WEATHERING

Weathering is the process by which solid rock is decomposed to loose gravel, sand, clay, and
soil.
Weathering involves little or no movement of the decomposed rocks and minerals. The weathered
material simply accumulates where it forms.

TYPES OF WEATHERING

1. Mechanical or physical weathering. This reduces solid rock to small fragments but does not
alter the chemical composition of rocks and minerals. This is caused by the following processes:

a. Pressure release fracturing. This is the breaking down of rocks because of less pressure
after exposure to the surface.

b. Frost wedging. This is the wedging of rock by ice formed from accumulation of water in
cracks.

c. Abrasion. This is the wearing down of rocks because of impact and friction.

d. Organic activity. This is the breaking down of rocks because of plant and animal action.

e. Thermal expansion and contraction. This is the fracturing of rock when temperature
changes rapidly than the rock’s interior.

2. Chemical weathering. This occurs when air and water chemically react with rock to alter its
composition and mineral content.

a. Dissolution: During dissolution, minerals in a water solution break down into ions. This
reaction primarily affects relatively soluble salts and carbonate minerals.

b. Hydrolysis: During hydrolysis, reactions with water break down existing minerals and
produce new minerals.

c. Oxidation: Reactions of iron-bearing minerals with atmospheric oxygen or with oxygen

dissolved in water cause oxidation, or “rusting,” of rock, yielding a reddish-brown mixture of
weak iron oxide and iron hydroxide minerals.

d. Hydration: Hydration happens when water molecules form bonds within mineral crystals.

Sometimes, mechanical and chemical weathering act together in breaking down rocks, such as the
following:
a. Salt cracking. Caused by pressure exerted by precipitated rocks in cracks
b. Exfoliation. Caused by either pressure-release fracturing or hydrolysis expansion where rack
splits in concentric shells or plates
c. Spheroidal weathering. Caused by combination of physical and chemical forces that cause
formation of spheroidally-shaped boulders

FACTORS AFFECTING RATE OF WEATHERING

 1. Hardness
2. Surface area
3. Composition
4. Climate
5. Vegetation
6. Organic activity
7. Time

SOIL

Soil consists of sediment that has been modified over time by physical and chemical interaction
with rainwater, air, organisms, and decaying organic matter. Soils are the upper layers of regolith (a thin
layer of loose rock fragments, clay, silt, and sand overlying bedrock) that contain organic matter and can
support rooted plants.

Soil is a mixture of mineral grains and rock fragments, organic material, water, and gas. The size
and interconnectedness of pore spaces in soil and therefore the rate at which water and air can infiltrate
the soil depends on the soil texture—the relative proportions of sand, silt, and clay. Soils rich in sand and
silt contain pore spaces big enough to allow the infiltration of water and air. In contrast, clay-rich soils are
so fine grained that pore spaces between the sediment particles are very small, inhibiting the transmission
of air and water. Plants rooting in such soils often suffer from lack of oxygen. A loam is a soil with
approximately equal parts of sand, silt, and clay. Such soils are well drained and may contain abundant
organic matter, making them especially fertile and productive.

Clay minerals perform several important functions in soils. Clays can retain water by
incorporating it into their crystal structure or by attracting water molecules to the charged flat surface of
the platy clay crystals. The charged surfaces of clay minerals also can attract and hold other ions, such as
calcium or potassium, commonly formed from the weathering of feldspars. By releasing hydrogen ions
from organic acids, plant roots are able to exchange it for the calcium or potassium ions that the plant
needs for growth.

Organic matter in soils also contains nutrients necessary for plant growth. When organic litter—
leaves, stems, and flowers that have not decomposed—decomposes sufficiently that you can no longer
determine the origin of individual pieces, it becomes humus. Humus is decay resistant and nutrient rich
and is an essential component of most fertile soils. Humus-rich soils swell after a rain and shrink during
dry spells. This alternate swelling and shrinking loosens the soil, allowing roots to grow into it easily. A
rich layer of humus also insulates the soil from excessive heat and cold and reduces water loss from
evaporation.

