. This
causes the Earth's crust to generate incredible amounts of pressure. Thus, the Earth’s crust is
constantly subjected to forces that push, pull, or twist it. These forces are called stress. In
response to stress, the rocks of the earth undergo strain. Fold is a ductile type of strain which
means that it only has bending and twisting, but no breaking in the rock. It has flat layers of
rock called strata while instead of seeing nice, straight horizontal strata, it will look like it has
been pushed together, causing it to fold upwards or sometimes they can fold downwards.
There are different types of folds, the anticline, a linear with dip away from the center. The
syncline, a linear with dip towards the center. The monocline, is a linear with dip in one
direction between horizontal layers on each side. The basin, a non-linear with dip towards all
center direction. Lastly, the dome, a non-linear with dip away from center in all directions.

The other type of strain is the fault, it is a break in the rock along which the
surrounding rock moves, sometimes a fracture which there are breaks in the rock but no
movement, There a different types of faults as well, the strike-slip faults are vertical (or
nearly vertical) fractures where the blocks have mostly moved horizontally. the dip-slip faults
are inclined fractures where the blocks have mostly shifted vertically. Lastly, the transform
fault, a special variety of strike-slip fault that accommodates relative horizontal slip between
other tectonic elements, such as oceanic crustal plates. Often extend from oceanic ridges.
There are three main types of faulting, the normal faulting, reverse faulting and the tear
faulting. They occur due to divergence, convergence and transverse movement of plates
respectively.

Therefore, The formations folds and faults was caused by the movement of tectonic
plates due to processes such as compression, tension and shearing, and in doing so, deform
and rearrange the Earth's crust. Rocks that were originally deposited in horizontal layers can
subsequently deform by tectonic forces into folds and faults. Folds and faults are dependent
to the plate tectonics because of the processes & events that lead to its formation in the first
place. There are different types of folds and faults that is caused by different events which are
all product of the plate tectonics or the movement of the plates

References:

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/geo/chapter/reading-strain/
https://platetectonicsinfo.weebly.com/faults-and-folds.html
https://rocogeog.files.wordpress.com/