Weathering and Mass Movement - Essay Example

Weathering This is the alteration and breakdown of the minerals and rocks on the surface of the earth’s crust to more equilibrium products with the conditions found on the environment. A lot of rocks and minerals are found deep within the earth’s crust where pressures and temperatures are different from those at the surface. Because of the disequilibrium, these materials are decomposed eroded, and attacked by physical and chemical processes. Weathering is the first step to geomorphic and biogeochemical processes.

Weathering is in three mechanism processes: chemical, physical, and biological and all theses take place together. (Kawamura, 2008).. Mass movement This is the downward movement of rocks and regolith on the earth’s surface due to gravitational force. Mass movements have significance to the process of erosion. It moves materials from a higher elevation to lower elevation. The type of mass movement showed was slope failures;Falls - Rockfalls It occurs when a rock falls downslope. The debris is similar except that they contain regolith and rocks.

The effect of this collision is that the rocks break more in size and deposit downhill; talus. Single and mass rock are forms of rockfall. Effects to urbanization Some of the rural areas show relatively week slope stability and are more susceptible to landslides because of the nature of the area’s soils, landslides are also triggered with other natural hazards such as heavy rains, floods, earthquakes and wildfires, landslide also destroy property and infrastructure and mass movement occur slowly or it takes time: warning time.

Due to the above reasons, people have resulted to move to urban areas that are free and safe.