SOIL FORMATION

Soil formation, which takes place at or just below the Earth’s surface, represents an interaction
among several components of the Earth System. Soil can form either from weathered rock or from a pre-
existing sediment deposit. Three key processes contribute to soil formation.

1. Chemical and physical weathering break up pre-existing material (rock or sediment), forming
loose grains.

2. Rainwater falls on the accumulation of grains, sinks in, and slowly percolates downward. As
water moves down, it dissolves ions and picks up clay flakes and carries them along. The region
from which downward transport removes ions and clay is the zone of leaching. Farther
 underground, new mineral crystals precipitate from the downward-percolating water, and the clay
that was leached from above gets left behind. The region in which new minerals grow and
transported clay collects is the zone of accumulation.

3. Organisms interact with loose debris in many ways. For example, microbes, fungi, plants, and
animals alter grains by absorbing or releasing ions. Plant roots and burrowing animals (such as
insects, worms, and gophers) churn and break up the sediment. Animals leave behind organic
waste as a by-product of their metabolism, and when they die, their remains decompose and mix
into the mineral debris. And at the ground surface, leaves and other vegetation decompose and
mix into the debris.

SOIL HORIZONS

Typically, because different soil-forming processes operate at different depths, soils develop
distinct zones, known as soil horizons, arranged in a vertical sequence, collectively called a soil profile.

1. O-horizon (organic horizon) consists mostly of humus

2. A-horizon where humus has decayed further and has mixed with mineral grains (clay, silt, and
sand)

3. E-horizon (eluviation horizon) where leaching has taken place, but not much organic matter has
mixed in

4. B-horizon where transported clay and very fine organic particles collect and new minerals such
as iron oxide grow

5. C-horizon, which consists of weathered rock or sediment that has not yet undergone leaching or
accumulation

Th e O-, A-, and E-horizons together represent the zone of leaching and can form topsoil, the part
of the soil that farmers till when planting crops. Beneath the A-horizon (or, in some cases, the E-horizon)
lies the B-horizon, or subsoil, representing the zone of accumulation. Here, transported clay and very fi
ne organic particles collect and new minerals such as iron oxide grow.

FACTORS AFFECTING SOIL FORMATION

1. Parent rock. The texture and composition of soil depends partly on its parent rock. For example,
quartz containing rocks usually result in sandy soil. Soil formed directly on bedrock and are
called residual soils, such as those formed on hillsides. In contrast, transported soils develop
from parent material not the soil itself that is transported, but rather the regolith from which the
soil is formed, such as those formed on sediment deposited on a river floodplain during a flood or
on deposits of windblown silt. Transported soils typically are more fertile than residual soils,
because they consist of a wider variety of source materials and hence supply a greater variety of
minerals and nutrients.

2. Climate. Climate exerts a fundamental control over soil formation, mainly through average
annual temperature and precipitation. Rates of chemical weathering reactions, plant growth, and
plant decay are all higher in warmer climates than cold ones. Precipitation that infiltrates the soil
can translocate soil particles and ions downward, leading to the development of soil horizons.
 Although precipitation typically seeps downward through soil, several other factors related to
climate can pull the water back upward. Plant roots suck soil water toward the surface. In arid
climates, subsurface evaporation can cause upward movement of water. In addition, a process
called capillary action draws water upward in the same way that water is drawn up into the holes
of a sponge placed on a countertop spill of water.

3. Rates of plant growth and decay. In the tropics, plants grow and decay rapidly and growing
plants quickly absorb the nutrients released by decaying vegetation. Heavy rainfall and organic
acids leach nutrients from the soil. Little humus accumulates and few nutrients are stored in the
soil. Thus, even though the tropical rain forests support great populations of plants and animals,
these depend on a rapid cycle of growth, death, and decay. Conversely, the Arctic tundra is so
cold that organic matter in the soil decays very slowly, accumulating through time to form a
significant reservoir of carbon.

