Posted
on July 27, 2014
So...if
you learn a lot about something while having fun doing your hobby,
you too might end up with a university job teaching that something, a
Wikipedia article about yourself, and a lake in Antarctica named
after you!
Born
on this date in 1833, the English geologist Thomas George Bonney was
a math teacher who loved to hike around alpine (high mountain)
regions, studying the rocks there.
He
got so knowledgeable about alpine geology, he became a geology
lecturer at a college and later a professor of geology at a
university. He also became the president of the Alpine Club.
Bonney
also wrote a biography of geologist Charles Lyell, who was
the most important geologist of his time. Lyell came up with the
concept of uniformitarianism, which is the idea that the Earth was
shaped by the same forces and processes that we see happening today.
Rather than assuming that the Earth's landforms were created very
suddenly by short-term, violent events like a catastrophic global
flood, Lyell suggested that they were created slowly and gradually by
processes such as erosion, which we see occur now. Lyell was one of
the first geologists to realize that the Earth was older than 300
million years.
Lyell
was a friend of and important influence on biologist Charles Darwin.
The word alpine
comes from the Alps
When
we talk about alpine animals, alpine plants, and alpine geology being
the animals, plants, and rocks found on high mountains, we are using
a word coined by Europeans for the highest mountains in Europe: the
Alps.
The
Alps are a mountain range that stretch from Austria and Slovenia, in
the east, through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Monaco, Germany
and France, in the west.
Like
many mountain ranges, the Alps were created when two tectonic plates
collided. Remember, geology has a lot of very slow (yet unstoppable)
processes, and the collision of two plates is one of them. It's not a dramatic SMASH! BANG! collision -- but it goes on and on year after year after year after thousands and millions of years.
In the
case of the Alps, the African plate and the Eurasian plate moved
slowly toward one another, probably at about the rate of fingernail
growth. They collided while traveling toward one another at a rate of less than an inch to a few inches PER YEAR.
(Of
course, once in a while tectonic plates move quickly, slipping past
each other in a juddery, skittery event called an earthquake. But
that's generally when plates are moving alongside each other.)
In the
case of colliding plates, it's hard to see any change within a human
lifetime. But as they collide, the plates push upwards in a series of
folds, forming mountains over millions of years.
Here
is what is special about the Alps:
They are the most densely
populated mountain area in the world.
The
Alps are middle aged mountains. (For comparison, the Rockies and
Himalayas are considered young – at 10 to 25 million years of age.
The Urals and Appalachians are old, at more than 200 million years of
age. The Alps began to form about 40 million years ago.)
About
11 million people live in the Alps, making their living through
forestry, pasturing sheep, cattle, and other animals, and of course
tourism. Ski resorts and other winter tourism is especially popular,
but in the summer the Alps are filled with hikers and walkers,
cable-car riders, and para-gliders.
Because
of the huge numbers of tourists and the large all-year population,
the Alps is considered the most threatened mountain chain in the
world.
I
am thrilled to inform you that, although I have only ever been to the
Alps in the summer, I was up high enough during a storm that it
snowed on us! I never thought I would get to say that I was snowed on
in the Alps!
 |
| The world-famous Matterhorn |
 |
| Tourists can even enjoy the INSIDES of the Alps. This tunnel was carved into a glacier. I visited tunnels and under- ground caves of a salt mine in the Alps. |
Also
on this date:
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