4. Slope aspect and steepness. Aspect refers to the orientation, or facing direction, of a slope with
respect to the Sun. In the semiarid regions of the Northern Hemisphere, thick soils and dense
forests cover the cool, shady north slopes of hills, but thin soils and grass dominate hot, dry,
southern exposures. The reason for this difference is that in the Northern Hemisphere more water
evaporates from the hot, sunny, southern slopes. Therefore, fewer plants grow, weathering occurs
slowly, and soil development is retarded. Plants grow more abundantly on the moister northern
slopes, and more rapid weathering forms thicker soils.

5. Time. Chemical weathering occurs slowly in most environments, and time is therefore an
important factor in determining the extent of weathering. Recall that most minerals weather to
clay. In geologically young soils, weathering may be incomplete and the soils may contain many
partly weathered mineral fragments. As a result, young soils are often sandy or gravelly.

TYPES OF SOIL

1. Andisol: It is a young soil from volcanic parent material, which contains >50% chemically
reactive volcanic debris. It has a high cation exchange capacity and high fertility, and is capable
of supporting intensive agriculture and supports very productive forests.

2. Vertisol: It is a dark brown to black soil rich in expandable clay minerals, with deep vertical
cracks when dry (where organic debris can accumulate) and commonly very sticky and nearly
impermeable when wet. It has a thick A horizon, and good for rice but not for tree growth.

3. Aridisol: It is the desert soil characterized by low moisture content and little organic matter. It
requires sufficient time to develop, with the subsoil characterized by accumulation of mineral
salts, especially calcium carbonate, and is prone to salinization if over-irrigated.

4. Alfisol: It is a soil formed in semi-arid to humid environments, which typically support hardwood
forests. It is characterized by clay-rich subsoil and have a relatively high fertility and capable of
supporting sustained agriculture.

5. Spodosol: It typically forms in cool, moist environments and support coniferous forests, with
typically sandy texture with little to no clay. It has a well-developed light-colored E horizon and
red-brown B horizon. It is an acidic soil which makes it naturally infertile.
 6. Mollisol: It is a mid-latitude grassland ecosystem soil characterized by thick, rich A horizon from
long-term addition of organic matter derived from plant roots. It has a high cation exchange
capacity, high base saturation, and a B horizon rich in calcium carbonate or other salts.

7. Ultisol: It is a red or yellow color strongly leached soil formed in temperate humid to tropical
settings. It is characterized by accumulation of clay in the B horizon and has almost without base
cations. It comes from older, stable geologic surfaces and has low fertility.

8. Oxisol: It is a very strongly leached soil formed in tropical settings, formed on very old geologic
surfaces and typically lack well-developed horizons. It has nearly no base cations, making it an
extremely infertile soil and very difficult to cultivate. It erodes easily.

9. Gelisol: It is formed in high latitude or high elevation regions characterized by very cold
temperatures and permafrost within 2 meters of the surface. It is a very organic-rich, lack of
well-developed horizons because of soil churning due to freezing and thawing.

10. Histosol: It is characterized by thick, organic-rich accumulation in non-permafrost regions,

typically bogs, marshes, or swamps. It inhibits the decay of organic matter and is typically >20–
30% organic carbon by weight. It has a low density and it is locally mined as peat.

11. Inceptisol: It is a young soil formed in sub-humid to humid environments. Its horizons are
weakly developed. It has an abundance of unweathered minerals. It is commonly form on
moderate slopes, young surfaces, or resistant parent material and have variable fertility.

12. Entisol: It is a very young soil with little or no evidence of horizon development except an A
horizon. It typically developed on unconsolidated parent material and is mostly sandy and thin.
It is the most extensive soil order. Soils not classified under any other order are classified as
entisols.

EROSION

Erosion is a process by which solid material is ground away by glaciers (glacial erosion), snow
(snow erosion), waves (water erosion), wind (aeolean erosion), animals (zoogenic erosion), plants, and
humans (anthropogenic erosion). Just like weathering, erosion can also be mechanical or chemical.

STREAM EROSION

Streams shape Earth’s surface by eroding soil and bedrock. The flowing water carries the eroded
sediment downslope. A stream may deposit some of the sediment in the valley down which it flows,
while it carries the remainder to a lake or to the sea, where the sediment accumulates.

Stream erosion and sediment transport depend on a stream’s energy. A rapidly flowing stream has
more energy to erode and transport sediment than a slow stream of the same size. The competence of a
stream is a measure of the largest particle it can carry. The capacity of a stream is the total amount of
sediment it can carry and is proportional to both current speed and discharge. Because the ability of a
stream to carry sediment is proportional to both velocity and discharge, most sediment transport occurs
during the few days each year when the stream is in flood.

After a stream erodes soil or bedrock, it transports the products of weathering downstream in
three ways: dissolved load (ions dissolved in water), suspended load (sediment carried within the flow
by turbulence and is free from contact with the streambed), or bed load (sediment transported along the
bottom or in intermittent contact with the bottom of the streambed).

A stream can erode both downward into its bed and laterally against its banks. Downward erosion
is called downcutting. Downcutting may result to a graded stream (stream with a smooth, concave-
upward profile, in equilibrium with its sediment supply). Lateral erosion occurs in low-gradient streams,
which occurs where a low-gradient stream forms a series of bends, called meanders. As a stream flows
into a meander bend, the water pushes against the outside bank of the meander. As water is pushed
against the outside bank, it causes the bank to erode.

WAVE EROSION

Most wave erosion occurs gradually, by abrasion. Water is too soft to abrade rock, but waves
carry large quantities of silt, sand, and gravel. Breaking waves roll this sediment back and forth over
bedrock, acting like liquid sandpaper, eroding the rock. At the same time, smaller cobbles are abraded as
they roll back and forth in the surf zone.

Seawater slowly dissolves rock and carries ions in solution. Saltwater also soaks into bedrock;
when the water evaporates, the growing salt crystals pry the rock apart.

Most waves approach the shore at an angle rather than head-on. When this happens, one end of
the wave encounters shallow water and slows down, while the rest of the wave is still in deeper water and
continues to advance at a relatively faster speed. As waves approach an irregular coast, they reach the
headlands first, breaking against the point and eroding it. The waves then refract around the headland and
travel parallel to its sides.

When waves strike the coast at an angle, they form a longshore current that flows parallel to the
shore. They transport sand for great distances. Longshore sediment transport also occurs by beach drift.
If a wave strikes the beach obliquely, it pushes sand up and along the beach in the direction that the wave
is traveling. When water recedes, the sand flows straight down the beach.

GLACIAL EROSION

Ice is viscous enough to pick up and carry particles of all sizes, from house-sized boulders to
clay-sized grains. Thus, glaciers erode and transport huge quantities of rock and sediment. Ice itself is not
abrasive to bedrock, because it is too soft. However, rocks embedded in the ice scrape across bedrock,
gouging deep, parallel grooves and scratches called glacial striations. When glaciers melt and striated
bedrock is exposed, the markings show the direction of ice movement.

A glacier extends across the valley bottom and commonly fills the entire valley itself. As a result,
the glacier scours the sides of the valley as well as the bottom, carving a broad, rounded U-shaped valley.
Landforms formed from glacial erosion include:

1. Cirque. A steep-walled, spoon-shaped depression eroded into a mountain peak by a glacier.

2. Tarn. A small lake at the base of a cirque.

3. Paternoster lakes. A series of lakes in a glacial valley, strung out like beads and connected by
short streams and waterfalls.
 4. Horn. A sharp, pyramid-shaped rock summit where three or more cirques intersect near the
summit.

5. Arête. A sharp narrow ridge of rock between adjacent valleys or between two cirques, created
when two alpine glaciers moved along opposite sides of the mountain ridge and eroded both
sides.

6. Hanging valley. A small glacial valley lying high above the floor of the main valley

7. Fjords. A deep, narrow, glacially carved valley on a high-latitude seacoast that was later flooded
by encroaching seas as the glaciers melted

WIND EROSION

Wind erosion or deflation is a selective process. Because air is much less dense than water, wind
is capable of moving only small particles, generally those sand-sized and finer. When wind blows, it
removes only the silt and sand, leaving the pebbles and cobbles behind to form a continuous armoring of
stones called a desert pavement. A desert pavement prevents the wind from eroding additional sand and
silt, even though this finer sediment may be abundant beneath the stoney armor.

Wind erosion is caused by sand-sized grains of sediment that are entrained in wind. When it is
strong enough, wind can begin to roll and bounce sand grains across the ground surface. If the wind
strengthens, some of the grains will be kicked upward then carried downwind a short distance before
falling back to the surface, in a process called saltation. The resulting trajectory of each grain is
asymmetric, with a steeper ascent angle and a more shallow descent angle. When the wind is strong
enough to cause many grains to saltate at one time, a saltation carpet is formed. Such windblown,
saltating sand is abrasive and capable of eroding bedrock.

MASS WASTING

Mass wasting is the downslope movement of earth material by gravity. Mass wasting plays a
critical role in the rock cycle as the first step in the transportation of sediment, and it serves as the most
rapid means to modify slope shapes. But, like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, and floods, mass
wasting is a type of natural hazard, a feature of the environment that can cause damage to landscapes and
to human society. Unfortunately, mass wasting becomes more of a threat to society every year because, as
the world’s population grows, cities have expanded to include areas of unstable slopes.

Most people refer to any mass-wasting event as a landslide. Geologists and engineers, however,
find it useful to distinguish among types of mass-wasting events based on four features: (1) the type of
material involved (rock or regolith); (2) the velocity of movement (slow, intermediate, or fast); (3) the
character of the moving mass (coherent, chaotic, or slurry); and (4) the environment in which the
movement takes place (subaerial or submarine).

Type of Description Subcategor Description

Movement y
Flow Individual particles move Creep Loose material moves very slowly
downslope independently downslope, usually at a rate of only about
of one another, not as a 1 centimeter per year and usually on land
consolidated mass. with vegetation.
Typically occurs in loose, Trees on a creeping block tilt downhill and
 unconsolidated regolith. grow to have a trunk shaped like a pistol
Rate of movement can butt.
range from visually Debris flow Common in arid regions with intermittent
imperceptible (<1 m/year) heavy rainfall, or can be triggered by a
for creep to 100 km/hr or volcanic eruption.
more for some mudflows. Earthflow Viscous flow of fine-grained sediment or
Flows typically are poorly fine-grained sedimentary rock that is
sorted. Particle sizes range saturated with water and moves downslope
from large boulders in as a result of gravity; usually slow moving,
some debris flows to typically less than one to several meters
mostly silt and clay in per day
mudflows. Mudflow Involves the downslope movement, usually
on unvegetated land, of fine-grained soil
particles mixed with water; can be slow
moving, as slow as 1 meter per year, or as
fast as a speeding car.
Slide Material moves as Slump Blocks of material slide downslope as a
consolidated blocks; can consolidated unit over an upward-concave,
occur in regolith or curved fracture in rock or regolith; trees on
bedrock. the slumping blocks tilt uphill. The uphill
portion of the slump usually consists of
several tilted slide blocks, whereas the toe
of the slump usually consists of rumpled,
folded sediment.
Rockslide A segment of bedrock slides downslope
along a fracture and the rock breaks into
fragments and tumbles down the hillside;
also called a rock avalanche
Fall Materials fall freely in air;
typically occurs in
bedrock.
Falls occur only on steep
cliffs

FACTORS WHICH CAUSE OF MASS WASTING

1. Steepness of the slope.

2. Type of rock and orientation of rock layers
3. Nature of unconsolidated materials
4. Water and vegetation
5. Earthquakes and volcanoes